THE WORD ‛I’ BETWEEN HYPOSTASIS AND REDUCTIONISM PROBLEMS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE ON SELF

Abstract

In this paper the author is reflecting on the status of the words ‛I’ and ‛Self’ in the philosophical discourse. By making the difference between two tendencies of dealing with problems of self-consciousness – the idealistic and analytical tendency – he points out two ways to understand ‛Self’ as a phenomenon. The idealists make a category mistake by transforming the self into a separate entity (hypostasis) that becomes the main philosophical principle in the era of German idealism (for example in Fichte’s transcendental idealism); on the other hand many representatives of analytic philosophy are criticizing this kind of substantialized usage of words concerning self-consciousness and subjectivity and they are reducing this usage to one-person-situations (one person = one user of the word ‛I’). Instead of opting for a singular perspective of understanding the self the author pleads for an expansion of semantic horizons of words we’re using for philosophical purposes (this is a metaphilosophical view). Finally he suggests the integration of the affective dimension of our subjective experience into the analysis of Self – the word ‛Me’ will be an important part of this discourse (in sentences like ‛Something happened to me’ we can recognize a different character of the phenomenon called ‛Self’).