Contestation of the "self" in modern and religious psychologies

Abstract

We begin our article with commonly available insights from world religions into the notions of “human nature,” “self,” “soul,” and “spirit.” Then, we take brief notes of the more recent metamorphosis of the same notions into “subject,” “ego,” “personality,” “consciousness,” and the like up to modern times and beyond. In doing so, we explore a number of attempts at defining the human self and the many more ways they fail to achieve a satisfactory consensus on the conception of the human self. Parallel streams of both convergent and divergent tendencies are observed in philosophy and psychology, in scientific context as well as in popular culture. To understand these better, we end in juxtaposing between the religious and modern views on the self, and asking if the two can ever be reconciled.