ABSTRACT
Not the least of the questions thrown up by Cartesian philosophy concerns the reality of the individual ‘self’ or person. This language of the self has a historical character and is not fixed. A new sense of self in the seventeenth century is a crucial part of what is distinctive, modern and Western. Modern people are preoccupied by personal feelings, personal wealth, personal fulfilment, personal health, personal privacy and much else ‘personal’ besides. This gives much of the twentieth century human sciences, like psychology and sociology, their subject matter. There is much less agreement about how, why and when these preoccupations arose. It was a long-term historical process. But the seventeenth century was a time when there was a considerably increased sense of self connected to developments in natural and moral philosophy as well as society and culture more generally.
