TIVE THEORIES OF fHE SELF

PART II THE SELF

FIVE THEORIES OF THE SELF

Prologue

A metaphyslcal questlon that ls even more fundamental than the mlnd/body prob-Iem, one that Inbrms not only phllosophy, but also psycholos/, soclolos/, polltlcaldence, economlcs, literature, rellglon, and popular culturc, is "What ls the self?" or,more generally, "What ls human nature?' All the great thlnkers, elther inadvertentlyor dellberately, put fiorward some sort of theorlr of human naturc. In thls sectlon we'lllook at five theorles of fhe s€lf that have been of some slgniflcance in modem West-em thought.

The nve vlews of the self chosen br thls chapter have some lustlficatlon. Theyare all connected to lmportant tradltlons ln Westem thought and literature, and al-though eaci tradltlon had lts staE, none can be seen as the qeatlon ofrust one greatthlnker. Second, they bear on some of the questlons dealt wlth In the philosophy ofmlnd. Thlrd, these five theorles of the self lnteract by answedng the followlng ques-tlons ln a unlque set ofwa)|s|

' Where does valld knowledge come from? Can we know the external world?' ls reason or passlon morc lmportant In govemlng our lfues?' Do we have an authentlc lnner self s€parate from our empirlcal ogeriences or

soclal llF, or ls the self defined by ouf tnteraction wlth the external world?' ls morallty lndivldual or sodal? Are moral rules gtuen to us by @, by nature,

or bD/ soclety? Or arc th€ry ratlonal truths? Or arc they pur€ly self-chosen?' What ls the best llft? Does it Invofue Intellectual pulsults, ful8lllng a creatlve lm-

pulse, a communlon wlth nature, or vlbrant soclal lnteractions?

As you go through the commentaries and readings that follow, try to sort out howeacl of the five theorles of the self would answer the prevlous questlons.

The Rationalist Self

We wlll only brlefly deal wlth the ratlonallst self, as you should already have a goodsense of its fundamentals from the discusslon of Descartes in Part I of this chapter. Aratlonallst ls someone who believes that all reliable knowledge comes ftom our rea-son. Rationalism was the domlnant movement in contlnental philosophy ln the sev-enteenth and early eighteenth centuries in Western Europe. The holy trinlty of ratlo-nalism consisted of the hther of modem philosophy, Descartes, who we've alreadymet ln Part l; the Jewlsh-Dutch phllosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-16771, who be-Iieved that the unlveFe was composed of a single neutral substance; ancl the Ger-man thlnker Cjottfrled Wllhelm Lelbnlz (1646-1716l, who believed that all thingswere made of tiny centers of brce called "monads." The rationalist self can be out-lined in fiour polnts, relylng largely on Descartes' worlc

:l

CHAPIER3 Mind, Bod!, and sdlf

WE ARE ESSENTIALTY THINKING THINGS, RTS COG'TAA/S

The essential part of us Is our mind or soul, not our body. Our mind is distinct fromour body, and its essential nature is the hct that it thinks. 5o we are basically thingsthat think, In Latln res cogr'fans. Other Parts of our selves are secondary, for example,the body and its drives, which decays and disappears at death. The rationalists usu-

saw our as tied to the and thus as obstades in

'AtL RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE COMES FROM REASON,USUALLY GUARANTEED BY A GOOD GOD

The rationalists believed that the only reliable source of knowledge is reason. Thisidea is usually iustined by the argument that a good C.od wouldn't give us reasonto distinguish tuth ftom falsity ifthis reason were flawed, and by the related notionthat slnce we are In essence thinking things, our reason ls closer to thls essence thanour senses. We can entirely trust our clear and distlnct ideas, but not ideas providedby our senses, whlci are bodily apparatuses, and thus distoried by their reliance onphyslcal processes,

WE HAVE INNATE IDEAS WITHIN US, NOT DEPENDENT ON EXPERIENCE

The ratlonalists generally believed that we have within us innate ideas, ideas that are"lmprinted" on the mind at blrth and not the product of experlence. For o(ample,Descartes believed that the 'pure" ldeas of mind and matter are used in our under-standlng of experience even bebre we have any exPerlence, so th€y must be innate.He also believed that our idea of Crod Is innate.

LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS LEAD US TO TRUTH: ANALYSIS AND ATOMISM

Because of their emphasis on the value of reason and thelr distrust of the senses, theratlonallsts belleved that loglcal analysls, Induding mathematics, was the best way ofarMng at truth. Thls led them, as Descartes suggesH in one of hls rules of method,to belleve that the best way to undeEtand anythlng-whether lt's the behauor ofph)6lcal oblects or of human belngs-was to break down the obrect under study intosmaller plec€s, or atoms, and then to anaDz€ thes€ atoms. 50 ratlonallsts tended tofavor atomlsm and loglcal analysls as thelr baslc methods. Splnoza's "geometric" wayof wrlting, whlch conslsted ofdeffnltlons, axloms, and proposltlons tlghtly llnked to-gether, lllustrated not only these two methods, but also hls tj/plcally rationalist loveof mathematlcs.

The Empiricist Self

An emplrtdst ls someone who thlnks that all knowledge starts with the Inbrmatlongfuen to us by our ftve senses. The heyday of €mpirldsm was between approxlmately1690 and 1780 ln Britain, although emplrldsm contlnues to be a powerful force in

--)

\__

FIVETHEONES OF THE SELF 4r

both phllosophy and sdence to this day. The emplrldst hall of fame fuatures threegreat thlnkers: the Engllshman John Locke ( | 632-1 704), the bunder of modem em-piricism; the lrishman Creorge Berkeley (1685-1753), a blshop In the Angllcan Church;and the Scot Davld Hume (1711-1776), the most lnfluentlal of the three.

WE ARE A IAEUT.A RASA, A BLANK SLATE WNTTTEru OTt BY P(PERIENCE

Locke befieved that we start lifu as a tabula rax, a blank slate on whlch experlence(the data of our senses) writes informatlon, ,ust as a teacher wrltes Inbrmatlon on ablaclboard. We have no personal identig at blrth: lt develops as we o

242 CH mR3 Mind,Eody,ondv

vldual self vrould collapse tnto a schlzophrenlc haze, Hume made two analogles thathclp us out here: The self ls llke a theater wherc our perceptlons of the wodd pass byus llke actos on a st4ge, and the self ls llke a republlc whose laws and members con-stantly change, yet ls held together by causal llnks betwe€n past, present, and futureelements of thls polltlcal body.

The Romantic Self

Romantlclsm wa9 a dominant force in European arts and letters from the l79Os untilat least the mld-nlneteenth century. lt was very much a reaction agalnst the Enlight-enment, esp€clally lts emplrlcist philosophy, lts medranlstlc vlew of sdence, and itsdasslcal, emotlonally restrained vlew of art and llterature.

There are llteralty doz€ns of wrltes and thlnkers who we could group under theromantlc banner, but we'll mentlon only a tsw here, Romantldsm got started wlththe 'storm and Stress' movement In Grman literature, in which the major figure wasthe poet, ptaywright, and novellst johann Wolfuang Goethe (t749-1832). Engllshromantldsm frrst flowed from the pens of the po€ts Wlliam Blake ( 1 757- | aZ7), Wil-llam Wordsworth (1770-185O), and SamuelTaylor Colerldge (l772-'1834). the sec-ond generatlon of Engllsh romantlc poets was Ied by john Keats ( t 795-1821), LordByron (178a-1824), and Perq/ Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Rnally, comes the lrishpoet Wlllam Butler Yeats ( 1865-1939), sometlmes refiened to as the "last romantic. "We'll read Goethe and Shelley h thls chapter, retumlng to romantldsm In chapter L

The romantic plcturc of the self lnvolves a complex set of ldeas expressed bymany dlfferent w ters, but can be bolled down into seven malor themes.

