52. History of the self

In his Sources of the self, Charles Taylor traces the appearance in history of what he called the ‘disengaged self’. There are three forms of disengagement. First, disengagement of the soul from the body, and rationality from passions. Second, disengagement of the self from its natural and social environment. Third, disengagement from ‘higher’, transcendent values, in a denial of values that transcend individual human well-being.

After the classical views of Plato and Aristotle that the good and true lie outside the self, in universal ideas that we can try to grasp (Plato) or in forms to which life tends (Aristotle), the church father Augustine took a turn to the self as a source of inner light, generated by God, in which the self is transparent to itself, and which illuminates the path to God. The internal light is a gift from God and by turning inwards we reach God. We move, so to say, inward in order to turn outward.

With his turn inside Augustine can be seen as a precursor of Descartes but with the latter the self stays in itself, as a source of morality. Our capacity to reason construes both knowledge and morality, and is master of the passions. Here we see a double disengagement of self, from passions and from the world.

While in classical thought (Plato, Aristotle) rationality was substantive, i.e. referred to the making of good choices from a hierarchy of good things for a virtuous life, from Descartes on rationality increasingly becomes more procedural and instrumental, for the pursuit of optimal pleasure as the only good.

In humanism, emerging from the end of the 15th century, autonomy of the human being, in its capacity to form and give direction to its life, played a central role.

With the Reformation, around 1500, according to Taylor religion shifted from collective experience of being in the same boat, in which everyone had his place and where individual deviance jeopardized the salvation of all, to a direct personal relation to God and dedication to Him, without intervention by the church.

In contrast with the Augustinian view that love for the higher is granted us by the grace of God, Rousseau proposed that our inner nature is fundamentally good but, instead of the biblical fall, there is a perversion of this natural good by human culture. The root of evil lies in what others think and expect from us, and the pressure towards the satisfaction of pleasure. This turn of Rousseau deepens the look inside. Sentiments are no longer the movers of deeds for the good life but have intrinsic value as part of the good life. The realization of nature in us shows itself in the expression of feelings. The self, not the social, is the source of the self.

For Nietzsche, the self is not a given but something to be overcome and to be developed, created. There, even change of the self is up to the self.