This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question (as suggested by thinkers such as MacIntyre, Ricœur and Taylor). These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: (a) debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; (b) questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and (c) the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective.

本期专刊从现象学的角度探讨了关于个人身份的辩论，尤其是当代关于自我的现象学研究。在引言中，我们首先根据洛克的初步建议对与个人身份有关的各种经典问题进行简要调查，并勾勒出洛克之后辩论的关键概念和区别。然后，我们描述了19世纪和20世纪后黑格尔，德国和法国哲学所代表的方法的类型。我们认为，英语人士关于个人身份的辩论最初是由持久性问题和性格特征问题构成的，而“大陆式”传统则包括关于个人或自我的独特性或“具体性”的激烈辩论。就像萨特（Sartre）和福柯（Foucault）等一些哲学家所声称的那样，它具有深远的暂时性，即使没有外部强加，也无法拥有任何身份。我们将大陆人关于“自我”的思路描述为对洛克后后“个人身份”问题的答复和调整（正如麦金太尔，里乔尔和泰勒等思想家所建议的那样）。这些观察构成了我们介绍个人身份现象学方法的背景。这些方法分为三类：（a）关于自我的各个层面的辩论，从体现和最小的自我开始，一直贯穿到成熟的人的概念；（b）时间变迁，变化和稳定的问题，例如通过老化或变革性的生活经历来说明；（c）在社会，机构，和规范空间。因此，引言建立了一个结构，用于在我们的特刊中查找和连接不同的贡献，作为一个整体，从现象学的角度代表了对个人身份辩论的强大而有区别的贡献。