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Psychologists have often distinguished between the ego and the self, taking ego as subject and self as object of thought. So, for example, George H. Mead's distinction of the "I" and "me" aspects of the self points, at one level at least, to the "I" as the subject and the "me" as the object of any act. More explicitly, William James in the first volume of his Principles of Psychology distinguishes between the self and the ego. But James is quick to establish a distinction between what he calls the "empirical self" and the "pure ego." "The Empirical Self of each of us," he writes, "is all that he is tempted to call by name of me"¹ but the pure ego refers to a "pure principle of personal identity" and leads ultimately to considerations of transcendental philosophy.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-9086-2_4

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