The Self and I

Abstract

In discussing the nature of ‘the self’ and the meaning of ‘I’ it is important to remember that the questions raised by these words are practical ones and not theoretical. From birth we are fundamentally engaged with the world and things in it. We have to be able to deal with the world before we can talk about it. When we think about ourselves and wonder who we are, we are in a context. In dreaming, or meditating alone in a cave, we are still somewhere. It makes no sense to abstract ourselves from our practical relations to the world, to what is already given, and imagine ourselves as without a context, a sort of essence in a vacuum that we can define. The meaning of a word is not in me but in its place in the symbolism and this is shown by the way it is used. This was pointed out by Frege (1950, para 62): ‘it is only in the context of a proposition that words have any meaning’.