The Self in Social Theory: A Psychoanalytic Account of Its Construction in Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls, and Rousseau

by C. Fred Alford

Recent writers have argued that the self is the center of all value, the source of a rapacious individualism that is destroying Western society, and the mirror of its culture. Few books, however, have actually attempted to present a developed concept of the self.

In his newest work, C. Fred Alford sets forth a psychoanalytic account of the self and applies it to texts by Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls, and Rousseau in order to draw out their implicit, often inchoate, assumptions about the self.

Combining Heinz Kohut's self psychology with the post-sturcturalism of Jacques Lacan, Alford creates an innovative theory of the self that 'decenters' Kohut's idealistic notion of selfhood. He then uses this theory to measure other accounts of the self found in the works of political theorists from Plato to Rawls.

Alford argues that these philosophers are willing sacrifice important aspects of the self to ostensibly higher goals, such as social peace; they weaken, split, or shatter the integrity of the self in order to make it more tractable within society. Alford, who is concerned with defending the value of the self, discusses how both Western and non-Western theorists can do this within a civilized society. His book clarifies what it means to talk about the self, reinvigorates the study of selfhood in general, and show its import for social and political theory.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 1991