Dobrodziejstwa i pułapki tożsamości

Abstract

The question about identity has recently become more important
than it used to be in the past. Never before has the world
been changing so quickly; never before have the individuals and
societies been faced with a question about the sense of their own
existence, about an invariable point of reference for the hasty
course of history. What makes these questions even more difficult
is the fact that they consist of two interdependent strings. The
first one constitutes the aspiration for one’s own individual allotment
of rules and destinations. The second one comprises
discovering aspirations and expectations of the environment,
investigating the roommates or neighbours of our own individual
identity.
The author does not offer a clear-cut prescription for identity
problems. Nevertheless, he attempts to show the comfortable
and secure mode of life of a traditionalist from the past – free
from ideological choices between conservatism and modernism –
for whom, the world remained invariable and stable. Since in that
world everything had its own fixed place, identity could not be
threatened in any way.
The situation, however, appears opposite in the world where
nothing is stable or definite: also individual identity cannot be fixed
permanently. The author quotes concepts of two 20th century
ethical philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Knud Lrgstrup,
who claimed that the contemporary question „who am I” and „how
do I differ from others”, should be replaced with the search for the
answer to the query „who am I for other people” and „what do
I mean to them”. According to the aforementioned philosophers
this is how the ethical sense of the identity problem shows itself
at present.
The author seems to share this opinion, however he does not
provide a definite answer. Instead, he states that in contemporary
world identity is not given to us, but it is rather assigned; realising
the meaning of „we” for each of us requires continuous effort –
„this effort incessantly gives rise to human community as well as
human self”, the author