Pt. 4: A Brief History of the Modern Self

 

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In an autobiographical account of his life entitled Confessions, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau writes an introduction that gives a distinct description of his perspective of the self. Rousseau writes:

The particular object of my confessions is to make known my inner self, exactly as it was in every circumstance of my life. It is the history of my soul that I promised, and to relate it faithfully I require no other memorandum; all I need do, as I have done up until now, is to look inside myself.

For Rousseau, the real and authentic self is something found "inside". What he means by this internal self isn't directly obvious, unless we understand his larger thought of two distinct types of self-love: amour de soi-même and amour propre.

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Rousseau saw human beings as naturally innocent and genuine from the start. The first kind of self-love (amour de soi-même) is the consideration of ones self by themselves only. It is the love of self that is unaffected by and unaware of the outside world. The second, amour propre, is that self-love gained from outside of oneself- accolades from a community, status in a society, etc. The Rousseauian dichotomy is that these two loves are at war with one another; the "internal" self-love seeks to express itself in an authentic and honest way externally but is hindered by a self-love bound to the rules and standards set by society. Human freedom to express the inner "real" self, in Rousseauian terms, is the highest good.

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By contrast, the Christian concept of selfhood centers on God who Himself possesses Selfhood and bestows it upon man. Selfhood therefore is not an essentially internal reality, but involves man's whole existence and consciousness as the image of God- body and soul. For Christianity, the true self is not "inside" of a person's body- it includes his body. 

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It is clear which view of selfhood has prevailed today. Rousseau's veneration of authentic self expression has only ripened in modernity. Today, the internal self is considered more real and significant than the external/physical reality of the world and the chasm between the two is only widening.