Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master by Advanced Study in Peace Studies.

We live in a marketplace filled with valuable ideas for how to be happy, yet people continue to suffer. We are just now awakening to the principal source of our unhappiness and suffering, which is ego. Ego wreaks havoc in our daily lives, from the pain that individuals, couples, and families experience all the way up to global tensions and international conflict. Most people think of ego as an inflated sense of self-importance, but this is only a fraction of what it really is. Ego is the misidentification of who we are as beings. It drives us to think and behave in ways that are inconsistent and incongruent with whom we really are, leading always to dissatisfaction and suffering. The secret to finding happiness is to loosen ourselves from egos painful grip by going beyond ego and entering the world of Spiritthe source of true joy and peace. To do so, we must first travel through the ego. Without proper guidance, this trip can be perilous, because ego, to ensure its own survival, makes every attempt to derail us along the way. Beyond the Ego is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to help you make this journey safely. The seeds of happiness, joy, and peace of mind will take root at the outset of your journey and continue to grow every step of your way.

A powerful meditation on the nature and dangers of ego, from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Stillness is the Key, and Obstacle is the Way - over 1 million copies sold 'Re-read it each year. It's that important' Derek Sivers, author of Anything You Want 'Ryan Holiday is one of his generation's finest thinkers' Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art 'This is a book I want every athlete, aspiring leader, entrepreneur, thinker and doer to read' George Raveling, Nike's Director of International Basketball 'Inspiring yet practical' Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power It's wrecked the careers of promising young geniuses. It's evaporated great fortunes and run companies into the ground. It's made adversity unbearable and turned struggle into shame. Every great philosopher has warned against it, in our most lasting stories and countless works of art, in all culture and all ages. Its name? Ego, and it is the enemy - of ambition, of success and of resilience. In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday shows us how and why ego is such a powerful internal opponent to be guarded against at all stages of our careers and lives, and that we can only create our best work when we identify, acknowledge and disarm its dangers. Drawing on an array of inspiring characters and narratives from literature, philosophy and history, the book explores the nature and dangers of ego to illustrate how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures. The result is an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are our greatest friends when confronting the challenges of a culture that tends to fan the flames of ego, a book full of themes and life lessons that will resonate, uplift and inspire.

This 1991 book examines nineteenth-century literature, focusing on the general question of the American Romantic ego.

This book seeks to set humanism on a new footing. No longer Enlightenment intuitions of an autonomous, disconnected, and rational self but a philosophy oriented towards the relationship between self and other. With this, it seeks to provide an escape from present egotism and narcissism in society. It discusses altruism as well as its limitations.