Individuals understood in relational terms cannot be conceived as fully separate from their communities. Others in one's community may already be a part of the self. This conception of the person as overlapping in identity with others has normative implications for what constitutes the good of the individual and how that good relates to the good of others. One's relationship with others can form a part of one's good as an individual, such that one can have a compelling interest in the welfare of these others and in one's relationship with them.
The most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind of the person one is in love with.
Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.
Of necessity, the autobiographical self is not just about one individual but about all the others that an individual interacts with. Of necessity, it incorporates the culture in which the interactions took place.
The self cannot be self without other selves.
The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.
The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.
As the social self can only be developed by contact with society, so the spiritual self can only be developed by contact with the spiritual world.
It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.
There are different facets to everyone. When you're at work, you're a different person. When you're with your friends, you're a different person.
