THE SELF AS WILL AND INTELLECT

In the German language, as in English, the pronoun or pronominal adjective selbst, or 'self,' lends emphasis to something or someone previously named. In its nominalized form, das Selbst, or 'the self,' the pronoun serves chiefly to identify a human being or person. A specifically philosophical usage of the nominalized form came into currency in England, chiefly through the work of John Locke, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, from where it seems to have made its way into German philosophical terminology a few decades later. A main function of the philosophical term has been to identify the core or essence of a human being, as opposed to what might be accidental or contingent about him or her. In particular, the self has been identified with a human being's soul or mind as opposed to his or her body. In a secondary usage, the term has been employed to distinguish between constituent parts or aspects of one and the same being, in particular to articulate the special status of someone's or one's own 'better self.'