The Viewing Self and the World We View: Beyond the Perspectival Illusion

This paper approaches the question of how we see (and know) by investigating the historically changing nature of the self that views. Recognizing that viewing in geometrical perspective requires the self to combine two different fixed views, it traces the history of what it therefore sees as a doubling or splitting of the self. It first shows how the perspectivally viewing self is made possible by an earlier medieval splitting and immobilizing of the self, and that it remains thereafter in its essence split. It then points to an internal evolution in this split self in the late 18th century, as it comes alive as the self-examining self. It links the development of both the medieval and 18th-century reconstructions of the self to changes in the practices through which humans learn. It concludes by reflecting on the relation between this modern pygmalion-like form of the self and the viewing of the world as `organ'-ized.