sense. If some of the things I value most are accessible to me
only in relation to the person I love, then she becomes part
of my identity.
To some people this might seem a limitation, from which
one might aspire to free oneself. This is one way of understanding
the impulse behind the life of the hermit or, to take
a case more familiar to our culture, the solitary artist. But
from another perspective, we might see even these lives as
aspiring to a certain kind of dialogicality. In the case of the
hermit, the interlocutor is God. In the case of the solitary artist,
the work itself is addressed to a future audience, perhaps
still to be created by the work. The very form of a work of art
shows its character as addressed.10 But however one feels
about it, the making and sustaining of our identity, in the
absence of a heroic effort to break out of ordinary existence,
remains dialogical throughout our lives.
Thus my discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that I
work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue,
partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why
the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity
gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially
depends on my dialogical relations with others.
Of course, the point is not that this dependence on others
arose with the age of authenticity. A form of dependence
was always there. The socially derived identity was by its
very nature dependent on society. But in the earlier age recognition
never arose as a problem. General recognition was
built into the socially derived identity by virtue of the very
fact that it was based on social categories that everyone took
for granted. Yet inwardly derived, personal, original identity
doesn’t enjoy this recognition a priori. It has to win it through
sense. If some of the things I value most are accessible to me
only in relation to the person I love, then she becomes part
of my identity.
To some people this might seem a limitation, from which
one might aspire to free oneself. This is one way of understanding
the impulse behind the life of the hermit or, to take
a case more familiar to our culture, the solitary artist. But
from another perspective, we might see even these lives as
aspiring to a certain kind of dialogicality. In the case of the
hermit, the interlocutor is God. In the case of the solitary artist,
the work itself is addressed to a future audience, perhaps
still to be created by the work. The very form of a work of art
shows its character as addressed.10 But however one feels
about it, the making and sustaining of our identity, in the
absence of a heroic effort to break out of ordinary existence,
remains dialogical throughout our lives.
Thus my discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that I
work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue,
partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why
the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity
gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially
depends on my dialogical relations with others.
Of course, the point is not that this dependence on others
arose with the age of authenticity. A form of dependence
was always there. The socially derived identity was by its
very nature dependent on society. But in the earlier age recognition
never arose as a problem. General recognition was
built into the socially derived identity by virtue of the very
fact that it was based on social categories that everyone took
for granted. Yet inwardly derived, personal, original identity
doesn’t enjoy this recognition a priori. It has to win it through
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