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The Enduring Self? The Concept of ‘The Self’ in Western and Eastern Traditions
The term ‘self’ refers to an individual human being, along with their body, mind, and in
some cases, the concept of a ‘soul’. The western view of the ‘enduring self’ refers to the
notion that “you are the same person you were earlier in your life. In other words, it
assumes that we humans are selves that endure through time” (Velasquez 96). So,
despite the many mental and physical changes that may occur during our life, we are
essentially the same ‘self’ throughout our many developments. While western traditional
has, for the most part, accepted and championed the idea of an ‘enduring self’, the exact
definition and characteristics of this ‘enduring self’ are diverse. However, the
Enlightenment philosopher David Hume and the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha
Gautama, both rejected the idea of an ‘enduring self’, even going so far as to claim any
concept of a ‘self’ is an illusion. In this essay, I intend to examine the two different views
and state my own thoughts on which viewpoint is more compelling.
The European philosophers Plato, Descartes, and Locke all believed in an ‘enduring self’,
however what exactly constituted this ‘self’ was varied. The concept of a ‘soul’ is often
the most popular representation of an ‘enduring self’, because according to western
belief, a soul is “immaterial or spiritual” (Velasquez 100), thus a ‘soul’ is beyond the
physical realm and not subject to change like material objects. Plato was one of the first
philosophers to state that the soul is eternal, so it is the soul of a man that makes him
an enduring self, because even after death the soul continues to exist. Many years later,
the philosopher Descartes stated that “thinking is an attribute of the soul” and that “the
continuity of his thinking mind [is what] makes him remain the same person” (Velasquez
100). In other words, our consciousness is a result of our ‘soul’, or of our ‘enduring self’.
Descartes basically believed that, if he could not think, then he could not exist, and thus
‘thinking’ in and of itself was what constituted an enduring self. Locke had a similar view,
though his idea was the ‘enduring self’ is a person’s memory. In other words, it is our
memory that allows us to identify ourselves, and it is the process of identifying
ourselves that allows us to formulate the idea of a ‘self’.
While the western tradition may make some fairly significant justifications for an
‘enduring self’, the Buddhist philosophy completely rejects the notion of a ‘self’ in
general, viewing it as an illusion. Buddhist philosophy believes that everything in life is
ephemeral, or that nothing lasts forever. Everything is in a constant flux of change and
impermanence, thus, the ‘enduring self’ cannot exist, because an ‘enduring self’ would
imply something that is ‘permanent’ or ‘unchanging’. The Buddha taught that the idea of
a ‘self’ is an illusion, and that this illusion leads to pain and suffering. By renouncing the
‘self’ and transcending the ego, one can obtain release from suffering (nirvana) and
finally be at peace.
The Original Question is: What are Eastern and Western perspectives about self?
This is a very controversial subject to go through, but I'll do my best to make it short.
First, let's forget everything about the contemporary understanding of the notion of "east" and "west".
There is nothing like a whole unpenetrable leveled union west against those of the east. Mystical orient
vs rational west is a fabrication of the colonial scholars. Both cultures and civilization have many in
common hence it is difficult sometimes to recognize and separate cultural elements.
Second, when it comes to the people, it's getting more complicated because the human being is the
human being and the motives which run the human thoughts and did is almost the same everywhere. So
we need a comprehensive study of the case and take an interdisciplinary view to find the differences.
But I will try to face the notion of the "Self" from a religious perspective which is more related to my
studies.
East:
If we assuming that the religious tradition was the mainstream in the east, accepting the concept of a
superior being (Allah, Nibbana, Ha Shem, Lord and etc) was a necessity for being religious. As a
follower, you should live in a way that God demands. Every single aspect of a follower's life will be
defined by the concepts of obedience, submission, and dedication. They should surround their will to
the Lord irresistible one. The ultimate aim of a worshiper is the contentment and the satisfaction of the
worshiped. How? By eliminating their will and following His commandments. Denial of their
personal self and becoming a God-oriented self is the first step toward His eternal and glorious
kingdom. As an eastern, concept of the "self" stands for something which always exists
somewhere out of you. You are not an individual person anymore, but a servant who serves along with
His other servants. So in the east, the community of the followers are always more important than
individuals. The Ummah of Islam, the nation of the Jehovah, the Church of Christianity, the Sangha of
the Buddhism are some of these communities which their interest is always comes first so the followers
need sometimes even sacrifice their lives to protect it. In one word, "self" direction in the east
is outward.
West:
Let's assume that we can associate the west with the concept of rational atheism. By this, I mean the
religious tradition like what we have in the east, is not dominant as a school of thought here, and I don't
mean the eastern theism is irrational. Well if we put the age of mythology away, (which we can't
actually categorize it as a religion in the eastern sense) then we have a bunch of the philosophers who
they generally didn't believe in kind of personal god(s) or at least not a god who be able to change our
human ways of life. Their approach to the world was formed around a materialistic view with a rational
realism which seeks the reality of the nature of everything by studying their attributes and properties.
