Common threads · 6 books
Memory, bodies, narratives, and survival. Use unusual cases to uncover the assumptions behind ordinary claims about who we are.
Books, curator notes, and what to read next.
John Locke
Focus on Book II, chapter XXVII, on identity and diversity. Ask why memory might matter differently for a person than for a living organism.
Next: Personal Identity (Topics in Philosophy)
John Perry
Treat this edited collection as a seminar: compare the arguments for bodily, psychological, and other accounts of persistence.
Next: Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity
Sydney Shoemaker
Shoemaker explores how knowing oneself relates to being the same person. Keep psychological and bodily criteria distinct.
Next: Reasons and Persons
Derek Parfit
Read the sections on identity and future people as connected questions about whose interests matter over time.
Next: The Human Animal
Eric T. Olson
Olson argues that we are organisms. Test this account against memory-based stories about surviving radical change.
Next: The Constitution of Selves
Marya Schechtman
Schechtman gives narrative a role in personhood. Ask which stories make a life intelligible without inventing its continuity.
Also includes Reasons and Persons
A demanding environmental ethics course on communities, technological power, future people, and the difficulty of acting on climate responsibility.
Also includes Reasons and Persons
Start with time as lived experience, then test philosophical accounts of persistence, temporal order, and what it means to exist over time.
Also includes Reasons and Persons
Study the fear of death, the value of a finite life, and our dependence on a future we will never personally see.
