Development of an experiential self

Abstract

Is there a self over and above experiencing? When we try to express our experience through words, there appears a subject and its object. Can our experience be articulated without this subject-object structure? Anyhow, experiencing and talking about experience are not same. As students of philosophy, we do the latter, but as human beings we do the former. We live through our experience. Experiencing provides an opportunity to relate to others. This experiencing gradually helps to develop a notion of self which involves others. One way of talking about self is to talk about the subject of our experience. But there is another way to narrate self which is feeling the experienced self which emerges with our experience and a dynamic one. In different domains of human knowledge, thinkers talk about ‘self’, e.g. literature, philosophy, social science etc. But all these talks do not have the same orientation and goal. Here I would like to talk about a self, which develops with time and experience. This experience rooted self is not contaminated by any theorization. I would like to talk about the development of a pre-theoretical self which is not notional but experiential.