The problem of identity, between definitions, perpetual crises and moral challenges

Within the broader framework of the Philosophical Interrogations and Reflections communication sessions, organized on the occasion of the “Iași Academic Days”, the “Gh. Zane” Institute for Economic and Social Research proposes this year a colloquium on the topic: The Problem of identity, between definitions, perpetual crises and moral challenges. In a metaphysical sense, the concept of identity captures the relationship that any thing has with itself. Understood in this way, identity conceptually renders the stable, essential character of beings and things and appears as a philosophical problem by simply relating to things, beings, and the environment. Personal identity is the one that directly targets man, in his capacity as a person, as a social being, or, more abstractly, in his ipseity. Personal identity is at the center of fundamental questions: Who am I? What does the stability and physical and psychological continuity of my person consist of? What are my defining characteristics, capacities, attitudes, preferences? What persists in us? What changes can we endure within the limits of a fixed identity?

Personal identity is most often built on the basis of beliefs, values, customs, which determine the horizon of time and space in which we live, understand, act morally and make certain decisions. We can say that we are ourselves to the extent that we claim ourselves from a certain spiritual, religious, political tradition, or to the extent that we belong to an ethnicity, race, nation, etc. How much does each of these weigh and what importance do they receive in the order of identity?

Philosophical reflection does not limit the understanding of personal identity to concepts such as essence, limits and relations of necessity. Personal identity can also have a fluid meaning. We consider both the individual’s ability to become and to define himself permanently, as well as the inconsistency of the defining reports that we often practice regarding others, amid the changes in the world we live in. From this fluid perspective, research on phenomena that we capture through concepts such as “identity crisis”, “identity assimilation”, etc. are fertile. The way in which the human being understands his identity throughout his existence fluctuates, varies depending on circumstances, events, special life situations and, above all, depending on the importance and significance he gives to them. We define ourselves based on various aspects: our personal conception of ourselves, our social image, our cultural, gender, national identity and, more recently, the virtual identity proposed by the online environment. The identity crisis is not a phenomenon foreign to our times and is generated by various other crises, as current as possible, that come against the backdrop of the Covid 19 pandemic, military conflicts, complex geopolitical changes or paradigmatic changes in communication and interpersonal socialization. We invite the participants in the colloquium The problem of identity, between definitions, perpetual crises and moral challenges to answer a general question: How do we define (personal) identity and what role can the understanding of this concept play in the current context, in which contemporary man directly and acutely feels the effects of the crises mentioned above? The answers we expect may draw on arguments from different fields of research, such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, social and political sciences, literature and cultural studies.