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Identity as self-transformation: emotional conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory

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Abstract

This paper develops the thesis that personal identity is neither to be taken in terms of an unchanging self-sufficient ‘substance’ nor in terms of selfhood ‘without substance,’ i.e. as fluctuating processes of pure relationality and subject-less activity. Instead, identity is taken as self-transformation that is bound to particular embodied individuals and surpasses them as individuated entities. The paper is structured in three parts. Part I describes the experiential givenness of conflicts that support our sense of self-transformation. While the first part develops an inter-subjective topography of emotional movements, the second part pays attention to their temporal dimension. We work with conflicts and get transformed by them also in the way we remember them. Part II focuses on the process of self-understanding that accompanies conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory. Part III compares and discusses different models of a ‘relational ontology’ of the person, which question the idea that we are defined only by how we define ourselves—just as they question the idea that one’s identity is independent of how one relates to one’s having changed.

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Notes

  1. Regarding the notion of substance, cf. Robinson (2004): The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek , transmitted via the Latin substantia, which means ‘something that stands under or grounds things.’ Substances are fundamental entities, which contrast mainly with properties and events (cf. Aristotle, Categories 1b25–2a4). In this tradition, substances are typified as being (1) ontologically basic, (2) relatively independent and durable, (3) the paradigm subjects of predication and bearers of properties, (4) the subjects of change, (5) classified as that particular individual or a kind of stuff. Cf. Joosten (2005).

  2. Cf. e.g. the critique of the ontology of substance put forward by Seibt (2004, pp. 23–55), who proposes a process-ontological scheme which operates with dynamic, multiply occurrent individuals; and the critique by Bickard (2009).

  3. The subjunctive mood is to indicate a thought experiment, not a possibility that could be realized in actual life. I do not think that we will ever be able to completely abolish conflicts, but we may, from time to time, live in long-lasting non-conflictual situations.

  4. Cf. Ricoeur (2002, pp. 89, 106f, 132).

  5. Ibid., p. 131.

  6. Cf. ibid., pp. 132–134, 140.

  7. Ibid., p. 140.

  8. Ibid., p. 141.

  9. Ibid., p. 69.

  10. Note that fallibility includes the possibility, not the factuality, of falling. Ricoeur here disagrees with the Lutheran tradition that assumes that we always already live post lapsum and that the human nature is to be taken as natura corrupta.

  11. Cf. Ricoeur (1994, p. 116).

  12. Cf. ibid., pp. 118, 121, 123.

  13. Cf. ibid., p. 114 n. 1.

  14. Cf. Ricoeur (2005, p. 255).

  15. Ibid., 257.

  16. Locke (2004, §9, p. 302).

  17. Ricoeur (2005, pp. 121–122).

  18. Cf. Locke (2004, §19, p. 308).

  19. Ibid., §10, p. 303.

  20. Ibid., §3, p. 297.

  21. Cf. ibid., §10, p. 303.

  22. Ibid., §17, p. 307.

  23. Ibid., §6, p. 299.

  24. Cf. ibid., §10, pp. 302–303.

  25. Cf. ibid., §20 and §22, pp. 308–309.

  26. Cf. ibid., §26, p. 312.

  27. In this paragraph I draw on Grøn (2004, p. 126, 132–137, 143–144).

  28. King (2000, pp. 11–16, 175, 180).

  29. Cf. Westbury & Dennett (2000, p. 19).

  30. Cf. Schacter (2001, p. 139): “Consistency and change biases show how our theories about ourselves can lead us to reconstruct the past as overly similar to, or different from, the present. Hindsight biases reveal that recollections of past events are filtered by current knowledge. Egocentric biases illustrate the powerful role of the self in orchestrating perceptions and memories of reality. And stereotypical biases demonstrate how generic memories shape interpretation of the world, even when we are unaware of their existence or influence.”

  31. Cf. Tulving & Lepage (2000, pp. 209, 211, 216).

  32. Cf. Ross & Wilson (2000, pp. 240, 253).

  33. Cf. de Levita (2002, pp. 244–246), where identity is defined as ein Bündel von Rollenvorstellungen that are tied to the following factors or ‘identials’: body, name, and one’s personal life history.

  34. Brison (2002, p. xf.).

  35. Cf. ibid., pp. 4, 38.

  36. Cf. ibid., p. 45.

  37. Cf. ibid., pp. 49–50, 52.

  38. Ibid., p. 63.

  39. Ibid., p. 95.

  40. This concept is developed in his early work Gjentagelsen (1843), translated in Kierkegaard (1983).

  41. For a short commentary see Mooney (2007, pp. 161–172).

  42. This is explained in Kjerlighedens Gjerninger (1847). Cf. Welz (2008, pp. 146–148).

  43. Ricoeur (2005, p. 110).

  44. Ibid., p. 250.

  45. Liebsch (2008, pp. 122–123, 126, 129, 136, 143–144).

  46. Cf. Luther (WA 39/I, p. 176).

  47. Cf. Luther (WA 7, pp. 49–73), note especially the concluding passage and the structure of the text.

  48. Luther (WA 39/II, p. 340).

  49. For this paragraph, cf. Levinas (1978, pp. 173–179, 220–225) and Dickmann (1999, pp. 377–381, 400–403).

  50. Cf. Levinas (1978, p. 175).

  51. One objection to this portrayal of the perpetually self-transformative nature of identity might be the following: Is our common, everyday experience of being a self as fluid as suggested? Do not many of our conflicts arise precisely from the sense of being a fixed, permanent self whose wishes and preferences have somehow been violated or ignored? Indeed. When in conflict with others, we tend to cling tenaciously to our position, even if we know we are wrong, which also serves to reaffirm the feeling of being stable and enduring selves. However, the very fact that we can relate to our position, cling to it or move away from it, shows that we are not, as it were, frozen at a certain standpoint. We can take different stands towards our personal traits. We can defend them or be unhappy about idiosyncrasies we cannot change. The experience that we in some respects meet resistance from within and have to struggle with ourselves does not speak against the possibility of self-transformation, but is its (pre-)condition. Self-substantializing no less than other-relating habits would be superfluous, if we could not be formed and transformed by what we suffer and we do.

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank all those who have discussed some topics of this paper with me, for inspiring and challenging questions and comments, namely (in chronological order) Kasper Morville, the participants in the session on “Personal transformation” that took place as part of the conference Understanding Conflicts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives at the University of Aarhus on August 21, 2008, Johan Eckhart Hansen, Joel Krueger, the staff members of the CFS in Copenhagen present at the research seminar on October 7, 2008, and Arne Grøn, who—as I discovered after finishing this paper—has proposed a similar approach to the problem, but considers a simultaneity of activity and passivity that I have not sufficiently taken into account, namely the experience of having to bear what oneself has done (Cf. Grøn 2002, pp. 186–199). This study is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research.

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  1. Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 140–142, Building 25, 5th Floor, 2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark

    Claudia Welz

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Welz, C. Identity as self-transformation: emotional conflicts and their metamorphosis in memory. Cont Philos Rev 43, 267–285 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9142-9

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