Review of John Davenport and Anthony Rudd's 2012 books, recently published in Faith and Philosophy (April 2015).

This book defends an account of the self it calls the NEST (Narrative, Evaluative, Self-Constitutive, Teleological) theory. It argues that the self, rather than being a wholly given entity, at least in part “constitutes” or shapes itself, and does this by endorsing some desires or dispositions and repudiating others. As it is therefore inherently a self-evaluating being it must view itself teleologically, as standing in relation to a standard of value, which it must conceive as having objective authority. Furthermore, as a temporal self-evaluating agent, it must understand itself in narrative terms, though this does not mean that it has complete authorial mastery over its own narrative. Versions of some or all of these ideas have been developed by various influential writers (including Frankfurt, Korsgaard, MacIntyre, Ricoeur and Taylor) but, while drawing extensively on them and replying to some of their critics, this book develops a version of NEST that is importantly different from others familiar in the literature. It takes its main inspiration from Kierkegaard’s account of the self, which it (controversially) argues belongs in the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian tradition of teleological thinking. So the book makes a case, through close engagement with much contemporary philosophical work, for an ancient and currently unfashionable view; that the polarities and tensions that are constitutive of selfhood can only be reconciled through an orientation of the self as a whole to an objective Good.

Identity becomes a liquid discourse when attempting to examine humans in life. Human ideas, actions, and expressions confirm that there is fluidity. This research seeks to elaborate human identity into the existential philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard. The dimensions of fluidity and determination can lead humans to fragility. The methods are used in this study is qualitative by performing descriptions, comparisons, and interpretations. The results of this study are that (1) human identity is in three regions of existence that exist within hermeneutic circles; (2) the discovery of human identity lies in the concept of repetition. Key words: Identity, hermeneutic circles, repetition

Personal Identity theorists as diverse as Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson have noted that the experiencing subject (the locus of present psychological experience) and the person (a human being with a career/narrative extended across time) are not necessarily coextensive. Accordingly, we can become psychologically alienated from, and fail to experience a sense of identity with, the person we once were or will be. This presents serious problems for Locke's original account of “sameness of consciousness” constituting personal identity, given the distinctly normative (and indeed eschatological) focus of his discussion. To succeed, the Lockean project needs to identify some phenomenal property of experience that can constitute a sense of identity with the self figured in all moments to which consciousness can be extended. I draw upon key themes in Kierkegaard's phenomenology of moral imagination to show that Kierkegaard describes a phenomenal quality of experience that unites the experiencing subject with its past and future, regardless of facts about psychological change across time. Yet Kierkegaard's account is fully normative, recasting affective identification with past/future selves as a moral task rather than something merely psychologically desirable (Schechtman) or utterly contingent (Parfit, Strawson).

Having transcended the mythical conception of time, the European philosophical thinking set on the trajectory of establishing subjecthood. The ‗agape personalism‘ of Ocepek and Milbank (among others) ensued, building primarily on the emphasis on the individual and his relatedness to himself and to Other. The legacy of S. Kierkegaard and his strand of theological existentialism has been and may continue to be a valuable resource for developing the agape personalism in our striving to bring about an existential revolution on the inner-personal as well as inter-personal levels. This becomes most obvious upon reading his masterpiece in theological anthropology, The Sickness unto Death. Kierkegaard here grounds authentic subjectivity in a double relatedness of a human individual‘s self – as self relates to itself and as this relatedness relates to Other in faith.

The self as an entity of being and becoming, is revealed as a dynamic process of constant change. The nature of this process as well as the structure of the self in Kierkegaard’s philosophy takes more than one shape as his thought evolves. This may be somewhat surprising. Isnʼt the self’s structure and its lineation essentially constant, while the content alone is the changing ingredient? This is not the case in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, where the very formation of the self changes (along with its content). In this paper I elaborate on Kierkegaard’s early view of the self’s structure. I, then emphasize the dramatic change we find in Sickness unto Death, where the self is changed in both structure and content.

It is an apparent danger in the existence of the modern man that abstraction is substituted for reality. The truth of the uniqueness of each man and the various situations of life where one cannot but make a personal choice and decision, compel man the need to authenticate his being. It is then pertinent at this time, when there is not only a loss of personal identity but more still a total flaw of existence in our modern society, to pinpoint what authentic life should be. Hence, a Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard has done a masterly work of authenticating one's existence, becoming an individual instead of being swallowed up in the appraisal of untrue crowd. Precisely, the researcher will apply in this work the philosophical method of critical reflection of Kierkegaardian three spheres of human existence to arrive at the best manner of approach to examine one's life as to live an authentic existence.