THE CREATIVE SELF, THE ARTIST AS GENIUS, AND THE SEARCHFOR DEPTH ME{NING BY WAY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

lnstead of the calm, ratlonal s€lf of the Enllghtenment phllosopheF, whlch knewtifngs becaus€ lt was a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon whlch experience wrote inficr-mation, the romantlc self was actlve and creatlve, a soul wlth dark depths where fan-tasles and dr€ams were as rea.l as mathematlcal equatlons. The romantlc artlst didn'tfnd, but creaH truths. The romantlc self was dynamlc and qeatlve, not lust the pas-slve reclplent of sens€ data. It was an lmmensel5l actlve energ/ that subJected senseimpresslons to a metabollc process that tumed them lnto orlglnal creatlons. Insteadof reckonlng truth by loglc and analysls, the romantlcs (to use Colerldge's phrase)favored the "ellcltlng of truth at a flash." To modify HumeS analogr, the self is not atheater, but an actor peffcmlng on a stage.

Of cours€, the rcal genlus€s were poets, who fult the lnfinite Splrlt of the woddin them when they created. Ihelr s)mbols of Nature probe deeper into her mys-teries than experlmental sclence or analtical reason. they use the unconscious mindto help undeBtand the depth meaning of the natural world and of human actlons.Shellqy attacked the emplrldst 'theater" view of the self as a "curs€" that enslavesus passlvely to our perceptlons. He saw the creatlve mind as a fading coal, drawlngon uncons€lous lnsplratlons that fllcl(er lnto lle for a fuw brlef moments. The point of

-)

FIVETHEORIES OF THE SELF

creatively connecting to the unconscious is to search fior the depth meaning of na-ture and human lifu, to strlp the "veil of familiarlty" from the world, and to seek outIts hldden secrets.

P SSION OVER REASONT THE CULT OF SENSIBILITY

The romantlcs reiected the rationalism and materialism ofthe Enllghtenment by ex-tolllng passlon over feason. The more direct and unmedlated our passlons and urgesare, the more authentic and valuable they are. The abstract inGllect, in Wordsworth swords, murders to dissect. Its not that reason had no role to play In o\perlence;but that the romantlcs saw it as a cruel tyrant that prevented an Intlmate and directexperlence of others and of nature. Perhaps the central passlon for the romanticswas the imaglnatlon, the poWer of creatlng new things and ideas by means ofan in-ner vlslon.

At the stari of the romantlc period, there exlsted a strong "cult ofsenslbllity,"whfch we can see In Goethe's earl5l romantlc novel, The Sonows of Young Werther.Its hero, Werther, ls lovelom and troublecl, treating hls heart llke a 'slck child," grat-irying lG every fancy. He ls proud of hls heart alone, fur It is unlque and indivldual,unllke knowledge, whlch ls op€n to e\re4rcne. thls ls clearly an attacl on both the ra-tlonallsts and the emplrldsts and thetr deslre to unlveEallze our undeBtanding ofhu-man nanFe.

REBELLI0N AND FREEDOM: THE INDIVIDUAL lS EVERYTHING

The romantlc artlst threw down the gauntlet to soclety: 'lhe romantlcs c€lebrated the

creatlve genlus who broke the rules of society's game. The rornantlcs saluted therugged adventurer, the subllme salnt or sage, the conqueror, the poet who dles atraglc death hr from home (Byron and Shell€N/ were cas€s In polnt, dylng in Greeceand ltah/, resp€ctively). Thls sense of the lonely genlus rut off from society is stlll Wthus today.

The romantlcs yearned br fteedom and self-o

244 CHAPIER 3 Mnd. tudg, oad Sq

Sweet Is the lorc whlci nature brlngstOur meddling lntellectMls-shapes the beauteous nlrms of thlngs;-We murder to dissect.

