Chapter 1
‘Who am I?’ Identity in philosophy
Know thyself!
Surely there are things more interesting to ponder than oneself? Not so fast!
Philosophers don’t think there are, and they have a point.
As I gaze from my desk across the wide river, I see a flock of gulls circling
around high in the sky. We can describe with great scientific precision the
intricate process it takes for the light waves to touch my retina and from there to
be translated into electrical impulses that travel through nerve fibres to the
occipital lobe of my brain, where they form an image of a flock of gulls. But
where is the ‘I’ that sees, and enjoys seeing, the gulls; that decides to look out of
the window rather than answer my email and apply myself to other chores?
Who’s in control?
‘Know thyself!’ Socrates instructed his disciples. For, as he clearly saw, self-
directed thought (autognosis) raises the problem that we must know what
knowledge is and who does the knowing. This became a point of departure for
one of the richest fields of philosophical investigation, from the Socratics
through the ‘confessions’ of Christian thinkers in the medieval period to idealism
and materialism in the modern era.
‘Who am I?’ is not just about me, but the question guiding the inquiry into what
it is to be human. French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) echoed
Socrates’ reasoning two millennia later when he posited, ‘every man bears
within himself the entire form of the human condition’.