- 1
c. 800–700 BCE · IndianYājñavalkya
The Self is the unseen seer — “not this, not this” — beyond every description, deathless.
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Uddālaka Āruṇi
The finest essence of everything, invisible like salt in water — that thou art.
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c. 563–483 BCE · IndianGautama Buddha
No permanent self — only five ever-changing aggregates. Clinging to “I” is the root of suffering.
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c. 428–348 BCE · Ancient GreekPlato
The soul is immortal, tripartite, akin to the Forms; the body is its prison.
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354 – 430 · Patristic & MedievalAugustine of Hippo
The restless heart turned inward; si fallor, sum — if I am deceived, I exist.
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1596 – 1650 · FrenchRené Descartes
I am a thinking thing — the one certainty, distinct from the body.
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1711 – 1776 · British & IrishDavid Hume
I look inside and find only perceptions — the self is a bundle.
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1724 – 1804 · German-languageImmanuel Kant
The “I think” must be able to accompany all my representations — a formal unity, not a known substance.
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c. 700 – c. 750 · IndianĀdi Śaṅkara
The witness-consciousness is Brahman itself; individuality is a superimposition.
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1813 – 1855 · ScandinavianSøren Kierkegaard
The self is a relation that relates itself to itself — despair is failing to be one.
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1844 – 1900 · German-languageFriedrich Nietzsche
The “I” is a grammatical fiction — yet become who you are.
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1905 – 1980 · FrenchJean-Paul Sartre
Consciousness is a nothingness; existence precedes essence; we make ourselves.
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Literature runs alongside: Hamlet’s divided inwardness; the Underground Man’s self-consciousness as illness; Gregor Samsa, who remains himself inside an insect’s body; Ivan Ilyich, who discovers at death that the self he lived was not his own.
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The proofs, the refutations, the wagers and the leaps — the great argument about God from the Upanishads to Nietzsche.
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The relay race of epistemology — from Plato’s Cave to Kant’s categories, via Descartes’ demon and Hume’s billiard balls.
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Witness-consciousness and matter, the soul as form, two substances, one substance, Dasein — the mind–body problem across civilizations.
What Is the Meaning of Life?
Liberation, virtue, tranquillity, God, the will, revolt — the great answers to the greatest question.