Physiognomy

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
1

Can physical characteristics be used to determine character?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Not sure
0 voters

From Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’:
“Between temperament and character there is therefore only a difference of principle, and character is identical with the body. This is what justifies the attempts of numerous authors to instate a physiognomy as the basis of the studies of character and in particular the fine research of Kretschmer on character and the structure of the body. The character of the Other, in fact, is immediately given to intuition as a synthetic ensemble.”

This particular passage struck me as a truth I agreed with.
I had always believed that the character of the other was readily available and that all that was necessary was the ability or the knowledge to accurately translate its detailed manifestations.
I don’t believe any particular physical attribute could be used to deduce another’s character but could it in unison with the entirety of the other’s external physicality reveal psychology or potential?

I agree with Sartre that there is no mysterious thing-in-itself forever inaccessible to us.
A thing, a phenomenon, is what it is in its entirety. Whether we become aware of it or can accurately interpret how it exposes itself to us or understand it is another matter.

In my own experience I’ve noticed that I could tell a dull mind merely by looking into its eyes. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was but I recognized it immediately.

It is said that you cannot judge a book by its cover.
But I disagree.

It is true that consciousness, particularly self-consciousness, can mask itself or hide itself or pretend it is something other than it is.
This is a willful act of concealment, often produced by self-awareness and by the ability to imagine how one appears to another.
But even this isn’t entirely successful at all times.
The mind exposes itself in subtle ways or in moments of distraction or passion.

I’ve sometimes heard someone be described as ‘looking like a pedophile’ or ‘creepy’ or ‘nice’ or in whatever manner, and I’ve wondered if these evaluations were entirely erroneous or if there wasn’t something to them.
It is true that one can misinterpret or misevaluate another but I wonder if there isn’t something to first impressions.

The perception and appreciation of beauty isn’t entirely skin deep. There is something to a form that exposes itself, its truth, symmetrically or asymmetrically.

Could physical deformities point to mental issues and do physical attributes represent a being’s overall character?

2

someones appearance can reflect something about them, but often, not at all at the same time.

take someones eyes for example. peoples eyes stay the same whether they are smiling or not, but when you look into someones eyes, you “think” you can read their personality, but you are actually reading their whole facial expression based upon some criteria in your mind.

someone might be really bright, but haven’t sleept in two days, look into their face for the first time if you haven’t meet them, and you’ll assume that something wrong about their intellect for sure.

Looks decieve . . . period. Advertising is largely based on looks, because it sells, not because it tells. Look at george bush, a smiling man, but an oil and war president. He fools millons (plural) by his appearance.

The sure way to get to know someone is too talk to them. And then, if you are smart, you won’t throw your critera of judgement on them right away. Many people who look “creepy” are just inept at social skills, or different than the norm in some ways. Getting to know them will take the “creep” out of them, that people have projected, that was never there in the first place.

My landlord was really nice to my girlfriend and I, smiled, dressed business like, and we thought she was a really nice lady, it turned out that she filed absurd charges against us for things that we plainly did not do, and tried to steal money from us. We talked to a friend who knew the lady, and we found out that she had done this multiple times to other people in the past.

Looks tell you about looks, they tell you nothing of the mind. Nothing . . .ok, they do tell you about stereotypes in your own mind, but that is mostly it.

3

George Bush isn’t evil. He’s a simpleton that can be used by others for their own purposes. He’s a puppet…a figurehead.
You can see this simplicity in his face.
You can see that he actually believes many of the things he says.
He just doesn’t always know why he believes them. It’s easy to be sure of yourself when there’s so little to incorporate into your certainty.

You allowed your landlady’s willful masking abilities to fool you.
You didn’t look close enough or, perhaps, you lacked the ability to perceive and interpret the sign accurately.

Clothes are often used to deceive as is makeup or property or careers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were sexualy obsessive individuals who were gynaecologists or homosexuals who were priests or pedophiles who were school teachers or criminals who were cops.

Want to spot the one with the most to hide?
Look for the most flamboyant one.

4

While I’m sure that a sensitive person can “read” personal characteristics, it is always against a stereotype you have formed in your mind’s eye. You’ve already pre-judged a certain look, a certain posture, a certain…

You’ll be right about the same as chance score will allow, or maybe just a teensie bit better. There are too many studies that have shown that such readings vary widely between different cultures.

The idea that character is identical with the body is just an idea that allows one to ‘project’ whatever they wish to assign to another - often wrong with disasterous result. There may be vague over-all impressions that come from observing physicality, but nothing that would let us assign any particular knowing of anything about that physicality.

5

I think there’s something to the idea of reading a person’s body language, picking up expressions and movements, etc. and maybe being able to draw some basic conclusions about their personality. Beyond this, assumptions and conclusions can be dangerous. I can’t help but think that when one is ascribing certain personality characteristics to a person’s physical appearance, maybe what’s really happening is that body language is being read. Some are better at it than others. Take a posed portrait of somebody you don’t know. Other than basics (gender, age, etc.) you couldn’t tell a thing. It’s the person in action that reveals. And that’s physical motion, not physical traits.

