Shaftesbury’s Natural Self

Lori Branch describes the paradoxical pursuit of “natural” self in Shaftesbury’s private “Exercises.” It is not a pretty sight. He seeks integrity in unified affections, but this unity is achieved only at the cost of dismemberment: “In search of the natural self, Shaftesbury imagines himself with clothing removed and even limbs cut off, dissecting and asking again and again ‘What am I?’ and finally answering in a bold hand ‘A Mind.’” Where his public writings emphasize natural sociability, the private notebooks treat society as “false,” associated with the artificial self and not the natural self.

This was sometime a paradox: The problem he’s trying to solve is the problem of a divided self; the solution is to divide himself into small bits until he gets to the core mental self. Thus the modern ambition for a centered self yields its opposite; the insane quest for self-same identity produces a diffused self.

Better by far to give up the paradoxical search, acknowledge with Paul that there is “I” and alongside there is another “I.” Better by far to say in faith, again with Paul, “I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me.”