Key Arguments

• After analyzing sameness, he explicitly returns 'to the question that directs the present study' and asks: 'Does the selfhood of the self imply a form of permanence in time which is not reducible to the determination of a substratum... in short, is there a form of permanence in time which is not simply the schema of the category of substance?'
• He reframes this as a 'who?' question: 'Is there a form of permanence in time which can be connected to the question "who?" inas much as it is irreducible to any question of "what?"? Is there a form of permanence in time that is a reply to the question "Who am I?"?'
• He notes the difficulty of this question by pointing out that in speaking of ourselves we in fact have 'two models of permanence in time' summed up in 'character and keeping one's word.'
• He formulates his hypothesis: 'the po larity of these two models of permanence with respect to persons results from the fact that the permanence of character expresses the almost com plete mutual overlapping of the problematic of idem and of ipse, while faithfulness to oneself in keeping one's word marks the extreme gap be tween the permanence of the self and that of the same and so attests fully to the irreducibility of the two problematics one to the other.'
• He immediately adds that this polarity 'suggests an intervention of narrative identity in the conceptual constitution of personal identity in the manner of a specific mediator between the pole of character, where idem and ipse tend to coincide, and the pole of self-maintenance, where selfhood frees itself from sameness.'
• By framing character and promise‑keeping as emblematic experiential models, he prepares the later argument that narrative identity is required to articulate how selfhood maintains itself in and through change, beyond structural or substratum‑based permanence.

Source Quotes

2. Having performed this conceptual analysis of identity as sameness, we can now return to the question that directs the present study: Does the selfhood of the self imply a form of permanence in time which is not reducible to the determination of a substratum, not even in the relational sense which Kant assigns to the category of substance; in short, is there a form of permanence in time which is not simply the schema of the cate gory of substance? Returning to the terms of the opposition which has repeatedly appeared in the earlier studies, we ask, Is there a form of per manence in time which can be connected to the question "who?" inas much as it is irreducible to any question of "what?"?

Having performed this conceptual analysis of identity as sameness, we can now return to the question that directs the present study: Does the selfhood of the self imply a form of permanence in time which is not reducible to the determination of a substratum, not even in the relational sense which Kant assigns to the category of substance; in short, is there a form of permanence in time which is not simply the schema of the cate gory of substance? Returning to the terms of the opposition which has repeatedly appeared in the earlier studies, we ask, Is there a form of per manence in time which can be connected to the question "who?" inas much as it is irreducible to any question of "what?"? Is there a form of permanence in time that is a reply to the question "Who am I?"? It will immediately be apparent that this is a difficult question indeed if we consider the following reflection.

It will immediately be apparent that this is a difficult question indeed if we consider the following reflection. When we speak of ourselves, we in fact have available to us two models of permanence in time which can be summed up in two expressions that are at once descriptive and emblem atic: character and keeping one's word. In both of these, we easily recognize a permanence which we say belongs to us.

In both of these, we easily recognize a permanence which we say belongs to us. My hypothesis is that the po larity of these two models of permanence with respect to persons results from the fact that the permanence of character expresses the almost com plete mutual overlapping of the problematic of idem and of ipse, while faithfulness to oneself in keeping one's word marks the extreme gap be tween the permanence of the self and that of the same and so attests fully to the irreducibility of the two problematics one to the other. I hasten to complete my hypothesis: the polarity I am going to examine suggests an intervention of narrative identity in the conceptual constitution of personal identity in the manner of a specific mediator between the pole of character, where idem and ipse tend to coincide, and the pole of self- maintenance, where selfhood frees itself from sameness.

My hypothesis is that the po larity of these two models of permanence with respect to persons results from the fact that the permanence of character expresses the almost com plete mutual overlapping of the problematic of idem and of ipse, while faithfulness to oneself in keeping one's word marks the extreme gap be tween the permanence of the self and that of the same and so attests fully to the irreducibility of the two problematics one to the other. I hasten to complete my hypothesis: the polarity I am going to examine suggests an intervention of narrative identity in the conceptual constitution of personal identity in the manner of a specific mediator between the pole of character, where idem and ipse tend to coincide, and the pole of self- maintenance, where selfhood frees itself from sameness. But I am running ahead of myself!

Key Concepts

• we can now return to the question that directs the present study: Does the selfhood of the self imply a form of permanence in time which is not reducible to the determination of a substratum, not even in the relational sense which Kant assigns to the category of substance; in short, is there a form of permanence in time which is not simply the schema of the cate gory of substance?
• Returning to the terms of the opposition which has repeatedly appeared in the earlier studies, we ask, Is there a form of per manence in time which can be connected to the question "who?" inas much as it is irreducible to any question of "what?"? Is there a form of permanence in time that is a reply to the question "Who am I?"?
• When we speak of ourselves, we in fact have available to us two models of permanence in time which can be summed up in two expressions that are at once descriptive and emblem atic: character and keeping one's word.
• My hypothesis is that the po larity of these two models of permanence with respect to persons results from the fact that the permanence of character expresses the almost com plete mutual overlapping of the problematic of idem and of ipse, while faithfulness to oneself in keeping one's word marks the extreme gap be tween the permanence of the self and that of the same and so attests fully to the irreducibility of the two problematics one to the other.
• I hasten to complete my hypothesis: the polarity I am going to examine suggests an intervention of narrative identity in the conceptual constitution of personal identity in the manner of a specific mediator between the pole of character, where idem and ipse tend to coincide, and the pole of self- maintenance, where selfhood frees itself from sameness.

Context

Transition from the analysis of sameness to the explicit posing of the ipseity question, where Ricoeur introduces character and promise‑keeping as two experiential poles of temporal permanence and anticipates narrative identity as a mediating concept.