On his book The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves
Cover Interview of February 14, 2013
In a nutshell
We are multiple, fragmented, and evolving selves who, nevertheless, believe we have unique and consistent identities.
What accounts for this illusion? Why has the problem of identity become so central to post-war scholarship, fiction and popular culture?
I contend that the defining psychological feature of modernity is the tension between our reflective and social selves.
To address this problem, Westerners have developed four generic strategies of identity construction that are associated with four distinct political orientations: conservatism, totalitarianism, liberalism and anarchism.
I develop my argument through the reading of ancient and modern literary, philosophical and musical texts.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
In a nutshell
We are multiple, fragmented, and evolving selves who, nevertheless, believe we have unique and consistent identities.
What accounts for this illusion? Why has the problem of identity become so central to post-war scholarship, fiction and popular culture?
I contend that the defining psychological feature of modernity is the tension between our reflective and social selves.
To address this problem, Westerners have developed four generic strategies of identity construction that are associated with four distinct political orientations: conservatism, totalitarianism, liberalism and anarchism.
I develop my argument through the reading of ancient and modern literary, philosophical and musical texts.