Why is there a striving for recognition, for acknowledgement of your uniqueness, your unique virtue - what a strange drive, not obvious in its benefits - fame, the last infirmity of noble mind, as Milton called it, meaning that it is a flaw in mind, but one that runs deep, that ought to be dispensed with but is hard to surrender, is not incompatible with nobility, and might even constitute it - perhaps ignoble minds lack it, lack the peculiar register in which lies its wholly metaphysical pay-off - although there are also ignoble kinds of fame that apparently some crave, even rather passionately. What is it that is sought here, in this recognition? Others must give it, but it belongs entirely to us. Surely it is a robust form of definability, not merely to be known by your friends and family but to be a distinct and memorable personage in a wider sense, as wide and as general as possible, to exist, or to exist!. It is not merely the perks of fame that are sought, if so why not seek them directly. No, definability is a way in which we presume to being. And yet it is entirely socially defined. It would not be particularly gratifying to be the only sufferer from some rare disease, but if you attracted a lot of attention because of it, it might be considered to have its compensations. It suggests the extraordinary inadequacy of the mind, or of the embodied consciousness, to define or ground itself. Without socially mediated reflection you are nothing, that is, merely a ghost, lacking in any identity or individuality. Of course there are some whose claim is precisely that they are self-sufficient, that they do not require external reflection, and that too is a social claim, commensurate with the protean nature of the mind. The central question, however, remains unanswered.