Coethe edroes $ls enchantnent with nature ln the reading below enumeratlng thebeautles ofa lovellr valley teemhg with fnlst, populated wlth trees, tall grass, ffow-

The romantlcs' attachment to nature had a metaphyslcal foundatlon ln a sort ofmystlcal ldeallsm. They had a vislo4 of reallty as a splritual unlon of humanlty and na-ture. A helghtened enersf of the soul, an overflow of fuellng, led them to envlsagea vfuld, all-pervadlng sense of corpmunlon wlth nature as one great organlsm, full ofspldtual ener$/.

EVEFYTHING lN FLUX: BECOMING OVER BEING

The romantlcs saw the wodd ln flux, as becomlng, rather than as statlc and chang-lng, as being,

'Ih€ry apptled thls philosophy to soclety, to history, and to nature. Theysalv the wofld as a process of dynamlc change, evoMng from one fiorm to another Inan endleis movement. Thus, the most real thlng In the unlverse was becomlng, thefact that lt was constantly danglng.

Sodal communltles were not statlc, unchanglng sets of relatlonshlps, but mo-blle connectlons that changed over flme. The romantlcs werc thus k€enly aw4re ofhow history clanges our Ingtltutlons, ldeas, and values: how nothlng lasts forever.They thus gave blrth to historldsm, the ldea that all Instltutlons, ldeas" and valueshave to be understood In terms of the hlstorlcal era where thev exlsted and not asetemally valld things.

ORGANICISM AND POETRY OVER MECHANISM AND ANALYSIS

The pmantlcs reJected the Mew of nature as a world machlne govemed by statlcmathematlcal relatlonshlps ln favor of thc ldea that lt was llke a constanry evolvlngorganlsm. Ttre wodd machlne of the sdentlsts of the seventeenth c€ntury was op-posed by the romantlC conceptlon ofa nature pervaded by one unlffed splrlt.

Although rearcn and sense o(perlence can glve us banen blts of knowledge,they cannot enlarge our Inner worlds or glve us the generous impulse to take actlon.

a

Shelley argues that Sclence has allowed us to control nature, but drcumscdH our .,lnner world. Poetry ls "the root and blossom" of all $6tems of thought, glvlng them ; ;thelr ealentlat noudshment. What r,rrould vlrtue, love, pafiotlsm, and frlendshlp be i"lfpo€try dld not ascend to brlng llght and fire from those eternal reglons where theowl-wlnged faculty of calculatlon dare not wer soar?' Reason or emplrlcal knowl-edge by themselves tannot prcduce the good and noble thlngs In llfu. ij

THE WILD, THE ExOTlC, AND THE GOTHIC: EXTREME PSYCHIC STATESThe romantlcs llked wlld, exotlc images and places, disordered, overgrown gardens.iGothlc archltecture and storleg, and extrFnle pq)rchologlcal states, sometlmeson by dtugs, br th€y fult thege were the moments when they could b€ most

FIYE IHEOR/ES OF IHESELF 245

Indeed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thorrias de Quincey both used opium to fueltheir poetic reveries, with de Quincey chronicling his narcotic dreams in his book theConfesslons of an Engllsh Oplum Eater (1821). The literature of gothic honor flour-ished In the romantic era.

The romantics paid close attention to altered .states of consciousness such asdreams, halludnations, and suicidal depresslons, and were open to the effects of nar-cotics, panics, and frenzies, They saw these altered states as bringing them closer tothelr lnner selves and to nature, which had been dosed off fur them by the scientificratlonalist vierr of the world. Thls preference pointed ahead to Freud! theory of theunconsclous mind, the id, as the source ofour instinctual drives, and to the llnk be-tween creativity and chemlcally lnduc€d altered states of consciousness In the ca.rders of cgntemporary artists, Mters, and rock stars (wltness Wlliam S. Buffoughs,Jim Monlson, and Kurt Cobirin).