The human being was part of this world, the only difference about humans was their cognition and
awareness. The human is the only creature who is able to be studied by very him/herself. The journey
of the western people into the depth of their most inner labyrinth of "self" started right here. Looking to
the ancient Greek and its political system based on a kind of democracy (Although slaves, women, and
a majority of low-level citizens couldn't vote!) shows the importance of the concept of individuality.
Even the aristocracy of Plato had kind of self-oriented approach to the governing over the political
system, however, it wasn't based on the people votes but it is highly depended on elite individual's
opinion over the issues. While in the east the vote only belongs to the God or His messengers or a
council of his chosen servants which decided based on His will which interpreted through His revealed
message, not based on worshipper's opinion. We can see the sparks of what we call humanism in the
enlightenment era back in the ancient Greek. The well-being and joyful life of the individuals (not the
society unless we consider society a gathering of the individuals) are the main priority of the western
societies. (In the theory, of course, I won't go through all those disputes over the capitalism and modern
slavery blah blah) You should make yourself happy in this world, It's the ultimate goal of the life. In
one word, "self" direction in the west is inward.
P1: We consider Christianity as an eastern tradition and of the east, we meant cultural east, not
geographical.
P2: We have many examples of democracy systems also in the east. Like the term of Bay'ah in Islamic
tradition which means swear an oath to the ruler by people of the Muslim society (Ummah) which
gives him the authority to rule over them. (something like the election)
P3: I'm not evaluating the inward or outward direction which I mentioned above. Democracy has its
flaws as the theocracy has. By democracy, the institution of power can control people's free will using
media for instance, and theocracy, on the other hand, can simply lead the authorities to a dictatorship.
P4: There is an inward journey in religious traditions in which disciple seeks the God by knowing
him/herself. There are some amazing and heretic reports of many of these spiritual travelers to the
realm of the soul, in which they meet God in their own faces. (I won't judge!) respecting that, could be
God and "self" be the same? So can we identify the concept of the "self" in the east and west?
Broadly, speaking,
Western society strives to
find and prove "the truth", while
Eastern society accepts the truth
as given and
is more interested in finding the
balance.
EASTERN PHILOSOPHY WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Integral Christianity**, R
Yoga, Islam, Taoism, Zen ational, Scientific, Logical schools
● Cosmological unity
● Feeling oneself as an element of the Divine
● Life is a journey towards eternal realities that
are beyond the realities that surround us ● Life is a service (to the God, money, business,
etc.)
● Circular view of the universe, based on the
perception of eternal recurrence ● Linear view of the universe and life, based on
the Christian philosophy where everything has its
● Inner-world dependent beginning and the end.
● Self-liberation from the false "Me" and finding
● Outer-world dependent
the true "Me". The highest state is believed to be a
state of 'no-self', where neither self-worth nor self-
● Self-dedication to the goal (big dream, life
importance have any real meaning.
vision, happiness, personal success, etc.)
● Behavioral ethics
C
Damon Winter/The New York Times
r
eI recently took my self to a gathering of a dozen selves to discuss the idea of self, East and West. This
dcreated a strange dissonance between the theoretical premise of the meeting and the empirical reality.
iThe people seated around the table seemed very obviously all to be the same kinds of beings, yet they
kept
t telling one another how differently they conceived the self. Stark differences between theoretical
selves were completely indiscernible in ordinary human interaction.
over not because selves differ, but because at different times and places people have more or
less concern with different aspects of selfhood. They provide different answers to the question
“What is the self?” because that apparently singular question in fact contains any number of
different ones.
This explanation also helps justify the value of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary inquiry.
The point is not to reach some kind of warm, ecumenical mutual understanding, rooted in
profound respect for difference. Rather it is to see that our questions are not the only ones
worth asking and that by considering others, we might not only open up new vistas but also
see our familiar intellectual territory in a different light.
Both these explanations for the coexistence of radical difference and fundamental sameness
seem extremely plausible when it comes to ideas of self. Take perhaps the most commonly
noted, broad-brush feature of the Eastern conception of self: its relationality. Whereas in the
West the self is understood primarily as an autonomous ego whose existence is distinct from
that of others, in the East, it is often argued there is no meaning of self that is independent of
our relations to others. The self is irreducibly social.
Evidence for this is legion. There are more than a dozen different words for “I” in Japanese,
and which one people use depends on the precise social circumstances.