6

I think Jerry’s point is worth considering. In any case, Sartre is saying that character is identical with the body. Yet the body is constantly in ‘motion’ (the For-itself is constantly nihilating the In-itself), and so there is no reduction here. For a (pseudo)dialectician like Sartre, it is more accurate to say that the body is identical with character (i.e. to reverse the apparent emphasis): what literally appears to you is not the body, per se, but the person himself. (Albeit temporally distantiated.) The question is, as it is for every analysis of this sort, just how much of a the ‘character’ you can ‘see’ when, for instance, someone walks past you in the street. Of course for an ontologist the concept of ‘seeing’ is also unique. It may appear to be the raw sense-data conception of sight, in which case the idea that you can read character purely from this would be a reductive one; however this hardly gels with Sartre’s overall system - I would say - though I guess if you were thus inclined you could persist in such a reading regardless of this fact.

I have a pretty good visual memory, and often see the same facial configurations over and over again. From this experience I sometimes wonder how much of the apparent variety of human appearance would turn out to be illusory if we all just remembered each other a little better. In any case, whilst physiogamy might provide a broad indication of general mood or disposition (i.e. in cases where you only see a face for a matter of seconds), I don’t think it can provide anything more than - at best - a little peek at type-identities (i.e. rather than token-identities). You ought not to forget that Sartre characterizes existential psychoanalysis as ‘hermeneutical’ (if I am not mistaken), and that his argument proceeds on the premise that a person’s ‘character’ or ‘identity’ can only be arrived at by taking into account the particular way in which they manifest the “desire to be God” - i.e. the desire to be a for-itself-in-itself: a plenum of being. The whole of this seems to my eye to agitate against any approach which includes the idea that you can “judge a book by its cover”. Though it depends on how strongly you want to interpret this statement.

Regards,

James

7

Jerry made a good point.

Movement is a much more noticeable expression of character.

James no 2 mentioned that for Sartre the physical body was the being’s character as it manifested itself within the world; Being unfolding in space/time by creating distances.
The body is the self-for-others.

It isn’t a vehicle or a tool for the For-itself - but only for others - , it is the For-itself as it becomes apparent to itself and to others (coming into existence) through the negation of the In-itself, according to Sartre.

The body, even in what we call a state of rest, is in perpetual movement. It is in constant flux. The movement might be more subtle than when a body is running or reaching or making some gesture, but it is always in action.

If we then reconsider Jerry’s commentary then we might say that a body is either more or less obvious or more or less subtle, since consciousness, and especially self-consciousness, can control the volume and direction of its self-expression, but as a living entity it is always acting.

Tentantive adds the added parameter of personal and cultural prejudice to the mix.
But from where do such prejudices come from and are there not universal human characteristics that go beyond culture?

For me culture is mostly a prejudice produced by how a body or a being is hidden or “civilized” into or towards a particular ideal.
Culture is added to the body as a garment is added to it.

The body doesn’t vanish underneath culture, nor does it mutate, it remains similar to every other body of the same species.
It only alters its garments. It alters its appearance towards others and it willfully controls how it relates and self-expresses self towards them.
Can these alterations, through willful suppression, become permanent in time?

8

I have to accept that we can discern by posture, mannerisms, and facial expressions certain clues about character that even transcend culture. That said, what can be learned is so vague that it really says very little. There is also an unconscious notice of context and environment in which such ‘readings’ take place. The individual, their environment, and their situation of the moment are seamless. These things are only separated abstractly, and the attendant judgement contains such great complexity that one needs to be extremely careful in assigning attributes. Through the looking glass darkly, indeed.

9

There are different opinons on george bush being a simpleton or evil. I personally believe that he possibly uses the image of being a simpleton to fool simpletons, and intellectuals to dismiss him as a simpleton. But again, he keeps many of his personal affairs secret, and he alligns himself with various people, so to know is not cake.

I think you are drawing assumptions here before you have information, Which was the exact point I was initially trying to make. I did not tell you “how” my landlady was fooling us, but you “assumed” that it was “my fault” without “knowing” the circumstances. My overall point is that, we “assume” before we know. We sometimes assume right, and sometimes not, but assuming is just that, assuming.

Now you are onto a obvious truth of the world. Not just people, but businesses. The more you realize that reading people is limited, and investigating is more acuarte, the less of a distored picture you will have.

Walmart will spend millions of dollars to make them seem like they are good for communites, and those who go into walmart and read their adds will believe them . . . unless they have done prior research.

Homosexuals are not hidden pedophiles . There is no proof for such ideas. Yes, there are pedophile priests, but there are just as many lay people pedophiles. Each person is cultured differently and has a different genetic code. Get to know the person . . . clothes, and facial expressions I believe tell us little.

I do believe that clothes often may tell you how someone wants to be percieved, (for identity reasons, subculture etc etc) but it often does not tell you “who they really are.”

(sometimes people know who they are, sometimes people think they know, and sometimes they don’t.) lots of variety

10

.

Lots of people believe that the face we have is created by the thoughts we have built up over many lifetimes . Some Buddhists call this Nam karma
.

11

Reincarnation aside, the face or the form is a product of multiple lifetimes.

Generations of beings interacting with environments, being affected by it and then passing this off, in combination with another’s through sex, to another.