Abstract

Histories of the Self

The self is a historical phenomenon. As Nietzsche pointed out, the forms of self now taken for granted are the product of an arduous and often violent development whose beginnings, in Nietzsche's accounts at least, predate Cesare Borgia.¹ Nietzsche is not the only figure to have attempted to write the history of the self. Max Weber and Norbert Elias immediately come to mind.² More recently, Charles Taylor has historicized modern Western identity (calling it “a function of a historically limited mode of self-interpretation … which had a beginning in time and space and may have an…