8 PARTISAN REVIEW
without the memory which makes it conscious-in other words, without
the consciousness of one's history. Christian theologians maintain that
God is both a person and a timeless being. Such a statement may be
meaningfully uttered, but we lack both the conceptual and the empirical
tools to understand such a being or gain any insight into its existence.
Personal identity requires not only the consciousness of one's past but
also, and in equal measure, an attitude with regard to the future: a con–
scious anticipation, usually tinged with a variety of emotions like hope,
fear, uncertainty, joy, or despair. Anticipation is a feature of human exis–
tence which a variety of philosophers, usually those of an existentialist
bent, have attempted to describe, and it is the third element of identity.
The fourth element is body. The body is an essential part of the very
idea of personality, but this claim does not settle the question of whether
disembodied human life is possible, and is logically independent from it.
We have no reliable empirical access to disembodied persons.
Bodily identity has been a subject of controversy at least since the
paradox of Theseus's ship: if we gradually replace every part of a ship
with a new one until all its original parts have been replaced, is it still
(assuming that neither its structure nor its appearance has changed) the
same ship? The problem with the human body seems similar, but there
are important differences . First, the human body is a conscious thing,
and we cannot consider its identity over time without considering the
contribution of memory to that identity. I remember my body as being
my own: it is always the same body,
my
body, no matter how much it has
changed since I was born. Second, each of us has, as we now know, a
unique and immutable genetic make-up which defines the identity of our
body, not only during our lifetime but even after death. The fact that we
are conscious of only a fraction of the processes that take place in our
bodies does not alter the status of the (conscious) body as an essential
part of identity. However large or small that fraction might be, we still
experience the continuity of the organism to which we belong (or which
belongs to us, if it seems more appropriate to put it that way-either way
will do) . The fact that our body's history is only partly remembered in no
way affects the continuity of personal identity through memory.
The fifth element of personal identity is the consciousness of an iden–
tifiable beginning. We do not, and perhaps cannot, remember the first
event of our lives-our own birth-but we know that it took place. This
knowledge is so basic and so patently indisputable that it might seem
unnecessary to mention it at all, but it is indispensable, for it is what
allows me to utter with conviction the apparent tautology "I am
I."
If
at some point I simply discovered myself as a conscious and thinking
