History of the Self: From Primates to Present

Abstract

The article begins with a semiotic theory of how human selves emerged from the primates. It then follows the history of the self from classical Greece, throught the Christian Middle Ages, to early industrialization (as seen by Durkheim) and later industrialization (as seen by Weber). The story is largely an implicit struggle between self and society for what might be called the steering power, or “cybernetic control,” of life.