<\/p>
The Western quest for \u201cpersonal identity\u201d rests, in part, on a confusion of different senses of the term. We recognize that there are degrees of sameness among things: Identical twins are never strictly identical. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, further, that we tend to confuse two senses of \u201cidentity,\u201d which he explicates using the Latin terms idem and ipse. As explained by Calvin O. Schrag, <\/p>\n
\u201cIdem-identity involves an appeal to objective criteria of identification. Finding its touchstone in the oneness of numerical identity, idem-identity secures the concept of permanence in time, or more precisely permanence outside of time, by analyzing this concept into an unbroken continuity and a rigid immutability. The tradition of Western philosophy found the metaphysical support for such a continuity and immutability in the vocabulary of an abiding substratum that is able to weather the ravages of time and change. Ipse-identity, in contrast, is the identity of selfhood, the sense of identity at issue in the occasioning of personal identity, the sense of identity applicable to a person\u2019s character, which for Ricoeur finds its direct analogy in \u201ccharacter\u201d as a protagonist in a story.\u201d <\/p>\n
This distinction roughly correlates, Schrag points out, to the distinction between persons and things: Idem-identity answers a \u201cwhat\u201d question, while ipse-identity answers a \u201cwho.\u201d The relation of time and identity is differently conceived from these two angles: <\/p>\n
\u201cIdem-identity travels with an external and objectivized concept of time as a serial succession of instants in a determinate order of coming to be and passing away. Entities retain their identity precisely because they remain external to this succession of instants, exhibiting a permanent throughout time, fixed, continuous, and immutable. Ipse- or personal identity develops with and in the temporal becoming of the self, occasioning a presence of the self to itself that is borne by a recollection of that which has been and an anticipation of that which is not yet. The temporality at issue in ipse-identity is more like an overlapping of past and future with the present than a serial succession of nows . . . . Narrative temporality enables the emplotment of the history of the self as a dynamic coming from a past and moving into a future in which a wise that past and future figure as indigenous features of the story of the self as it unfolds. And the identity of the self in all this consists in the degree to which the self is able to unify its past accomplishments and future projects. The self that has nothing to remember and nothing for which to hope is a self whose identity is in peril.\u201d <\/p>\n
As ipse-identity, the self is not \u201cin\u201d time and it doesn\u2019t exactly continue \u201cthrough\u201d time. Rather, time is internal to the constitution of the self: \u201cThe self exists as temporalized. Temporality enters into the very constitution of who the self is. Temporality thus need no longer be viewed as an external threat to self-identity, as a coefficient of adversity, as that which ruptures the unity of the self by pulverizing it into a flux of changing multiplicities.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Western quest for \u201cpersonal identity\u201d rests, in part, on a confusion of different senses of the term. We recognize that there are degrees of sameness among things: Identical twins are never strictly identical. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, further, that we tend to confuse two senses of \u201cidentity,\u201d which he explicates using the Latin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n