Self and Others: What am I? What are you? Who are we?

What is the self?

Does it exist at all? Or is it simply an illusion of static thing-hood projected by our organism in order to facilitate survival, whilst the “reality” might well be swirling chaos, as Nietzsche was prone to mischievously suggest?

Or is it almost atomic, a point-like and simple thinking thing (res cogitans), as Descartes concluded?

Or is it constituted through relationship as Hegel suggested in his account of mutual recognition? Or as Freud and his followers implied with their various accounts of child-development?

Why does it matter, if it does matter? (I would contend that it does matter because accounts of self can and do become [partial] determinants of modes of life and ways of being human for both individuals and communities.)

Perhaps we had better start by clarifying what we mean by self. Definition is likely to elude us, but that does not mean we can’t picture or characterise “the self” thereby enabling discussion.

There are at least two ways to go here as far as I can see. Firstly, (following Wittgenstein), we can look closely at the use of the term and its cognates. Probably the most useful strategy here is to consider “I”, “you” and “we”.

Secondly, we can attempt to see what we are by a kind of introspection.

This might take the form of the koan meditation, “Who am I?” or a phenomenological bracketing of mental static. There are probably other ways too, but I don’t know what they are. (What I would want to notice here is both our normal sense of continuity which is signified when we say “myself” and an observable [and ordinary] discontinuity in our sense of being an entity which is less emphasised in our culture, but foregrounded by some meditative practices. The question thrown up here is: “Is the self an entity or a process, if it is at all?)

We can of course try to synthesise these two approaches if we want a hard life!!!!

At this point, we are bound to be faced with a question of whether the self is “atomic”, i.e. without a history of formation, or whether it is the result of a process of development and continual maintenance. If we decide on the latter we will perforce need to consider the context and conditions of the development of self which will of necessity include a consideration of the role of others in that development. Thinking about self then becomes a matter of thinking about culture, and probably about ideology.

(What interests me here is the question of how far, if at all, the organising presuppositions underpining particular natural languages impact on both our philosphical (self-conscious!!!???) conceptualisations of self and our ordinary self-concept. For example, because as a matter of grammar we expect a doer for every deed, a bearer of every quality, a subject of every perception, a thinker of every thought, don't we then almost automatically think of the self as a thing?)