Kopf: identidade pessoal

The concept of personal identity arose arguably within the European intellectual tradition. It has its etymological roots in the colloquial Greek term prosopon and its Latin equivalent persona, signifying “the mask worn in comedy or tragedy” or “the character an actor plays – dramatis personae.” (Chadwick 1981, 193). As early as the sixth century, Boethius (480–524 C.E.), a Latin philosopher and Christian theologian, formulated the concept of personal identity as a synthesis of the Aristotelian concept of substance and the notion of an eternal soul, which early Christian theology had inherited from Neoplatonist philosophy. In the context of the early Christian debates on Christology, Boethius developed his now famous definition of persona as “individual substance of rational nature” (Lat.: naturae rationabilis individua substantia) (193). The foremost function of this formula was to express that Jesus the Christ, despite his dual nature – divine and human – was unified and one in numero. Nevertheless, the formula additionally identified the “incommunicable quality of the individual within the human species” (194) which functions as the self-identical and individual essence of the human being. Boethius’ definition of the concept “persona” radically differs from its original meaning “mask” in that it, now, denoted that which persisted over time, despite changes and transformations that might occur in its attributes and accidents, be they physical or psychological in character. It is important to note that Boethius’ usage of “persona” implies unity, endurance, and, most importantly, rationality, thus distinguishing the essence of Mensch-sein not only from the mask that can be arbitrarily and deliberately utilized or discarded by any given actor, but also from inanimate, insensible, and irrational entities. However, it was not until the notion of the individual had developed in the thought of the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the European Enlightenment that the conception of personal identity as an individual-over-time became the subject of general philosophical debate, involving eminent thinkers such as Gottfried W. Leibniz, John Locke, Hume, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid. By then, the synthesis of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought within the Christian theological tradition had given rise to the notion of an individual and enduring core, which clearly demarcates and identifies an individual, human person. During the periods of the Enlightenment and Modernism, this notion of the individual person-overtime was adopted as the general theory of Mensch-sein, underlying most philosophical, psychological, and ethical systems in the West. For all these theories (with the exception of the theories of Hume, Parfit, and some cognitive scientists), the notion of a real, enduring, and conscious agent, namely personal identity, functions as a necessary condition, addressing the issues of ethical responsibility and accountability as well as the continuity of experience. Today, personal identity is defined as persistence-over-time, suggesting that there is one enduring individual which persists through a multitude of different and separate moments in time and which possesses a multitude of experiences.