Abstract
The key to understanding self-identity is identifying the transcendental structures that make a temporally extended, continuous, and unified experiential life possible. Self-identity is rooted in the formal, temporalizing structure of intentional experience that underlies psychological continuity. Personal identity, by contrast, is rooted in the content of the particular flow of experience, in particular and primarily, in the convictions adopted passively or actively in reflection by a self-identical subject in the light of her social and traditional inheritances. Secondarily, a person’s identity is rooted in others’ characterizations of that person in the light of the social conventions and constructs of the cultures and traditions that have shaped the personal identity of the ones who make the attributions. Personal identity, on this view, is fundamentally rooted in beliefs, traits—especially character traits—sentiments, and moods, that is, in the subject’s convictions about the true, the good, and the right—and in the commitments to the pursuit of (apparently) worthwhile goods and to the practical identities rooted in those convictions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Consider the Brave Officer case: Suppose a boy of ten (A) is flogged for stealing apples from an orchard. At forty, a general (B) bravely takes a standard from the enemy and remembers his having been flogged at ten. At eighty, the general (C) remembers taking the standard, but he has forgotten having been flogged. On the memory version of personal identity, A is the same person as B, and B is the same person as C. But A is not the same person as C. This result, however, is contradictory, for the general (B=C) both is and is not the same the boy who was flogged (A); see Reid 2002, 276.
I have discussed tradition at greater length in Drummond 2000.
Husserl 1931, unpublished archival Ms. A VI 34, 19. I thank Julia Jansen, the Director of the Husserl Archives, Leuven, for permission to quote from Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts. Affective experience encompasses several related and interwoven, but non-identical, experiences and states: intentional feelings, emotions, affective traits, character traits, sentiments, and moods. See Drummond forthcoming for a more complete—but still incomplete—discussion of different kinds of affective experience.
Husserl 1900–1914, unpublished archival Ms. M III 3 II 1, 29–30.
References
Brough, J. (1972). The emergence of an absolute consciousness in Husserl’s early writings on time-consciousness. Man and World, 5, 298–324.
Brough, J. (1975). Husserl on memory. Monist, 59, 40–62.
Brough, J. (1989). Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness. In W. McKenna & J. N. Mohanty (Eds.), Husserl’s phenomenology: A textbook (pp. 249–290). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Brough, J. (1991). Translator’s introduction. In Husserl 1991.
Čapek, J. (2017). Narrative identity and phenomenology. Continental Philosophy Review, 50, 359–375.
Deonna, J. A., & Teroni, F. (2012). The emotions: A philosophical introduction. New York: Routledge.
Drummond, J. J. (1979–80). On seeing a material thing in space: The role of Kinaesthesis in visual perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 40, 19–32.
Drummond, J. J. (2000). Time, history, and tradition. In J. Brough & L. Embree (Eds.), The many faces of time (pp. 127–147). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Drummond, J. (2006). The case(s) of (self-)awareness. In U. Kriegel & K. Williford (Eds.), Self-representational approaches to consciousness (pp. 199–220). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Drummond, John J. (Forthcoming). The varieties of affective experience. In The Routledge handbook on the phenomenology of the emotions. Edited by T. Szanto and H. Landweer. London: Routledge.
Husserl, E. (1900–1914). Unpublished archival manuscript M III 3 II.
Husserl, E. (1931). Unpublished archival manuscript A VI 34.
Husserl, E. (1970). Cartesian meditations: An introduction to phenomenology. Translated by D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, Edmund. (1973a). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass, zweiter Teil: 1921–1928. Edited by I. Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1973b). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass, dritter Teil: 1921–1928. Edited by I. Kern. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1989) Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a pure phenomenological philosophy. Second book. Studies in the phenomenology of constitution. Translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917). Translated by J. Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Husserl, E. (2014). Ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. Translated by D. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co..
Lee, N.-I. (1993). Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Locke, J. (1975). In P. Nidditch (Ed.), An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Reid, T. (2002). In D. Brookes (Ed.), Essays on the intellectual powers of man. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Sherman, N. (1991). The fabric of character: Aristotle’s theory of virtue. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Shoemaker, D. (2016). In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Personal identity and ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/identity-ethics/.
Zahavi, D. (1999). Self-awareness and alterity: A phenomenological investigation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Availability of data and material
Not applicable.
Code availability
Not applicable.
Funding
Not applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Single author.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest/competing interests
Not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Drummond, J.J. Self-identity and personal identity. Phenom Cogn Sci 20, 235–247 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09696-w
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09696-w