Ihe Exrltentrhftbt Sef

Existentlallsm was a complex movement In Western European philosophy and litela-ture dqring the nineJeenth and iwentleth centuries. Ihe exlstentlalists were a broadgroup ofthlnkeB with related by but no means identlcal ldeas. They shared the prem-ise th4t huDar ersferce is a better startlng point for philosophy than any metaplrys-i&/ essence (e.g., Descartes' thinklng thlngj. Freedom, the necessity of choice, andthe absurdl$l of human odstence were also common themes in existentialist work.

A parallel movement was phenomenologr. Phenomenolo$f ls a difficult termto pln dorvn: It involves the oGmlnatlgn ofthe contents of human consciousners freefrom any moral or metaphysical assumptlons. It looks at consciousness as a pure phe-nomenon, free from presupposltioris about lts character, Indudlng whether the ob-Jects that consclousness refurs to really odst. Phenomenolosr is thus a "descriptlve"dlscjpline. The ffrst lmportant phenomenologist was Edmund Husserl (1859-1938),Martln Heideggerb teacher. Husserl was grcatly opposed to the psychologlcal re'duction of human thought to InstinctUal drives: He belteved that the loglcal contentofthlnking was more lmportant than its connectlon to our physical belng. Phenome-nolosf helped to prepare the way for the exlstentiallst notion that human conscious-ness is free, not determined by physlca.l or psychological laws.

To understand the general sftape of existentidism and phenomenologr, lmag-ine a cenfial core of thlnkeE sunounded by two orbiting dngs of more loosely as-sociated ffgures. At the core of the odstentlalist solar syst€m are Jean-Paul Sartre( 1 9O5 -198O), the only thlnker to explicitly claim that he was an existentlAllst; SorenKierkegaard (1813-1855), the great Danish philosopher, who was the gEndfather ofthe movernent; and Martin Heldegger (1889-1976), the German thlnker who sys-tematlzed phenomenolosf ln his book Being and Time (1927), but who rejected theIabel "exlstentialist " We mlght also indude in thls group Karl Jaspers (1883'1969),

salne vetn asregarded as his countrlrman Heldegger.

In the lnner orbit surroundlng thls cenhal core ofthlnkeE, we find the SpanlshphilosopherJos€ Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), who later ln llfe came to avlew veryslmllar to Sartre's; the French novelist and essaylst Albert C"amus ( 1 91 3-l 960), whose

,# CHA%R3 Mind,W,onduf

llterature often spokc of the absurdlty of llfu and ofthe need to revolt agalnst this ab-surdlty; Slmone de Bcauvolr ( 1908-1986), Sartreb dose frlend, who used exlstentlal-lsm, among other thlngs, to polnt out the unequal statrs of the two sexes; and Mau-rlce Merleau-Ponty ( t 908-t 961), another hlend ofSarhe's, whose u/ork centered ona phenomenologr of experlence.

At the outer rlm of the odstentlallst solar s)6tem are wrlteF morc loose\r asso-

Russlan novelist, who often deated an atnosphere of odstentlal dread or angulshln hls works, notably In Nofes Fom trre Underground; Frutu Kaff

FIVE IHEORIES OF THE SELF

slty to mal(e cholces, lf we avoid them or allow others to make them for us, we be-come "inauthentic." Ortega and Sartre agreed that choice ls an inescapable part ofour lives, present in every moment ofour exlstence. Even notdoing something ls asort of choice. Ortega says that we're ftee b)/ compulsion, whlle Sartre says that hu-man beings are- "condemned to be free."

Further, given the fact that we're condemned to be free and have to makecholces, our values are at their core self-chosen. We can pretend that the values weadopt are the product of our rellgion, of human nature, or of soclety; yet in chooslngto follow them, we make them ourvalues. Sartre put this even more strongly: He sawexistentiallsm as the playing out ofa conslstently atheistlc posltlon. lf God is dead,there ls no cosmlc guarantee of moral truth; therebre, all the values we choose areour own.

