ABSTRACT
The philosophical quest for the sources of the self is as controversial today as the search for the sources of the Nile once used to be, and is in danger of coming to the same swampy end. Why is there so much recent interest in the sources of the notion of self? A lot is at stake: the notion of self belongs to a cluster of closely related concepts such as subject, author and agency, which are subsequently further qualified with epithets like autonomous, original, or authentic. The possibility of aesthetic and ethical discourse is predicated on these concepts. No moral ascription is possible without the idea of free agency. Similarly, no aesthetic creation seems possible without authentic self-expression. All the same, these crucial concepts came under fire in the second half of the twentieth century (in poststructuralism and postmodern criticism). There was provocative talk about ‘the end of the author’ (Roland Barthes) and ‘the death of the subject’ (Michel Foucault), which called into question the principles of modern ethics and aesthetics. Conservative corrections, most prominently Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (1989), were published to counter the dreaded loss of self.
