Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 1

R E S E A R C H P R O P O S A L – P A R A D O X E S O F I D E N T I T Y : P E R S O N S , S E L V E S A N D T I M E 1. ABSTRACT 1 2. DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH 1

I. QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS 1 II. PERSONAL IDENTITY LITERATURE REVIEW 1 III. OUTLINE OF PROPOSED RESEARCH 2 IV. PROVISIONAL CHAPTER STRUCTURE: 6 V. METHODOLOGY 6

3. BIBLIOGRAPHY (LITERATURE REFERRED ABOVE AND OTHER RELEVANT SOURCES) 7

1. ABSTRACT This dissertation develops a temporal account of the self. It deals with the question of personal identity over time: How do we explain or test whether one is the same person at two points in time? In seeking to answer this question, current scholarship assumes a sequential view of time. I argue, however, that this account of temporality is not suited to understanding human existence in the world. I contend that an explanation of meaning in day-to-day life and of how one becomes who one is requires a particular understanding of time, wherein time is not reduced to a sequence of moments and wherein the Past, Present and Future co-obtain rather than follow one another. I defend this account of time from the claim that it amounts to temporal idealism and distinguish it from what is called the A-theory and the B-theory in order to show how this conceptualisation differs from the contemporary literature. On the basis of this, I aim to show that the problem of personal identity dissolves. This is because if we do not conceive of time essentially as a sequence of moments we cannot accurately compare persons and selves at different moments in time. Keywords: Personal Identity over Time; Metaphysics of The Self; Existential Mine-ness; Metaphysics of Time; Meaning; Martin Heidegger.

2. DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH

i. QUESTION AND HYPOTHESIS

My dissertation offers an alternative approach to the question of personal identity over time: What is sufficient and necessary for one to be identical with oneself at different moments in time? It does so by examining the underlying assumptions and the validity of this question, through a temporal approach. I aim to answer two questions: (a) How should we conceptualise time in a way that enables us to put forward an account of the self (that which answers the question of who one is) and of how entities and action gain significance in day-to-day life? (b) Does the question of personal identity as outlined above make sense under the account of time formulated in response to question (a)? My hypothesis is that only an account of time wherein time is conceived in a more originary way than pure sequentiality explains the phenomena of the self and of how meaning obtains. The question of personal identity relies on an account of time that is essentially sequential because it compares the person at different moments in time. I therefore argue that a careful examination of the metaphysics of time dissolves the problem of personal identity over time.

ii. PERSONAL IDENTITY LITERATURE REVIEW

The question of personal identity over time has been conceptualised as what is sufficient and necessary for one to be identical with oneself at different moments in time. This conceives of time in a sequential manner (i.e. as a series of moments that follow one another). The stance that my dissertation takes on this issue is that the attempts made by the current scholarship to answer this question are unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, a reductionist approach to personal identity, while more advantageous, is also untenable. Thus, I aim to offer an alternative approach to this question that exposes its assumptions and ultimately dissolves it. One way personal identity has been construed is in an essentialist manner. Following Leibniz, this identifies the person with a constant that remains unchanged through the passing of time (a substance). This approach has resurfaced in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, in which writers like Broody (1980) and Swinburne (1984) explain personal identity with reference to essential proprieties which form an individual’s core and which are independent of any phenomenon that is subject to change. As such, the relation of identity stands between the person at t1 (the way one is at a particular moment in time) and the essential person at t0.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 2

The alternative is a criteriological approach (a term coined by Ricœur 1992) that seeks to find a criterion that is necessary and sufficient in order to constitute personal identity. Such writers fall into two categories: some identify this criterion with bodily continuity and survival, while others adopt a psychological criterion. The former argue that our survival is dependent on the survival of our bodies. Some writers (e.g. Williams 1973; Wiggins 1980) claim that being a person is dependent on the soma. Others (e.g. Snowdon), however, argue that being an animal does not explain being a person and that personhood can be conceived of as a passing quality. The psychological criterion follows in the tradition of Locke (2008) who argued that identity depends on memory. Contemporary writers tend to extend the criterion to cover any psychological identity construed more broadly as well as connectedness/continuity (e.g. Shoemaker 1984; Perry 1972; and Parfit 1984, although the crux of Parfit’s argument is different, as I discuss below). However, because some contemporary writers have conceived of psychologies in terms of brains, this criterion seems not to be clearly distinguished from the criterion of bodily continuity. Kopf (2001) is one of the only scholars to revisit these debates by raising the question of temporality: (a) asking what the underlining assumptions about time in the debates on personal identity are and questioning their appropriateness; (b) asking what a satisfactory temporal framework for discussing this issue would be. He provides an analysis of the Future and the Past where these are not simply grasped as a series of moments that have either passed or have not yet passed, but as phenomena within a broader existential context. However, his analysis of the Present is inadequate, in that he reduces it to the current moment, whose characteristics are limited to being neither already-passed nor not-yet. In doing so, he does not discuss temporality as a unified phenomenon and thus fails to question the nature of the Past and Future that enable the Present to obtain as stretched between an earlier and a later. This failure leads him to conclude wrongly, I argue, that time is a series of nows that are arranged in a non-linear fashion reflecting the past and the future, and to reduce the self to a series of non-linear instances of awareness. This conclusion also reflects Buddhist soteriological concerns, which appear to inform his work.

