Q&A: Defining the Self — and Thoughts on Modern Lectures
Defining the Self — and Thoughts on Modern Lectures
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask whether there is a good definition of who “I” am. For quite a while now, like mushrooms after the rain, lectures keep popping up morning and night among the various thinkers, with conclusions that seem unreasonable. They begin with some bombastic attempt to define an elusive concept, and from there derive things that seem ridiculous and implausible at first glance (and at second glance too).
An example would be defining the self, or defining the concept of love. From there it develops into a wonderful harmony according to which the self is really whoever I identify as myself. And the dividing line between me and you is only a matter of identification, so that the religious person understands that the self is all of being (and sometimes even its source — pantheism), and this is the essence of love: going out from narrow selfishness and egoism into union with all of nature (as a kind of exalted egoism), and this is the root and basis of the reason for the commandments between man and his Creator. And so on with all sorts of pleasant, sugary concepts.
So I wanted to ask the Rabbi: do we even have a way to define such concepts? Doesn’t the lack of a definition negate the existence of the concept? And is it coherent to speak about an undefined concept? (Even if logically it is possible, and not according to Leibniz.)
I was thinking about the existence of the self, that usually when we define a certain concept we are never speaking about the thing in itself, but about the attributes associated with it. But when we ask who the “self” is, we usually mean the thing in itself, so it is not clear that we have any available definition. Second, experiential concepts exist in a person’s “private domain,” and therefore, in order to use definitions, if we are not Platonists we always try to infer from analogies made in the public domain. But the problem is that all these concepts do not exist in the public domain in order for us to use them…
I apologize to the Rabbi for having to read these musings at the beginning… but is there a proper answer to this? Because really, these lectures feel to me like one confusion far too great.
Jacob
Answer
You’re pushing on an open door. I don’t know these lectures, and I also try not to know them. They are usually just empty verbiage.
Sometimes there is a way to define such concepts, but the lecturers of this type usually do not do so. Sometimes there is no way to define them (because they are basic concepts and not composite concepts, and every definition reduces a composite concept to more basic concepts).
But your claim that if there is no definition then there is no point in talking about these concepts is incorrect. First, there may be a concept that exists even though we have no definition for it. The fact that we have no definition does not mean it does not exist (and this was noted by Mr. Phaedrus in the book by Mr. Persig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, regarding the concept of “quality” — see Column 107, and that whole series of my columns there, which deals precisely with this question). Second, if you do not speak about undefined concepts, you will not be able to speak about any concept at all. After all, even concepts that are defined are defined on the basis of other basic concepts that are themselves undefined.
As for the concept of the self, your point appears in my book Man Is as Grass almost word for word (following an article that once appeared in Higayon by a psychologist from Bar-Ilan, who described disputes between Nefesh HaChaim and the author of the Tanya regarding what the self is). I wrote there that the psychological search for a definition of the “self” seems to me futile and pointless. The seeker assumes that the “self” is one of the parts of the soul, whereas I argue that it is the owner of the soul. The thing itself, whose characteristics are the parts of the soul. And this was already noted by Mr. Schopenhauer in his remark that the self is the only thing to which Mr. Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena does not apply, since we encounter our self in its very essence and not only through its characteristics. And not like Mr. Aharoni in his book The Cat That Isn’t There, who protested forcefully against this and argued that our perception of ourselves operates exactly like the perception of anything else. See my Columns 157–158, where I disagreed with the glory of another eminent one, with apologies.
Regarding experiential concepts, sometimes they can be defined experientially (not through their external manifestations).
The self is ultimately just a word, not even a concept.
The self is a word a person uses to refer to himself in the way he wishes to relate to himself. The self does not include the other parts of the soul to which a person does not want to relate.
And therefore the way a person perceives himself is very partial and very limited. In addition, the way a person perceives himself is not the way others perceive him.
One can learn a great deal about a person from the way he wishes to relate to himself. But beyond that, the self is marginal relative to the soul-forces a person has.