Self-understanding and self-alienation (SELFU&A)

Abstract:

Humans are self-interpreting beings. Although this is a key insight in philosophical hermeneutics (Heidegger 1927; Taylor 1985), it remains an open question exactly what it means to say that human beings are ‘themselves’, or have an ‘identity’, precisely through the fact of self-understanding. To answer this question the present project adopts a negative approach by focusing on experiences of self-alienation. How can self-understanding be fundamental to being human if it can also be lost? What does the possibility of self-alienation show us about the role of self-understanding in being human? We suggest that adopting such a negative approach will turn out to be particularly illuminating in showing how the relations to oneself, to others and to the world are intertwined in being human.