Abstract

In its major aspect, the dissertation is an inquiry into the thesis that all writing, including philosophical writing, involves a confessional aspect that cannot be dissociated from what is written. The question that frames the inquiry is: "how is a discourse on the self possible?" The thesis that the act of writing is one of authorial self-construction, that it is, whether intended or not, a mode of discourse on the self, has its roots in the latter Wittgenstein, and in Sartre, Foucault and Nietzsche. ;In particular, I have shown that the construction of the authorial self is accomplished in the activity of writing and that writing may be understood as confessional. Author, text and world are simultaneous constructions which can be traced in the activity of writing by means of the notion of style. Two contrasting examples are drawn from the contemporary philosophical literature, namely that of Quine and Sartre: the first, is considered as an attempt to exclude the subjectivity of the authorial self and the second, as an examination of how to resolve the question of self-referential discourse. ;In order to demonstrate the possibility of a discourse on the self and ultimately achieve a context in which individuation of the self may proceed, my investigations attempt to show three things: that all literary discourse is, by nature of the act of writing, both subjective and political, that the scientization of philosophical discourse attempts to exclude subjectivity and hence the possibility of a discourse on the self, and that within the context of the discipline competing styles of doing philosophy, namely philosophy-as-science and philosophy-as-literature, have been taken as exclusionary categories, however they are not. I argue that scientific philosophy is as writing both subjective and political. Hence it must be taken as a form of literature, and should be treated according to its literary and rhetorical form, for within these parameters it is possible to construct a discourse on the self