The metamorphosis of the Self in the modernity

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the different metamorphosis that the Self has experimented in the western modernity. The protestant reforms had a speech emphasizing the free evaluation creating a kind of personality that obtained the meaning of life from inside. Max Webber and Thomas Mann call first dealing with God and then with the Devil. This is an enchantment and disenchantment and are the two faces of the same process. Both, are the background to understand the proto-modern Self and the post-modern too. In the end of the XIX century and the begins of XX, the guide's Self changes. Now the self returns to the traditional guide and is determined from outside, guiding by the others. We can see this in authors like Simmel, Reisman, Poe, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Kafka, Berhard and Musil.