Éléments pour une théorie matérialiste du soi

Abstract

The concept of self has preeminently been asserted (in its many versions) by anti-reductionist, anti-naturalistic philosophical positions, from Descartes to Husserl and beyond, with the exception of some hybrid or intermediate positions which declare rather glibly that, since we are entities which fully belong to the natural and we are conscious of ourselves as 'selves', therefore the self belongs to the natural world (Merleau-Ponty, Varela). My goal in this paper is to argue for a theory of the self according to which (1) the self belongs to the world of external relations (Spinoza), such that no one fact, including supposedly private facts, is only accessible to a single person; (2) the self can be reconstructed as a sense of organic unity, partly analogous to what has been described as biological individuality (from Diderot to Goldstein, Canguilhem, Simondon); yet this should not lead us to espouse a Romantic concept of organism (3) what we call 'self' might simply be a dynamic process of interpretive activity within a world, undertaken by the brain. This materialist theory of the self should not neglect the nature of experience, but it should also not have to take at face value the recurring invocations of a better, deeper first-person perspective or first-person science. As Althusser said, the materialist philosopher is the person who catches the train already in motion; the world is more fundamental than the thinker.