In this paper I argue for a novel interpretation of Shepherd’s notion of selfhood. In distinction to Deborah Boyle’s interpretation, I contend that Shepherd differentiates between the mind and the self. The latter, for Shepherd, is an effect arising from causal interactions between mind and body – specifically those interactions that give rise to our present stream of consciousness, our memories, and that can unite these two. Thus, the body plays a constitutive role in the formation of the self. (...) The upshot of this interpretation is that it can dissolve the problem of individuating mind that Boyle identifies. Briefly, the problem consists in Shepherd seemingly individuating minds in terms of their associated bodies and bodies in terms of the minds they are united with. My interpretation, however, allows to see that Shepherd neither wants nor needs to individuate the mind in isolation of the body and to read the passages, in which the problem seems to arise, as being about what makes living beings individual – with mind and body both playing a crucial role in this context. (shrink)

Explores the notion of selfhood in the wake of the post-structuralist debates.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in bear sightings in Latvia, causing a change of tone in the country’s media outlets, regarding the return of “wild” animals. The unease around bear reappearance leads me to investigate the affective side of relations with beings that show strength and resilience in more-than-human encounters in human-inhabited spaces. These relations are characterized by the contrasting human feelings of alienation vis-à-vis their environments today and a false sense of security, resulting in disbelief to encounter beings (...) capable of challenging human exceptionalism. In a broader sense, the unease connects to human self-constitution and the fragility of the self, fueled by the domination of substance ontologies. This article considers bears as beings “in exile,” as potential threats to human self-pronounced exceptionality, and thus, examples of experienced abject regarding human subjectivity. The article aims to analyze the way the constitution of human selfhood is tied to the alienation of wildlife and its genealogical and biopolitical context and to question if a reconceptualization of the human/nonhuman relations via process, instead of substance ontology, is needed. (shrink)

I propose in this paper to explore Heidegger's thought of selfhood in Contributions to Philosophy through a close reading of key paragraphs. It is often assumed that after the "turning" in his thinking, when Heidegger engages in a thought of Ereignis no longer centered on human Dasein as the locus of the meaning of being, the reference to selfhood would fade away. However, a close reading of the Contributions reveals that a renewed thinking of selfhood, of what (...) Heidegger calls "self-being" , is enacted precisely at the same time that the subjectivistic understanding of the self is more radically abandoned. I attempt to delineate how Heidegger undertakes to rethink selfhood no longer from the paradigm of the ego, but from the event of Ereignis , or enowning. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of the existential conception of selfhood that follows from Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception. On this view, people relate to themselves not by “looking within” in acts of introspection but, first, by “looking without” at the field of solicitations in which they are immersed and, eventually, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, by “making explicit” the “melodic unity” or “immanent sense” of their behavior. To make sense of this, I draw out a distinction latent in Merleau-Ponty’s view between (...) a pre-reflective sense of self and a reflective self-interpretation. The former is a suite of abilities and dispositions in light of which a person is aware of and drawn to act in a situation. This sense of self undergoes transitions over time, is constitutively susceptible to moments of disorientation, and tends toward but never achieves full coherence. Reflective self-interpretation is an activity whereby someone—provisionally and defeasibly—clarifies, articulates, and gets a better “grip” on how they are prereflectively drawn to act. I ground this interpretation in a detailed reading of Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of romantic love and I corroborate it by examining his account of the emergence of class-consciousness in the self-interpretation of a worker. (shrink)

