This admittedly speculative paper contends that the "crisis" of the social sciences is not primarily a crisis of methodology; nor is it fundamentally a problem stemming from the proliferating "Babel of theoretical voices"; nor can the crisis itself be ignored, as more complacent, atheoretical students of politics and society suggest. Rather, the crisis of the social sciences is primarily a reflection of the long-standing neglect of the complexities of the self and personal identity and the appropriate vocabulary with which to portray them. Following the suggestive metaphor of Georg Simmel, this paper seeks to remedy this neglect by tracing the contours of such a vocabulary and the different "colonies of our selves" in ways that underscore a more embedded and relational notion of the individual than is currently in vogue. It also suggests that we will continue to misconstrue central features of the problem of the legitimacy of liberal democracies until we revise our understanding of the complexities of the self and human development.
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