Philosophical Aspects of Personal Identity Research Paper

In traditional societies, all of these criteria converge when they are used to classify individuals. They converge across contexts, across the life cycle, and across perspectives. To illustrate, the identification of X as ‘tenant of the Z farm’ simultaneously ascribes a social identity (e.g. X is a man, a farmer) and denotes personal identity (i.e., X is the stout, pockmarked man living at the south end of the village, who keeps initiating political debates in the pub). The identity markers used are valid in all contexts: in his family, in the village, in the pub everybody will know him as the pockmarked man running farm Z. They are valid across his life-span: From birth to death he is linked to the Z farm as its future, present, or former tenant. And descriptions from first-and third-person perspectives agree: his farmhands, his wife, and the other villagers know him as the tenant of Z, and he also identifies himself with this attribution—in fact so much so that he will have written on his tombstone: ‘Here lies the tenant of Z farm.’

With modernization these dimensions diverge. As a result of urbanization, social and personal identities separate: town people can only vaguely guess each other’s social identity, let alone know their personal identity. Social differentiation and cultural pluralization produce consistency problems: individuals increasingly partake in several subsystems or subcultures, each operating according to their own code or claiming specific value commitments. Thus, in different contexts they find themselves exposed to specific role expectations which quite often make conflicting demands. Rapid social change impedes the experience of personal continuity over the life course (e.g., elderly Germans have been subjects in an empire, citizens in the Weimar Republic, followers in a totalitarian regime, and citizens in a democracy again).

In general, modern sociostructural arrangements contribute less to the establishment and stabilization of identity than those of the past. From a third-person or a societal perspective, this is unproblematic. Members of modern societies are used to acknowledging or ignoring each other as strangers. When someone’s identity needs to be known there are social mechanisms for identification: titles, uniforms, or the office reception area inform on status or social identity; a passport or genetic analysis enable us to determine personal identity; the curriculum vitae and certificates give evidence of personal continuity; institutionalized sanctions guarantee at least context-specific consistency. A problem does, however, arise from a first-person or internal perspective. The question ‘Who am I?’ is not satisfactorily answered by referring to unparalleled fingerprints or to social positions held. Rather, individuals are in need of a sense of uniqueness, and a feeling of inner consistency and continuity over and beyond matchless physical markers or straight careers.

2. Theoretical Solutions To The Identity Problem

Various solutions to this modern problem of a subjective sense of identity have been proposed. In some of his writings Erikson (1958) assumed identity to be grounded in those lifelong substantive commitments (to a partner, an occupation, a worldview) a person enters upon, having successfully solved the adolescence crisis. Nowadays, however, people keep experiencing ever new crises (e.g., midlife crises, retirement crises, etc.) in which such commitments are revoked (e.g., by divorce, religious or ideological conversions, loss of employment, or occupational changes).

Elsewhere, Erikson (1956) defined ego identity as a formal competence: the competence to uphold internal unity and continuity. This competence arises from successful resolutions of previous crises in which basic trust, autonomy, initiative, and a sense of achievement (rather than distrust, shame, doubt, and guilt, and a feeling of inferiority) have been developed. In this definition, however, people’s need for substantive commitments remains unfocused.

Krappmann (1969) sees identity arising from the social recognition found in those interactions in which an individual succeeds in balancing out contradictory expectations, while at the same time signaling that they never will be merged totally in any given context. Krappmann, however, fails to specify any criteria that might enable us to distinguish opportunistic forms of balancing from the principled type of flexibility that is a prerequisite for warranting an inner sense of consistency and continuity.

Postmodern approaches deny that identity may need consistency and continuity. Instead, they propose the concept of patchwork identity to reflect the fact that there are constant changes in preferences, attitudes, roles, and relationships. However, even the external criteria that might enable us to distinguish one patchwork from the other, or to recognize sameness over time in case individual patches have been exchanged or colored, remain unclear. And from an internal perspective, body boundaries and physical continuity are not enough to confer a sense of identity. In fact—as is well documented by research in various fields such as dissonance theory, attribution theory, and studies on dogmatism and split personality—at least some consistency seems indispensable for psychological well-being and mental health.

