What is the self?

‘Know thyself’ (Gnothi Seaton) – the famous apophthegms chiselled over the portal on the temple at Delphi and the authorship of which Diogenes Laërtius attributed to Thales, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece – seems so unrealizable as ancient. Throughout history, people have tried to find the answer to the question “what am I?” Many theories have been invented and many practical methods have been devised. However, self-knowledge seems to escape all ready formulas and formulations, and it remains an intrinsically private endeavour, a problem that everyone should every time resolve anew.

It is evident that the concept of self-knowledge depends on how the self is conceptualized. While some trends of thoughts prescribe to the self the ultimate value, the others deny its existence altogether. For example, many religious traditions distinguish between the lower and the higher self (cf., for example, distinction between the soul and the spirit in Christian tradition, or between prakriti and purusha in Sankhya), assuming that if the former consists of many discordant elements and is a battlefield between good and evil, than the latter connects the man to God and is a spark of Divinity concealed within the man. Buddhism, on the contrary, teaches that there is no such dharma (fact of reality) as the self (neither in a lower, nor in a higher sense), and that the concept of the self actually acts as a mental block preventing sentient beings from the awareness of reality and attaining enlightenment. As it has been recently formulated by two Russian philosophers, 

Ignorance of some facts about consciousness is “symbolized” by the term “death” and ignorance of some other facts is “symbolized” by the term “the self”. (Mamardashvili & Pyatigorski 1982: 222)

If even the self has a relative reality, it may be very difficult if not impossible to comprehend and describe it in a rational way. As Alan Watts, an English writer about Zen Buddhism has said, ‘Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.’

The concept of the self is evidently based on the feeling of individuality and uniqueness or, philosophically speaking, on the opposition between “I” and “not-I”. In cultures and worldviews where this opposition is regarded as not essential or even as a hindrance for true knowledge and right living, the concept of the self is either peripheral or it is considered as false. The “primitive” people have no sense of the separate self and broadly identify themselves with various natural or supernatural powers. The surrender oneself to the Divine is a common trait of religious mysticism in many traditions. Societies that emphasize collectivism rather than individualism as a principle of social and spiritual living put little value on the concept of self or, at least, subordinate it to some higher entities and aims. In brief, the concept of the self is an ideological construct, which content, structure and functions are socially and culturally determined (Marsella, Devos, and Hsu 1985). 

In the West, with its emphasis on individualism and external activity, the self has remained one of the central concepts in common consciousness as well as in the specialized fields of knowledge. The concept of the self which is dominant in the West is generally described as analytic, monotheistic, individualistic, materialistic and rationalistic (Johnson 1985). However, the understanding of the self has been changed historicallyand, what is more, there has never been a unitary understanding of it. The words referring to the self have been used in different, sometimes rather contradictory, meanings.

As Gordon Allport in his classical work “Personality: a psychological interpretation” stated:

“Personality” is one of the most abstract words in our language, and like any abstract word suffering from excessive use, its connotative significance is very broad, its denotative significance negligible. (Allport 1937: 25)

Etymologically, “personality”, which is one of the words expressing the idea of the self, had connotations of disguise and false appearance.

The word “personality” comes from the Latin persona. Originally it referred to the mask worn in the theatre; later the term came to include the wearers of the mask. The audience could expect from the wearer of a given mask a more or less consistent pattern of behaviour and attitudes, and it is still common to speak of the socially defined role or roles that a person plays in life. (Burnham 1968: 2)

Allport (op. cit.) distinguished between four different meanings of persona found in the writing of Cicero (106 – 43 B.C.) who wrote probably not long after the word was introduced: (a) mask, external appearance, the way one appears to others (but not as one really is); (b) real status of somebody in social life, not merely a pretence; (c) an assemblage of inner psychic qualities that fit a man for his work or role, an individual possessed of distinctive personal qualities; (d) prestige, distinction or dignity (for example, as a style of writing). All these early meanings have been retained in the latter usage but some other meanings have been added. (For a detailed history of the evolution of the concept of personality from pre-Socratics to psychological theories of the middle of the 20^th century see Burnham 1968).

Allport (op. cit.) traced the historical development of the meaning of the term persona and its derivates such as “person” and “personality” and quoted hundreds of uses of these words in theology, philosophy, jurisdiction, sociology, psychology and other domains of human knowledge. He generalized these examples into 50 different definitions of personality, including one of his own in which he tried to synthesize various classes of contemporary psychological definitions:

Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment. (Allport 1937: 48)

However, he notes that

Since there is no such thing as a wrong definition of any term, if it is supported by usage, it is evident that no one, neither the theologian, the philosopher, the jurist, the sociologist, the man in the street, nor the psychologist, can monopolize “personality” (ibid., 47). 

