Conclusions

FUTURE OF IDENTITY

There are undeniable links between identity and behavior. People routinely conform to their society's moral codes because they have internalized them and made them constitutive of their self-understandings. By acting in accord of what is expected of them – even when it involves great costs or risks to themselves -- they avoid anxiety, dissonance or guilt. In keeping with his identity as a warrior, Homer’s Ajax insists that Hector strike the first blow although it exposes him to possible death.¹⁴⁵ People sometimes refer to these internalized codes as reflective of their inner selves. In the Le chagrin et la pitié [Sorrow and the Pity], Marcel Ophüls 1969 film about resistance and collaboration in France, farmers put their lives and those of their families at risk to protect French Jews. Those who did are generally at a loss to explain why beyond acknowledging that they acted in character. Every day, we encounter more banal examples of both phenomena. As I stressed earlier, our sense of self is shaped as much by our behavior as by our beliefs.¹⁴⁶ Families and societies shape behavior through roles and associated practices, which in turn encourage people to define themselves in certain ways. I have explored two different aspects of the path from behavior to self-identification. The first is self-fashioning by means of role playing. The second is reflection on this process and its consequences for our behavior and understnading of ourselves. Reflexivity is a two way street. It is responsible for the psychological dilemma of modernity because it can people from their societies. It is also the source of the four strategies intended to overcome this alienation and the angst to which it gives rise.

We are fragmented, often conflicting, multiple individual and social selves, and which self or selves are paramount at any moment depends on circumstances. We are also multiple selves historically as we continually rewrite our pasts to address present psychological and social needs. This multiplicity is equally apparent among religious people, Kantians and atheists. Identity is undeniably a source of ethical guidance, but it is never a coherent and consistent one. Different identifications generate different, even completing, ethical imperatives. I noted in the Introduction that this problem is foregrounded by Hegel in his reading of Sophocles' Antigone and has become more acute since by virtue of the proliferation of roles and affiliations.

Given our multiple selves, relying on them for ethical guidance risks reducing us to incoherence. To cope with this problem, some people narrow their identities to emphasize one identification (e.g., familial, religious, national, ethnic, political) at the expense of all others. Such people are uni-dimensional and we often find them difficult to deal with because they view everything from one perspective and have no doubts about right and wrong. They must suppress uncertainty in themselves – and sometimes in others – to maintain their belief systems. Of necessity, a full and virtuous life requires facing up to contradictions of all kinds. We mature and learn by coping with such tensions and their related uncertainties as best we can. This approach is not logically grounded but resonates with how many people live their lives. It is nicely captured by Gahan Wilson's New Yorker cartoon in which an avuncular, middle-aged man looks up from the book he is perusing and exclaims with an obvious sense of relief: "My god, for a minute there, it suddenly all made sense."

There is more to identity than ethics and more to ethics than identity. It is self-evident that we find ethical guidance from many sources. Most people take their cues from people they respect and are likely to follow them – for better and worse – given our strong desire for social acceptance. Elsewhere, I have argued that people and their social units are keen to build self-esteem and prepared to defend it at great costs.¹⁴⁷ Self-esteem usually involves winning the approval of one’s peer group or society and provides another powerful incentive to conform to group norms. Peer group and political pressure have the potential to direct our behavior in almost any direction. As memoirs, diaries and novels from the Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union and some very nasty post-Soviet regimes make tragically clear, it is very difficult to respond to the ethical imperatives of identity under the thumb of intrusive tyrannies.¹⁴⁸ This is by no means a novel insight as the Book of Revelation – greatly distorted and misused by Dispensationalists – is read by more sophisticated biblical authorities as an attempt to offer moral support to Anatolian Christians intent on preserving their identities and religion in the face of serious Roman oppression.¹⁴⁹

The problem of ethical cross-pressure is not about to go away. In the best of worlds, conflicts among internal identifications and between them diverse external pressures make us more aware of multiple ethical perspectives. Such awareness intensifies our decisional dilemmas and must inevitably unsettle our sense of self. This is worthwhile if it brings with it the realization that our ethical anchors are by definition context dependent and parochial. Such recognition can make us more tolerant of the moral benchmarks of others, and tolerance must rank among our principal ethical commitments in a world where there are multiple, competing ethical perspectives.

Ethics might accordingly be facilitated by a certain incoherence in identity. Rather than taking refuge in indefensible cosmic orders, or searching for an identity within us, in nature or in our institutions, we must transcend the illusion of coherent identity and live, albeit never comfortably, with internal conflicts and tensions within ourselves and between ourselves and our societies. This approach to identity might be described as a psychologically sophisticated parallel to the Kantian imperative.¹⁵⁰ For Kant, the "I" is an empirical and intellectual recognition. It confers dignity on humanity, but also inspires a love of self. Egoism can be checked by the egoism of others, but people for the most part remain convinced of their superiority and of their preferences and beliefs. The categorical imperative is intended as an antidote to such certainty. It encourages what Kant calls pluralism, a manner of thinking that gives equal recognition to others. Rather than engaging the world only from the perspective of the self, we come to think of ourselves as "citizens of the world." For Kant, pluralism is an intellectual orientation [Denkungsart], arising from reflection and feeling.¹⁵¹ His Critique of Practical Reason and Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals elaborate this argument and the concept of the "noumenal" self that lies behind appearances and allows us to use our reason and appreciation of beauty to grasp moral laws. The inevitable tension within the self then can provide the impetus for cognitive, partial transcendence, not of the empirical self, but of our multiple selves.

