Making the Self Real

In this chapter we draw on the psychological sciences to put forward a conception of the constitution of ourselves as Lockean persons (i.e. as morally responsible agents) in terms of the establishment of a process of self-description that is a unifying, integrative, synthesizing ‘selfing’ process. The focus is on the psychobiological synthetic function that originates the subject’s narrative identity, and we take it as the key ingredient in a developmental account of the identity of the person as a continuity across time and space, interpreted reflectively by the agent. Note that this synthesis cannot be a Kantian one. In Kant’s a priori philosophical psychology, the person is always given in its unity, as if the psychological level of analysis were always and in any case guaranteed by the transcendental level of analysis. This, however, does not hold true for the synthesizing selfing process: in this case, we will argue, the empirical subject is primarily non-unitary, and gains a sense of unity in the act of mobilizing resources against the threat of disintegration.