"That the self is an immediate unity with itself, a Moebius-like entity, was an insight taken in several directions by thinkers after Fichte"
— Peters, John Durham
Author
Date
1997
Metaphor
"That the self is an immediate unity with itself, a Moebius-like entity, was an insight taken in several directions by thinkers after Fichte"
Metaphor in Context
That the self is an immediate unity with itself, a Moebius-like entity, was an insight taken in several directions by thinkers after Fichte. Novalis, for example, saw that to be a self is to be engaged in self-deferral--a fact he dubbed the "sophistry of self." The self chases itsefl in successive phases: but since the self is fundamentally one, it strives for reunification in the future. In reflection, we see only our past self: in the present, we see only the self escaping itself. As Novalis wrote, to say that the self exists (in the etymological sense of "eksists") is to say that "it finds itself beside itself" (Es findet sich, ausser sich). The self confronts itself in the uncanny situation of being its own double. Romantic topoi such as nostalgia, longing for postponed unity, and the sweetly painful sense of the vanishing moment clearly originate, for Novalis at least, in philosophical reflection of the temporal structure of self-consciousness. (p. 230)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Peters, J. D. "'The Root of Humanity': Hegel on Communication and Language." Figuring the Self: Subject, Absolute, and Others in Classical German Philosophy. Ed. David E. Klemm and Günter Zöller. Suny Series in Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 227-44.
Date of Entry
10/16/2003