Recently, a three-dimensional construct model for complex experiential Selfhood has been proposed (Fingelkurts et al., 2016b,c). According to this model, three specific subnets (or modules) of the brain self-referential network (SRN) are responsible for the manifestation of three aspects/features of the subjective sense of Selfhood. Follow up multiple studies established a tight relation between alterations in the functional integrity of the triad of SRN modules and related to them three aspects/features of the sense of self; however, the causality (...) of this relation is yet to be shown. In this article we approached the question of causality by exploring functional integrity within the three SRN modules that are thought to underlie the three phenomenal components of Selfhood while these components were manipulated mentally by experienced meditators in a controlled and independent manner. Participants were requested, in a block-randomised manner, to mentally induce states representing either increased (up-regulation) or decreased (down-regulation) sense of (a) witnessing agency (“Self”), or (b) body representational-emotional agency (“Me”), or (c) reflective/narrative agency (“I”), while their brain activity was recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). This EEG-data was complemented by first-person phenomenological reports and standardised questionnaires which focused on subjective contents of three aspects of Selfhood. The results of the study strengthen the case for a direct causative relationship between three phenomenological aspects of Selfhood and related to them three modules of the brain SRN. Furthermore, the putative integrative model of the dynamic interrelations among three modules of the SRN has been proposed. (shrink)

Religious, philosophical, and theological views on the self vary widely. For some the self is seen as the center of human personhood, the ultimate bearer of personal identity and the core mystery of human existence. For others the self is a grammatical error and the sense of self an existential and epistemic delusion. This volume documents a debate between Eastern and Western critics and defenders of the self or of the no-self that explores the intercultural dimensions of this important topic.

Selfhood and Sacrifice is an original exploration of the ideas of two major contemporary thinkers.

Some scholars have identified a puzzle in the writings of Mary Astell (1666–1731), a deeply religious feminist thinker of the early modern period. On the one hand, Astell strongly urges her fellow women to preserve their independence of judgement from men; yet, on the other, she insists upon those same women maintaining a submissive deference to the Anglican church. These two positions appear to be incompatible. In this paper, I propose a historical-contextualist solution to the puzzle: I argue that the (...) seeming inconsistency can be dispelled through a close examination of (i) the concepts of selfhood and self-government in Anglican women’s devotional texts of the period, and of (ii) the role that these concepts play in Astell’s feminist arguments. (shrink)

_Selfhood and Appearing_ explores how, as embodied subjects, we are in the very world that we consciously internalize. Employing the insights of Merleau-Ponty and Patočka, this volume examines how the intertwining of both senses of “being-in” constitutes our reality.

Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is framed by a comprehensive theory of living nature. Central to this philosophical biology is the claim that animals lack self-consciousness but their awareness of their surroundings is nevertheless anchored in a self. Since Plessner does not explain how this unselfconscious self is manifest to the animal, the warrant for his claim remains unclear. Following Plessner’s construal of human existence as a radically transformed variant of animal life, I argue that he leaves animals’ selfhood unaccounted (...) for because he overlooks the animal precursor of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, which affords a pre-reflective self-awareness. I fill this lacuna by drawing on Kant’s and Plessner’s theories of human feelings, Hans Jonas’s conception of animal emotion,and recent arguments that make evaluative affects fundamental to animal consciousness. Revised along these lines, Plessner’s framework allows us to specify how animal affectivity is transformed in self-conscious human life. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 177 - 204 This article presents a synoptic account of the faculties of rational soul in the philosophy of Proclus and an interpretation of the unity which this soul constitutes despite the plurality of its faculties and objects of its attentions. It seeks to demonstrate that Proclus, through his conceptual construction of a rational soul grounded in an objective and cosmic framework, accounts for at least some of the subjective aspects of selfhood (...) which many contemporary philosophical theories take to be necessary for a concept of self, but that he does so on his own terms. This means, among other things, that Proclus posits each rational soul as a subjective entity with its own perspective on the world, but a perspective which is always grounded, more or less, in an objective knowledge of the world which belongs to it essentially and eternally. Despite grounding the subjective in the objective, Proclus is able to account for the individuality and uniqueness of souls within the limits of his objective framework. (shrink)

