You cannot be a rational subject without veto-control on the level of mental action.

At 19, I basically held the position that if you were intellectually honest and really wanted to get in touch with political reality then you had to smell tear-gas.

I could never understand how someone would embark on their life without having first confronted and clarified the truly fundamental questions.

The Ego is a transparent mental image: You, the physical person as a whole, look right through it. You do not see it. But you see with it.

If we lose the ability in question for a single moment only, we are immediately being hijacked by an aggressive little "Think me!" and our mind begins to wander.

The notion of a conscious model of oneself as an individual entity actively trying to establish epistemic relations to the world and to oneself, I think, comes very close to what we traditionally mean by notions like "subjectivity".

Only as long as we believe in our own identity over time does it make sense for us to make future plans, avoid risks, and treat our fellow human beings fairly - for the consequences of our actions will, in the end, always concern ourselves.