green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand this idea
| 6231 | There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are |
| 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. | |||
| From: Ralph Cudworth (Treatise of Freewill [1688], §X) | |||
| 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. |