"The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects"
About this Quote
The line “a cause among other causes” strips the ego of its special status. You still act, you still intend, but your intentions sit in a crowded room with gravity, other people’s desires, social rules, and plain accident. That’s the developmental pivot Piaget spent his career mapping: the child’s move from egocentric thinking (where the world feels arranged around the self) toward operational thinking (where systems, reciprocity, and constraint exist whether you like them or not).
The subtext is a kind of democratic humiliation: self-awareness is not crowning the self as sovereign, but demoting it into the same lawful universe as everything else. “An object subject to the same laws” sounds cold, yet it’s the prerequisite for moral and social maturity. If you can see yourself as an object in a shared world, you can imagine how your actions land on others, predict outcomes, accept responsibility, and negotiate rather than demand.
Contextually, it’s classic Piaget: knowledge isn’t downloaded; it’s constructed through interaction. The self is not discovered in isolation but engineered in contact with the world’s stubborn consistency.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Piaget, Jean. (n.d.). The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-self-thus-becomes-aware-of-itself-at-least-in-90604/
Chicago Style
Piaget, Jean. "The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-self-thus-becomes-aware-of-itself-at-least-in-90604/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The self thus becomes aware of itself, at least in its practical action, and discovers itself as a cause among other causes and as an object subject to the same laws as other objects." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-self-thus-becomes-aware-of-itself-at-least-in-90604/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
