Lecture 1

AKC 1 Semester I 2019/0 30 September 2019
Identity, Authenticity, and Recognition

Dr Kate Kirkpatrick, Department of Theology and Religious Studies
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What is identity?
• Aristotle: A logical relation A = A (‘the fact that a thing is itself’ [Metaphysics VII.17])
• Augustine: new concept of individual identity – the self (Confessions, Book X)
• What is the relation of personal identity to human flourishing and good relations with others?
Sceptics about personal identity: two existentialists on authenticity
Jean-Paul Sartre
• Sartre’s slogans: ‘existence precedes essence’ & ‘hell is other people’

• Scepticism about personal identity: The human is not herself in the same sense that a rock is a rock
or an inkwell is an inkwell – we are what we make of ourselves, and our ‘identity’ is always in flux
because it is always in the making
• Facticity: contingent and unchosen properties about me such as skin colour, sex, race, class,
nationality, time – and past actions
• ‘Hell’ and anxiety: being with others means we are not always seen how we want to be – and being
free means we often flee the anxiety of our freedom in bad faith
• Authenticity consists in correctly balancing the poles of the self: freedom and facticity
Simone de Beauvoir
• Beauvoir’s challenge to Sartre: “What kind of freedom can a woman in a harem achieve?”
• Claimed we need a distinction between abstract freedom and the concrete power to act
• The ‘gaze’ of the other is not always objectifying and problematic: it can be an invitation to
liberation
• Since ‘situations’ are different, so are ‘freedoms’
• Developed her (subsequently criticized) view of the oppression of women in dialogue with
American discussions about race in the 1940s (e.g. Myrdal, Wright)
• ‘Every individual may practice his freedom inside his world, but not everyone has the means of
rejecting, even by doubt, the values, taboos, and prescriptions by which he is surrounded’
(Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 98.)
• If it is to be an ethical ideal, authenticity must acknowledge facticity, freedom, and situation – and
value the freedom of others.
Identity politics and recognition
• Often conceived as rooted in the desire for recognition (this terminology is often traced to Hegel or
Rousseau)
• Here identity means something like ‘a person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental
defining characteristics as a human being’(Taylor 1994: 25)
But, there are divergent aims for recognition, divergent visions of ideals of equalitarianism → politics of dignity vs.
politics of difference
• Contemporary examples: France vs. the UK on ‘race’

• Difference-based recognition can lead to feelings of pigeonholing or tokenism: e.g. American
artist Kara Walker (whose work will soon be on display at Tate Modern)
Some think that naming and talking about political identities is necessary to the pursuit of justice in contemporary
societies (e.g. Linda Martín Alcoff), claiming that they are not ‘special interests’ nor doomed to oppositional politics.
Others (e.g. Kwame Anthony Appiah) think that identity politics problematically fails to give an adequate account
for the kinds of diversity globalized 21st-century life holds, the particularity of each individual human being, and
important and (on his view) neglected inequalities such as poverty.
Two distinctions to take forward in this series if you are optimistic about human beings’ ability to change:
• Scepticism: doubt of the truth of a claim or its evidential basis

• Suspicion: what are the motives that lead to this belief in a particular person or group of people?
What function does it play in the individual and the communities that adopt it? (See Westphal
1998)
• Acquisition responsibility: responsibility for the acquiring beliefs or attitudes

• Revision responsibility: responsibility for revising your beliefs or attitudes if they are vicious
(See Cassam 2019)
Recommended resources on this topic:
Details of works cited in today’s lecture are listed in full on the final slide.
To read
 Reni Edo-Lodge, ‘Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race’, The Guardian, 30 May 2017,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-
race
 Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in Amy Gutman (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics
of Recognition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, 25– 36.
To listen
 Podcast: Linda Martín Alcoff, on ‘Identity and history’:

https://shows.pippa.io/elucidations/episodes/episode-107-linda-martn-alcoff-discusses-identity-
and-histor
To watch:
 Video: Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘Identity as a choice’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhynnPYngnE

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AKC 1 Semester I 2019/0 30 September 2019

Identity, Authenticity, and Recognition

Sceptics about personal identity: two existentialists on authenticity

• Sartre’s slogans: ‘existence precedes essence’ & ‘hell is other people’

• Contemporary examples: France vs. the UK on ‘race’

• Scepticism: doubt of the truth of a claim or its evidential basis

• Acquisition responsibility: responsibility for the acquiring beliefs or attitudes

Recommended resources on this topic:

 Podcast: Linda Martín Alcoff, on ‘Identity and history’:

 Video: Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘Identity as a choice’:

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