Abstract
Rom Harré has held different views at different times on self and identity. He liked to keep these terms open and flexible, in line with his opinion that, “for the most part, selves are fictions”. These fictions take form (and change their form) in the ongoing flow of activities that people produce in interaction with one another—which is one reason why it is difficult, if not precarious, to use well-defined concepts to capture these “fictions.” Concepts tend to fix what they are meant to identify. In fact, this is the reason why we usually need and want well-defined concepts. But how then, drawing on Rom Harré, do we have to conceive of such unstable and unfixable phenomena as self and identity? How do we combine concepts and fictions?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Rom Harré has dealt with these issues in numerous books, articles, and chapters. In what follows, I draw on the The Singular Self (1998); The Discursive Mind (1994, with Grant Gillet); Social Being (revised edition, 1993); Pronouns and People (1990, with Peter Mühlhäusler); Greenspeak : A Study of Environmental Discourse (with Jens Brockmeier and Peter Mühlhäusler).
References
Brockmeier, J., & Harré, R. (2001). Narrative: Problems and promises of an alternative paradigm. In J. Brockmeier & D. Carbaugh (Eds.), Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self and culture (pp. 39–58). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Geertz, C. (1983). From the native’s point of view: On the nature of anthropological understanding. In C. Geertz (Ed.), Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology (pp. 55–70). New York: Basic Books.
Hacking, I. (1995). Rewriting the soul: Multiple personality and the sciences of memory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Harré, R. (1998). The singular self: An introduction to the psychology of personhood. London et al.: Sage.
Koselleck, R. (1979). Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp [Engl. translation: Futures past: On the semantics of historical time]. New York: Columbia University Press (2004).
Montaigne, M. de (2009). Les Essais. Ed. A. Lanly. Paris: Gallimard.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brockmeier, J. (2019). What Is It to Be a Human Being? Rom Harré on Self and Identity. In: Christensen, B. (eds) The Second Cognitive Revolution. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26680-6_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26680-6_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26679-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26680-6
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)