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Full Idea
This hegemonicon (self-power) always determines the passive capability of men's nature one way or other, either for better or for worse; and has a self-forming and self-framing power by which every man is self-made into what he is.
Gist of Idea
There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are
Source
Ralph Cudworth (Treatise of Freewill [1688], §X)
Book Ref
'British Moralists 1650-1800 Vol. 1', ed/tr. Raphael,D.D. [Hackett 1991], p.132
A Reaction
The idea that we can somehow create our own selves seems to me the core of existentialism, and the opposite of the Aristotelian belief in a fairly fixed human nature. See Stephen Pinker's 'The Blank Slate' for a revival of the old view.
| 6230 | If the soul were a tabula rasa, with no innate ideas, there could be no moral goodness or justice [Cudworth] |
| 6223 | If the will and pleasure of God controls justice, then anything wicked or unjust would become good if God commanded it [Cudworth] |
| 6226 | The requirement that God must be obeyed must precede any authority of God's commands [Cudworth] |
| 6225 | Obligation to obey all positive laws is older than all laws [Cudworth] |
| 6227 | Keeping promises and contracts is an obligation of natural justice [Cudworth] |
| 6224 | An omnipotent will cannot make two things equal or alike if they aren't [Cudworth] |
| 6228 | Senses cannot judge one another, so what judges senses cannot be a sense, but must be superior [Cudworth] |
| 6229 | Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals [Cudworth] |
| 6231 | There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are [Cudworth] |