IIFE IS FUNDAMENTALLY ABSURD AND FULL OF ANXIETY AND DREAD

The exlstentlalists also belleved that lifie ls absurd and full of an amorphous senseof anxlety or dread, angsf as Klerftegaard called it. Albert Camus used the myth ofSls)phus to show the absurdlty of lie. He says that human odstence is like the an-cient Greek story of Slsyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a rocl up ahlll every day, only to have lt roll back down at nlght. Hls labors seem pointless andabsurd. But our lives are Ilke that: We have no cosmic guarantee that our proiects areworthwhlle (or worthless), yet our dignlty comes In pursuing them anyway.

Some Cxlstentlallsts emphaslzed the anxlety or dread that we fuel when throwninto a world that has no Inherent meanlng, a \ rorld where we are ficrc€d to makecholces wlthout any real guldeposts (lfwe're betng authentlc, that ls). Kierkegaardtalked about the arystoftqdng to decide whether to take a leap ofFalth over the abyssof uncertainty into rellgious belief. Heidegger described the anxlety of our 'belng-

towards-death," whlch he fult was a fundamental test of whether we llved our llvesauthentlcally. Sartre argued that we fuel angulsh at havlng to constantly exerdse ourfundamental ffiom ln the act of cholce, whlch we are tempted to avoid by llvlngIn "bad falth" and blamlng our Failures on lmpersonal forces like physical shortcom-lngs or rellgious and sodal rules.

THE HUMAN CONDITION AtSO INVOLVES ALIENATION

A subsldlary theme tled to the ldea that llfu ls absurd is the idea that modern humanbelngs are alienated In a numb€r of ways. As consclous beings we're alienated fromthe wodd of physlcal obrects, from thlngs'ln-themselves, as Sartre called them. Theexlstentlallsts also saw human belngs as allenated from social instltutlons sucl as thestate and the church and from economlc roles, though itb difficult to say whetherthey saw thls type of allenatlon as fundamental to the human condltlon. We wear

ls only "pretendlng" to be a walter as he whlrls from table to table, hls tray ofdrinksIn hand. Sartre even belleved that we can be allenaH in our romantlc relationships,as when we obJectlfy the "Other' as a love oblect.

il

244 CHAPIER3 MindE&y,ond$

BE ALTTHENTICI AVOID FALLING IN WITH THE CROWD/THE HERD/DAS MAN

C-€nerally spcakln& the odstentlallsts demanded that people be authentlc, true tothemselves, and responslble for thelr actlons as Indlvlduals. Klerkegaard sald "thecrowd ls untnr$r' and that the hlghest tuth ls sublecilvq to mlndlessly adopt the be-lle6 and values of otheE is to lose )rourself to the group mlnd. Nletzsche put it evenmore suongly, rldlcullng the 'herd' br bllowlng the slave moralltles of Christlanity

the commands of Das /Vtran, "thc they." Sartre also urged us to be authentlc, to avoldbad Falth, and to ernbrace human freedom. ln short, to llve authentlcally, we must liveas free! chooslng lndMduals.

The Performing SelfSodologlcal ldeas about personal ldentlty and the self are too varled and dlverse todlscuss ln detall here. lnstead, we'll fioq.ls on rust one school of thought ln contem-porary soclologlcal theory here, symbollc lnGractlonlsm, and on the model of the self '

derribed by one malor ffgure ln that school, EMng C-oftnan's dramaturglcal model. .

THE SEIF IS SOCIALLY CONSTRUCIED IN A PROCESSOF SYMBOLIC INTEMCNON WITH OTHERS

For the rymbollc lnteractlonlst school of soclologlcal theory, we human belngs act'.toward others on the basls of the meanlngs that syrnbollc soclal oblects have for us,whether thes€ ob.lects ar€ actually ptrlrslcal thlngs llke traffc slgns, or concepts llkefrlendshlp and obedlence. We create tfiese oblects ln sodal lnteractlons wlth others,These meanlngs arc malntalned or modl6ed ln future Intefactlons_ as social actors ln-terprct and Elnterpret thes€ soclal oblects.

Our sclf ls sodalty constn cted out of thls proc€ss of Interactlon. There arelmpllcatlons of thls. Flrst the "self " ls an entlty of collaborattve manufacture, andrcllant on sodal Interactlon br lt to come lnto odstencr (C.€orge Herbert Mead,eadler Intcrartlonlst belleved that even the mlnd ltself developed to help thedMdrxl rchrre soctal problerns). Second, and paradoxlcally, although we havepartldpate ln lnteractlons to bulld our sefues, thls lntcractlon ls alreaqy structuredterms of the sodal ples gtven to us by soclcty, roles that we can adapt to ourpos€s only ln part. There ls no self lndep€ndent of the extemal world, asthought nor arc we unamblguously [€e to make ourselves as \ € s€e flt, asand Ortega b€lleved.

WE CREAIE OURSELVES BY iAEANS OF A SERIES OF PUBLIC PERFORMANCES

The sp€clflc way that we Interact, accordlng to Goftnan, ls by means of a serlespubllc performances, llke actors on a stage. ln our Interactlons wlth others, we trymalntaln one or more ldealized fronts that define who we are teacher, student,llce officer, mother, or bureaucrat, Thes€ fronts are llke claracters ln a play orGoftnan says that our publlc perficrmances are part ofa proceas of "lmpresslon

FIVE THEORIES OF THE SELF 249

agement" whereby we express these fronts through a series of tecinlques and per-sonal equipmentsuch as the wearlng ofsultable clothing; the use ofapproprlate bod-ily gestures, hcial expresslons, and ficrms of speech; and so on.

We want both smoothness and authentldty In our perbrmances: We want peo-ple to belleve that we're "really" students, profussors, doctors, lawyers, or bartend-ers. So we try to create a publlc persona that 6ts the role we're playlng: A la\ A/ermlght wear a conservatlve suit and conduct business In a soberly fumlshed office,whlle a student might wear reans and a baseball cap and spend a lot of tlme In thellbrary or sfudent union. Llke actors, we want to p€rbrm well, to convlnce others ofthe reallty of the front we are tDdng to maintain by manaSing their impresslons of us.After all, as soclal actors we need the audlence to accept our perbrmance as valld,oftdng them a number of physlcal "cues' (llke the pollce officer's unlfiorm or the pro.fiessor's leather brleftase) to convtnc€ them of thls.

THE DIVIDING LINE BETWEEN APPEARANCE AND REAL]TY IS FLUID

Fron6 are fraglle, and can break down easily If not carefully man4ged. Performershave to underplay or hlde actlvlties and facts tfiat don't ilbe wlth the ldeallzed frontsthey seek to Inhablt. AIso, they have to make thelr performances seem to be uncon-trlved or natural, llke stage or fflm actors. The danger ls always that the audience wlllsee one as a'phony." There are any number of wa)E that the barler between ap-pearance and reallty can break down! A profussor brgets some baslc Inbrmatlon lnan area ln whlch she ls suppo.sedl5l an o(pert; a suave ladles' man has to admlt thathe stlll llves vuth hls mother; or a much-ldollzed sports hero ls caught using llle-gal drugs. Some audlenc€ tact ls useful ln survMng at least our mlnor gaft: No per-blmer llkes a tough crowd, Ihe dlvldlng llne betw€en the appearance repres€ntedby the part we're playlng and the reallty that thls part ls merely a p€rformance b nuld,and can dlssofue qulte quldly.

