Identity (social Science) - Use in Philosophy

Use in Philosophy

See also: Personal identity (philosophy) and Identity (philosophy)

Philosophers have also reflected on the identity concept. In many ways Philosophical reflection on identity predated psychological. Philosophical discourse on identity begins with Descartes. His famous mantra "I doubt, therefor I think, therefor I am." have left many to inquire what exactly "I" is, and if indeed we can derive an "I-ness" from doubt.

Hegel rejects Cartesian philosophy, supposing that we do not always doubt and that we do not always have consciousness. In his famous Master-Slave Dialectic Hegel attempts to show that the mind (Geist) only become conscious when it encounters another mind. One Geist attempts to control the other, since up until that point it has only encountered tools for its use. A struggle for domination ensues, leading to Lordship and Bondage.

Nietzsche who was influenced by Hegel in some ways but rejected him in others, called for a rejection of "Soul Atomism" in The Gay Science. Nietzsche supposed that the Soul was an interaction of forces, an ever-changing thing far from the immortal soul posited by both Descartes and the Christian tradition. His "Construction of the Soul" in many ways resembles modern Social Constructivism.

Martin Heidegger, following Nietzsche, did work on identity. For Heidegger, people only really form an identity after facing death. It's death that allows people to choose from the social constructed meanings in their world, and assemble a finite identity out of seemingly infinite meanings. For Heidegger, most people never escape the "they", a socially constructed identity of "how one ought to be" created mostly to try to escape death through ambiguity.

Many philosophical schools derive from rejecting Hegel, and do this diverse traditions of acceptance and rejection have developed.

Paul Ricoeur has introduced the distinction between the ipse identity (selfhood, ‘who am I?’) and the idem identity (sameness, or a third-person perspective which objectifies identity) (Ricoeur & Blamey 1995).