iii. OUTLINE OF PROPOSED RESEARCH

REVISITING PERSONAL IDENTITY My dissertation will begin by outlining my research stance with regard to the debates on personal identity, namely that the contemporary discussions on personal identity over time fail to explain identity and that there is no such essence or quality that persists through time in such a way that it can function as the criterion for identity. There are multiple arguments for this claim. Against the theories of identity as essence/substance I argue that the concepts of substance or essential proprieties are obscure and unintelligible: What does this essence consist of and why would this concept be appropriate to describe persons? Moreover, even if this conceptual difficulty could be overcome, conceiving of personal identity this way is circular (e.g. Kopf 2001): the concept of substance appears to be almost identical with that of personal identity, so much so that the essentialist theories of personal identity appear to explain personal identity in terms of itself (for a comprehensive critique, see Madell 1985). The criteriological scholarship on personal identity relies on a kind of Cartesian mind and body distinction, which is doubtful. Moreover, I argue that it does not move far enough from the essentialist theory of personal identity and, instead, tries to identify this essential substance either with the body or with the mind/psychology/memory. The theory of bodily continuity faces the sorites problem: How much could one tamper with a body while it to continued to be the same? Progress in medicine (e.g. body transplants) seems to complicate this problem further, making it more pressing. It can also be argued that bodily continuity, in order to function as a criterion, requires possession of the body, which would imply psychological identity – there needs to be a self that the body belongs to, so the body is not a sufficient criterion. As far as the criterion of memory is concerned, as Butler (1860) argued, self-consciousness (which is what Locke envisaged constituting the person) cannot be explained in terms of memory. This is because one needs to continue to be self-conscious in order to know that one’s memories belong to him/her, so the argument is circular. In addition, identity is a transitive relation, whereas remembering is not. Finally, identity is a one-to-one relationship, whereas memories and psychology relations are not. By introducing the concept of quasi-remembering (i.e. having memories without necessarily having had the experiences remembered), Parfit (1984) and Shoemaker (1984) circumvent these problems to a certain extent. Moreover, Parfit’s thesis, which seems to be able to successfully dispose of the Butler paradox, is to reject personal identity. This thesis has three stages:

1. Personal identity does not matter in explaining continuity in one’s life. 2. What matters is relation R (psychological connectedness and/or continuity which can have any cause, Parfit 1984;

217); 3. Personal identity is a further fact from relation R and questions of personal identity are sometimes

undeterminable. Persons are like nations: they exist but they are not independent from their nationals (which in this case he reduces to brains, bodies and thought events).

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 3

In rejecting the Cartesian cogito he declares himself a reductionist. This means he “denies […] that the subject of experiences is a separately existing entity, distinct from a brain and body, and a series of physical and mental events” (ibid: 223). While I accept that Parfit’s claims resolve many of the difficulties noted above about personal identity, reductionism brings with it new problems which make this theory untenable. (a) As Ricœur (1992: 130-9) points out, the subjects of his thought experiments are described in such a way that makes them sound like disembodied minds. (b) Much of his analysis is based on thought experiments that are indeed conceivable but currently impossible (e.g. teletransporters that project a replica of you on Mars and destroy you). I am sceptical that these thought experiments help to understand issues that are related to the current structure of human existence. If teletransporters existed, and, more importantly, if we were the sort of beings that could be teletransported as Parfit describes, we would be a very different sort of being than we currently are, whose continuity differs from ours. Instead, I claim that these cases are largely undeterminable and tend to justify philosophical prejudice rather than truly test hypotheses. (c) His description of his thought experiments is manipulated to make no room for anything like existential mine-ness (ibid). Equally, his analysis of continuity is essentially based on a third-person ontology (Kopf 2001). (d) Most importantly, relation R is so vague that it does not explain phenomena like existential continuity, and it seems to boil down to causality. This would reify the self in an uncanny way. It also fails to explain how meaning and significance are generated. By this I mean how other entities and actions are intelligible and how, consequently, an existential self-understanding, which generates a sense of purpose and unity, is possible. THE SELF I argue that a starting point or a basis that allows these problems to be solved would be the concept of the self as an explanatory device. This is not the Cartesian cogito that Parfit rejects (i.e. not “a separately existing entity”). Following a tradition in post-Kantian philosophy that identifies the self with an activity or a project, I understand the concept of the self to be nothing more than the answer to the question of who one is. I shall argue that its nature is essentially temporal rather than substantial. Here I am not merely referring to the perception of temporality, but to the phenomena of time as such and of existing in time. In order to develop this account of the self while avoiding the Cartesian cogito, I will take stock of Heidegger’s conception that one has a particular familiarity with the structure of meaning that one finds oneself in (termed “being-in”). In a nutshell, Heidegger’s discussion of the being of equipment shows that useful things refer to one another in a way that makes up a public structure of significance (e.g. the hammer refers to nails, to other tools in the carpenter’s workspace and to the goal of building a shelf), a referential nexus. This structure of meaning can consequently be explained in terms of the nature of tools, their function, the products of their use, the environment in which tasks are pursued, and the final purpose of an activity (e.g. completing a bookshelf – termed by Heidegger the “for-the-sake-of-which”). One’s essence – or, as Heidegger would say, Dasein’s1 essence – lies in one’s existence. This means that one’s existential self-understanding is the result of the existential possibilities one projects into. These are activities that one is able to perform that are not just physically and logically possible but that are also viable given the referential nexus and the situation one finds oneself in. Projecting into possibilities means exercising such an activity that creates identities (e.g. being a carpenter). This is not synonymous to rationally planning one’s future. Possibilities are also not goals that become actualised in end results (e.g. building a bookshelf) but continue to provide a self-understanding only as long as practiced (Heidegger 2010: 144). By self-understanding I do not mean something propositional, similar to one putting the title of “architect” on one’s business card; what I mean is an understanding of oneself that shapes the way Dasein relates to its existence: it arranges one’s priorities, how one relates to others, the tools used, etc. For example, one can project into the possibility of being an architect. This generates goals such as getting a job at an architect’s practice, but it does not get actualised and does not disappear once one becomes a practicing architect. One is never “safely” an architect so that one can stop practicing architecture and continue to be an architect. Instead, in order for one to self-understand as an architect one needs to continue engaging in the practices involved in this possibility. The projecting into possibilities as sources of identity become unified in one’s existential for-the-sake-which, the stance that one ends up adopting with regard to the question of what it means to be the sort of entity that one is. However, one is thrown into one’s existence: on the one hand, one’s possibilities are drawn from the world so one can only exercise those activities that are meaningful in the referential nexus that one is in (ibid: 144, 145). The public nature of possibilities relies on an intersubjective condition that Heidegger terms “das Man”. However, in contrast with Husserl or Sartre, Heidegger’s conception of being with others is not a phenomenon that takes place between subjects but one that precedes subjecthood – being Dasein and having a self only occurs by virtue of being in a shared world of significance (Dallmayr 1980). This is somewhat similar to the current scholarship on intersubjectivity (e.g. Ratcliffe 2013a) but it entails that the pre-egological conception of being-with is a different yet related phenomenon to encountering others as particular entities in day-to-day life. On the other hand, Dasein is capable of a mood and it always finds itself in one – it is attuned. Dasein’s mood reveals its possibilities significantly (Heidegger 2010: 148). Contra Blattner (1999, 1994), I argue that the way 1 Dasein is Heidegger’s term describing sort of being that each of us is; it denotes something close to the phrase human being, while steering clear of the baggage that the concept of human tends to bring as well as highlighting existential mine-ness.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 4

