Is Reason a Factor of the Self?

 Here's a bit from "Can a Man Be Born Again, Once He Is Old?":

"What greatness Giussani once again bears witness to in censoring no aspect, none of the factors that make up the 'I' (reason and freedom), in affirming one without excluding the other, in trying to make the connection between the two understood, since if we take one or the other away, there is no more knowledge!" (37-38)

In the passage above, Julián Carrón is speaking about how freedom is necessary for knowledge, now I also see the light that it casts on the self. What is the self without reason, without awareness, memory, imagination, judgement? Certainly, GM Hopkins is concerned with the significance of all things. And Walker Percy also, is concerned with signs. I'm no philosopher and neither was Hopkins, but I begin to see the connections between these things...