The aim of this book is to present Ricoeur’s approach to the concept of selfhood (French soi) as a response to the dispute over subjectivity which was initiated by the critics of modern tradition of the absolutization of Cartesian cogito (taken as the ultimate foundation) and led to what Foucault called the "end of man". The strongest objections were voiced first by Hume and then by the three "masters of suspicion" (Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx), and soon thereafter also by the proponents of postmodernism (Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, and Foucault). In response to their frontal critique, Ricoeur emphasizes that the anticogito is not the inverse of the Cartesian cogito but "the destruction of the very question to which it was held to give an absolute answer." If we drop the requirement of some unchanging core of selfhood we need to reshape the conceptual framework within which subjectivity can be adequately grasped. This claim goes along with a general belief that every cognition, decision, speech, and action pertains to the question of “who?” (who is choosing? who is speaking? who is recounting about himself or herself? who is acting? who is the moral subject of imputation?). Ricoeur affords not only an account of what is to be oneself, a temporal being which develops through the whole course of its existence, but he also provides a specific method, namely, the hermeneutics of the self consisting in a long detour of reflection (an indirect manner of positing the reflexive self). Following Kant, Ricoeur extends the problematic of the reflexive into the practical sphere. His main efforts are focused on searching for an apt mode of continuing "the Aristotelian analysis of action, with its notion of rational desire, within the setting of the reflexive philosophy inaugurated by Descartes and Locke, then extended to the practical dimension by Kant's second Critique and brought by Fichte to its highest transcendental power." The critical-reflective acts, as he accounts for them, are a long-term, complex process which requires both the Nabertian "assimilation of the attempts of one’s own being", and the Socratic deliberation of one’s life. The reflexive consciousness of oneself is implied in recognition taken with its two aspects: the active "I recognize", which manifests itself in recognition-identification, in other words, in self-recognition in the variety of capacities that stimulate one’s ability to act, and the passive "I am recognized", which points at the subject placing him- or herself under the tutelage of a relationship of reciprocity - mutual recognition. As an illustration of this approach, Ricoeur uses three distinct but interweaving lines of enquiry. The first one refers to the theme of identity which is expressed in the correlation between idem and ipse identities. Idem identity is delineated by permanent traits which are given (like, for example, the DNA code). This modality of identity relates to "what I am". Ipse identity, in turn, is constituted by individual choices and actions, thus it points to "who I am". His second line of inquiry passes beyond the first one, introducing the vast semantic field of the concept of otherness, which stands for the relevant pole of the dialectic embedded in the formula "oneself as another". Finally, Ricoeur turns to another dialectical relation, the one between recognition and misrecognition. Not only does he appeal to the Hegelian dialectic, adjusting it to the aforementioned formula (discounting that part of the dialectical movement in which Hegel jumps to a vision of absolute knowledge), but he also points to the Platonic opposition of the notions of "the Same" and "the Other". Ricoeur’s initial claim breaks with the established language of ontology. Moving beyond the circle of sameness-identity towards the dialectic of sameness- and selfhood-identity entails the transformation of the notion of otherness: it is no longer an antonym of "same", but it is a kind of otherness that is constitutive of selfhood. Hence the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such a degree that one cannot be understood without the other. These three interrelated problematics are placed together under the heading of a hermeneutics of the self, i.e., the indirect approach of reflection through the detour of analysis. The first delimitation of selfhood through its dialectical relation with sameness and the second delimitation of selfhood through its specific dialectical structure of the relation with otherness - these taken together provide an exact depiction of what the self-interpretation (self-narration) implied in self-understanding and self-recognition stands for. In other words, of what sort of being is the self.