in which existential possibilities are revealed to Dasein is the result of two equiprimordial factors: the public nexus of significance and Dasein’s affective attunement (and not only the result of attunement). The third component that makes up Dasein’s structure of existence is being-amidst equipment and other entities that one deals with in an absorbed manner (termed “fallenness”). This is Heidegger’s alternative to a theory of self-consciousness and highlights one’s ability to encounter the world understandingly. On the basis of this account of existence I want to develop and further refine an account of the self as hermeneutic activity: through the possibilities and norms emerging from the public nexus of meaning, one is able to reinterpret them in a way that one becomes individualised. With this I aim to replace Heidegger’s differentiation between authenticity and inauthenticity, which is problematic, lacks conceptual clarity and stands in a contentious relationship with individuation and individualisation. TIME The constitutive horizons of my account of the self: always finding oneself in a pre-existent structure of meaning; obtaining a self-understanding by practicing possibilities that are meaningfully already available to one; and doing this while being among others and equipment that one deals with understandingly, commit us to a theory of time that includes at least two conceptualisations of time. One is world-time: the common understanding of time in which one experiences day-to-day dealing within the world. On this account, time is understood to be essentially a sequence. However, further analysis shows that world-time is made up of a series of nows that have the following characteristics: datability (the dating of a now is explained in terms of one’s being among intraworldly beings, use of equipment, etc., e.g. the moment when the fork fell was during dinner), stretchedness (a now is stretched between an earlier and a later, e.g. dinner took place after work and before going to bed), significance (a now is an appropriate time for an event, as a result of projecting into a possibility, seven o’clock is the appropriate time to have dinner), and publicness (it is shared as a result of the condition of pre-egological intersubjectivity) (Heidegger 2010: §79; Blattner 1999). The other conceptualisation is that of originary temporality, which incorporates the three horizons out of which the self develops, as described above. I argue that originary temporality is the unified phenomenon of temporality, whereas world-time is a derivative and deficient explanation. In a nutshell, it is derivative because its characteristics listed above can only be explained in terms of originary temporality. It is deficient because sequentiality alone (that of mathematics, or that of domino pieces producing a chain reaction) cannot alone explain the sequentiality that is implied by this account of time: before conceptualising it in terms of a sequence of hours, minutes or nano-seconds, I argue that world-time is stretched in a way that can later be divided into durations (e.g. one minute) that follow one another. The crux of my argument is that this stretchedness is explained by originary temporality: essentially in terms of the originary Past and Future (i.e. not the moment yet to come or the moment that has just passed), and in virtue of temporality being a unified phenomenon. Self-understanding by projecting into possibilities is futural because this projecting (and, consequently, taking a stand on what it means to exist, one’s existential for-the-sake-of-which) is like a goal that is never actualised – it is always something that needs to be practiced, that lies ahead. This makes up the Future as ecstasy2. Dasein is always thrown: it is always already in a particular mood and its possibilities are drawn out of a pre-existing referential whole. These features make up the Past qua ecstasy: they are always already there but it does not mean that they are no-longer. Finally, the ecstasy of the Present is constituted by always being amidst and in absorbed dealing with the world, able to reckon with time. Originary temporality is not sequential, the ecstasies are not made up of moments or nows and they co-obtain forming a whole: the Future does not pass into the Present and into the Past; the Past is not characterised by the fact that it is bygone, instead it is the source of activities and roles, which one practices in order to self understand as described above. They are equi-primordial and constitute that on the basis of which entities show up significantly for Dasein, unity, continuity, purposefulness in one’s life are explained, and the question of who one is receives an answer. They explain precisely what I noted above that Parfit’s reductionism fails to do. Existential unity and continuity are explained by the originary Future, namely, projecting into pre-existent possibilities. For example, one goes to work in a library on a Monday morning because one is projecting into the possibility of being a scholar which articulates one’s practical engagements in the world, and not because one is psychologically continuous to a previous time when one did scholarly things (i.e. remembers doing scholarly thing previously) or because of causality in the mechanistic sense.3 Further, one engages with books, writes using computers and then goes to lecture theatres to teach because this is what this role demands of one. Books show up as books and not as bundles of cellulose, computers show up as writing instruments and not as multi-colour light generators, and others show up as students and not as adversaries in a struggle for survival because one finds oneself in a public network of significance that is foregoing (always-already), the originary Past. 4

