This video lecture is part of the Identity and Selfhood course on Substack. You can find the reading list here. Links to readings and access to the full lectures as video and audio are provided to subscribers, with low-income and student learner discounts available on my homepage.
How do our expectations for what we can achieve shape our feelings about ourselves? How do the opinions of others, whether we know them well or not, form part of who we are? And are you defined by what’s in your bank account?
American philosopher and psychologist William James answers these questions and more in his account of the self in the Principles of Psychology. James, well-known along with his novelist brother Henry for a stream of consciousness approach to our psychological life, argues that the self is multilayered. From the most superficial (your material possessions) to the deepest (your values and feelings about yourself), the self has a variety of constituents that James separates into four distinct types. Undergirding the other three is what James calls the pure ego.
Enjoy reading James’s chapter, which has some whimsical—or cringe, depending—takes on yachts and land and sciousness (you’ll soon get what that is)!
As you read and watch the video (or listen—see audio file below), consider:
to what extent is the social self determinative of who we are, especially when we consider that we have very many social selves?
how do you understand what James means by the pure ego, or the I of the self (as opposed to the me)?
do you think his account of the material self is so determined by his bourgeois landowning context that it’s worth rejecting, or do you just think his examples are reflections of his own social standing but we could equally replace them with others and have the idea be just as valid?
what do you think of James’s formula for self-esteem?
how should we hierarchically order our various selves, and what does it mean to do so?
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.