An A–Zwhat is at stake in their separate strengths and weaknesses. For
example, the changing physical body might be thought of as
serving the ‘basic beingness’ of the individual, the continu-
ity of the person resting in that basic being not in the body.
Alternatively, the evolving nature of a person’s individual psy-
chology might be thought of as the shifting instantiation of the
basic being.
When it comes to the weaknesses of the two theories, notably
how they cope with change, basic being may help again. For
example, it can be thought of as the ‘bearer of experience’, or as
that which makes persons subjects. This would highlight a central
weakness of both the body theory and the psychology theory,
namely that they do not think of personal identity in terms of
human subjectivity, but rather in terms of a sequence of physical
or mental events. It is such subjectivity that Socrates was referring
to when he says that the reason he is in prison, awaiting death,
is because he has and holds to moral principles. The moral prin-
ciples he has form the personal explanation for his location, and
any purely material explanation as to why he’s in prison, such as
that his sinews led him there, seems woefully inadequate.
In other words, rather like trying to understand the nature of
consciousness, the nature of personal identity, or the soul, will
be incomplete unless it incorporates the element of human sub-
jectivity. We experience things, we don’t just undergo events.
J – is about Jesus
Christianity is compelling to many Christians for Jesus-shaped
reasons. That sounds silly to say. But it’s this problematic
notion that God comes to us as a person. The Christian doc-
trine of the incarnation says more than that God comes to us
through people, with which presumably many religions agree.
It says that God is a person, and you’ve got to have faith in this
divine man in order to receive the salvation Christianity affords.
Which is why to question the nature of the incarnation is high
on the list of heresies.