WE ARE MERCHANTS OF MOMLITY, USING AMOR^TTECHNIQUES TO KEEP OUR PUBLIC SELF INTACT

As soclal perbrmers, we are merchants of morali$r who us€ amoral techniques to tryto malntatn an o(presslve control over our public fronts. Our performances makemoral dalms and promlses on our audience. We ask to be taken seriously as a par-ent, laulyer, frlend, or student Yet ttre Gclnlques we r.lse are amoral In the s€nsethat, although thelr purpose is usually to uphold the 'common offidd values" of so-dety, they can be used ln a moral or immoral way, dependlng on the attitude oftheperbrmer. Some peffolmels mlght really believe In their peformances, and be sln-cere In playlng the role of a parent, lawyer, frlend, or student. Others might play theirrole more cynlcall)|, aware that when th€y qeate a soclal front they're only "playinga that doesnt reflect thelr real or long-term goals. In the worst case, lndMdu-als can create sod-fftnE_thafaFtfeltffiecesgens€lmectlotrlck DeoDIe Intobellwlng rcmethlng that lsn't true, perhaps to galn some materlal advantage (Goff-man ls Fasdnated w|th the con man, who typifles thls sort of deceptlon).

Goftnan even talks about our soclal theater belng dlvlded lnto the front of thestage, where we perbrm, and the back, where all the mesq/ preparatlons are made

250 CHAF|ERj Mnd,Eody,ond ilf

(e.g., an officc vs. the prlvate spac€ where we groom and dress ourselves). The pub-llc self ls made up of the roles we play out on the front of the stage, where physlcalappearance, routlnes, and Sestures are very important.

THERE MAY BE NO AUTHENTIC INNER SELF

therc be no au-thentlc Inner self lurklng behlnd the curtaln of the stage of everyday llfu. At tlmesGoftnan seerns to hlnt ttEt we're do more than the sum of our sodal roles, although,lf thls ls true, lt's hard to tell w/to ls plaldng these roles. He concludes that the self isa productof a well-staged and perbrmed scene, a 'dramatlc efu" arislng from thatrene. Our body ls mercb/ the "peg' on whlci we hang this dramatic efu ficr a whlle.

lndeed, the word "person" (ftom the Latln pelsona) origlnally meant "mask."There may well be no real person under the mask We can see thls posslbillty in ex-aggeratd brm when talklng to drama students or watchlng actoF belng inter-vlewed on televlslonr To better o(press themselves, they sometlmes slip into a varl-ant of some role they've played In the past. Perhaps we're all lust more restralnedverslons of these performers, relatlng to the world only through one or more fronts.Thls stands ln stark contrast wlth the romantic vlew of the full reallgr of the inner self

EMPIRICISM: THE SELFAS A BUNDLE OF PERCEPTIONS

Hume on Personal ldentity

David Hume (1711-17761ls In many peoplet minds the greatgt phllosopher everto wrlte ln the Engllsh language. He was bom In Edlnburgh to a middle.dass hmilywlth a modest estate at Nlnewells In southem Scotland. As the youngest male cilld,Hume wasn't entltled to much of an lnherltance, so he had to make hls own way lnthe world. He was educated ln the ClMnlst tradltlon in the Church of Scrtland, and . .early In Ilft occupled hls mtnd wtth theologlcal lssues. Hume left br the Unlvelslty ofEdlnburgh at age 1I, where he stayed untll he wat 15. He brlefty consldered a ca-rcer In the law, but by hls late teens was corMnced that he was destlned br the libof a phllosopher.

From 1734 to 1737 Hume ltued ln Franc€, most of thls tlme ln La neche, thesmall town rvhere Descartes had studled a century eadler. There he wrote hlsimportant ulork, A Tread* of Human Nature (published anon)mously In threeumes In 1739 and l ZIO). It conslsted of three books, one each on understandlng,passlon, and moraligr. The lreat:se almed to apply Isaac Newton's "experlmental" rmethod to human neture acnoss a wlde specbum of phllosophlcal lssues: The 7l@.ftse ls a mbdure of eplstemolos/, metaphyslcs, pqycholos/, ethlcs, and polltlcalory. Now consldered among the greatest works In the Westem phllosophlcal canon,'at the tfme lt "ftll dead-bm from the press, without reacling such distinctioneven to exdte a murmur among the zealots" (to quote Hume's own assessment).it Hume deended an emplrlcal account of knowledge, linklng hlm to the Britlsh

File0001.PDFFile0002.PDF