2 Ecstasy is Heidegger’s neologism to refer to the Future, Present and Past as the constitutive factors of this non-sequential temporality, highlighting the directionality of one’s being outside of oneself, being always already in the world. 3 Indeed, psychological continuity (i.e. memory) with acting like a scholar previously would not be sufficient for one to act like a scholar now, if one does not currently self-understand through this possibility, so relation R cannot explain purposefulness and existential continuity. 4 Of course, possibilities are not limited to professional occupations and this concept can and has been applied to explaining other social roles, gender, sexuality, etc.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 5

This account of the self and temporality, while sharing certain characteristics with what has been termed in the contemporary literature the A-theory and the B-theory of time (following McTaggart 1908), essentially differs from both. It resembles the A-theory because it is tensed but it differs in that the Future (or any of its contents) does not become Present and the Present does not become Past. It is similar to the B-theory in that the Future, Present and Past are equally “real” but it differs in that it is tensed. However, the main difference from both theories is that it is not sequential. There are two convincing reasons why these horizons of the self not only are temporal but also constitute the essence of temporality. Firstly, each of these horizons is shot through with temporal elements, they are each tensed, as shown above. Secondly, as stated above, originary temporality and its constitutive horizons stand in an explanatory relation with world-time: datability, stretchedness, significance and publicness depend explanatorily on the nature of originary temporality. DEFENDING ORIGINARY TEMPORALITY The most prominent recent scholar to focus on Heidegger’s theory of temporality is William Blattner. While my account of the self and of time dialogues with his reading of Heidegger, I reject his claim that the dependency outlined above amounts to temporal idealism. Blattner (1999) claims that the teleological character of the future of originary temporality does not form a neat chain and thus fails to explain why one engages in otherwise disconnected actions taking place in world-time. He accepts that, e.g., if Jones understands herself as an educator, she would prepare lecture slides, turn up to the lecture theatre, give a presentation, take questions, etc., and do everything in this order because one of the derivative characteristics of world-time is appropriateness. However, he asks why Jones would decide to, say, go to the cinema before doing all this, an action that is unrelated to her identity as an educator. I claim that this objection stands on a misunderstanding of Heidegger’s hypothesis. It is correct that the existential for-the-sake-of-which is teleological and that it is connected with the nexus of significance. However, the existential for-the-sake-of-which is not a singular possibility that one identifies with. It brings together a number of specific possibilities that together make up one’s overall identity. In other words, projecting into a possibility like that of an educator is not a final motivation but has its own teleology. It is motivated by the fact that we are the sort of entities who in our being take a stand on what it means to be, as such. The overall identity, the who that one is, is this stand (Heidegger 2010: 84). To be less abstract, in Blattner’s example, Jones, who is taken to self-understand as an educator, self-understands in a number of other ways, be that as a movie-goer, a cyclist, etc., and this is her stand on being, her existential for-the-sake-of-which. The existential for-the-sake-of-which (and the ecstasy of the Future) is unified by definition and is not just one or a number of possibilities randomly co-existing. This fact explains why one engages in what, prima facie, looks like unconnected actions, why Jones goes to the movies before she lectures. (A somewhat similar argument is put forward by Zuckerman (2016), but, while he accepts that originary temporality is modally indifferent, i.e. does not depend on Heidegger’s differentiation between authenticity and inauthenticity, he contradicts himself by claiming that the unified nature of the originary Future is what authenticity consists of, implying that having a Future is a form of authenticity or is something one should strive for; for a convincing critique of this thesis whereby originary temporality is identified with authenticity, see Blattner 1999: 98-102.) Blattner has another argument against this account of time. He complains that sequentiality, the fact that the nows of world-time (our day-to-day perception and understanding of time) follow one another, cannot be explained by originary temporality. While his claim relies in part on the point I already addressed in the preceding paragraph, I argue that the main problem with this criticism is that it translates what Heidegger calls “the vulgar understanding of time” into a mode of time: a linear sequence of qualitatively empty nows. It is one thing for Heidegger to claim that this, an understanding of time – the vulgar and incorrect one – is derived from world-time, and another for Blattner to assign to Heidegger the claim that the derivation is between modes of time, i.e. phenomena that obtain. Instead, the reading of Heidegger that I prefer and incorporate in my account of temporality is that pure sequentiality (i.e. the “vulgar understanding of time”) does not qualify as time. This claim reads similarly to that of the contemporary body of literature that highlights the difficulties of the concept of empty time (e.g. Shoemaker 1969, Coope 2001). As stated above, even from the standpoint of world-time (the derivative and deficient understanding), time is first stretched and then sequential (we can divide it into years or nanoseconds a posteriori) and this characteristic differs essentially from pure sequentiality (e.g. that of domino pieces falling on one another and consequently forming a sequence). As such, I argue that the sequentiality that is akin to word-time (but not to the overall phenomenon of time understood accordingly) can be derived from originary temporality, even if the wrong kind of pure sequentiality of empty time, “the vulgar understanding of time”, could not, as Blattner argues. Dealing with Blattner’s critique does not serve to bring sequentiality into originary temporality. However, since world-time is a sequential understanding of time, I have been forced to show how sequentiality can be derived from originary temporality, even though it is not a characteristic of this phenomenon as such, in order to justify the claim that world-time is a derivative understanding. Succeeding in this strengthens my argument that non-sequential orignary temporality comprehends the phenomenon of time in its wholeness, is the appropriate account of time for discussing the sort of beings that have a self (i.e. humans), and explains the derivative and deficient mode of world-time.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 6

