PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE // LMA // 08 MARCH 2010 // DO WE KNOW WHO WE ARE ? A BRIEF REFLECTION ON IDENTITY Stéphane VIAL, École Boulle, Paris, France Introduction I’m not a design teacher. I’m a philosophy teacher in a school of design. In France, with my colleagues, we try to involve philosophy in the design process. That’s why, at the beginning of a project, I often give a philosophy lecture about the main topic of this project. Because the beginning of a project is the moment when all the hypothesis are open, when all the ideas are possible. So it is the best moment to take a bit of distance with the design matters and, before making design, try to open our minds completely to the problematic of the project. What’s the problematic of this week’s project ? During this workshop, you will design a hotel room concept, by mixed teams of latvian and french students. You will have to work with the identity of the others. But you will have to work also with your own personal identity. To do that, and try to find out what your specific identity is, you will need to know a little more about what Identity is generally. That’s the main goal of my presentation. The questions I will try to answer are the following : What does Identity mean ? What is the problem of Identity ? Where does Identity come from ?
1. What does Identity mean ? In general, the philosophers don’t speak so much about identity, because it is not, in appearance, a classical philosophical concept. But, in the history of philosophy, there is a very classical philosophical concept which is very close to the concept of identity and which we can use in order to define the main properties of identity. It is the metaphysical concept of essence. What is essence ? The word comes from the Latin esse, which means «to be» and has its origin in the thought of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Essence stands for the fundamental being of something, that is to say the set of attributes that make it what it fundamentally is, which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity or would just not exist. Aristotle called it « the what it is ». The contrary of essence is accident, which designates a secondary attribute of something which it has by contingency, without which it keeps its identity, and which we can change without changing the thing itself. For example, the backrest (dossier) of a chair is part of the essence of the chair. Without it, a chair would lose its identity as a chair, because it would not be a chair anymore : it would be for example a stool (tabouret). So the backrest of a chair is an essential attribute of this chair. On the other side, the color of a chair is NOT part of its essence : it is one of its accidents because, if we change the color of a chair, the chair won’t lose its essence of chair : it will still be a chair and keep its identity as a chair. But what is what we call identity ? According to the dictionary, it is the set of « qualities that make someone or something what they are and different from other ». So, identity seems to 1/9
be the same than what old philosophers called essence : the set of attributes that make something what it is. But the concept of identity adds to this several special meanings. First, the concept of identity mixes essential attributes as well as accidental attributes : the identity of a chair can be made of the backrest as well as a special color particular to this chair. For example, this chair where I’m sitting right now has its essence in its particular shape but also in its particular color. Not only in the fact it has a backrest, which is common to all the chairs in the world. Second, the attributes that make something what it is, exist only because we can compare them to other different attributes that make one other different thing a different thing. That’s why the contrary of identity is not accident but difference. And that’s why identity can also be called uniqueness or singularity. For example, the identity of my favorite chair lies on special attributes that I can recognize because I can distinguish them from the different attributes of another chair. Third, the attributes that make something the unique thing it is, are necessarily permanent attributes, which stay the same through the Time. Indeed, the word identity comes from the Latin idem, which means the same : in that sense, identity is exactly the fact to stay the same, or sameness, that is to say, for something, the property of being equal to itself despite all the changes. For example, on our identity cards, we can read constant informations about us like our name, birthday, gender... that won’t change in our whole life. So, at this point, we can make a first summary of the main properties of identity : 1. ATTRIBUTES : identity stands for a set of attributes particular to something (that make it what it is) 2. ESSENCE / ACCIDENT : these attributes can be essential attributes as well as accidental attributes 3. OTHERNESS : these attributes are recognizable by comparing to other different attributes belonging to another thing 4. SAMENESS : these attributes must be constant attributes making the thing equal to itself through the time 5. synonymous terms are UNIQUENESS or SINGULARITY.
2. What’s the problem with Identity ? The concept of identity as we usually use it is quite close to the metaphysical concept of essence, in which it has its origin. But there is also a philosophical concept of identity, a bit different from the concept of essence, which is focused on the special sense of sameness that we just distinguished before. Since Aristotle, the philosophers and scientists call it the « Principle of Identity », which can be expressed by the following mathematical equivalence : A=A
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It is a fundamental logical principle that means that one thing must be equal to itself, that is to say one thing cannot be equal to itself and equal to another thing in the same time. For example, it is not possible that this chair would be equal to this other chair, or this person to this other person. This principle may appear to you a little strange because completely obvious. This is exactly why it contains a big problem. Because what is an obviousness in our daily life is in fact, from a philosophical point of view, just an hypothesis, a necessary hypothesis we all make every time. Indeed, according to the great german philosopher Martin HEIDEGGER, the principle of Identity is a major and essential condition of the whole western science and thought : « the science could not be what it is, if the identity of its object was not each time guaranteed in advance » (« la science ne pourrait être ce qu’elle est, si l’identité de son objet ne lui était chaque fois garantie d’avance ») 1. That means that the science could not exist if it was not relying on this hypothesis : all the beings in the world (the stones, the plants, the animals, the human beings...) have an identity that we can try to understand and know. For example, the physicists suppose that the planets they study have an identity, that is to say a set of attributes that they can study and try to understand ; the psychoanalyst or psychologist suppose that his patient has an identity, that is to say a set of characteristics that are particular to him (even if things changes within him during the psychotherapy). But this is not particular to scientists. We all do the same every day because we all suppose that the things and the persons around us have an identity, which means something that stays equal to itself. For example, we will talk about the identity of a chair, the identity of a building or the identity of a person. In these 3 cases, that means we suppose the same thing : 1. We suppose each chair has its own identity : we call it the STYLE of the chair. For example, the Red and Blue chair, designed in 1917 by Rietveld, which has a so different style or identity than the Barcelona chair, designed in 1929 by Mies van der Rohe. We suppose that these two chairs have their own identity. But, in this case, it’s easy to perceive the identity because we can see it ! 2. We suppose each building or place has its own identity : we call it the ATMOSPHERE of the place or the « spirit of the place » (in french « le génie du lieu »), which refers to the unique, distinctive and loved aspects of a place. Each piece of architecture contains such an identity or atmosphere : for example, in Riga, the Central Market buildings have not the same identity than the Art Nouveau buildings. In this case, it’s also easy to perceive the identity because we can see it and feel it, by experiencing the place. 1.
« Ce qu’énonce le principe d’identité, entendu dans sa base fondamentale, est précisément ce que toute la pensée occidentale ou européenne pense, à savoir que l’unité propre à l’identité forme un trait fondamental de l’être de l’étant. Partout où nous entretenons un rapport, quel qu’il soit, avec un étant de n’importe quelle sorte, nous nous trouvons placés sous un appel de l’identité. Sans cet appel, l’étant ne pourrait jamais apparaître dans son être. Partant, il n’y aurait pas non plus de science. Car la science ne pourrait être ce qu’elle est, si l’identité de son objet ne lui était chaque fois garantie d’avance». HEIDEGGER, « Identité et différence », in Questions I, Paris, Gallimard, 1968, p. 260. 3/9
3. We suppose each person has its own identity : we call it the PERSONALITY or the character of the person ; this is generally the major sense of the word Identity, in a psychological sense. It concerns the Identity of the Self (in french, « l’identité du Moi »), which is supposed to be equal to itself. It is the sense in which we will talk about identity during all this workshop. According to the dictionary, it stands for the « characteristics, feelings or beliefs that distinguish people from others ». For example, every body agree to say that Barbara has a personal identity different from Magali’s personal identity. We can recognize it in the way of thinking of each of them, in the way of speaking of each of them, in the way of getting in touch with others in each of them, and so on... The list could be long. And this is why here begins the problem of identity. Because it’s hard to define which are the attributes that constitute the identity of someone. It’s hard to determine what the identity of someone is made of. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher HERACLITUS used to say : « You cannot step twice into the same river » (in french, « On ne se baigne jamais deux fois dans le même fleuve »). That means that everything is changing all the time and nothing can stay the same. So that would mean the Self is changing all the time and cannot stay equal to itself. For example, it is true that we are not the same person at the age of 10, 20 or 40. But not only that : it’s just hard for someone to understand his own identity ! It’s hard to know oneself ! That’s why, a long time ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates used to say : « Know yourself ». Why ? Because, it’s very hard just to know and understand something about oneself ! It takes a very long time, thanks to a lot of life experiences, before someone can say : « I know who I am, I understand myself ». That’s why Freud invented Psychoanalysis as a method to know oneself, but only thanks to several years of work on the divan ! So it’s clear that being oneself is not obvious, not easy, not so natural. It has to be built, worked, invented. And we all want that. That’s why we sometimes say : « Be yourself ». Which means : « Get your own identity ». Therefore, on the one hand, it’s true that we all have great difficulties to define and get our own identity, as if it was something confused or vague, elusive or imperceptible, or even missing or nonexistent ! That’s what used to think the great English philosopher David HUME, in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739), book I, part IV, section VI, § 1-3 : There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF ; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence ; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. [...] For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. [...] If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. [...] He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself ; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me. 2 2.
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/TreatiseI.iv.vi.htm 4/9
But, on the other hand, we believe that we all have one determined identity, which we suppose to be defined and distinct, specified and unique, as if there was some kind of stable unity inside each of us, which stays all the time equal to itself, despite all the changes, and which we generally call the Self and can perceive as such. This belief is exactly the belief in which David Hume don’t believe. But it is exactly the hypothesis that lies in the Principle of Identity : « A = A », which could be written as well like this : « Self = Self ». It means that we must all have a inner unity that we call the Self and that is constituted by a set of personal and unique attributes that stay equal to themselves through the ages. In the following presentation and in our workshop, we will trust the principle of Identity and rely on the hypothesis of the existence and continuity of the Self. But we have to keep in mind that, from a philosophical point of view, Identity is just an hypothesis. 3. Where does Identity come from ? If we want to try to understand why it is so hard to find out our own identity and why it is so hard to reach it, we must ask now for the origin of it. Where does identity come from ? According to me, we can make a difference between 2 main origins for our personal identity. 1. THE PSYCHIC ORIGIN OF OUR PERSONAL IDENTITY According to Sigmund FREUD, the founder of Psychoanalysis, the human mind or soul can be defined as a psychic apparatus (in french, « appareil psychique ») determined by unconscious psychic processes. As well the function of our breathing apparatus is to make us breathe, the function of our psychic apparatus is to make us have a mental life 3. When we are a baby, our psychic apparatus is not yet structured. It is getting structured step by step during our childhood, more or less well, according to the kind of relationships we have with our parents and according to the unconscious fantasies we are making about it. One of the most important psychic process which takes part in the formation of our psychic apparatus, and in the same time in the formation of our own personal identity, is named Identification. It is unconscious, as all the psychic processes discovered by Freud. It designates the way someone builds his own identity by assimilating into his own personality an attribute that belongs originally to someone else. It happens mostly during our childhood with our parents - but not only. Children adopt unconsciously the characteristics of their parents and begin to associate themselves with the behavior of their parents. However, identification is not the same than imitation, which is a voluntary and conscious act. During the identification process, we choose the attributes to which we identify but we choose them unconsciously, according to a set of unconscious fantasies, therefore we don’t know the unconscious choices we have made (we can discover it later, in the adult life, for example in the psychoanalytical treatment). That’s the way our psychic apparatus forms itself.
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I cannot explain now the functioning of the psychic apparatus, it would be too long. You probably know that Freud divides it into three parts : the Id or unconscious repository of basic instincts (drives), the Ego or conscious part of us that deals with the conflict between pleasure principle and reality principle, and the SuperEgo or self-observation and self-criticism unconscious part of us. 5/9
That means that, from a psychoanalytical point of view, the main attributes of our personal identity are made by identification. One of the most important of them is our gender : male or female. Its determination is the ultimate purpose of the oedipal phase of the childhood, based on the famous Oedipus Complex and its particular unconscious conflict. It happens mostly between the age of 3 and 7. The resolution of the Oedipus Complex is the moment when, in his unconscious, the child identifies himself with the parent of the same sex and integrates then its final gender or sexual identity. But you must notice that gender is a generic attribute of our identity, that is to say an attribute we can share with others (every body has a gender). We have also specific attributes, that are particular to us and to our personality, according to our particular childhood and growing relationships environment. Theses attributes constitute what I would call our deep identity or radical uniqueness, because they are not sharable or common with others. They are just ours and belong to our privacy or intimacy. They consist mostly in personality features (in french « traits de caractère ») or personality types. For example, let’s talk about Franck (it’s a surname), a 40 years old man, who was one of my patients when I was a psychologist. Franck comes to me because he has problems in his couple life. He explains that his wife is too exclusive and too capricious, and never happy of what he can do for her. That’s the reason why, according to him, he has big difficulties to live with her on the daily life and wants to get divorced. After a few months of treatment, it appeared that, in his childhood, Franck’s mother was a very exclusive mother with him. Franck’s parents, Mary and John, had not very good relationship. They were not doing many things together, so Mary was spending a lot of time with Franck and his sister, without their father, who was always working. As she was not happy with this man, she was very often telling them bad things about their father, for example : he’s not a kind husband, he doesn’t take care of me enough, and so on. And because Franck was a boy, that is to say a future husband too, Mary used to tell him he will have to be in the future a better husband than his own father, he will have to be very kind with his wife, and so on. That’s not a big problem that his mother said that. The problem is that, because of his unconscious fantasy activity, Franck started to believe, in his unconscious, that his mission was to make his mother happy and save her from sadness. Such a belief is what we call in psychoanalysis a fantasy, which means a very deep belief someone has in his unconscious (without knowing it) because it is based on a very strong desire. That means that he identified himself with the ideal figure of the gentle husband, who is always kind and sweet with his wife. This very specific identification, particular to him and unknown of him, had a lot of consequences in his adult life. Thanks to the psychoanalytical treatment, Franck understood after a few months very important things about himself and his particular way to be in love and in relationship with women : he understood that, in all his love stories, he has always been too much the man who always makes a compromise, too much the man who does what his wife wants him to do, too much the man who always gives up his own desires, too much the gentle man and not enough the man who also does what he personally wants to do ! He understood that, in all his love stories, he has always felt not as a free person, but as a kind of slave, serving his wife as a queen, trying to make her happier and happier, as if he was trying unconsciously to save his mother from sadness... And he finally understood that his wife was maybe not as exclusive as he first believed and that he was used to think like that about her because, in his unconscious, he thought his mission is to be her servant... And of course, when you are the servant of a person, you think this person is very exclusive and always want you to do something for her... After several months, Franck tried to change his behavior in his daily life, and tried to satisfy a bit more his own desires. Thanks to that, he was happier with his wife, and did not want to get divorced anymore. 6/9
This example reveals us several important things : 1. first of all, our personal identity is made of psychic or mental attributes, which I call deep identity or radical uniqueness ; I could also say psychic identity ; 2. our deep identity comes from our unconscious fantasy or fantastical activity ; 3. we don’t know who we are and how our deep identity and mental life is made ; 4. our deep identity is not fixed or established for eternity : it can change and evolve and it is never finished or completely achieved : it is a work in progress, which is more or less built according to people. From a psychoanalytical point of view, the more you develop your deep identity, which is your radical uniqueness, the more your are a Subject. To be a Subject means you are the true master of your ideas and wishes, of your acts and behavior, instead of being dominated by your unconscious fantasies. To reach such a mental position, generally you need the Psychoanalysis, or an other method of introspection. Except if you had a very harmonious mental growth, which is possible, of course, but which is never perfect and without problems. Because, according to Psychoanalysis, we all live within our fantasies and all have a part of neurosis. That’s why our personal identity certainly exists, but is always to be built and is never completely built. It is a dynamic process, never ended, and not a static unity. 2. THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ORIGIN OF OUR PERSONAL IDENTITY As a member of a social group, we also have a cultural identity. It means that our personal identity is also made of cultural attributes. But what is a cultural attribute ? It’s an attribute which belongs not to our mental life but to our social belonging to an ethnic group, to our « culture » as a common thing and shared experience with others. But what is exactly a culture ? In 1871, in his book Primitive Culture, the English anthropologist Edward B. TYLOR provided a very good and classical definition of it : « Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. » (« Culture ou civilisation pris dans son sens ethnologique le plus étendu, est ce tout complexe qui comprend les sciences, les croyances, les arts, la morale, les lois, les coutumes et les autres facultés ou habitudes acquises par l’homme en tant que membre de la société »). It means that one particular culture is made of one set of particular arts and sciences, particular beliefs and religions, particular laws and morals, particular politics and government, particular customs and ways of life, particular cooking and gastronomy, but also particular design and philosophy, particular ways of life in art schools... That’s what we could see during the presentation of the cultural stereotypes about France (Victor Hugo, Napoleon, « la baguette », the beret, Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the snails...). All theses particular attributes are exactly what the cultural identity of a people consists in. That means that all the individuals who belong to one particular ethnic group share the same cultural attributes. But, on the contrary of the previous types of identity (psychic identity), we don’t have any influence, as individuals, on our cultural identity. We don’t choose it, we cannot refuse it, and we cannot make it change or evolve. Because it is not dependent on us. We are not responsible for our cultural identity. 7/9
That’s maybe why the French sociologist Emile DURKHEIM gave another name to our cultural attributes. He named them « social facts » and defined sociology exactly as the « science of social facts ». What are social facts ? Let’s read DURKHEIM, in the The Rules of the Sociological Method, chap. 1 : « they consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him » (« des manières d'agir, de penser et de sentir, extérieures à l'individu, et qui sont douées d'un pouvoir de coercition en vertu duquel ils s'imposent à lui »). For example, our religious practices, our food habits, our language, are all social facts because they are defined and determined out of us but, in the same time, they are acting on us. Who decided how should be our native language ? Nobody. But who is using our native language ? Everybody. Everybody, in the same ethnic group, is submitted to the same native language. Language is a social fact, maybe the most important one. But the field of social fact is much wider than you can imagine : « most of our ideas and tendencies are not developed by ourselves, but come to us from outside, they can only penetrate us by imposing themselves upon us. » (« la plupart de nos idées et de nos tendances ne sont pas élaborées par nous, mais nous viennent du dehors »). A proof of that is that, according to DURKHEIM, we can find social facts even in the most intimate issues of life, for example in the different suicide practices ! Indeed, in 1897, DURKHEIM published one of the most groundbreaking books in the field of sociology, called Suicide (in french, Le Suicide), which is a case study of suicide. In this book, DURKHEIM tries to demonstrate that suicide is fully a social fact because it is also caused by external reasons , I mean reasons that are external to the individuals who are committing suicides. For example, by exploring and comparing suicides rates, DURKHEIM found out that : • suicides rates are higher in Men than Women • suicides rates are higher for those widowed, single and divorced than married • suicides rates are higher for persons without children than with children • suicides rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics and Jews • suicides rates are higher among soldiers than Civilians • suicides rates are higher in times of peace than in times of war • suicides rates are higher in Scandinavian countries Therefore, even what is the most deeply engraved in our mind, like our inclination to suicide or not, can be due to our culture. It is very amazing and interesting. Because it means that our deepest identity attributes can be determined by our belonging to one particular ethnic group, and not only depend on mental or psychological issues. However, nowadays, the differences between all the cultures around the world are less and less visible, because of the globalization. Everything is today determined by what the french sociologist Jean BAUDRILLARD called « The Consumer Society ». The world we live in is 8/9
more and more built according to mass consumption considerations. And the cultural differences are progressively disappearing. That’s why, if you go for example in a shopping center, you will make the same experience in Riga, Paris, Barcelona or another city. A few years before his death, the french anthropologist Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS said he was not so happy about the evolution of our world because, according to him, we are going towards a unique culture world.
Conclusion If it’s true we have a unique Self, equal to itself, it seems hard to reach it. How can we become ourselves and be the real authors of our lives if everything is determined, from the one side by our unconscious (psychic side), and from the other side by our culture (social side) ? How can we become ourselves if, as Psychoanalysis showed us, our Self is never ended ? How can we become ourselves if we all are Consumers, consuming the same products and doing the same things according to the wishes of the Industry ? Maybe it is, today more than ever before, the most difficult thing to succeed in. That’s why, today more than ever before, we must take care of who we are. That’s why, today more than ever before, we still need to travel. To have chance of meeting other people. To have chance of finding out ourselves through the others. That’s what you will have to do during all this week. And you will have to turn it in design proposals. The only advice I can give you for that, from a philosophical point of view and not from a design point of view, is taken from a famous word by the French psychoanalyst Jacques LACAN : « Don’t give up on your desire » (in french : « Ne cède rien sur ton désir ») It does not mean that you must try to satisfy all your desires. It just means that you must never give up your deep desires as a Subject. The desires that make you a Radical Uniqueness.
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