ABSTRACT
The self-evident nature of the self is a primary desideratum in Western thought, at least since Descartes. For Descartes also the indubitable nature of the self in a sea of methodological doubt goes to prove, in oblique fashion, the existence of God. Mark Johnson goes on to say that self-theorists are interested in the loss of self in such phenomena as trances and psychoses, and in political and religious fanaticism. The empirical self of the social philosophers cannot escape its prior history in Western thought as the transcendental self, or at the very least as an integrated, identifiable, discrete entity. David Hume had no knowledge of Buddhism, but it is possible that his thinking is derived from another soulless thinker Heraclitus. It is of course easy enough to contradict the Humean or Buddhist idea of no-self by postulating that the world is not in a state of flux.