Let me close by returning to my four categories of identity. They are associated with modern and anti-modern social, religious or political projects of varying degrees of practicality. I think it self-evident that strategies one and two, that seek to reduce or do away with interiority and reflexivity, have not succeeded. Both these constituents of internal autonomy have became more prominent in the last hundred years and more pronounced in popular literature and the media. Efforts to substitute collective for individual identities have failed despite the phenomenal success and spread of nationalism. The Soviet Union collapsed, Communist China and Vietnam have evolved considerably, and are now content to regulate practice and expression of opinion. North Korea is the only regime committed to a totalitarian form of identity construction. Religious efforts to reduce interiority and reflexivity have been more successful. Fundamentalist movements in many of the world’s major religions have created tight-knit communities in which members or followers are told what to think, how to dress and behave and encouraged to commit their lives and resources to movement goals. Totalitarian regimes and fundamental religions are parallel projects and by their nature intolerant of dissent. They appeal to people anxious to forego their autonomy for whatever reason and often pressure others to accept their values and practices. To the extent that these movements come to wield political power they are a serious threat to people seeking to develop and express their autonomy.

Strategies three and four, which embrace reflexivity and interiority, have generally fared better. The initially British project of reconciling individuals and society though imitation and role playing and its positive feedback on society has become more common practice. It has even taken root in countries like France and Germany, where there has been a significant upward shift toward the valuation of individual autonomy. Socialist movements everywhere in Europe have also moved away from a traditional Marxist commitment to strategy one and have for the most part come embrace strategy three. The promise of socialism is now more in keeping with the early Marx, who can be read as someone more concerned with constructing a society that would encourage individual autonomy and expression. This strategy also has wide appeal in non-Western countries, especially those along the Pacific rim, that have experienced economic growth and significant increases in the standard of living.

The division of labor and growth of pluralism and tolerance have generated more role models and have made more choices available to more people. Critics might nevertheless contend that strategy three has been too successful in the sense that people often choose role models for the wrong reasons, that is in response to advertising and other powerful social cues. This is not the kind of freedom envisaged by Kant, Hegel or Mead, nor the progressive evolution of society that Smith, Hume and Mill hoped that role playing would encourage. The interesting, if unanswerable, question is which way different societies will develop. Will wealth and diversity facilitate autonomy and free choice or will commercialization and more intensive forms of socialization dictate role models and other choices and make a mockery of autonomy?

Strategy three is the only one of the four not associated with utopias or utopian projects. It emerged as a practice before it was theorized, and discourses about it were created by British empiricists and literary figures with similar positive attitudes and expectations about society. It is also the only strategy that recognizes the fragmented and discontinuous nature of identity. As the Boswell quote indicates, he considers himself a different person in response to his imitation and internalization through role playing of others' manners and values. He does not foreclose the possibility of trying on other faces, some of them at the same time. Neither do the writings of Smith, Hume and Mill's foreclose this possibility; Mill appears to anticipate and welcome it. Strategy three is the only strategy that might provide the basis for the post-modern kind of identity discourse I propose.

Strategy four, which vaunts individual autonomy but denigrates society has been most successful as an ideology. Most Westerners believe that they have the potential, if not the responsibility, to discover their uniqueness and develop and express their inner selves. As noted in the Introduction, this has become the conventional wisdom and nearly unanimously subscribed to by the university students I teach in Hanover and London. These expectations have spread beyond the Western world and offer strong competition to strategy three. In practice, strategy four is difficult to achieve and its successes are difficult to measure. I noted in the opening paragraph of the book that most people believe they are unquestionably unique, but offer many of the same reasons to justify this claim. With arguably more reason, people claim uniqueness on the basis of diverse tastes, personalities, mannerisms and modes of expression, or the combination of them. The search for a self with which one is comfortable or satisfied with is another matter and generally understood to be something of a lifetime project. Many people feel extremely frustrated and stymied in their efforts to achieve such a self, but others feel a degree of satisfaction, even if it may be in part, or even largely illusory.

Strategies three and four reconcile people to modernity but also generate intense frustration when they come up against the formidable political, social and economic barriers that often stand in their way. This frustration might be regarded as beneficial to the extent that it motivates individual or collective action to remove or ease some of these impediments. The quest for internal, not just external autonomy, can also be a catalyst for political revolutions, as it arguably has been most recently in the Middle East. The two forms of autonomy are closely related and essential for the implementation of strategies three and four. However, in conditions where they prevail, strategy four in my judgment remains something of a pipe dream. I am not suggesting that we ignore our so-called inner urgings or give up the quest to express ourselves and seek satisfaction through our choice of partners, friends, careers and extracurricular activities. I advance a different argument, and one, I believe, is more compatible with making these kinds of life choices.

At the outset of the book, I opposed my project to that of Heidegger, who sought a way toward a holistic identity. His project rests on Nietzsche's belief that real change is only possible in epochal moments when the collapse of meaning and legitimacy open an abyss that encourages thoughtful people to search for new ways of thinking and new answers that have the potential to reshape the world. We arguably live in such a world and Rousseau, Nietzsche and Heidegger were right in thinking that meaning, identity and human fulfillment are ineluctably linked. Like them, I advocate a reconstruction of self-identifications, but by encouraging people to accept or exploit the possibilities of fragmented selves rather than trying to overcome them. Rousseau, Nietzsche and Heidegger were insufficiently attentive to the down side of their projects. In worlds that have lost meaning, there is a temptation, to which all too many people succumb, to transfer their allegiance to projects like fascism or Dispensationalism that appear to restore meaning but at the cost of giving up key features of one's humanity and imposing meaning of the lives of others. The project I advocate undeniably has the potential to encourage these kinds of choices on the part of people unwilling or lacking courage to confront the truth about thesmelves but it also holds out the prospect of liberating the most positive kinds of creative energies.

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