Concept

Self

Overview

In philosophy, the self is an individual's own being, knowledge, and values, and the relationship between these attributes.

The first-person perspective distinguishes selfhood from personal identity. Whereas "identity" is (literally) sameness and may involve categorization and labeling,

selfhood implies a first-person perspective and suggests potential uniqueness. Conversely, "person" is used as a third-person reference. Personal identity can be impaired in late-stage Alzheimer's disease and in other neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, the self is distinguishable from "others". Including the distinction between sameness and otherness, the self versus other is a research topic in contemporary philosophy and contemporary phenomenology (see also psychological phenomenology), psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and neuroscience.

Although subjective experience is central to selfhood, the privacy of this experience is only one of many problems in the philosophy of self and the scientific study of consciousness.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Self is discussed.

This Self has to be known. Those that love the Self without knowing what It is, their love is selfishness. Those that love knowing what that Self is, their love is free, they are sages.
Swami Vivekananda, Jnâna Yoga, Part II
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In order to ascertain whether the fertility of the self-fertilised plants had been lessened by the plants having been self-fertilised for the three previous generations, thirty flowers on the crossed plants were fertilised with their own pollen. These yielded only five capsules, and their seeds being placed in separate watch-glasses did not seem more numerous than those from the capsules on the self-fertilised…
Charles Darwin, The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom
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These are primarily _self-complacency_ and _self-dissatisfaction_. Of what is called 'self-love,' I will treat a little farther on. Language has synonyms enough for both primary feelings. Thus pride, conceit, vanity, self-esteem, arrogance, vainglory, on the one hand; and on the other modesty, humility, confusion, diffidence, shame, mortification, contrition, the sense of obloquy and personal despair. These two…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
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19. Self depends on Consciousness, not on Substance. SELF is that conscious thinking thing,—whatever substance made up of, (whether spiritual or material, simple or compounded, it matters not)—which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends. Thus every one finds that, whilst comprehended under that…
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
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The subjective self may, in fact, be thought of in many ways--presented in many different sorts of imagery--but in all its forms it must be distinguished carefully from that objective self which, as described in psychology, is the assemblage of conditions under which the subjective or "energetic" self works out its purposes.
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
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Self

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Self

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition