Abstract
Most social roles require role identification from the side of the role occupant, yet whoever identifies him- or herself with his or her social roles thereby mistakes him- or herself for what he or she is not, because role identity is determined by other people’s normative expectations, whereas self-identity is self-determined. This paper first develops an interpretation of this existential paradox of role identity, and then suggests a Rousseauvian perspective on how the tension between being oneself and playing one’s social roles may be a matter of politics rather than a matter of the metaphysics of selfhood. The paper concludes with a cautionary remark on just how much Jacobinism a political solution to the existential paradox of role identity might entail.
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Notes
- 1.
An anonymous referee disagreed, claiming that fair weather need not upend the expectation of rain, if it is well-grounded, but that somebody’s lies will upend the expectation that he or she can be trusted. This may be true for future expectations (“It didn’t rain today, but it sure will tomorrow!”/“Fool me twice, shame on me”), but these are different expectations.
- 2.
Heidegger’s Being and Time is quoted following the 1962 translation by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. The rendering of key terms differs from their translation.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful for suggestions made by the participants of the workshop on Conventionalism, an open session on academia.edu, and to an anonymous referee.
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Schmid, H.B. (2017). Authentic Role Play: A Political Solution to an Existential Paradox. In: Schmid, H., Thonhauser, G. (eds) From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2_14
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