Is the self transparent to itself?

Even if a demon has planted every thought in my head, the thinking itself is happening, so I must exist: "cogito, ergo sum."

Put simply Descartes: even if a demon had put every thought in my head, I would still be thinking, so I must exist. Hence "cogito, ergo sum": I think, therefore I am.

What matters in the mind happens below awareness: Freud holds that "mental processes are essentially unconscious," with conscious ones only scattered fragments of the whole.

We can never fully know ourselves: what is most basic in us sits in the unconscious, so the self stays opaque to itself and permanently at odds with itself.

Put simply Freud: we can never fully know ourselves. What is most basic in us lies in the unconscious, so the self stays hidden from itself and always at odds with itself.

Gregor Samsa's waking as a "monstrous vermin" in The Metamorphosis forces the question of whether any stable self exists, or identity is only a mask with nothing underneath to grip.

Strip away the contingent particulars distinguishing empirical egos and a transcendental ego remains: the deepest, most essential I, yet universal and identical in everyone, as H2O underlies all water.

Put simply Husserl: strip away everything that makes each actual person different, and a "transcendental ego" is left: the deepest core of the self, yet the same in everyone. To use the lecture's analogy, it is like H2O in all water.

In the text In the Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§56), Husserl describes other egos as "monads, existing for themselves precisely as I exist for myself", a plurality he calls transcendental intersubjectivity.

Where Freud locates the essential self in what is most hidden, the transcendental ego is pure light: nothing in it stays concealed, and knowing is a matter of clear seeing.

Put simply Freud thinks the most important part of the self is what is most hidden. Husserl's pure self is the opposite: nothing in it stays hidden, and knowing means seeing clearly.

Husserl's transcendental ego is wholly transparent to itself; Dasein never is. Forever up to something, evading something, tempted toward inauthenticity, it stays partly hidden from itself, closer to Freud.

Put simply Husserl's pure self can see all of itself clearly. Heidegger's human being never can. Always busy with something, dodging something, tempted to follow the crowd, it stays partly hidden from itself. In this Heidegger is closer to Freud.

Shore leaves open whether Dasein radically thickens the subject, darker than Descartes', Kant's or Husserl's, or ends it: if subject and object are no longer apart, is there a subject?

Put simply Shore leaves it open. Does Heidegger's "Dasein" make the self far richer and darker than in Descartes, Kant or Husserl? Or does it end the self? If mind and world are no longer apart, is there still a subject?

Against Freud, consciousness cannot be cleanly cut into an opaque unconscious and a transparent conscious half; the whole of it is translucent, neither one nor the other.

Put simply Sartre, against Freud: the mind cannot be neatly split into a hidden unconscious part and a fully visible conscious part. All of it is "translucent": neither hidden from itself nor fully clear to itself.

Someone watching me might catch me fishing for approval while I believe myself simply generous. Stein's point: imagining their view of me can correct my self-picture, so empathy enlarges self-knowledge.

Sartre holds that genuine self-knowledge depends on being recognized by another subject; absent that acknowledgment, I cannot really know who I am.

In structuralism the subject is radically decentered: meaning is not something people produce; language produces people, more than the reverse.

Put simply Shore: in structuralism the individual is pushed from the center. People do not make meaning; language makes people, more than the other way round.

Descartes's cogito, Husserl's transcendental ego, Heidegger's Dasein, Sartre's radical freedom: each keeps an indubitable self at the center, and Foucault's early work revolts against that sovereign subject.

Put simply Foucault's early work rebels against the "sovereign subject": the self that philosophers from Descartes to Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre kept at the center as the one thing beyond doubt.

Speech cannot guarantee presence, because the one speaking is not necessarily present even to himself; so presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a binary to be dismantled.

Put simply Derrida: speaking does not prove that someone is truly "present", because the speaker is not fully present even to himself. So presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a contrast to be taken apart.