When we compare Henry and Levinas, we stumble upon a difficulty. Henry tries to reduce transcendence to immanence; Levinas, on the contrary, strives to call immance into question and to lend a new dignity to transcendence. Hence, the two thinkers seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Yet, if one does not limit oneself to such an overall view, one finds some similarities between them. There is an affinity between the two approaches which results from the fact that both (...) thinkers establish a narrow relationship between originally passive affectivity and the selfhood of the self. Henry and Levinas are, despite all their differences, united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. Assuredly, it remains a question whether or not an originally passive affectivity is really capable of founding selfhood. Some doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity tends to anonymity. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical significance; it also characterizes affective states and arousals in a positive way, since one can maintain that the self could not be a ?self? unless it were constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. (shrink)

I discuss Descartes’ metaphysics of selfhood, and relevant parts of contemporary philosophy regarding the first person. My two main concerns are the controversy that surrounds Descartes’ conception of conscientia, mistranslated as ‘consciousness’, and his conception of selfhood and its essential connection to conscientia. ‘I’-thoughts give rise to the most challenging philosophical questions. An answer to the questions concerning the peculiarities of the first person, self-identification and self-ascription, is to be found in Descartes’ notion of conscientia. His conception of (...) selfhood insightfully informs his conception of personhood. I offer a unified account of selfhood, conscientia, the first person, and personhood anchored in the self’s authority of reason and autonomy of freedom. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kyselo argues that an enactive approach to selfhood can overcome ‘the body-social problem’: “the question for philosophy of cognitive science about how bodily and social aspects figure in the individuation of the human individual self” ). Kyselo’s claim is that we should conceive of the human self as a socially enacted phenomenon that is bodily mediated. Whilst there is much to be praised about this claim, I will demonstrate in this paper that such a conception (...) of self ultimately leads to a strained interpretation of how bodily and social processes are related. To this end, I will begin the paper by elucidating the body-social problem as it appears in modern cognitive science and then expounding Kyselo’s solution, which relies on a novel interpretation of Jonas’s concept of needful freedom. In response to this solution, I will highlight two problems which Kyselo’s account cannot overcome in its current state. I will argue that a more satisfactory solution to the body-social problem involves a re-conception of the human body as irrevocably socially constituted and the human social world as irrevocably bodily constituted. On this view, even the most minimal sense of selfhood cannot privilege either bodily or social processes; instead, the two are ontologically entwined such that humans are biosocial selves. (shrink)

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of new and original essays in honour of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. Although they all share the same concern - the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live - as in the work of the honorand himself they are distinguished by a diversity of approach and subject matter, taking the reader on a journey from ancient philosophy to medical (...) writing via discussions of topics as varied as money, love, free will, and cookery. (shrink)

Review of Philosophy and Psychology has lately published a number of papers that in various ways take issue with and criticize my work on the link between consciousness, self-consciousness and selfhood. In the following contribution, I reply directly to this new set of objections and argue that while some of them highlight ambiguities in my work that ought to be clarified, others can only be characterized as misreadings.

The relationship of self, and self-awareness, and experience: exploring classical phenomenological analyses and their relevance to contemporary discussions in ...

In a recent paper, Kyselo argues that an enactive approach to selfhood can overcome ‘the body-social problem’: “the question for philosophy of cognitive science about how bodily and social aspects figure in the individuation of the human individual self” ). Kyselo’s claim is that we should conceive of the human self as a socially enacted phenomenon that is bodily mediated. Whilst there is much to be praised about this claim, I will demonstrate in this paper that such a conception (...) of self ultimately leads to a strained interpretation of how bodily and social processes are related. To this end, I will begin the paper by elucidating the body-social problem as it appears in modern cognitive science and then expounding Kyselo’s solution, which relies on a novel interpretation of Jonas’s concept of needful freedom. In response to this solution, I will highlight two problems which Kyselo’s account cannot overcome in its current state. I will argue that a more satisfactory solution to the body-social problem involves a re-conception of the human body as irrevocably socially constituted and the human social world as irrevocably bodily constituted. On this view, even the most minimal sense of selfhood cannot privilege either bodily or social processes; instead, the two are ontologically entwined such that humans are biosocial selves. (shrink)