CONCLUSION Having gained insight into the conceptualisation of time that does justice to the concept of the self, I return to the question of personal identity and try to show that under this account of time the problem of personal identity over time dissolves. This is because, under this understanding, time is not sequential, thus it does not allow a comparison of the person at two different moments, as one is committed to by formulating this question. While I am not trying to substitute the problem of personal identity with the problem of self identity, I argue that the problem of personal identity can be dissolved by showing that it cannot be asked while preserving a form of temporality which is akin to self, a need that became apparent as a result of examining the various attempts to answer the question of personal identity as such. I seek to show that, at the heart of the problem of personal identity over time, there is a conceptual misunderstanding of time, in which time is reduced to sequentiality, and, by extension, a misunderstanding of what is meant to be human in the world, wherein the latter is understood as objective presence, or “present-at-hand”, to quote Heidegger. This criticism does not only extend to the attempts to answer the question of personal identity positively – it leads me to abandon Parfit’s reductionism as well. This is not only because of its inadequacies (as outlined above) but because in his attempt to replace personal identity with relation R he equally relies on an understanding of time as sequentiality. Relation R is still between one at t1 and one at t2 and I have shown that this temporal framework and the account of temporality it relies on are inaccurate for speaking about the sort of entities each of us is. If this question cannot be asked, I argue that when philosophers ask about personal identity over time and employ thought experiments they very often tend to ask how we recognise one another in day-to-day situations. This is a distinct question from that of identity and I argue that it relies on different criteria depending on the situation (e.g. the way I recognise someone who has undergone a full body transplant will differ from the way I recognise someone who suffers from amnesia or dementia). By arguing that the nature of the self is temporal and that the problem of personal identity dissolves if temporality is conceptualised appropriately, my research will make an important contribution to the metaphysics of time as well as offer a radically new approach to the problem of personal identity over time, one of the central issues of the metaphysics of the self. The relevance of the latter crosses boundaries into other areas of philosophy and beyond, as questions of personhood have crept up in ethical and legal dilemmas.

iv. PROVISIONAL CHAPTER STRUCTURE: 1. A discussion of the contemporary theories of personal identity over time highlighting their inherent problems and commitment to sequential temporality 2. Reductionism: (a) the merits of its critique of the current theories of personal identity; (b) inability to explain significance, relation R and to answer the question who one is. 3. The self as interpretation: public world and individuated self. 4. Temporality of the self: originary non-sequential time. 5. Heidegger and Blattner: reconstructing and defending originary temporality. 6. Revising the debates on personal identity from the standpoint of original temporality. 7. Conclusion

v. METHODOLOGY While the literature around personal identity abounds with thought experiments, I am highly sceptical of them for the reasons outlined above. Thus, I aim to avoid these (I have already outlined some of the reasons above). Throughout, I adopt a method that is circular. I start with personal identity: this pushes me to recognise and discuss the merits of Parfit’s reductionism. The failure of this stance to account for existential continuity, existential mine-ness, significance and what Parfit calls relation R (in other words, the question of who one is) makes me consider the self as a non-substantial entity – a project. This enables me to discuss temporality, and, once I settle on an account of time, I use this insight to come back to the question of personal identity over time, closing the circle by showing that this question dissolves if an appropriate understanding of time is adopted. My dissertation is grounded in analytic philosophy in that it deals with a question that has emerged within this tradition. It engages with the debates on this topic, and uses this to show the need for the concept of the self in order to explain essential existential categories. It also uses the insight gained from the discussion of the self and of time to return to the question of personal identity (as phrased in analytic philosophy). In addition to this, I also engage with the critique of reductionism that comes from continental thought (e.g. Paul Ricœur). Moreover, I find fertile ground for developing a conceptual framework of filling in the gaps that reductionism is unable to answer through the concept of the self and, eventually, temporality, which emerge out of continental thought. While I engage with the work of Heidegger here, my intentions are not exegetical and instead I develop an original account of the self and of temporality.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 7

