Abstract

Startingpoint of the investigation is the Humean idea that the notion and problem of personal identity (and a fortiori of personhood) is best understood not from an epistemological-ontological perspective‚ but in the context of an analysis of ‘the concern we take in ourselves’ as in pride. It turns out that an insight in pride requires an analysis of the paradoxical relation of identification. It is argued that this relation cannot be understood in terms of a conscious strategy from the part of the individual. The analysis shows that identification involves a fundamental passivity of the subject‚ but at the same time requires a certain capacity of distantiation with respect to the object(s) of identification. Pride and the identification(s) going with it‚ involve value-judgments not only concerning the value of the self as identified with certain valuable objects‚ but also concerning the mode of identification. The question is asked by whom and how the criteria of these judgments are determined. An attempt is made to give a rationale for the absence of definitive criteria in this matter. In the last parts of the paper‚ the fundamental passivity of the self in its identification(s) is interpreted as a fundamental ‘vulnerability’ which must somehow be assumed to fully be a person. (It is suggested that the analysis of pride and self-esteem in terms of ‘vulnerability’ could profit from an analysis of gratitude)