Essay On Selfhood

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This minimal self can best be described by what just occurred. When you read written words, you have a feeling that you, and only you, can know what is going on in your head at this very moment. This form of consciousness, the capacity to think in our heads as we experience, is unique to you and only you. The notion of selfhood and the notion of consciousness rely heavily on first-person experience, which is the only thing unique to each individual. This uniqueness is based on internalization and conception of such experience. Although two human beings can have the same events during their lifetime, at the same moment and same time, they are uniquely “theirs” based on the perception of the experience. What may seem as an indistinguishable

In fact, it highlights empathy’s role in selfhood. The notion of empathy is by far one of the most convenient fictions in all of human society. It is a uniquely human trait, and a remarkable one to say the least, to use our own experience and relate it to other experiences. As David Foster Wallace said, “We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.” Accepting this quote in relation to empathy as a convenient fiction allows us to really understand human nature. Through this process we are able to fictionalize an “empathic” emotional response and use it to broaden emotional connections and relationships. This allows for deeper and more personal human interaction. Empathy is the key to understanding how a “thick” and “thin” selves are related and crucial to one another in human society. Empathy allows for the development of sort of an “extended” self; one that persists beyond mere core self and is able to preform in society, and relate to other