View Item 
        •   Utrecht University Student Theses Repository Home
        • UU Theses Repository
        • Theses
        • View Item
        •   Utrecht University Student Theses Repository Home
        • UU Theses Repository
        • Theses
        • View Item
        JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

        Browse

        All of UU Student Theses RepositoryBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

        On Being and Becoming: Experiential Ethics

        Thumbnail
        View/Open
        Renders, johannes - Renders JAM.pdf (752.9Kb)
        Publication date
        2014
        Author
        Renders, J.A.M.
        Metadata
        Show full item record
        Summary
        In this document I discuss the techniques employed by young adults in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in order to make themselves into morally acceptable persons for the rest of society, and attain a certain state of happiness and perfection. Through the stories of my Mongolian peers, and an analysis of Foucauldian ethics, I argue that experiencing this ethical transformation consists in resolving the paradox lurking between becoming and being, and liberating mental space in which change can happen. Focusing mainly on the Buddhist and shamanist personal ethical experiences of my informants, I argue that Foucauldian conception of ethics builds upon a fundamentally distinct dualist philosophical tradition of 'becoming'. And conversely, the main technology of the self I found in Mongolia is characterized by the letting go of the technologies themselves, abandoning the never-ending neurotic struggle for change, and abiding to what 'is' in a spiritual sense.
        URI
        https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/18351
        Collections
        • Theses
        Utrecht university logo