Abstract
Within the framework of contemporary individualist accounts of identity, the experience of subjective difference that is at the core of human consciousness is considered to be an obstacle to authentic selfhood. The gap between the “I” and its “self” as is obvious from propositions such as “I wasn’t my-self”, “Just be your-self,” etc., is taken to reveal an inner difference or lack of selfhood that needs to be overcome by the individual in order to attain a form of personal identity as the condition for authentic judging and acting.1 A commitment to authenticity supposes that an individual tries to connect as directly and immediately as possible with his inner self. He has to eliminate all differences that may estrange his ego from his self, because as long as there remains a gap between his judging ego, on the one hand, and his self, on the other, there is a possibility that his judgments and acts do not authentically express who he really is; they can, for instance, be influenced, modified or even manipulated by something that is external (heteronomous) to the subject’s inner reflexivity. At least from a popular point of view, such type of thinking has become widespread and seems to correspond with our contemporary views on authenticity and identity. The recent and very “popular mindfulness” movement, for example, urges people to listen to the actual contents of their consciousness through meditation and reflection in order to connect with their true selves, whereas various high schools and universities claim that their educational programs will help students to gain self-knowledge so that they can discover who they really are and what they really want.
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Notes
- 1.
Since every act as a motivated act presupposes a prior judgment as to what should be done, it is not necessary to systematically distinguish between “act” and “judgment.” Human agency indeed implies that a judgment precedes an act as that what allows a subject to act in the proper sense of the word.
- 2.
In what follows, I will refer to this approach as the metaphysical approach.
- 3.
See, for instance, Caroline Walker Bynum, “Did the 12th century discover the Individual”, in Jesus as Mothers. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, 1982.
- 4.
For an insightful discussion of the invention of the self in the Renaissance and a comprehensive overview of the scholarly literature on the issue, see G. Baldwin, “Individual and Self in the Late Renaissance”, The Historical Journal, 44(2) (2001), pp. 341–364.
- 5.
M. De Montaigne, The Complete Essays (trans. M.A. Screech) (London: Penguin Classics, 1991). The references between brackets in the text indicate the book, the number of the essay and the page. II,12,680:
[…] if you should determine and to try and grasp what Man’s being is, it would be exactly like trying to hold a fistful of water: the more tightly you squeeze anything the nature of which is always to flow, the more you will lose what you try to retain in your grasp.
- 6.
This is obvious from multiple passages, for example: “If I had to live again, I would live as I have done; I neither regret the past nor fear the future” (III,2,920); “I rarely repent and my conscience is happy with itself” (III,2,909); “I cannot do better: and the act of repenting does not properly touch such thing as are not in our power […]” (III,2,917).
- 7.
P. Charron, Of Wisdom (Taylor 2001).
- 8.
Cf. Baldwin, op. cit.
- 9.
Hobbes, for instance, is heavily influenced by the Greek philosopher and historian Thucydides, whereas Montaigne refers numerous times to the stoics and more in particular to Cicero.
- 10.
See, for instance, M. Moriarty, The Age of Suspicion (Oxford, 2003) and J. Starobinski, Montaigne en mouvement (Paris, 1982), A. Goldhammer, trans., Montaigne in Motion (Chicago, 1985).
- 11.
Cf. Baldwin, op. cit., p.347:
I would like to argue that there was, in the later Renaissance, a new discussion pertaining to the self which served both to show how problems raised by humanist ethics and politics could be limited, or at least circumvented, and to demonstrate how the individual could best cope with living within such a culture. This involved strategies for understanding the world in which appearance differed from reality, and truth differed from what was said, as well as living with the psychological strains arising from the presentation of fictive personae. […] The way in which this inheritance was employed would involve discussion of something some contemporaries called the self, a construction that would enable individuals to deal with the vicissitudes of life.
- 12.
A position defended by scholars like V. Carraud in L’invention du moi (Paris, 2010) and J.-L. Marion, “Qui suis-je pour ne pas dire Ego Sum, Ego Existo”, in: V. Carraud et J.-L. Marion (Eds.), Montaigne: scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie (Paris, 2004). J. Lyons’ claim that Montaigne’s does not contain a concept of the self should be read along the same lines; J. O. Lyons, The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century (Carbondale, 1978).
- 13.
I cannot go in to this here, but I think there is a good claim to be made that Montaigne’s account of the elusive self is an important anticipation of Hume’s “Bundle theory of the self.”
- 14.
Cf. B. Sève, “Témoin de soi-même. Montaigne et l’écriture de soi”, in: P. Magnard et T. Gontier (Éds.), Montaigne, Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010, pp. 23–44.
- 15.
Virginia Woolf, in particular, was highly interested in the relation between Montaigne’s writing process and his concept of the self. Cf. V. Woolf, “Montaigne”, in: Collected Essays (Toronto: The Hogarth Press Ltd, 1967), Volume 3, pp. 18–26; see also D. M. Marchi, “Pater and Woolf: A Modernist Renaissance”, in: D. M. Marchi, Montaigne Among the Moderns. Receptions of the Essais (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1994).
- 16.
An obvious yet rather underexplored connection between Montaigne and Derrida seems possible. Cf. D. M. Marchi, op. cit., p.91: “[…] The Essais anticipate a Derridean attitude in which meaning is never absolutely present outside of a play of differences, a position that puts systematic thought into question […].”
- 17.
Interestingly, the English word “self-consciousness” contains both meanings: it is the state of being aware of oneself, yet being self-conscious also denotes an experience of doubt and uncertainty, for instance, when one has to address a large audience.
Bibliography
G. Baldwin, “Individual and Self in the Late Renaissance”, in: The Historical Journal, 44, 2 (2001), pp. 341–364.
Bynum, C. W., Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Sprituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkely, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 82–106.
V. Carraud et J.-L. Marion (eds.), Montaigne: scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie (Paris: PUF, 2004).
M. De Montaigne, The Complete Essays (trans. M.A. Screech), (London: Penguin Classics, 1991).
J. O. Lyons, The Invention of the Self: the Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978).
D. M. Marchi, “Pater and Woolf: A Modernist Renaissance”, in: D. M. Marchi, Montaigne among the Moderns. Receptions of the Essais (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1994).
M. Moriarty, The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
B. Sève, “Témoin de soi-même. Montaigne et l’écriture de soi” in: P. Magnard et T. Gontier (Éds.), Montaigne (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010), pp. 23–44
J. Starobinski, Montaigne en mouvement (Paris, 1982), trans. A. Goldhammer, Montaigne in Motion (Chicago: Gallimard, University of Chicago Press, 1985).
C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
V. Woolf, “Montaigne”, in: Woolf, V. (ed.), Collected Essays (Toronto: The Hogarth Press Ltd, 1967), Volume 3, pp. 18–26.
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Caudron, V. (2016). Being My-Self? Montaigne on Difference and Identity. In: Winkler, R. (eds) Identity and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40427-1_4
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