The Self (A Very Short Introdu ction)

This VSI is a multidisciplinary approach to central questions about the nature and existence of the self. It engages millennia-old questions about the self as well as modern research to produce new perspectives on both academic questions about the self and the more immediate practical, everyday puzzles about the self that concern us all.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

'Know thyself' is said to have been one of the maxims carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. On the face of it, this does not seem like a very difficult task. My self is with me at every moment of every day, I have access to its inner thoughts and feelings, and I am hardly liable to mistake someone else for me. At the same time, however, the self is surprisingly elusive and opaque. What, after all, is a self? Is it some kind of object? If so, what kind? If not an object, what then? Is our sense of self ultimately illusory? Something that disappears when studied too closely? Our understanding of the self is replete with puzzles and paradoxes: I cannot be anyone but who I am, and yet everyone will acknowledge that there are circumstances in which being oneself is an extremely difficult task. If I change enough, I can be said to have become a different person. I cannot get away from myself, and yet I can find and lose myself.