ABSTRACT
This chapter examines multiple strands of the "question of the self". It surveys the complex web of ideas discussed in this study with an eye to the central issues that lie at the heart of the debate. The chapter discusses the issue of narcissism in a particular sense of the term derived from Ovid's famous story of Narcissus and Echo. It illustrates a number of disagreements between Rousseau and Smith about the "question of the self", and hence about the nature and attainability of self-knowledge, gravitate around the distinction between the external and internal. The chapter cites Michael Ignatieff's observation that was inherited from Smith and Rousseau "a choice between two languages about politics, and two different utopias". The intractability of debates in our contemporary civic and political discourse testifies to the depth of the disagreement about many issues examined in this study. This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
