ABSTRACT
In our own era, underwriting questions about identity lies self-consciousness in its various formats, namely, what is experienced as the enigmatic me. That agent, the I, has been construed in diverse ways: mind in contrast to body, the subjective in contrast to the objective, rational understanding pitted against unconscious desire, reflective consciousness in contrast to the content reflected, etc. In toto these dichotomies point to the intuition that “the ‘I’ bears a relation to itself that is quite unlike its relation to other objects” (Rorty 1976, 13). Indeed, who is this intimate other who shadows my consciousness and leaves me to ponder my own identity? This is the question at the heart of the romantic quandary.
A consciousness of one’s own self and a consciousness of other things, are in truth given to us immediately, and the two are given in such a fundamentally different way that no other difference compares with this. About himself everyone knows directly, about everything else only very indirectly. This is the fact and the problem. (Schopenhauer 1969, 192)
