The Self 80

In his discussion of the self, James follows his radical empiricist approach, and rejects the postulation of a non-empirical self such as a Kantian transcendental ego.41 He also rejects Hume’s empirical analysis of the self, as it “proceeds to pour out the child with the bath, and to fly to as great an extreme as the substantialist philosophers” ([1890], 1:

41 _{While James rejects such a non-empirical conception of the self on psychological grounds, he remains}

open to it philosophically. “I find the notion of some sort of an anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls. Meanwhile, as psychologists, we need not be metaphysical at all. The phenomena are enough, the passing Thought itself is the only verifiable thinker, and its empirical connection with the brain-process is the ultimate known law” ([1890], 1: 346).

352). For James, the self is made up of two interconnected components: 1) the subjective passing thought of the stream of consciousness, which he calls ‘the I’; and 2) the

objective collection of habits and dispositions, which he calls ‘the me’.

We may sum up by saying that personality implies the incessant presence of two elements, an objective person, known by a passing subjective Thought and

recognized as continuing in time. Hereafter let us see the words ME and I for the empirical person and the judging Thought ([1890], 1: 371).

While the self is composed of ‘the I’ and ‘the me’, James further divides ‘the me’ into three parts – the material self, the social self and the spiritual self. The material self is for the most part related to the bodily concern of self-preservation; the social self,

meanwhile, is concerned with the recognition one gets from others; and the spiritual self, which is really composed of aspects from the material and social self, is what we take to be the most intimate part of the self, including our moral sensibility and conscience. The emotions figure prominently with respect to these three parts of ‘the me’. In fact, ‘the me’ is constituted by emotions and instincts. The material self is made up of

emotions such as fear and anger as well as instincts including hunting, acquisitiveness and home-constructing ([1890], 1: 307-8). This may seem like a strange grouping, but these emotions and instincts are all united by the function of self-preservation. The social self, meanwhile, is constituted by emotions that are other-related, such as jealousy, envy, shame and instincts such as ambition and power. Finally, the spiritual self includes “every impulse towards psychic progress, whether intellectual, moral, or spiritual in the narrow sense of the term” ([1890], 1: 309). James does not draw the connection to the subtle emotions, probably because he has yet to introduce this concept, but it seems that the cultivation of these more refined emotions fall into this part of the self. While ‘the me’ that ‘the I’ reflects on is largely made up of emotions and instincts, it is not the occurrent emotions that James is concerned with in “The Emotions” chapter. The emotions of ‘the me’ are dispositional in nature. They are habitual emotions.

The central part of the me is the feeling of the body and of the adjustments in the head; and in the feeling of the body should be included that of the general

emotional tones and tendencies, for at bottom these are but the habits in which organic activities and sensibilities run ([1890], 1: 371).

There is an intrinsic relationship that holds between self-feeling and these “emotional tones and tendencies” that in part make up the self. By changing our self-feeling, which is in our control, we end up restructuring many of our emotional habits. For example, if I give up the desire for attaining a certain stature in my career, I will no longer be jealous of those who have such a stature; I will no longer respond with anger when my career path is thwarted; and I will no longer experience fear about not attaining this career goal, etc. In short, by changing aspects of one’s global self-feeling many of the emotional habits that constitutes the individual will in turn change. If self-feeling is in our power, then it seems many of our emotional habits are, by extension, in our power as well. James’ discussion of the self and self-feeling clearly shows that not all of our

emotions are beyond our control; that they are not merely passive disturbances that direct us off course. Solomon’s criticism of James is certainly overstated in this respect, but it is not completely without merit. Some emotions for James do indeed simply happen to us. In order to appreciate the range of emotions with respect to the active-passive question, we must consider in greater detail the relationship between emotion, instinct and habit.