Why do you need explicitly have the “self” argument in a Python method?

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When defining a method on a class in Python, it looks something like this:

class MyClass(object):
    def __init__(self, x, y):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y

But in some other languages, such as C#, you have a reference to the object that the method is bound to with the “this” keyword without declaring it as an argument in the method prototype.

Was this an intentional language design decision in Python or are there some implementation details that require the passing of “self” as an argument?

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