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Diachronous and Synchronous Selves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brian Smart
Brian Smart*
Affiliation:
University of Keele
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Extract

We talk of the differences between the old Camus and the new Camus. Often such talk is equivalent to talk of the differences between Camus’ old self and Camus’ new self, between Camus’ diachronous selves. In other contexts, contexts which I shall ignore, the old and the new Camus is something we can read, provide literary criticism of, ponder over. In these contexts it is to the literary works of the old and new Camus that we are referring. The same kind of ambiguity attaches to the expressions ‘the early Beethoven’ and ‘the later Beethoven’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 13 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1976

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References

1 I have sketched the bare bones of this paper in ‘Persons and Selves’, Philosophical Studies Vol. XXVI. Dec. 1974 pp. 331–336Google Scholar, with particular reference to proper names. I am greatly indebted both to Terence Penelhum and to a referee for criticisms of an earlier draft of the present paper.

2 London: Secker and Warburg, 1957.

3 Dover, New York, 1950, Vol. I. pp. 391-393.

4 Cf. Searle, John: Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press, 1969), Chapters 2 & 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Interview by Ross Benson with the Liverpool player Kevin Keegan, Sunday Express, Dec. 24th, 1972.

6 Cf. Cohen, G. ‘Beliefs and Roles’, PAS LXVII, 1966-7, especially pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Parfit, Derek ‘Personal Identity’, Philosophical Review LXXX, 1970,pp. 3–27.Google Scholar

8 Force of Circumstance. (translated by Richard Howard) Penguin p. 272.

9 See Identity and Spatio-temporal Continuity (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1967) p. 7Google Scholar, and ‘Reply to Mr. Chandler’, Analysis XXIX, 1968-9, pp. 175-6.

10 (1) op. cit.; (2) ‘On “The Importance of Self-Identity“’, journal of Philosophy, LXIX, 1971, pp. 683–90Google Scholar, (a reply to Penelhum's ‘The Importance of Self-Identity’), ibid pp. 667-76; (3) ‘later Selves and Moral Principles’, in Philosophy and Personal Relations ed. Montefiore, A. (london: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973) pp. 137–69.Google Scholar

11 (1) p. 25.

12 (3) pp. 140-1.

13 (2) pp. 689-90.

14 e.g. Wiggins, : ‘On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time’, Philosophical Review, LXXVII, 1968, p. 91.Google Scholar

15 Markham, Felix: Napoleon (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1963) p. 11.Google Scholar

16 Saul Bellow, Dangling Man (Penguin) p. 21.

17 In particular, see Gardiner, Patrick: ‘Error, Faith and Self-Deception’, PAS 1969-70 pp. 221–243.Google Scholar

18 e.g. ‘The Split Brain in Man’, Scientific American, 1967, pp. 24–9.Google Scholar

19 ‘Personal Identity and Individuation’ PAS LVII (1956-7)Google Scholar reprinted in Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press 1973) p. 18;Google Scholar the quotation is from Morton Prince: The Dissociation of a Personality (1905). For a criticism of Williams's handling of synchronous selves see my ‘Persons and Selves’ loc. cit.