Identity, Agency and Historical Consciousness

Abstract

The idea of human agency shifts the locus of the self from the ‘what’ to the ‘who’ question, i.e. from the Cartesian rationalism or Platonic soul-substance to the domain of action and responsibility. The identity question is about an agent – a moral agent who, as Ricoeur says, is an ‘acting and suffering being’. However, the quest for ‘who am I?’ does not individuate the self in the sense of representing the personal identity-profile that complements the dialogical-communicative self, though it is true that there is an existential constitution of individuality that depends upon but is not reducible to some larger meaning-giving structure of social reality. Burdened with the loads of “who” questions concerning accountability and social responsibility, the quest for identity expanses onto the horizon of historical consciousness. It unties its bondage from the logic of ‘I can’ and ‘I do’, from the centre-stage of the present (which is assertive of one’s identity), and merges with the larger domain of historical consciousness that yields identity in the articulation of the three-fold present.