Assuming that both the analytic and continental traditions deal with facets of the same phenomenon – being an individual in the world – I bridge them. Indeed, my initial discussion of personal identity solely within the framework of analytic philosophy highlights the limits (viz. the inadequacies of reductionism) of looking at this problem exclusively within this tradition. Overall, in dialoguing with both analytic and continental philosophy I aim to cast doubt over the boundaries between them and to develop my own style of argumentation, characterised by the clarity and rigour of the analytic tradition and engaging with the richness of hermeneutics and phenomenology in dealing with the questions that are relevant to my research.

3. BIBLIOGRAPHY (LITERATURE REFERRED ABOVE AND OTHER RELEVANT SOURCES) Altshuler, Roman. 2015. “Teleology, Narrative, and Death” In Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self, edited by John

Lippitt and Patrick Stokes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Arntzenius, Franz. 2014. Space, Time, and Stuff. Oxford: Oxford UP. Barrett, William. 1968. “The Flow of Time.” In The Philosophy of Time: A Collection of Essays,. London: Macmillan. Blattner, William D. 1999. Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism. Modern European Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ———. 1994. “The Concept of Death in Being and Time.” Man and World 27 (1): 49–70. ———. 1996. “Existence and Self-Understanding in Being and Time.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1):

97-110. Braver, Lee. 2015. Division III of Heidegger’s Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being. London: The MIT Press. Brody, Baruch A. 1980. Identity and Essence. Princeton: Princeton UP. Butler, Joseph. 1860. Analogy of Religion. Edited by George Richard Crooks. New York: Harper & Brothers. Caputo, John. 1987. Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project. Bloomington: Indiana

UP. ———. 1973. “Time and Being in Heidegger.” The Modern Schoolman 50 (4): 325–49. Carman, Taylor. 2000. “Must We Be Inauthentic?” In Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus: Heidegger, Authenticity, and

Modernity, edited by M A Wrathall and J Malpas, 13–28. Essays in Honor of Herbert L. Dreyfus: Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity. London: MIT Press.

———. 1994. “On Being Social: A Reply to Olafson.” Inquiry 37 (2): 203–23. ———. 2003. Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in Being and Time. Cambridge: Cambridge

UP. Cercel, Gabriel. 2010. Cartea Experientei: Heidegger Si Hermeneutica Vieții. Bucharest: Humanitas. ———. 2001. “Fenomenologia Intre Bewußtsein Și Dasein.” Studia Phænomenologica 1 (3): 379–90. Ciocan, Cristian. 2007. Moribundus Sum. Heidegger Și Problema Morții. Edited by Humanitas. Bucharest. Coope, Ursula. 2012. “Why Does Aristotle Think That Ethical Virtue Is Required for Practical Wisdom?” Phronesis 57 (2):

142–63. Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2012. “Heidegger’s Concept of Temporality: Reflections of a Recent Criticism.” Review of Metaphysics

49 (1): 95–115. Dainton, Barry. 2008. The Phenomenal Self. Oxford: Oxford UP. Dallmayr, Fred R. 1980. “Heidegger on Intersubjectivity.” Human Studies 3 (1): 221–46. Dastur, Francoise. 1996. “The Ekstatico-Horizonal Constitution of Temporality.” In Critical Heidegger, edited by Christopher

E Macann, 158–70. London: Routledge. ———. 2007. La Mort. Essai Sur La Finitude. Paris: PUF. ———. 2011. Heidegger et La Question Du Temps. Paris: PUF. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1991. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge, Mass:

Cambridge, Mass. ———. 1995. “Interpreting Heidegger on Das Man.” Inquiry 38 (4): 423–30. ———. 2004. “What Could Be More Intelligible Than Everyday Intelligibility? Reinterpreting Division I of Being and Time

in the Light of Division II.” Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 24 (3): 265–74. Earman, John. 1992. World Enough and Space-Time: Absolute Vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time. Bradford Books.

London: MIT Press. Fedier, François. 2010. Le Temps et Le Monde. Paris: Pocket. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian. 2009. Obisnuit Si Neobisnuit in Viata de Zi Cu Zi: Fenomenologia Situatiei Si Critica Conceptului de

Valoare La Martin Heidegger,. Bucharest: Humanitas. Ferencz-Flatz, Christian, and Paul Marinescu. 2012. Timp, Memorie Și Tradiție. Studii de Fenomenologia Istoriei. Bucharest:

ZETA Books. Figal, Günter. 2000. Martin Heidegger. Phänomenologie Der Freiheit. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum. ———. 2006. Gegenständlichkeit. Das Hermeneutische Und Die Philosophie. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ———. 2006. “Leben – Dasein – Lebendigkeit.” In Mensch – Leben – Technik. Aktuelle Beiträge Zur Phänomenologischen

