The Self in George Herbert Mead’s Thought: A Socio-Ontological Analysis

Abstract: The self, which grounds moral ontology and moral values, is closely related to how one understands what is outside of oneself and how one relates oneself to it through conscious behaviors. George Herbert Mead, in his social self-theory, argues that the relationship between the individual and the world develops the self which provides a ground for these vital issues. At the same time this ground makes both the organism and the mind necessary for the formation of the self. Mead argues that the organism is not passive in the relation of the external world, rather there is an interaction between the two. Mead argues firstly against reductive materialistic conception of the self by pointing to the fact that the self is a matter that transcends the organism; secondly against the rationalist self-understandings by suggesting that the organism is a necessary condition for the formation of the self; and lastly idealistic self-understandings by his conception of “the world that is there” as the base of the reality for the self. In this framework, the social self is discussed, Mead argues, in terms of two functional stages as the subject self (I) and the object self (me). The subject self represents the stage of the first reaction of individual to an external stimulus, while the object self represents the stage in which this reaction is seen, recognized, questioned and interpreted in the imagination. The subject self and the object self are equally obligatory for the formation of a complete/whole social self