Original scientific paper
Identity as a Personal Matter
Ivor Altaras Penda
Abstract
Identity is an issue that has again become highly relevant in a globalised society ruled by globalised relations. The change of the wider social paradigm has produced radical changes in the identification of personal identity, resulting in a crisis in the perception of affiliation as an essential determinant of identity. In the author's view, the solution is to be sought in the self-understanding of one's personality, one's thinking and actions, which is realised in the social reality, a reality which is at the same time crucially shaped by that self-understanding. If this is lacking, the social identification of an individual with any group (gender, religious, cultural, class, professional, national, supranational etc.) becomes a major concern of various ideologies. The construction of identity as a subjective category makes possible the understanding of the social context in which the subject exists, and the development of the society at large is based on the subject's free consciousness and will. The role of societal influence on the creation of identity is seen in securing conditions to all for the realisation of this identity and of support to all in order to achieve the ultimate realisation of their potentials. Individual, and hence also social progress, becomes thus the natural consequence of the fundamental freedom of the search for, and possibly discovery of, the reply to the question contained in the notion of identity – who are we, do we differ from others and, if so, in what way. Even if not providing the answers to these questions, science plays a functional part in the attempts to find them.
Keywords
EUROPEAN UNION; IDENTITY; IDENTIFICATION; THE INDIVIDUAL; PROGRESS
Hrčak ID:
13684
URI
Publication date:
30.6.2005.
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