The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 150 of 254
Ricoeur: selfhood is not sameness
Not all philosophers have suffered from this misapprehension, of course. The best, to my mind, are precisely those who manage both to be no less precise than necessary, but no more precise than is possible. Paul Ricoeur is a rare example of a philosopher who seems to appreciate the unsuitability of applying logical identity to persons. His central idea is captured in the phrase ‘selfhood is not sameness’.22 Ricoeur uses the Latin terms idem and ipse to distinguish between sameness and selfhood. Sameness, idem, is unique and recurrent: one thing continuing to exist as exactly the same thing over time. In other words, idem is what we have called quantitative identity. But selves do not have this sameness over time. It is in their nature to change, never exactly the same from one day to the next. The trouble is that we tend to use the word ‘identity’ in relation to persons, unclear as to whether we mean sameness (idem) or selfhood (ipse). What we need to be clear about is that persons retain a sense of selfhood over time, but this is not a precise sameness.