The will to love : intrinsic dialogism and the philosophy of human motivation

WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Michael Colby Murphy (Creator)
Institution
Western Carolina University (WCU )
Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
Advisor
Beth Huber

Abstract: This work analyzes the ways in which humans, both individually and en masse, shape and areshaped by discourse and social exchange. Additionally, this work examines the systemic meansof social organization and structuralized power inherent in human existence and ways in whichthese structures influence human motivation. Although the source(s) of motivation in the entiresocial collective of humans qua humans is the subject of this work, the majority of sourcematerial derives from concentrated social contexts that serve as microcosms of human existence.Both the American prison system and university system provide extremely befittingrepresentations of human existence and interaction within a manageably sized socialenvironment for the purpose of examining a highly organized social system of power, thestructural division of individuals, the development of human identity (within a power structure),the various forms of interpersonal relationships, instances of high emotional and psychologicalstress, and the role of language within each aforementioned area. The author addressescontemporary thanatological and psychological notions of joy and meaning making in human lifeand offers a nuanced, rhetorically grounded theory of human consciousness and intrinsicallydialogical motivation. Intradialogism, as the author suggests, understands humans as anauthentically social species wholly reliant upon dialogical processes and emphasizes the innate human desire to experience new experiences regardless of any inhibiting means of systemic ororganizational control. The author rejects current theoretical models of human life as anextrinsically motivated activity and cites social constructivist theoretical framework such asMikhail Bakhtin’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language and Hannah Arendt’s HumanCondition to support the aforementioned intradialogical theory of human existence. Ultimately,the author suggests the intrinsic joy found in discourse and social experience is love—love is theprimary, authentic motivation according to an intradialogical theory of human existence.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 2015
Keywords
Dialogic, Dialogism, Intradialogsim, Love, Rhetoric, Theory
Subjects
Intrinsic motivation -- Philosophy
Discourse analysis -- Philosophy
Power (Social sciences)
Social exchange

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