Cohen and Taylor (1976) focus on sense of uniqueness. Individuals seek to develop eccentric hobbies, interests, or life-styles, go in quest of adventure or unusual experiences so as to resist the fear of exchangeability that keeps creeping up on them in modern mass societies. Nevertheless, over and over again, they find that any newly invented identity marker will be imitated by others, socially co-opted, and commercialized. Thus, all attempts to secure personal identity by appropriating singular activities are— empirically—doomed to failure. Moreover, the very idea of basing identity on unique markers is misconceived because it reduces the dialectic inherent in distinctiveness to just one pole—to positively valued exceptionality—and overlooks the risk of being seen as deviant and becoming stigmatized. More importantly still, it neglects the core feature of a sense of uniqueness—its being a ‘necessary byproduct’ (Elster 1979). There are states such as sleeping, forgetting, or happiness that will inevitably be missed by those who directly aim for them. In the same way, a sense of uniqueness can only be experienced concomitantly; i.e., as a consequence of doing something one is intrinsically committed to doing.

Giddens (1991) conceptualizes identity as a ‘consistent narrative’: enveloped in the ‘protective cocoon’ of basic trust, individuals keep rewriting their autobiography so as to create a consistent meaning structure from the sequence of decisions made, the paths chosen, and the actions taken. This definition integrates motivational aspects (trust), substantive commitments (life decisions), and a need for consistency. The meaning of consistency, however, remains ambiguous: by insisting that identity be based on a ‘morality of authenticity that skirts any universal moral criteria’ (Giddens 1991, p. 79), Giddens cannot distinguish between consistency based on principles or consistency based on defensive rationalizations (‘sour grapes’).

3. Aspects Of Identity: Theoretical Assumptions

From this brief overview and critical comments, several assumptions concerning constitutive aspects of identity can be derived:

(a) Commitment is constitutive of identity.

(b) Given that commitment needs an object (e.g., a person, values, projects), content is requisite for identity.

(c) What matters, however, is not the type of content chosen, but the mode of appropriating it.

(d) A subjective sense of uniqueness is a necessary by-product of an autonomous commitment.

In the following, these assumptions will first be theoretically justified. Second, I will try to substantiate them empirically.

Assumption (a) follows Frankfurt’s (1988, 1993) analysis of the concept of a person. If an individual had nothing He/she would never betray, He/she would be at the helpless mercy of contingent conditions, of inner drives, of fleeting whims. He/she would not be a person but a ‘wanton’. Personhood (i.e., identity) is acquired by committing oneself to ideals. The kind of ideals chosen—be they moral, aesthetic, or truthoriented ones—is of little import. What counts is that the person—in view of his/her commitment to an ideal—is taking a stance toward spontaneous impulses and desires, and is suppressing those that are incompatible.

Frankfurt describes the way in which identity is constituted; Nozick (1981) analyzes the way in which it may be stabilized. He proposes the following thought experiments. Assume that Theseus’ ship is anchored in port. As time passes, one plank after another is beginning to rot and is replaced. Finally, all the planks have been replaced by new ones. What is Theseus’ ship? The renovated ship in port or the original planks piled up in the shipyard? We would consider the ship in port to be Theseus’ ship, because, despite a change in its components, it has maintained its structure and its transformation is of some continuity underneath the seties. Analogously, we consider an organism to continue to be itself despite the fact that its cells are continuously replaced. Similarly, we consider a person to remain the same even if they have changed some of their views. We do so only, however, if we assume that they have changed their views autonomously, i.e., voluntarily, and with good reason. Nozick explicates this using counterexamples. Assume that, due to grave brain damage, a man has been suddenly reduced to the state of an infant, or that as a result of brainwashing, an ardent democrat has been transformed into a fanatic communist. We would say of both that they are no longer the people they once were. In contrast, we have no problem in acknowledging the identity of a former opponent to atomic energy who is now arguing for the use of atomic energy, if we can understand this change of mind as being motivated by reasons (e.g., a fear of global warming), and not effected by causes. In other words, we do not consider identity to be endangered if changes in mind result from learning processes. The concept ‘learning process’ implies that the new state is better than the former; i.e., it presupposes intersubjectively validated standards to judge the adequacy of views held. Unavoidably, everyday life is based on such collectively shared understandings of rationality—otherwise the very idea of, for example, questioning the identity of the brainwashed communist would be meaningless.

4. Aspects Of Identity: Some Empirical Support

There are empirical findings that agree with these philosophical reflections. In The Uncommitted, Keniston (1965) describes the feeling of inner void and meaninglessness, and the sense of exchangeability some young Harvard students experienced despite the fact that from an external perspective they were considered as being highly successful; i.e., ascribed a positively valued identity. In contrast, by committing themselves to something they deem worthy and important, the Civil Rights Movement, the Young Radicals (Keniston 1968) increasingly came to develop a sense of uniqueness. Similarly, Helen John, a leading pioneer in protests against nuclear missiles, came to feel irreplaceable once she began to accept personal responsibility. As she put it: ‘Nobody can do exactly what I am doing, in the way I am doing it. Only I can do that.’ (Haste 1993, p. 339) The sense of uniqueness is not dependent on ‘difference,’ on singular contents; rather, it is dependent on personal commitment. Only in truly caring for something can a person feel in exchangeable.