This book is a collection of fourteen essays on the themes of selfhood and rationality in ancient Greek philosophy. The discussion ranges over seven centuries of innovative thought, starting with Heraclitus’ injunction to listen to the cosmic logos, and concluding with Plotinus’ criticism of those who make embodiment essential to human identity. For the Greek philosophers the notion of a rational self was bound up with questions about divinity and happiness called eudaimonia, meaning a god-favoured life or a life (...) of likeness to the divine. While these questions are remote from current thought, Long also situates the book’s themes in modern discussions of the self and the self’s normative relation to other people and the world at large. Ideas and behaviour attributed to Socrates and developed by Plato are at the book’s centre. They are preceded by essays that explore general facets of the soul’s rationality. Later chapters bring in salient contributions made by Aristotle and Stoic philosophers. All but one of these pieces has been previously published in periodicals or conference volumes, but the author has revised and updated everything. The book is written in a style that makes it accessible to many kinds of reader, not only professors and graduate students but also anyone interested in the history of our identity as rational animals. (shrink)

Plotinus’s theory of dual selfhood has ethical norms built into it, all of which derive from the ontological superiority of the higher (or undescended) soul in us overthe body-soul compound. The moral life, as it is presented in the Enneads, is a life of self-perfection, devoted to the care of the higher self. Such a conception of morality is prone to strike modern readers as either ‘egoistic’ or unduly austere. If there is no doubt that Plotinus’s ethics is exceptionally (...) austere, it will be argued below that it is not ‘egoistic.’ To that effect, the following questions will be addressed: Are the virtues, civic as well as purificatory, mere means to Plotinus’s metaphysically conceived ethical goal? To what extent must the lower self abnegate itself so as to enable the higher self to ascend to Intellect and beyond? And if self-perfection lies at the centre of the Plotinian moral life, is there any conceptual room left in it for other-regarding norms of conduct? A close reading of selected passages from Plotinus’s tractate I.2[19] On Virtues and tractate VI.8[39] On Free Will and the Will of the One will, it is claimed, bring elements of answer to these questions. (shrink)

Peter Strawson (1962) argued that the truth of determinism would not threaten our reactive attitudes, e.g., resentment, or our normative practices, e.g., punishment, though these presuppose (indeterministic) free will, because they are too entrenched. If autonomous agency presupposes an agent-self, however, the same concern faces the issue of the resilience of belief in an agent-self. If belief in agency would persist in the face of determinism, would belief in the agent-self? If not, what are the likely consequences? Buddhist practice is (...) depicted as the path from allegedly erroneous belief in the conventional agent-self to the ultimately enlightening realization of no-self, with meditation as the primary means for directly experiencing that ultimate reality. One largely unnoticed problem with this view is that analysis of Buddhist claims suggests the opposite: that ordinary people do not have an agent-self nor agency, but that the Buddha had an agent-self and agency, and that Buddhist practice increases agency, thus selfhood. Another problem is that Buddhist practice might not uncover the unreality of self, but disassemble a pre-existing self. And, among other problems, it is possible that the no-self doctrine would disempower individuals, threaten individual wellbeing, and lead to antisocial behavior. Such problems are examined here. (shrink)

This book presents engaging and informative analysis of three interrelated notions, namely: selfhood, the first person pronoun ‘I’ and the first person perspective. Philosophers have long debated about these notions on non-empirical grounds often focusing on the question of whether the first person pronoun ‘I’, beyond its role as a grammatical term, has an underlying implication for the ontology of selfhood. Philosophers continuously grapple with whether the first person pronoun ‘I’ is a referring expression and if it is, (...) what its referent is or could be. To give an adequate treatment of such questions, philosophers have begun working across the relevant disciplines. This book highlights some excellent examples of the complex nature of the first person thoughts as they figure in linguistics, autism, thought insertion in schizophrenia and the phenomenon of mental autonomy. In Selfhood, Autism and Thought Insertion, many of the leading philosophers working on this issue, as well as a few emerging scholars, have written 12 new essays addressing questions besetting the ontology of selfhood. The essays address topics as diverse as reflections on E. J. Lowe’s non-Cartesian substance dualism, physical determinism, the metaphysics and anti-metaphysics of the self, animalism, neo-Lockean persons, rationality and the first-person, whether the first person is essentially a linguistic concept, first-person and third-person perspectives and autism, consciousness, first person perspective and neuroimaging, thought insertion and mental autonomy. The contributors to this volume do not agree in all of the details associated with the notion of selfhood, yet they all have a common conviction that the central questions besetting it must be taken seriously. (shrink)

