How do we define ourselves?

Note: Café Philo is a way of meeting interesting, inquiring people who enjoy talking about life's big issues and conundrums in a convivial atmosphere, rather than a heavy-duty philosophy seminar. Read more about our approach here.

OK, so how do you define yourself?

Is your definition of yourself the ‘best’, most accurate approximation to your true self that you can manage (whatever that means), or is it a personality which you would like to have, or like to be thought of as having? We all know people whom we strongly suspect of having a different idea of themselves to the one we have of them. Which is right (if either)? Can we ever truly know what others think of us?

On the other hand, who are we really? Jung developed the concept of persona to consider the different ‘masks’ we put on in different interpersonal contexts. After all, most of us are ‘different people’ at work compared to how we are in intimate relationships, with children, as customers, and in many other contexts. Do we consider that one of them is ‘the real me’ or am I a conflation of all of them? Is our definition of ourself the same as our identity?

What about personas which are insincere (where, at some level, the person knows that they are playing a role, wearing a false ‘mask’)? See for example Bad faith (existentialism).

But when we try to define our ‘self’ what do we mean by that? What is it? Zen Buddhists believe that it doesn't exist at all but is an illusion. Is that helpful or is it a cop-out? How does an individual first as child, then an adolescent develop its sense of self, of who it is? A quotation attributed to the legendary Chinese figure Lao Tzu:

‘Watch your thoughts, they become your words

Watch your words, they become your actions

Watch your actions, they become your habits

Watch your habits, they become your character

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.’

Personally, I would replace ‘destiny’ with ‘behaviour and experience’. After all, our experiences play a large role in determining our behaviours; it is through our behaviours that we reach, or don’t reach, our destiny; and it is our behaviours for which we are directly responsible.

Another idea of the sense of self is that we construct a narrative of our lives, trying to organise our life events into a coherent story. It’s this story which we come to believe describes our selves and which we present to others to provide the basis of their experience of us. Socrates suggested that ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. To what extent is self-reflection useful to you in defining yourself? Or at all?:

Six Fundamental Truths Of Self-Awareness
The Unexamined Life is not Worth Living


Often, it’s useful to understand something by considering what it is not. There are people who have been diagnosed as lacking a (strong) sense of self:

People who are Missing a Sense of Self

Are we really the definition we use? Are we more than what we do? Or think or feel? Do we use this to signal our intelligence, wealth, worthiness and so on to allow us to be understood by others? Is this useful? Does it work? Could we define ourselves differently and get a better outcome?

At the end of the day, how might we apply this?