Decline of Personal Identity in the Modern Technical Age Cover Image

Sumrak osobnog identiteta u suvremenom tehničkom razdoblju
Decline of Personal Identity in the Modern Technical Age

Author(s): Fulvio Šuran
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Hrvatsko Filozofsko Društvo
Keywords: scientific-technical apparatus; empirical individual; partial identity; system of values; personal identity; freedom as hidden slavery; deidentification; culture of relativism; culture of insignificant choice; freedom of inability

Summary/Abstract: After the introduction which deals with the problem of identity and the difficulty of real recognition in the modern western cultural environment, in the first chapter I am going to analyse some aspects of the modern western thought, which have brought to surface the problem of identity in all its forms. In the second chapter I will concentrate on the concept of the single person as individual, as it is a concept of mainly western origin, which finds its origin in ancient philosophy while in the modern technical age it finds all the conditions for its end. The third part will focus on the examination of functionality as a new kind of “identity”, which, inevitably, brings to a larger process of deidentification, considering that human action has lost the functionality that used to distinguish humans from other living beings. Because of this, the complete horizon of technical functionality is becoming more inaccessible and obscure. Thus, it is within this horizon that we should look for and find new meanings for already old and worn out concepts, among which there is also identity, which has found its sense and origin in the previous, anthropological horizon.

  • Issue Year: 31/2011
  • Issue No: 04/124
  • Page Range: 775-785
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Croatian