Kenny's book covers the philosophical concept of the self.

He concentrates here on two of the roots of "self" - the epistemological root and the psychological root. Saying: "The myth of the self takes different forms in accordance with the root from which it takes its growth."

In his introduction Kenny notes:

"It is not poets and dramatists, but philosophers who are most given to talking about the self. The Oxford English Dictionary lists a special philosophical sense of the word ""self"" which it defines as follows:

That which in a person is really and intrinsically he (in contradistinction to what is adventitious); the ego (often identified with the soul or mind as opposed to the body); a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness.

It is the purpose of this lecture to claim that the self of the philosophers is a mythical entity, and so likewise is the self of the poets and dramatists to the extent to which it is modelled on the philosophers' myth."