Abstract
Rather than with the study of behavior itself, I am concerned here with the study of how we talk about ourselves and our behavior, with the way in which in a moral world we make our conduct accountable. I shall not, however, propose any new theories: in fact, my approach will be an implicit argument for the repudiation of theories in any attempt to understand the workings of everyday social life, for theories too require accounts as to how they should be interpreted and applied; they are themselves products of accountable behavior. Thus, rather than a “empirical/theoretical” approach, I shall be taking an approach of a “practical/descriptive” kind (Shotter, 1984), in which the major question I want to raise is: What as human beings, and as persons, are we to ourselves. And the answer that I shall give is: that we are to ourselves very much as we treat one another as being in our everyday life activities.
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Shotter, J. (1985). Social Accountability and Self Specification. In: Gergen, K.J., Davis, K.E. (eds) The Social Construction of the Person. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5076-0_9
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