James, W. (1892). The Self.

^{Header image:}^{KF in Dall-E}

https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/james-self/release/2

(A) the self as known, or the me, the ‘empirical ego’ as it is sometimes called

(B) the self as knower, or the I, the ‘pure ego’ of certain authors.

A. The Self as Known: The Empirical Self or Me

Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw [KF- Floridi: info as self]

Its constituents;
1. The constituents of the Me may be divided into two classes, those which make up respectively—
  1. The material me; body – clothes – immediate family – home – property
  2. The social me;
Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind.
The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with
A man’s fame, good or bad, and his honor or dishonor, are names for one of his social selves: “As a man I pity you, but as an official I must show you no mercy”;
The code of honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either of which is that so we best serve one of our social selves.
1. The spiritual me
The I – instinct – spark/soul

The feelings and emotions the constituents arouse,—self-appreciation;
- two sorts, self-complacency and self-dissatisfaction.
  - there is a certain average tone of self-feeling which each one of us carries about with him, and which is independent of the objective reasons we may have for satisfaction or discontent

The acts to which they prompt,—self-seeking and self-preservation.
bodily self-seeking,
social self-seeking,
- The noteworthy thing about the desire to be ‘recognized’ by others is that its strength has so little to do with the worth of the recognition computed in sensational or rational terms. [KF: e.g. a follow from Floridi]
- there is a whole race of beings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers, no matter under what heading, ‘arrivals and departures,’ ‘personal paragraphs,’ ‘interviews,’—gossip, even scandal, will suit them if nothing better is to be had. [KF: ‘profilicity’ 100 years before SM]
- many a man truly great, many a woman truly fastidious in most respects, will take a deal of trouble to dazzle some insignificant cad whose whole personality they heartily despise [KF: TuumMess]
spiritual self-seeking.
every impulse towards psychic progress, whether intellectual, moral, or spiritual in the narrow sense of the term.

Rivalry and Conflict of the Different Mes

the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation [KF: the scholar]. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them.

With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure, no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
[Homer: trying is the first step toward failure]

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do [Sisyphus; “my illusions”]
our self-feeling is in our power

Sameness in the Self as Known.—

If in the sentence ‘I am the same that I was yesterday,’ we take the ‘I’ broadly, it is evident that in many ways I am not the same…then younger, now older, etc. And yet in other ways I am the same, and we may call these the essential ways.
Moreover the Me of now and the Me of then are continuous: the alterations were gradual and never affected the whole of me at once. So far, then, my personal identity is just like the sameness predicated of any other aggregate thing. It is a conclusion grounded either on the resemblance in essential respects, or on the continuity of the phenomena compared.
Yesterday’s and to-day’s states of consciousness have no substantial identity, for when one is here the other is irrevocably dead and gone. But they have a functional identity,
This functional identity seems really the only sort of identity in the thinker which the facts require us to suppose. Successive thinkers, numerically distinct, but all aware of the same past in the same way, form an adequate vehicle for all the experience of personal unity and sameness which we actually have.
The logical conclusion seems then to be that the states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous. [KF: enough for me?]