Self-Identity: Mid-Twentieth Century Philosophical and Literary Interaction on the Experience of "I" and "Non-I"

This article substantiates the autonomy of a philosophical text in relation to a literary text. Max Frisch's novel Stiller1 is used to illustrate the idea of the dialectical nature of the process of concealing/revealing metaphysical meaning in a work of fiction regarding the problem of self-identification and the construction of one's own "I," which is pivotal in this novel. The philosophical idea of self-identity as the goal of the process of self-knowledge exists only as a projection; it is not feasible in life. On the contrary, the novel Stiller, considered through the prism of basic ideas of philosophy of the twentieth century, allows the reader not only to better understand the inconsistency of the process of self-knowledge, but that it involves a reconfiguration of meanings in a conversation about being, and therefore requires a philosophical revision of the essence of the problem.