All of this is no doubt true, but we misunderstand what it means
RELATED
if we see it as indicating a wholly other idea of self to that which More From The Stone
holds in the West. That would be to fall prey to a kind of Read previous contributions
to this series.
exoticization, the source both of xenophobia and romantic
idealizing of the foreign Other. Many identities are relational in the West, such as those of
parent, child, group member and so on. What we think of as different notions of self are
largely a matter of differences in what aspects of self are expressed where and when.
Why then is it that different aspects of self receive greater or lesser emphasis in different
cultures? The answer is, I think, primarily ethical. Conceptions of self are usually assumed to
be attempts to describe the objective reality of what a self is, and this is indeed what thinkers
around the globe have often thought they were doing. But philosophies of self are usually at
least as prescriptive as they are descriptive. For example, thinkers like Confucius knew that
people could choose to live in isolation as rugged individualists. Living without relationality is
perfectly possible; it just isn’t good. There would still be some self living such a life but it
would be an impoverished, emaciated one. Differences between conceptions of self are
therefore more ethical than metaphysical.
Hence these Eastern accounts of self do not so much provide a rival set of answers to the
questions asked in the West as suggest that there may be other questions worth asking. If we
want to know what it is which underpins the continued identity of a self over time, for
example, it seems to me nothing from the East threatens the account offered in the tradition
of Hume and Locke, in which psychological continuity is the bearer of selfhood. The question
posed by a fruitful engagement with the East is whether this continuing self is best sustained
by its own resources alone or its engagement with society and with others.
Western philosophers have never been completely blind to these questions. William James
explicitly talked of the social self. Generally speaking, however, they have played down
relationality and emphasized individuality. Many in the West now question this, wondering
whether we have become too atomized, too discrete. Eastern ways of thinking about the self
are a resource for thinking about how we might change this.
As the West rethinks the importance of relationality, it also needs to think which relations
matter most. At the moment this looks decidedly under-thought. We worry about “bowling
alone” and about diminishing social cohesion but are the relations that can fix this the ones of
family, friends, neighborhood, community, nation, social media, interest groups or religion?
Comparative philosophy shows us that there is more than one possible answer, and perhaps
others that no great tradition has yet given.
There are also other gains to be had from cross-cultural philosophical encounters. First, there
would certainly appear to be some value in at least understanding the often implicit
philosophies that inform populations, benefits for both observers and those observed.
For instance, although Confucianism has deeply affected the
NOW IN PRINT
Chinese outlook, after decades of official disavowal of his The Stone Reader: Modern
Philosophy in 133
philosophy, many even in China do not realize just how Arguments
instinctively Confucian their thinking is. Cross-cultural An anthology of
essays from The
philosophy can therefore be not just a way of understanding the
Times’s
cultures of others but of our own. This is particularly important philosophy
as countries begin to be affected by foreign values. In Japan, for series, published
by Liveright.
instance, aspects of Western individuality are becoming more
apparent with some studies suggesting that tradition, service and abrogation of self are less
valued by youth. (Although it should be noted that laments for the passing of old values are as
old as those values themselves.)
We should be careful, however, that an atmosphere of ecumenical respect does not prevent
real interrogation. To learn from other traditions one has to see the bad as well as the good.
The downside of less emphasis on individuality, for instance, can be an excessive deference
and a consequent lack of energy against injustice. When self is defined relationally, that can
also make it more constrained by society and less flexible. That perhaps in part explains the
relatively high suicide rate in Japan. North Korea is an even starker reminder of how the
relegation of self can be a tool for terrible things.
There are of course some elements of foreign philosophies that others can borrow from. Jin
Li’s work on the differences in child-rearing practices of Asian and Western parents, for
example, suggests that all children everywhere can benefit from being brought up to think
more about effort and their relations to others than their own abilities and personal
development.
We might also consider the value of Confucian harmony in politics, as Daniel Bell urges us to
do in his recent book “The China Model.” Harmony is found when our social relations are
good, and to be good they require openness about disagreement and conflicts of interest.
Harmony is not an aspiration for bland uniformity. As Bell points out, “One of the most
famous lines in the Analects of Confucius – known to most educated Chinese – is that
exemplary persons should pursue harmony but not consensus (or uniformity).”
However, such appropriation has its limits because of what Isaiah Berlin called the plurality of
values, meaning that more than one set is justifiable but they may also be incompatible. Gains
from greater community, for example, result in losses for real values arising from individual
autonomy. If we therefore set out to decide which set of values is right and which is wrong we
often ask the wrong question. Both have their losses and gains, and you can’t have one with
the other.
The different conceptions of self in different cultures matter so much because they are so
subtle. If they really were staring us in the face we would know how to deal with them. When
people speak a foreign language, for example, you either need to get an interpreter or learn it.
But when people hold slightly different assumptions, it’s easy to miss what is critically
different. And if we miss that, we not only cut ourselves off from others, we also cut ourselves
off from useful ways of thinking about how we live.