Abstract

An examination of what was unique about the concept of the self as it developed in late-Enlightenment thought: a picture of a self emerging from nature into society but still caught between the two, giving a divided, paradoxical, view of the self; showing us ideas of authenticity and autonomy, freedom and self-government, self and society in their relation and tension. The human subject was increasingly placed at the centre of the world creating in the process a temptation to remake the world in its own image: deepening and extending a crisis of authority that continues to this day.