Modern psychological handbooks usually group all theories of personality in two main categories: substantial theories, which locate personality within the person, and mask theories, which locate personality in the behaviour of the person and its environment rather than the inner states or processes of the individual. For example, psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, Adler, Erikson, Fromm, and Horney), psychology of traits (Allport, Sheldon, Cattel, and Eysenk) or factors (Guilford), the Humanists (Maslow, Rogers, and Perls) belongs to the first category, while behaviourism (Skinner), social learning theories (Dollard and Miller, Roter, Bandura and Mischel) as well as approaches based on the methodological principles of social constructivism and postmodernism, tend to the second category. As there exist many theories of and approaches to personality, some attempts have been made to synthesize them in the framework of a complex approach. For example, in a recent book Understanding the Self  (Stevens 1996), the self is viewed from five different perspectives – biological, experimentalist, experiential, social constructivism, and psychodynamic – to each of them a different kind of self – embodied, interpreting, reflexive, distributed and defensive – is brought into correspondence.

The philosophical approach, as distinct from the psychological one, focuses on the non-empirical self, its relationship to what is not the self, and such processes as self-awareness and self-reflection. The self is thought as “nonbodily and nonmental something” (Myers 1969) , irreducible to body, feeling or thoughts, but rather as “the possessor of a mind and body, and… what is referred to, by each of us, by the first-person pronoun” (Myers 1969: 16). Historically, philosophical self has been defined as “rational individual substance” (Boëtius), “substance gifted by understanding” (Leibniz), that “which has become objective to itself” (Windelbrandt), “the indivisible centre”, only on the periphery of which “the processes of alternation take place” (Rickert), “the ideal of perfection” reached only by God though approached in varying degrees by men (Lotze), “supreme value” (Goethe, Nietzsche, Humbolt), “the subject of moral law which is sacred by virtue of the autonomy of his individual freedom” (Kant), the entity characterized by the principles of “self-consciousness, self-control, and the power to know” all of which “have no corporate significance” (Bowne), “a multiple dynamic unity” (Stern), etc. (All quotations are borrowed from Allport 1937). 

The problems of self-awareness and self-reflection are central in the analysis of the philosophical self. René Descartes (1596-1650) rejecting Scholasticism, which method of investigation was based on comparing the views of recognized authorities, posited the principle of cogito, or independent thinking based on itself, as the universal principle of philosophizing. Cartesian “I” was thought of as a pure subject reduced to the act of thinking and having no content of its own, while thinking was thought of as a momentary act undifferentiated within itself. Soon, John Locke in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) drew a distinction between sensation and reflection as two sources of ideas and experience. If sensation provides the material for knowledge of the external world, than reflection is a means of knowledge of the mind. According to Locke, personal identity, or “sameness of oneself” is based on memory as reflection extended in past.

The ability of reflection has been considered in Western philosophical tradition as a distinctive human property. George Mead, for example, argued that the uniqueness of the self lies in its possibility of being the object unto itself, whereas no other event in the universe is reflective in the same sense(Mead 1934). Reflectionin the philosophical sense signifies ‘the mode, operation, or faculty by which the mind has knowledge of itself and its operations, or by which it deals with the ideas received from sensation and perception’ (OED). It is based on the procedure of introspection, which is defined as ‘the action of looking within, or into one's own mind; examination or observation of one's own thoughts, feelings, or mental state’ (ibid).

It has been generally argued that introspection and reflection are means of attaining knowledge about the self. However, David Hume in his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740) maintained that our introspections can disclose specific feelings, sensations, and perceptions, but nothing corresponding to the concept of self is detectable. Since it is impossible to detect the self as a distinct entity, Hume concluded that selves “are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions” or series of perceptual experiences. But his argument is internally contradictory. As Ricoeur has noted,

Here, then, is someone who claims to be unable to find anything but a datum stripped of selfhood; someone who penetrates within himself, seeks and declares to have found nothing. … With the question Who? – who is seeking, stumbling and not finding, and who perceives? – the self returns just when the same slips away. (Ricoeur 1992: 128)

Hume’s conclusion, somewhat consonant with Buddhist teaching, has found in the 20^th century a further development in phenomenology, a philosophical approach dedicated to describing the structures of experience as they present themselves to consciousness. The general method of phenomenology, proposed by its founder Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), was phenomenological reduction, that is, reflection on the content of the mind without recourse to any presumption and theories. Existence or non-existence of contemplated objects was “bracketed” as well as their actual source. However, for Husserl, the detailed analysis of mental structures was a means of returning to “the things themselves”, because it was based on direct “seeing” of what actually is and is purified from any presumptions and superstitions.

Perception and reflection can be considered, using Husserl’s terminology, as two modes of intentionality or directedness of consciousness toward an object, the difference between which is based on the nature of the object: one is directed to what is thought as the external world, and another to what is perceived as the inner world of the knower. Thus, some philosophers distinguish between subjective and objective self awareness defining the former as ‘a state of consciousness in which attention is focused on events external to the individual’s consciousness, personal history, or body’, whereas the latter ‘is exactly the opposite state’ (Duval and Wicklund 1972) . They also state that these two types of self awareness are mutually exclusive and that ‘as the person transfers his focus from one dimension to another, he will inevitably find numerous discrepancies and incur negative affect’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, these discrepancies have an important function. Since ‘self conscious person respond not only to external stimuli, but also to himself as a stimulus’, then ‘awareness of the self as an object acts as a feedback system which forces the individual to alter aspects of himself in the directions of his conception of what a correct person should be’ (ibid.). Although the indication at the feedback function of self-reflection seems valuable, the conception as a whole evidently steps back in comparison to pure phenomenology and can be challenged in many respects. For example, the posited opposition between the two modes of awareness does not account for the phenomenon of identification which plays an important role in the development of the self (at least, on personal level) as well as in the process of self-knowledge through what is not self.

