Mead's the Social Self
The Social Self
Source: The Mead Project. Department of Sociology, Brock University. Read: at the Western Philosophical Association AGM, March, 1913; First Published: George Herbert Mead. “The Social Self”, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10, 1913: 374-380; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Recognizing that the self can not appear in consciousness as an “I,” that it is always an object, i.e., a “me,” I wish to suggest an answer to the question, What is involved in the self being an object? The first answer may be that an object involves a subject. Stated in other words, that a “me” is inconceivable without an “I.” And to this reply must be made that such an “I” is a presupposition, but never a presentation of conscious experience, for the moment it is presented it has passed into the objective case, presuming, if you like, an “I” that observes – but an “I” that can disclose himself only by ceasing to be the subject for whom the object “me” exists. It is, of course, not the Hegelism of a self that becomes another to himself in which I am interested, but the nature of the self as revealed by introspection and subject to our factual analysis. This analysis does reveal, then, in a memory process an attitude of observing oneself in which both the observer and the observed appear. To be concrete, one remembers asking himself how he could undertake to do this, that, or the other, chiding himself for his shortcomings or pluming himself upon his achievements. Thus, in the redintegrated self of the moment passed, one finds both a subject and an object, but it is a subject that is now an object of observation, and has the same nature as the object self whom we present as in intercourse with those about us. In quite the same fashion we remember the questions, admonitions, and approvals addressed to our fellows. But the subject attitude which we instinctively take can be presented only as something experienced – as we can be conscious of our acts
Source: The Mead Project. Department of Sociology, Brock University. Read: at the Western Philosophical Association AGM, March, 1913; First Published: George Herbert Mead. “The Social Self”, Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10, 1913: 374-380; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden. Recognizing that the self can not appear in consciousness as an “I,” that it is always an object, i.e., a “me,” I wish to suggest an answer to the question, What is involved in the self being an object? The first answer may be that an object involves a subject. Stated in other words, that a “me” is inconceivable without an “I.” And to this reply must be made that such an “I” is a presupposition, but never a presentation of conscious experience, for the moment it is presented it has passed into the objective case, presuming, if you like, an “I” that observes – but an “I” that can disclose himself only by ceasing to be the subject for whom the object “me” exists. It is, of course, not the Hegelism of a self that becomes another to himself in which I am interested, but the nature of the self as revealed by introspection and subject to our factual analysis. This analysis does reveal, then, in a memory process an attitude of observing oneself in which both the observer and the observed appear. To be concrete, one remembers asking himself how he could undertake to do this, that, or the other, chiding himself for his shortcomings or pluming himself upon his achievements. Thus, in the redintegrated self of the moment passed, one finds both a subject and an object, but it is a subject that is now an object of observation, and has the same nature as the object self whom we present as in intercourse with those about us. In quite the same fashion we remember the questions, admonitions, and approvals addressed to our fellows. But the subject attitude which we instinctively take can be presented only as something experienced – as we can be conscious of our acts