Abstract

The dispute in fact turns on two opposed conceptions of the self. The first is that shared by Leibniz, Hume, and contemporary empiricists according to which the self is nothing more than its determinate nature; the second conception is that shared by Hegel, Kierkegaard, and contemporary existentialists according, to which the self transcends its determinate nature. On the first conception, the self is an individual system of determinate conative, emotional, and cognitive dispositions, both innate and acquired. Its action is the actualization of these dispositions in accordance with the laws that define them. On the second conception, on the other hand, the self is an individual, indeterminate, unconditioned power of self-determination. Its action is the actualization of that power. The self on this second conception is indeterminate prior to the action by which it makes itself determinate. For this reason, the determinate nature, with which the self is immediately identical on the first conception, is on the second a datum to which the self relates itself and which becomes its own possession only when it has made it its own. Hence, while the action of the self on the first conception is a predictable actualization of a determinate potentiality, its action on the second is an unpredictable original act of self-determination.