The metaphysical opposition between the self and another is replaced by their dialectics in the framework of philosophical hermeneutics. This approach proceeds from the fact that

the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other, that instead one passes into the other, as we might say in Hegelian terms (Ricoeur 1992: 3)

Hermeneutics is traced back to Schleiermacher who applied the principles of Biblical exegesis to the interpretation of secular texts and Dilthey who introduced the notion of Geisteswissenschaften or science of the humanities, which aims to understand and interpret subjective experience, and opposed it to the natural sciences, which deals with the worlds of objects. Hermeneutics exemplified by the works of Gadamer, Heidegger and Ricoeur posited language as the universal medium of human experience. Moreover, language in hermeneutical thinking has lost its representational function and was identified with being. As the result, self-knowledge, as well as knowledge of the world, has been explained in linguistic terms. Since ‘[t]here is no direct apprehension of the self by the self, no internal apperception or appropriation of the self’s desire to exist through the short-cut of consciousness’, self-knowledge is possible ‘only by taking the long road of the interpretation of signs’ (Ricoeur 1974: 170).

The prioritization of language has become the common feature of many intellectual trends of the 20^th century, such as, for example, semiotics, structuralism, and post-structuralism. Its roots can be traced back to the emergence of modern science. Its fundamental principles include: denial of metaphysics in favour of observable facts; denial of ontology and its substitution by a theory and methodology of knowledge; denial of the possibility of self-evidence and acquiring knowledge by logical inference; denial of subjectivity as a hindrance to objective scientific knowledge and absolute subject-object opposition; acknowledgment of social consensus rather than personal consciousness as the criterion of truth (Gorny 1994) .

If hermeneutics and semiotics still acknowledged the world outside language, at least as a point of reference, then in ‘postmodernist’ thinking the idea of ‘non-referential sings’ or ‘simulacra’ (Baudrillard) has become dominant. It has naturally led to the belief that the self is narratively constructed (Holtein and Gubrium 2000; Bruner 1986; Gergen 1991). Since language is not a private but a social phenomenon,the idea of the “storied self”(Sabrin 1986)  has been reinforced by the social constructionist approach that ‘stresses joint action, dialogue, debate, conversation, conflict and discussion, both between and within people as they try to reconcile the diverse “voices” or internal dialogues which make up their mental lives’ (Stevens 1996: 265). Thus the selfhood has lost its independent and autonomous status and turned out to a ‘reproduction of the logic of the prevailing symbolic order, a blind reinscription of its ideological norm and values’ (Worthington 1996: 26). Postmodernists seem to celebrate the truth they discovered that ‘we are ‘assembled’ selves, in which all the ‘private’ aspects of psychological interiority are constituted by our linkage into ‘public’ languages, practices, techniques and artefacts’ (Rose 1997: 226); that there is no possibility of escape ‘from external systems of authority into the realm of creative authenticity’(Worthington 1996: ibid). However, such statements have only reinforced the search for the gaps in the texture of postmodern conditions. The way out has been sought in various strategies – from producing unreadable texts to direct political action. The authority of language, according to the logic of postmodernism, can be overcome through the subversive use of the language itself, and the self possesses freedom, even if relative, to define itself through the selection of and play with diverse, often incompatible discourses.

In recent years, many philosophical works discussing the problem of the self and personal identity have been published (Alexander 1997; Baillie 1993; Barber and Gracia 1994; Berglund 1995; Brody 1980; Burkitt 1999; Butchvarov 1979; Baillie 1993; Barber and Gracia 1994; Berglund 1995; Brody 1980; Burkitt 1999; Butchvarov 1979; Corbey and Leerssen 1991; Cuypers 2001; Ganguly 2001; Giles 1997; Griffin 1977; Hill 1997; Hirsch 1982; Lund 1994; Macdonald 1989; Madell 1981; Morick 1970; Munitz 1971; Noonan 1993; Oderberg 1993; Olson 1997; Parfit 1986; Perry 2002; Rorty 1976; Shoemaker 1963; Slors 2001; Van Inwagen 2001; Williams 1973) . However, the multitude of research clearly indicates that there is no general consensus about how the self should be understood. However, it seems possible to distinguish between two aspects of the self that are generally acknowledged: one that observes, and the other that is observable. The first is a principle of pure subjectivity or “the knower of the field”, while the second is the field itself. This ambivalent concept of the self as knowable something and knowing nothing seems to permeate the history of philosophic inquiry into its nature. Historically, there has been a constant oscillation between these two understandings. But if even to speak only about the phenomenal aspect of the self, the variety of its interpretations suggests that either self-knowledge is impossible or it can be performed in a variety of ways that actually relate to different objects of knowledge. The self thus remains difficult to know and to realize as it was in the age of the Seven Wise Men.

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