William James on the Self

In the late nineteenth century William James pieced together a theory of self that is remarkably modern, some might say 'post-modern.' In Chapter X of his magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology (1890), entitled "The Consciousness of Self," James discusses the manifold nature of the self treating it in its native complexity. Among other things, he proposes a notion of identity and experience of self that critiques and melds the three leading models of his day: the 'soul' theory, the associationist model, and Kant's transcendentalist conception. James begins the chapter talking about the most common empirical sense of self. He starts on a radical note: instead of attributing some centralized, subjective consciousness as many might do, he contextualizes the self. James thinks the self is more than subjectivity: