ABSTRACT

Who Do You Think You Are?

Relations, Subjectivity, and the Identity of Persons

A complete and accurate objective conception of the world leaves out something important about my identity. It leaves out which of the many persons in this objective picture is me. Any objective account of identity is necessarily incomplete. Specifying a unique place in an objective conception of the world requires a specification of the total set of relations one bears to all other objects; it requires a specification of perspective. Identity necessarily involves a perspective, the entire set of concrete relations an object bears to its environment. I argue that this set of relations is prior to essence in the determination of identity.

I further argue that an adequate understanding of the role of perspective in determining identity reveals (1) a fundamental error in the model of objectivity advanced by Thomas Nagel and (2) how, in different ways, it is true both that essence precedes existence and that existence precedes essence., that we both inherit and create our identities.