Anthropologie, edited by Julia Jonas and Karl-Heinz Lembeck, 67–76. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Fisher, Tony. 2010. “Heidegger’s Generative Thesis.” European Journal of Philosophy 18 (3): 363–84.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 8

Fleischer, Margot. 1991. Die Zeitanalysen in Heideggers "Sein Und Zeit. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. Fuchs, Thomas. 2005. “Implicit and Explicit Temporality.” Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 12 (3): 195–98. ———. 2013. “Temporality and Psychopathology.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (1): 75–104. Greisch, Jean. 1994. Ontologie et Temporalité: Esquisse D’une Interprétation Intégrale de Sein Und Zeit. Paris: PUF. Guignon, Charles B. 1983. Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett. Haar, Michel. 1990. Heidegger et L’essence de L’homme. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon. ———. 1996. “Le Moment, L’instant, et Le Temps-Du-Monde.” In Heidegger 1919-1929: De L’herméneutique de La

Facticité À La Métaphysique Du Dasein, edited by Jean-François Courtine. Paris: J. Vrin. Haugeland, John. 2013. Dasein Disclosed: John Haugeland’s Heidegger. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP. ———. 1982. “Heidegger on Being a Person.” Noûs 16 (1): 15. ———. 1998. Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP. ———. 2000. “Truth and Finitude: Heidegger’s Transcendental Existentialism.” In Heidegger, Authenticity and Modernity:

Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1, edited by J. Wrathall, M. and Malpas. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Heidegger, Martin. 2002. On Time and Being. Edited by Joan Stanbaugh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1982. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Edited by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana UP. ———. 2010. Logic: The Question of Truth. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP. ———. 2012. Contributions to Philosophy (of The Event). Edited by Richard Rojcewicz et al. Bloomington: Indiana UP. ———. 2010. Being and Time. Edited by Joan Stambaugh. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. ———. 1992. The Concept of Time. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1993. “Letter on Humanism.” In Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell. London: Routledge. ———. 1985. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Heine, Steven. 1985. Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen. Albany, NY: State University

of New York. Heinz, Marion. 1986. “The Concept of Time in Heidegger’s Early Works.” In A Companion to Martin Heidegger’s Being and

Time, edited by Joseph J Kockelmans, Theodore J Kisiel, et al. 183–207. Washington, D.C.: UP of America. Henschen, Tobias. 2010. Gebrauch Oder Herstellung? Heidegger Über Eigentlichkeit, Wahrheit Und Phänomenologische

Methode. Paderborn: Mentis. Herrmann, Friedrich-Wilhelm von. 1974. Subjekt Und Dasein. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. ———. 1991. Heideggers “Grundprobleme Der Phänomenologie”: Zur “Zweiten Halfte” von “Sein Und Zeit”. Frankfurt

am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Hoffman, Piotr. 2005. “Dasein and ‘Its’ Time.” In A Companion to Heidegger, edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A.

Wrathall, 325–34. Oxford. ———. 1986. Doubt, Time, Violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Kisiel, Theodore. 1995. The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kopf, Gereon. 2001. Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self. Richmond: Curzon. Krell, David Farrell. 1986. Intimations of Mortality: Time, Truth, and Finitude in Heidegger’s Thinking of Being. University

Park, PA: Penn State UP. Langan, Thomas. 1959. The Meaning of Heidegger. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Larthomas, Jean-Paul. 1989. “La Question de La Répétition Dans Être et Temps.” In Être et Temps de Martin Heidegger,

edited by Jean-Pierre Cometti and Dominique Janicaud. Marseille: Sud. Latour, Bruno. 2004. “How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies.” Body & Society 10 (2–

3): 205–29. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2012. Discourse on Metaphysics and The Monadology. Edited by G R Montgomery and A R

Chandler. Dover Philosophical Classics. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Locke, John. 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter Harold Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press Lucas, John. 1976. A Treatise on Time and Space. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Luchte, James. 2008. Heidegger’s Early Philosophy: The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality. London: Continuum. Madell, Geoffrey. 1981. The Identity Of The Self. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Makkreel, Rudolf A. 1988. “The Overcoming of Linear Time in Kant, Dilthey and Heidegger.” In Dilthey and

Phenomenology, edited by Rudolf A Makkreel and John Scanlon. Washington, D.C.: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

Marx, Werner. 1971. Heidegger And The Tradition. Edited by Theodore Kisiel, et al. Evanston: Northwestern UP. McMullin, Irene. 2009. “Sharing The ‘Now’: Heidegger and The Temporal Co-Constitution of World.” Continental

Philosophy Review 42 (2): 201–20. McTaggart, J. Ellis. 1908. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind XVII (4): 457–74. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1989. “La Décision d’Existence.” In Être et Temps de Martin Heidegger, edited by Jean-Pierre Cometti and

Dominique Janicaud. Marseille: Sud. Newton-Smith, W. H. 1984. The Structure of Time. The Philosophical Quarterly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Okrent, Mark. 1988. Heidegger’s Pragmatism: Understanding, Being, and The Critique of Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell UP

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 9

Olafson, Frederick A. 1987. Heidegger and The Philosophy Of Mind. New Haven: Yale UP ———. 1994. “Heidegger À La Wittgenstein or ‘Coping’ with Professor Dreyfus.” Inquiry 37 (1): 45–64. Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon. ———. 2011. On What Matters (Vol 1 and 2). Oxford: Oxford UP. Perry, John. 1972. “Can the Self Divide?” The Journal of Philosophy 69 (16): 463. Pöggeler, Otto. 1982. “Philosophy, Temporal Interpretation and Hermeneutic.” In Phenomenology: Dialogues and Bridges,

edited by Bruce W Wilshire and Ronald Bruzina. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1990. Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers. Pfullingen: Neske. Polt, Richard. 2005. Heidegger’s Being and Time: Critical Essays. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ratcliffe, Matthew. 2013a. “The Structure of Interpersonal Experience.” In The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity,

edited by Rasmus Thybo Jensen and Dermot Moran. Cham: Springer. ———. 2013b. “Why Mood Matters.” In The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time, edited by Mark A.

