The "Self": What is it?
Just who are we? We think of ourselves as individuals, as persons, as human beings. We think of ourselves as having many parts and many dimensions. We think of ourselves as reasonable, or emotional, or spiritual, or physical. We think of ourselves as being in relationships with others. We think of ourselves as a complex whole.
That says we are, indeed, many-faceted, but all this has no unity. When we try to put it together, we can’t. There’s too much there to unify. We can, however, determine who we are in a different way. We can say, “I have an ultimate core identity as my “Self.” We can try to determine what is my “Self.” The process may go something like this.
The Self as the Renaissance Man or Woman
During the summer after my first year in college, I read Jefferson the Virginian. This book is a classic biography of Thomas Jefferson’s first forty years and the first in a six-volume series by the pre-eminent Jefferson scholar Dumas Malone. I realized that Thomas Jefferson was the epitome of what one could become. Jefferson represented the ideal of the Renaissance Man. Jefferson became my own ideal of what I wanted to be, as much as I could.
The Renaissance Man or Woman as Ideals
Actually, Jefferson far exceeded the ideal. The Renaissance Man could dance and write poetry and woo women, but also fight well, serve his feudal lord faithfully, and develop at least one or two other talents or abilities. Engineering or diplomacy would do nicely. Being a first-rate general who could also write love poems, appreciate a fine painting, and play a musical instrument would do quite well.