Roots of the Western Self: Dualist and Monist Philosophies of Personal Identity

Abstract

Personal identity has recently appeared in the agenda of social sciences and humanities in a variety of ways. There is a huge and expanding body of literature on identity, and "identity studies" has gained significant importance in the social sciences and humanities across the globe. This article aims to trace back the history of theories on Western personal identity from an interdisciplinary angle. Defining identity raises many questions and invites different disciplines ranging from hermeneutics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, anthropology, and many more. Answering questions about the nature of the self and the relationship between a person and her body led this article to trace back two lines of thought: a dualist view that sees identity in terms of soul and body dichotomy, and a monist view that focuses on the body as a defining element of identity. The enormous philosophical interest in the idea of personal identity is due to concerns with the nature of personal identity throughout time and the relationship, if any, between personal identity and bodily identity.