Abstract
The Third Study explores the two sides of identity, one that is apprehended from the inside and which is known inwardly in contrast to the identity viewed from the outside, the side of society. Included is the objective, third-person, impersonal view of a generalized other of the social group one participates. Self and identity are distinctively different aspects of a person. Investigations of psychological science of identity are empirically easier than investigations of the more indefinite nature of self so that self and related issues are often obscured or ignored. The reality is that we live in the social world by means of identity. The Greeks articulated a recognition that the physical body and its physical environment changes while one’s identity persists and maintains a property of sameness. Christian thinking transformed identity by creating an internal dimension to a self and a person became responsible for their own moral behavior. One’s identity was that of a free and responsible person in pursuit of moral perfection. The idea of an autonomous person responsible for their own behaviour was strengthened in the subsequent centuries, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the understanding of self and identity became what can be described as naturalized. The mind and cognition is emphasized so that a person is identified as a knower with a capacity and, perhaps, responsibility to understand the mechanistic world. The last step of this naturalization process was firmly put in place by John Locke who showed how one’s identity was formed in social relationships. The consequence of emphasizing relationship in forming one’s identity, and a self, was that a soul is no longer necessary to be a person. William James describes the modern form of identity, and the self, in an intrinsic psychology in a context of first-person perspective that makes clear the sameness properties of identity. Summarily, “identity is the heart of human life.”
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Notes
- 1.
See the First Study for parallel conversations concerning Augustine in Jerrold Seigel (2005) and Charles Taylor (1989).
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Duus, R.E. (2020). Third Study: Identities of a Person. In: Constituting Selves. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39017-4_3
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