The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 4 of 254
Selves are like paintings
The Irish philosopher Bishop Berkeley once wrote, ‘Philosophers have raised a dust and then complain that they cannot see.’ The cloud that obscures our view of the self has been thickened by the trampling of psychologists, scientists, theologians and sociologists too. In contemporary academia, the assumed solution to this often seems to be that we should examine each particle of dirt in ever more isolated detail. My approach is rather to let the dust settle and have another close look at what it is that everyone was stampeding to see. Selves are like paintings: they cannot be brought into focus if you stand too far away or too close.