Troubled Identity, or the European Canon and the Dilemmas of Memory

Abstract

Duality, as major modern philosophers and sociologists have observed, permeates our human nature, since one part of it is beyond our reach and control, and another part is made up by us. Being determined by our existential and moral choices, this mobile part of our identity becomes another facet of our nature, manifesting itself as a set of accomplishments and achievements. Up to the nineteenth century we could safely assume that theorists were inclined to see that unchangeable part of human nature as essential. A paradigm shift in social philosophy and sociology signified an identity shift toward the mobile or changeable part of human nature.

J’ai ainsi contrasté le Français: “Je suis homme par nature et français par accident,” et l’Allemand: “Je suis essentiellement un Allemand, et je suis un homme grâce à ma qualité d’Allemand …”

[I contrasted somewhere the French: “I am a human being by nature and a Frenchman by accident” and the German: “I am essentially a German, and I am a human being through my German nature …”]

—Louis Dumont, Homo Aequalis, II: L’idéologie allemande, France-Allemagne et retour

I once said, perhaps rightly: The earlier culture will become a heap of rubble and finally a heap of ashes, but spirits will hover over the ashes.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen)