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Trajectories of a Non-Fragmented Self: Attending to the Ecosophical Wisdom

of the Frog
Devasia M. Antony, PhD
Department of Philosophy, Hindu College, University of Delhi
devasiamantony@hinducollege.ac.in

Abstract
What Nietzsche had said about the possibility of the definability of a concept
that “all concepts in which a whole process is semiotically summarized elude
definition; only that which has no history is definable” can very well be said
to apply verbatim to the very notion of the self. And the very word ‘self’ and
its cognate terms like self-consciousness, self-awareness, self-identity have
been the subject matter of investigation across the spectrum of pluriform
intellectual traditions. One primal problematic in this inquiry has been the
dialectic between the self and the very reflexive nature of awareness and the
possibility that this could open new vistas for understanding what the self is.

This poses interesting questions on our everyday use of self-revelatory

Personal a pronouns: I, you, and she/he/it.
Reflexive Pronouns: myself and my self; yourself, herself, and itself.

Wittgenstein: Family resemblance concept

Locating myself sympathetically in the domain of Ecosophy, I ask myself this

paradigmatic question: Is the self ipso facto fragmented? If not, is it viable to
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ideate existentially, ecologically and ethically what I would call a non-

fragmented self?
Taking cues from the writings of philosophers such as Felix Guattari, Arne
Naess, Heidegger and Ramchandra Gandhi, I wish to, in answer to this
question, listen attentively to the croaking of the frog as imaginatively
described in the narrative of the Māṇdūkya Upaniṣad.

The word ecosophy combines the Greek ‘OIKOS” and ‘SOPHIA”

Greek ‘oikumene’, ‘the inhabited earth’, an ancient concept that had various
meanings, to designate the earth as one whole, including the humans and
the non-humans, the sentient and the non-senient.

Arne Naess, the Norwegian Philosopher

Felix Guattari, the French post-Marxist Philosopher and Psycho-analyst

Heidegger, the omnipresent German Philosopher
Ramchandra Gandhi, arguably the most creative Contemporary Indian
Philosopher

The Croaking of the Frog, मंडूक in the Mandukya Upanishad

This to my mind indubitably establishes the ecosophical piece of wisdom that

the self is (four-footed). More significantly it also critiques its possible two
fallacious propositions: 1) that the self is only this body and 2) that the self is
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not this body at all! Hence, I conclude that ‘caring for the self’ means caring
for this non-fragmented four-footed self!