On Personal Identity

There are many ways in which a person may define their personal identity.  In many cultures which stress the importance of the community over the individual, people often define their identity first in terms of the family they belong to or their family relationships.  Or they might define identity first in terms of the national or ethnic group to which they belong.  Still others may define their personal identity first according to their participation in a religious tradition or other organization.  How a person defines their personal identity has significant ethical implications because it can determine how a person prioritizes the various values that they have, and thus how they choose to live their life.

In modern American culture, it has become increasingly popular for people to define their personal identity in terms of the feelings and desires they have inside of them, rather than in terms of participation in something bigger that transcends the individual.  With the loss of any dominant set of transcendent moral or metaphysical beliefs in American culture, relativism and individualism have increased dramatically.  People are often told to “be true to yourself,” with “yourself” defined in terms of the feelings and desires inside the individual.  “This is who I am” is a phrase often used as a rebuttal when others attempt to impose difficult and uncomfortable moral demands on an individual; the assumption is that it simply goes without saying that “who I am” is defined by the individual’s interior feelings and desires, rather than by any transcendent set of moral standards.  

This cultural development has significant ethical implications.  If an individual’s personal identity is defined by the feelings and desires they have inside, then claiming that those feelings and desires are wrong according to an objective moral standard can be interpreted as immorally “taking away” that individual’s personal identity.  Similarly, making a moral claim that people should not act in a certain way can, and often is, be interpreted as “discriminating” against individuals who happen to have feelings and desires inside that make them want to act in this way.  Paradoxically, defining personal identity in terms of expressive individualism sometimes leads to people using the coercive power of the state to force other individuals not to act on according to their own personal ethical convictions, on the grounds that tolerating adherence to a set of objective moral standards means “discrimination” against people who happen to not want to act in accordance with these moral standards.

It is therefore important to carefully examine the idea that individuals should define their personal identity in terms of the feelings and desires they have inside and to determine if it is reasonable and coherent.  The first problem with this idea is that its adherents utilize this idea in a selective, arbitrary, and contradictory manner.  For example, if a person experiences same-sex attraction, then it is taken for granted that this person “is” a homosexual, that this defines their personal identity, and that disagreeing with this person acting on these desires is an immoral act of discrimination against them.  However, if an individual, through not choice of their own, is attracted to children, no one claims that these desires define the individual’s personal identity and that therefore disagreeing with acting on these desires is an immoral act of discrimination against them.  For another example, if a man experiences the psychological disorder of gender dysphoria, then it is taken for granted that these subjective feelings, rather than objective biological facts, defines who this person really is and that therefore they are a woman.  However, if a man experiences the psychological disorder of body integrity identity disorder, making him deeply feel that one of his legs is not part of his body, no one claims that this feeling defines his identity and that therefore he “is” a one-legged man.  

The second, more fundamental problem with defining personal identity in terms of expressive individualism is that, if taken to its logical conclusion, it undermines all moral order in society.  If people define their personal identity in terms of the feelings and desires they have inside, rather than in terms of participating in some transcendent reality, then they will approach life in terms of acting according to whatever feelings and desires they happen to have, rather than in terms of conforming their feelings, desires, and actions to an objective moral standard.  This effectively makes the development of virtue, without which an ordered society is impossible, an impossibility.  Human beings have all sorts of feelings and desires inside them, many of which point them towards evil and immorality.  In order for people to develop morally, they need to be able to define their personal identity in terms of something outside themselves, which can provide a coherent foundation for deliberately changing their inner feelings and desires, without thereby having a sense that they are giving up who they are.  

Defining personal identity in terms of expressive individualism is deeply problematic.  It is impossible to hold to consistently, it has morally problematic consequences, and in fact threatens to undermine all moral order in society.  Instead of defining their personal identity in terms of expressive individualism, human beings need to define their personal identity in terms of some transcendent reality.