The self
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Do we have a nature that precedes us, or do we become what we choose to be?
If a nature precedes us, there is a way to fulfil ourselves or to betray ourselves, but our freedom has limits; if we invent ourselves, everything becomes possible, but nothing guides us and nothing excuses us. To take a position is to say what we owe to what is given to us, and what we alone are answerable for.
Should we examine our inner life, or fulfill ourselves first and foremost through action?
Turning inward sheds light on who we are, but can slide into rumination far from the world; throwing oneself into action accomplishes much, but risks dodging the question of who is acting, and for what. To take a position is to say where the self is truly found: in the return to oneself, or in what one does.
Am I my body, or do I have a body?
To treat the body as an instrument is to be able to stand back from it, repair it, leave it behind in thought; to identify with it is for nothing of me to remain when it suffers or wears out. Our relation to illness, to pleasure, to ageing and to our own animality is decided here.
What makes me remain myself through time?
What makes me the same person as the child in the old photographs, or as the one I will be in thirty years? If nothing stable endures, promises, remorse, and pride in a past self lose their footing; if a core remains, no change ever truly remakes me. To take a position is to say what exactly we are holding onto when we say "me."
Are categories like gender, race or class natural, constructed, or objective social realities?
Depending on whether these categories are facts of nature, mere ideas we could dispel by changing our words, or very real social forces, we fight inequality in quite different ways. To take a position is to say what, in the social order, can be undone, and what can only be acknowledged.