This paper examines the unique structures of identity formation within the craftsperson/maker mindset and their relation to Western views of work and labor. The contemporary Maker Movement has its origins not only in the internet revolution, but also in the revival of handicraft during the last several economic recessions. Economic uncertainty drives people toward the ideals and practices of craft as a way to regain a sense of agency and control. One learns how to become an active participant in our (...) material lives by making and maintaining the objects that surround us. This orientation toward craft has the potential to alter the practitioner's sense of self going forward. I will argue that the work-based nature of craft leads to a unique and positive sense of self that the assumed freedom of ‘art’ and intellectualized labor unwittingly discourages. Tacit mechanisms shape the craft mindset through emphasis on skill, mastery of materials, polymathic problem solving, and quality. Hannah Arendt’s notion of the vita activa and Martin Heidegger’s arguments on modern technology reveal the dynamics between physical and intellectual labor and how many have greatly misunderstood the ‘essence’ of the craftsperson’s work. Peter Dormer and Glenn Adamson’s analysis of the nature of craft demonstrate how these two lines of thought can be unified into one system of selfhood granting the greater sense of agency many seek without relying on an individualized sense of self. The Richard Sennett shows how this sense of self challenges the desire to liberate ourselves from labor via technology and poetic autonomy as seen in Franco Berardi’s Manifesto of Post-Futurism. Malcolm Gladwell's work on intuition examines the impact of this tacit craft mindset and the psychological mechanisms that drive it. This will allow Peter Korn’s first-hand account of his own craft practice to demonstrate this structure and its inherent points of resistance against today’s hyper-individualized and resultingly selfish ways of life. Throughout this paper, a clear emphasis on materiality as a profound source of embodied knowledge will be maintained to reveal craftspersonhood as a source of deep existential fulfillment and practical philosophy. Acknowledging and embracing our intrinsic materiality and all that it has to teach us is imperative in the face of a consumption-centric culture of excess and exploitation that looms over much of the West. (shrink)

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature (...) can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

The health benefits of practising mindfulness are well documented, yet the phenomenological mechanisms of such practice remain under-theorised from both ontogenetic and social perspectives. By leveraging an enactive perspective on selfhood, these lacunae can be addressed: firstly, it is argued that proper understanding of mindfulness – and the health benefits that mindfulness practices seek – relies on recognising the socio-embodied nature of the self; consequently, occasions in which the therapeutic need for mindfulness are most pressing will be shown to (...) be inextricably tied to socio-embodied fluctuations across different stages of life. What emerges is a phenomenological understanding of mindfulness as allowing one to dwell in the sensuous density of the present and, through this, remain connected to the social world of open possibilities. (shrink)

"A Crossroad book." Includes bibliographical references.

Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an important exception to this pattern of neglect, and this paper explores Mackenzie’s work (...) on embodiment and self-narrative with the aim of better understanding the adequacy of autobiographical narrative as an account of the agentic self. I argue that Mackenzie’s narrative account of embodied subjectivity and agency is incomplete, for it over-estimates the reach of narrative and underestimates the cognitive and agentic powers of the lived body. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for people to suffer identity crises. Yet, faced with similarly disruptive circumstances, some people plunge into an identity crisis while others do not. How must selfhood be construed given that people are vulnerable to identity crises? And how must agency be construed given that some people skirt potential identity crises and renegotiate the terms of their personal identity without losing their equilibrium -- their sense of self? If an adequate theory of the self and agency (...) must be able to account for this capacity to avert identity crises, I argue that it must include an account of agentic corporeity. After explaining what an identity crisis is, I examine Charles Taylor’s and David Velleman’s accounts of identity and agency and argue that their omission of agentic corporeity makes it impossible for them to convincingly account for the ability to avert an identity crisis. In the spirit of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the intentional arc and J. J. Gibson’s account of the relation between corporeity and affordances, I sketch an account of psychocorporeal practical intelligence that includes three main components – psychocorporeal insight, psychocorporeal values, and psychocorporeal versatility. I conclude by connecting my position to Aristotle’s views about practical understanding and by arguing that both Taylor and Velleman have reason to embrace my position. (shrink)

Traces the decentered formulation of self at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy from his earliest works to his most recent.

Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese and Feminist Philosophies explores the importance of the body to ethical selfhood. Through her comparative feminist approach to ethics, the critical comparison McCarthy offers in Ethics Embodied not only illuminates complexities in Continental, Japanese and Feminist philosophies, it provides clues about how to live the model of selfhood, ethics, and the body that emerges through the encounter.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The article takes issue with the proposal that dominant accounts of collective intentionality suffer from an individualist bias and that one should instead reverse the order of explanation and give primacy to the we and the community. It discusses different versions of the community first view and argues that they fail because they operate with too simplistic a conception of what it means to be a self and misunderstand what it means to be (part of) a we. In presenting this (...) argument, the article seeks to demonstrate that a thorough investigation of collective intentionality has to address the status and nature of the we, and that doing so will require an analysis of the relation between the we and the I, which in turn will call for a more explicit engagement with the question of selfhood than is customary in contemporary discussions of collective intentionality. (shrink)

This paper investigates the philosophical tensions between secular-liberalism and Islam, and reviews Islamic conceptualisations of knowledge, personhood and education, in order to conceptualise shakhsiyah Islamiyah as an authentic and credible form of personal agency within an Islamic worldview. It begins by examining the liberal critique of Islamic education and explores notions of authority and autonomy in Islamic educational theory. It proposes that these tensions exist to varying degrees in all educational practice. Some theoretical work to develop an Islamic understanding of (...) personal autonomy as selfhood is presented and translated into a concept of shakhsiyah Islamiyah. Finally, the possibility of understanding shakhsiyah Islamiyah as a dialogical Muslim-self is explored. (shrink)

Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese and Feminist Philosophies explores the importance of the body to ethical selfhood. Through her comparative feminist approach to ethics, the critical comparison McCarthy offers in Ethics Embodied not only illuminates complexities in Continental, Japanese and Feminist philosophies, it provides clues about how to live the model of selfhood, ethics, and the body that emerges through the encounter.

_Relating Narratives_ is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, _Relating Narratives_ is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature (...) can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This essay In this essay develops and defends the view that a “self “ is nothing but a creature that bears the property of selfhood, where bearing selfhood is, in turn, nothing but having the capacity to deploy self-representations. Self-representations, it is argued, are very special things. They are distinguished from other sorts of representations,not by what they represent – mysterious inner entities called selves, say -- but by how they represent what they represent. A self-representation represents nothing (...) but a living human animal but it does do in a special way. It follows that a "self" is not a thing that a living human animals has or contains within, but something a living human animal is. The view defended represents a principled middle ground between Cartesianism and Factionalism or Eliminativism about the self. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from Søren Kierkegaard, Art and Selfhood: A Kierkegaardian Account defends the idea that art matters in our society today because it can play a pivotal role in helping us become better and more authentic versions of ourselves.

Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers, Fairfield proposes that liberalism requires a complete reconception of moral selfhood, one that accommodates elements of the contemporary critiques without abandoning liberal individualism.