From Hero to Anti-Hero, From I to Self: An Inquiry into Who-ness

Abstract

In this study, it is argued that the explanations about the problem of selfhood in philosophy have two starting points and that these explanations can be interpreted as results of thinking styles practiced on the axis of centrality-noncentrality. These two ways of consideration of selfhood are discussed within the context of the inquiry into who-ness, encompassing fiction, in a more general framework that questions where the question who is? belongs, where it finds its basis and how this basis shapes it. The answers to the question in philosophy as I and self are discussed through Descartes and Heidegger, the important cornerstones of these answers in the history of philosophy. I and self are concepts that differ from each other in terms of whether or not they allow themselves to be defined in a conventional sense, the former pointing to a closed and unchanging center and the latter to an open and relational noncentrality. The hero and anti-hero, positioned as the literary counterparts of I and self on the abovementioned axis, are used to indicate the parallel routes of the answers to the question who is? take in fiction and philosophy, with an eye to Campbell's theory of monomyth and a Derridean reading of the prefix anti-. Along the same line, the study aims to expose the inquiry of who-ness in the interpolar spectrum of answers put forward in fiction and philosophy.