Abstract

The subject matter of this paper is inexhaustible: it has to do with the nature of the human self. Moreover, it seeks to explore not just one but several of the more distinctive activities of the self: thinking, judging, and responding to the voice of conscience. My plea for so ambitious an undertaking in a single essay is that the self is, after all, endlessly fascinating, profoundly paradoxical, and philosophically as challenging as any object of reflection could be. And the activities I want to examine are so intimately bound up with one another that any attempt to deal with them in isolation seems futile.