The concept of self in Eastern and Western philosophy

Abstract

The problem of the self currently remains unsolved. In the literature, there are many correlated concepts, such as: self-consciousness, consciousness, self, personal identity and other. Eastern and Western concepts of the self are diametrically opposite. Sigmund Freud, for example, introduced the structural model of the psychic apparatus, part of which is the ego, which, however, does not completely cover the concept of self. David Hume, from a philosophical perspective, conceived the self as an illusion – only contents of consciousness are present, which are not constant, but changeable; for Hume, the only thing that exists is the theater of consciousness. Georg Hegel argued that when the self thinks about itself, it has to include itself in this thought, but this represents a paradox. Immanuel Kant viewed the self as a thing-in-itself or a noumenon. Eastern philosophy unequivocally argues that the self is an illusory fiction and that it does not exist in reality. It is evident that there exists a pluralism with respect to the existence of the self, as well as that some Western authors have similar views to the Eastern concept of the self (e. g. Hume). In the current article, the most notable concepts of the self in the Eastern and the Western philosophy will be discussed and a conceptual-linguistic analysis of the notion of self and its correlated notions will be performed. Subsequently, it will be shown how a linguistic confusion influences the search for the material substrate of the self in the fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology.