Might the Self be a Substance after all?

Abstract

Substance theories of the Self have enjoyed little attention or support since the seventeenth century. Locke and Hume established the empiricistic standards for understanding the concept and Kant, within a very different tradition, seemed to render it jejune. Ryle famously and relentlessy subjected substance theories to a criticism bordering on ridicule. At present, such theories and the Self they would sustain have received yet another and different challenge from social constructionists. This article attempts to show, however, that substantialism has not asserted the weak propositions so easily refuted by its critics and is grounded in still other propositions that are largely immune to the usual arguments adduced against ontological claims for the Self. Within very limited space, there is an additional attempt to clarify a number of Cartesian and Kantian positions typically misunderstood in contemporary discussions.