Wrathall, 157–76. New York: Cambridge UP. Rentsch, Thomas. 1989. Martin Heidegger – Das Sein Und Der Tod. München: Piper. Ricœur, Paul. 1985-8. Time and Narrative (Vol.1-3). Edited by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. ———. 1992. Oneself as Another. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Riquier, Camille. 2009. “Heidegger, Lecteur de Bergson : La Durée Pure Comme Esquisse de La Temporalité Ekstatique.” In

Heidegger En Dialogue, edited by Servanne Jollivet and Claude Romano. Paris: J. Vrin. Rivelaygue, Jacques. 1989. “Le Problème de l’Histoire Dans Être et Temps de Martin Heidegger.” In Etre et Temps de Martin

Heidegger, edited by Jean-Pierre Cometti and Dominique Janicaud. Marseille: Sud. Romano, Claude. 1999. L’événement et Le Temps. Paris: PUF. Rousse, B. Scot. 2014. “Heidegger, Sociality, and Human Agency.” European Journal of Philosophy, ———. 2016. “Care, Death, and Time in Heidegger and Frankfurt.” In Time and the Philosophy of Action, edited by Roman

Altshuler and Michael Sigrist. New York and London: Routledge. Schmitt, Richard. 2000. Martin Heidegger on Being Human: An Introduction to Sein Und Zeit. Lincoln: iUniverse. Schürmann, Reiner. 2003. Broken Hegemonies. Broken Hegemonies. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP. Schürmann, Reiner, and Simon Critchley. 2008. On Heidegger’s Being and Time. Abingdon: Routledge. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1962. “Time and the World Order.” In Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time, edited by Herbert Feigl, 527–

616. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sherover, Charles M. 1971. Heidegger, Kant & Time. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana UP. Shoemaker, Sydney. 1984. “Personal Identity: A Materialist’s Account”. In Personal Identity, edited by Sydney Shoemaker

and Richard Swinburne. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 1969. “Time Without Change.” The Journal of Philosophy 66 (12): 363. Snowdon, Paul F. 2014. Persons, Animals, Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford UP. ———. 2004. “Persons, Animals, and Ourselves.” In Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology, edited by Tim Crane and Katalin

Farkas, 578–97. Oxford: Oxford UP. Starr, David E. 1975. Entity and Existence: An Ontological Investigation of Aristotle and Heidegger. New York: Franklin. Swinburne, Richard. 1984. “Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory.” In Personal Identity, edited by Sydney Shoemaker and

Richard Swinburne. Oxford: Blackwell. Taylor, Charles. 1976. “Responsibility for Self.” In The Identities of Persons, edited by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, 281–99.

Berkeley: University of California Press ———. 1992. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 2008. “People and Their Bodies.” In Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, edited by Theodore

Sider, John Hawthorne, and Dean W Zimmerman, 155–76. Oxford: Blackwell. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1967. Der Wahrheitsbegriff Bei Husserl Und Heidegger. Berlin: de Gruyter. ———. 2000. “Zeit Und Sein in Heideggers Sein Und Zeit.” SATS – Nordic Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 185–98. Weatherston, Martin. 2002. Heidegger’s Interpretation of Kant : Categories, Imagination and Temporality. Basingstoke:

Palgrave Macmillan. White, Carol J. 2005. Time and Death: Heidegger’s Analysis of Finitude. Edited by Mark Ralkowski. Aldershot: Ashgate. Whitrow, G J. 1980. The Natural Philosophy of Time. Oxford UP. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wiggins, David. 2001. Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ———. 1980. Sameness and Substance. Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, Bernard. 1973. Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers, 1956-1972. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Williams, S. G. 1986. “On the Logical Possibility of Time without Change.” Analysis 46 (3): 122. Zahavi, Dan. 2012. “The Complex Self: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives.” In Phenomenology, Cognition, and

Neuroscience, edited by J. McCurry and A. Pryor, 40–58. Pittsburgh: The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center. ———. 2010. “The Experiential Self: Objections and Clarifications.” In Self, No Self?, 56–78. Oxford UP.

Exposé – Mihnea Chiujdea 10

———. 2007. “Self and Other: The Limits of Narrative Understanding.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 60 (August 2007): 179–202.

———. 2005. Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating The First-Person Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ———. 2009. “Is the Self a Social Construct?” Inquiry 52 (6): 551–73. Zuckerman, Nate. 2016. “Originary Temporality and Existential Commitment: A Defense of Heidegger’s A Potiori Claim.”

European Journal of Philosophy.