>>14346308
It just depends on what you mean by "I" and "self", if I understand those short quotes - perhaps he's just saying that if you were the only thing that existed, there would be nothing to call your "self". No biggie.
If you want some deep despair, you can look at the people who say that even though you're thinking, you don't "exist", because you might just be a possibility - as real as a dream, although with no dreamer. For example, right now I am imagining a man saying "I think therefore I am". Is he lying? (Is it then impossible to imagine "a truthful Descartes"? Have I just described, in words, a literally unimaginable thing?) I could imagine him thinking, if that would make it better. If I cease to imagine him, is he any less real? And what if I told you that, in fact, I never imagined him - that he only existed in your imagination of my imagination? Are there "degrees" of "unreal"ness? If so, then since imagination can nest infinitely, so that the degrees go up infinitely, what are the odds that the thing you think of as *you* has degree 0, instead of degree 3 or 78 or seven trillion and five? And why, after all, does there have to be anything "real" - can't all of this unreality get along perfectly fine without it?
You can answer those questions however you want, or not. No matter what answers you choose, I guarantee you that some dead guy has written a book about it. If you want my advice, skip it all, because you can't change it one way or the other, and after a certain point you stop even being able to make any useful progress. Socrates was saying "I know nothing" long before any of these copycats were masturbating over how *much* nothing they knew, and what *type*.