On Substack, Selfhood, and the Fleeting Fiction Called "I"

"Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh." — Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and essayist (1911–1995)

One of the most famous and most oft-invoked dictums in all of philosophy is the Socratic claim, allegedly uttered at his trial for corrupting Athenian youth, that the unexamined life is not worth living.

This would seem difficult to dispute, not least on a platform as innately navel-gazing as Substack.

Certainly, as the animating principle behind many an …