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Subjectivity and the Elusiveness of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert J. Howell
Robert J. Howell*
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX75275, USA
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Extract

‘Where am I?’ This is something we might expect to hear from hapless explorers or academics with no sense of direction. If we can, we'll explain to our inquirer that he is east of East St. Louis and hope he can find his way from there. If he persists, insisting that he is not really lost, but only cannot find himself no matter how hard he looks, we might reasonably suspect that we are dealing with that peculiarly incorrigible academic explorer, the philosopher. When we hesitantly point to his body, we hear him explain, exasperated, ‘No, don't you get it? That's my body, but I’m looking for my self! And I cannot find it!’ At this point it is tempting to slip away, convinced that our philosophical friend is throttling himself with the noose of his own cleverness and is at risk of intellectual suicide by denying that he in fact has a self. Nevertheless, we shouldn't turn away so quickly: some pretty ingenious people from radically diverse schools of thought have endorsed the claim that the self ineluctably evades detection.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 459 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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