Individuals tend to realize that caring for specific ideals is constitutive of their own identity. In the context of a longitudinal study I asked 170 17-yearolds: ‘What would most make you a different person— different looks, parents, hobbies, grades, a different understanding of right and wrong; another nationality, sex; a lot of money? Why?’ The answers given most often were: different parents, different sex, different moral understanding. The importance of ‘ideals’ to identity could be seen in the frequent references to ‘moral understanding,’ and in the justifications given for the response ‘different parents.’ Most subjects argued that growing up in a different family would make them a different person because parents so decisively influence and shape one’s value orientations. There is a more indirect confirmation of the claim that ideals are constitutive of identity: many longitudinal studies find that individuals tend to hold on to the sociopolitical value orientations developed in late adolescence—even if they have experienced social and geographic mobility or fluctuations in public opinion (cf. Sears 1981). This finding may indicate that people seek to stabilize their identity during their life course by remaining true to their value commitments—irrespective of changes in context or the ideological climate.

As noted above, however, this mode of upholding identity is rendered increasingly difficult given rapid and far-reaching changes in knowledge systems and collective interpretation. In the following, I maintain that with modernization two new mechanisms that enable us to constitute and stabilize identity are evolving: value generalization and an egosyntonic motive structure. I will illustrate both using data from a cohort comparison involving 100 65to 80-year-old, 100 40to 50-year-old, and 100 20to 30-year-old subjects representative of the West German population. The study focused on the understanding of moral rules and moral motivation (cf. NunnerWinkler 2000a, 2000b). In making use of these data in the present context I do not, however, wish to imply that the ideals constitutive for identity need to be moral ones.

5. Mechanisms For Stabilizing Identity In Modernity

5.1 Value Generalization

Commitment to more abstract values increases the flexibility required if varying context conditions are to be taken into account. To give an example: when asked to judge a young mother’s desire to work fulltime without real economic need, older subjects express clear condemnation; they see it as a neglect of duty. Younger subjects, in contrast, no longer assume ascriptive female duties; they focus on the problem of good child care. On these more abstract terms several functionally equivalent solutions are possible. Similarly, older subjects tend to condemn a sexual relationship between two men as unnatural, deviant, or sick. Younger subjects instead tend to discuss it in terms of the quality of the relationship. Thus, increasingly concrete rules tying behavioral implications to specific context conditions (e.g., child care to being a mother; sexual relations to being of the opposite sex) are replaced by more abstract values (e.g., welfare of the child; quality of the relationship) that allow flexibility in realization without a betrayal of basic commitments.

5.2 Egosyntonic Motive Structure

Norm conformity can be motivated by various concerns: by fear of physical or institutional sanctions, social contempt (Luhmann), or pangs of conscience (Freud); by compassion (Schopenhauer); by respect for the law (Kant). In a longitudinal study on moral development it was found that children see moral behavior as being motivated not by the consequences anticipated either for the wrongdoer or for the victim (e.g., by fear of sanctions or by compassion), but by an intrinsic desire to do what is right (Nunner-Winkler 1999). The cohort comparison shows that between generations there is a change in the understanding of moral motivation indicated by changes in the emotional reactions expected to follow transgressions. Older subjects mostly refer to guilt and shame; that is, to emotions that focus on some higher internal or an external entity (e.g., the superego or a social audience); younger subjects, in contrast, are more likely to express sorrow or regret; that is, emotions that focus on the wrong committed or the harm done. Thus, norm conformity is increasingly coming to be seen not in terms of bowing to dictates authoritatively imposed on people but rather in terms of not wanting to wrong others. This change in moral motivation in the direction of a more egosyntonic structure corresponds to a change in the cognitive understanding of morality, in as much as norms are no longer seen to be set by God or church authorities, but rather as derived from rational consensus among equals.

To conclude, with modernization—i.e., with social differentiation, cultural pluralization, and rapidly changing social conditions—new mechanisms have evolved that allow us to constitute and stabilize identity. By egosyntonic commitment to generalized values individuals may develop a sense of uniqueness, and experience consistency and continuity in their life course. In this way ego identity becomes a substitute for social role identity.

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