Prolegomena to the Philosophical-Psychological Understanding of the Self and the Self-Concept of the Human Being

Abstract

The article substantiates the idea that the construction of an individual’s self-concept is carried out primarily within the research context of resolving problems concerning the relationship between the human Self and the World, subject and object, consciousness and being, self-development and the deepening of self-knowledge, as well as within the broader current of the evolution of the image of the human being and the disclosure of their potential capacities within it. At the same time, it is described that the formation of a person as an individual is grounded in the developmental unfolding and affirmation of their positive self-concept. It is demonstrated that the latter determines not only aspects of acceptable self-attitude, self-support, and self-respect, but also the effective productivity of activity, the capacity for humane social interaction with others, one’s social position and social roles, and exerts influence on the fateful choices a person makes throughout their life. In addition, the distinctive traditions of examining the self-conceptual, self-knowledge, self-improvement, and self-development of the individual are explored in the context of domestic and foreign philosophy, the foundations of existential conceptions, the philosophical-psychological approaches of atheistic existentialism, the psychodynamic and phenomenological directions of psychology, the alliance of linguistics and literary studies, sociological investigations of the interactionist vector, and the diversity of schools of psychological orientation. It is analyzed that the regularities of the scientific study of this construct-phenomenon depend on the logically verified correlation of the methodological, theoretical, and empirical levels of research, and that the self-concept of the human being holds an important integral role-characteristic in the dynamics of their ontological development as a person. Accordingly, the formation of the conceptual Self is driven more from within the inner world of the individual than from without, socially. Furthermore, it is argued that the sources and outcomes of a person’s representations and attitudes toward themselves – or toward the essential horizon of the self-concept – deserve serious attention, since through an understanding of it there is the possibility of comprehending more wholly the «supreme image of the human being within the human being.»