relational inquiry regarding meaning » value » authenticity / valuable for me / my 'ought'
• Aristotle's highest good for a human as one that can be achieved independently (with intellectual virtue): "Happiness, then, is something complete and self-sufficient [...] And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity" (1097b22 & 1177a).
• endowment effect: We regard what we own as more valuable than it would be if we didn't own it.
• existentialism (broadly):
• Heideggerian authenticity: resolute being-toward-death, taking ownership of one's life —see, for example, M. MacDonald's essay on Medium.com
• Kierkegaard's faith
• Nietzsche's "Become who you are!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
• Sartre's being-for-itself/freedom/responsibility
• self-actualization through the process of Jungian individuation: At birth, the ego is still one with the transpersonal Self in an original wholeness. Through a process of alternating inflation and alienation, the ego discovers its uniqueness. Once distinct from the transpersonal Self, the ego can begin to reintegrate itself back into the Self, playing its proper, unique role in the world. The fully Self-integrated ego is self-actualized. —see Edinger, E. F. (1972) Ego and Archetype, esp. Part I: "Individuation and the Stages of Development"
_texts
• Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
• Edinger, E. F. (1972) Ego and archetype: Individuation and the religious function of the psyche [Shambhala 1992]
• Guignon, C., & Pereboom, D., eds. (2001) Existentialism: Basic writings, 2e [Hackett]
• Heidegger, M. (1927) Being and time, esp. Division Two
• Varga, S., & Guignon, C. (2020, spring) Authenticity [The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
