The Sense of Self

In the book Philosophy bites again Galen Strawson and Nigel Warburnton talk about ‘The Sense of Self’

 

“’Know thyself’ was a popular aphorism with the ancients, but it isn’t that clear what this means. What is the self? Is it fixed? And should we spend our lives trying to uncover its nature? Is that being true to oneself? Or is the self, as the existentialists believe , something we create and revise as we go along? And what is the link between the self and character?” – David Edmonds asking the question of what is self?

 

Strawson on character says –“ Imagine that you are wearing pink spectacles through which you view the world, and you just assume the world is pink – it doesn’t occur to you that you’re wearing pink spectacles. I think your own character is a bit like that. It’s something you see the world through, and so it doesn’t really feature as an object of experience for you. It just conditions everything and it’s invisible to you.”

 

Warburnton- “and yet people around you are likely to make all kinds of attributions about your characters and believe that you’re an angry person, or that you’re a kind person.”

 

Is our own sense of self in other people’s opinions of us? I think if this was the case it would be a very superficial self. Our character changes depending on who we’re interacting with, where we are and what is happening. So how can anyone really get a full sense of who we truly are on character alone? I don’t think so.