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The Metaphysical Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Roger Trigg
Roger Trigg
Affiliation:
Department at Philosophy, University of Warwick, England
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Extract

What is the self? What is the ‘I’ that appears to be the subject of all ‘my’ thoughts and imaginings, my experiences and desires? This is not simply about problems of identification. How I pick you out or you recognize me are questions related to the problem of what it is to be or you, but they are not the same issue. If our ‘true selves’ are inaccessible to public scrutiny, how we are identified and re-identified publicly will be different from who ‘we’ are. The problem of the self is a genuinely metaphysical question which cannot be reduced to the epistemological one of how we know each other, without further argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 277 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

page 277 note 1 ‘The Presuppositions of Survival’, Philosophy, LXII (1987), 28.

page 277 note 2 Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane, E. and Ross, G. R. T., (Cambridge, 1931), p. 101.Google Scholar

page 280 note 1 Will to Power, [no. 480,] ed. Kaufmann, W., (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

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page 281 note 1 E.g. Theaeletus 182D.

page 283 note 1 Genealogy of Morals, ed. Kaufmann, W. (New York, 1969), p. 57.Google Scholar

page 285 note 1 Will to Power, no. 136.

page 285 note 2 Op. Cit. 240.

page 286 note 1 2.14

page 287 note 1 Kerr, F., Theology after Wittgenstein, (Oxford, 1986), p. 69.Google Scholar

page 287 note 2 Op. Cit. p. 57.

page 287 note 3 See my ‘Thought and Language’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXXIX, (1978–1979).