An accountable self

The contemporary post-modern western culture is getting more unsure of itself. Surrounded by uncertainty and anxiety the self has opted for a solipsistic existence.

The only thing that can be known with certainty is one's self.

This philosophical position implies two things. First, only the self exists. Second, "existence" is a part of one's own mental states - all objects, people and so forth which one comes in contact with are simply parts of one's own mind.

This way of perceiving reality embraces a subjectivist attitude to life. Existence is relegated to just merely subjective experiences. The nature and existence of every object rely upon one's subjective consciousness of it. This means that the self is choked by its own subjectivity.

The implications of such a partial view of the self have revealed an existentially fragmented self. The latter has lost the responsibility over itself and the entire cosmos.

The feeling of loneliness, divisions and conflicts, family crises and the weakening of the concept of family, ethnic conflicts, re-emergence of racism, interreligious tensions, selfishness, power in the hands of the few, individualism, and increased undermining of interpersonal solidarity are the telling indications of a broken self that is crying for freedom.

For it to grow, the self needs to know and take responsibility for itself. It desperately needs the personal other. How? Firstly, it requires society. In his book Faith on Earth, Richard H. Niebuhr upholds that, "we do not seem to know ourselves as selves in isolation but only in interpersonal society". The "other" becomes essential both for the self's feeling of awareness and for the self's ability to own itself and what it does.

Secondly, the self needs God (the Other) for its growth. Speaking within the context of sin in The conflict of Interpretations, Paul Riceour maintains that the fundamental presence of the other is crucial in assuming responsibility for one's sin. "Sin is my true situation before God. The 'before God' and not my consciousness of it is its measure of sin. That is why there must be an other; a prophet, to denounce sin. No becoming aware of myself on my part is sufficient, all the more because consciousness is itself included in the situation and is guilty of both lies and bad faith".

An accountable self is one that is capable of loving God and its neighbour as its own self.