Abstract

I argue that in realism the identity of things, increasingly independent from typological paradigms, becomes series-dependent; that is, it becomes a form emergent from a series of instances rather than a form intelligible through one instance alone. Realistic identity, in other words, becomes abstract, removed from direct apprehension to a hidden dimension of depth. In speaking of realistic identity, I use the term "identity" to mean the oneness or the invariant structure by which we recognize a thing, by which we judge it under varying conditions to be the same. This conception of identity and all it implies about the regularity of nature and about the possibilities of knowledge belongs to an empirical epistemology which, though foreign to the Middle Ages and radically modifies today, was current throughout the otherwise diverse period from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. It is a conception of identity so obvious to us that we have ceased to see it as the convention it is, but it was not obvious in the Renaissance, and it took a long time to become common sense. Elizabeth Ermarth teaches English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is the author of several articles on George Eliot