In recent decades, questions surrounding the concept of the “self,” whether by that name or such cognate terms as “subjectivity” or “identity,” have come to occupy a prominent place in historical scholarship, literary and gender studies, social theory and philosophy. Most recently, Jerrold Seigel's The Idea of the Self has provided not only a vast new historical map of this conceptual terrain but a challenging new way of exploring it. My purpose here is to examine both, and the thematic and methodological questions they raise for this major contemporary field of inquiry.