The Vanishing Subject
The Many Faces of Subjectivity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20057120 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Pages | 34-51 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Subjectivity (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1525/9780520939639-005 |
| OpenAlex | W2479449941 |
| ISBN | 9780520939639 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 3 |
Augustine says, What then is time? If no one asks me, know; if want to explain it, do not know. And yet know.1 Augusti e in troduces his perplexity by noting that while the present is evanescent, and neither time past nor time future exist, he can nevertheless tell the time of day, and correct himself when he finds he was mistaken. We can echo Augustine's dilemma in speaking about subjectivity. And indeed the two are connected: if no one asks us, we are confident that our ex perience is ours. But the moment we try to explain in what subjectivity consists, the sense of certainty vanishes. If subjectivity is an awareness of oneself, it seems to have no stable content: every moment brings a different to light. Montaigne puts it this way, Anyone who turns his . . . attention to himself will hardly ever find himself in the same state twice.2 If subjective reflection offers proof of the existence of the self, it does not necessarily deliver self-knowledge. Descartes puts it this way: know that exist; the question is 'What is this I that know?'3 Descartes is rightly puzzled: the greater part of the Meditations is a detective story that traces the momentary certainty of the momentary existence of the thinker through a labyrinth of arguments to discover that?grace ? Dieu?the self is a particular compound unity of a section of two substances, Mind and Body.4 Reflecting on Augustine, Montaigne and Descartes, we see that the concept?and perhaps the experience?of subjectivity is historically laden with philosophical presuppositions and controversies. In grammar and in fact, contemporary conceptions of subjectivity?and our experienced sense of ourselves?serve multiple functions and fuse distinctive archeological layers of meaning
Certainty · Dilemma · Epistemology · Perplexity · Reflexive pronoun · Subject (documents) · Subjectivity · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Studies · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.16 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2015 (9) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |