Reason Before Identity

In November of 1998 Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, delivered the 1998 Romanes Lecture before the University of Oxford. The subject was social identity and its role and implications.

In November of 1998 Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, delivered the 1998 Romanes Lecture before the University of Oxford. The subject was social identity and its role and implications.

Brian Hedden defends a radical view about rationality, personal identity, and time. He argues that what it is rational to do should not depend on your past beliefs or actions, which are not part of your current perspective on the world. His impersonal approach holds that what rationality demands of you is solely determined by your evidence.

“One of the few world intellectuals on whom we may rely to make sense out of our existential confusion.”—Nadine Gordimer In this sweeping philosophical work, Amartya Sen proposes that the murderous violence that has riven our society is driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

In an increasingly multi-religious and multi-ethnic world, identity has become something actively chosen rather than merely acquired at birth. This book essentially analyzes the resources available to make such a choice. Looking into the world of intellectual India, this unique comparative survey focuses on the identity resources offered by India's traditions of reasoning and public debate. Arguing that identity is a formation of reason, it draws on Indian theory to claim that identities are constructed from exercises of reason as derivation from exemplary cases. The book demonstrates that contemporary debates on global governance and cosmopolitan identities can benefit from these Indian resources, which were developed within an intercultural pluralism context with an emphasis on consensual resolution of conflict. This groundbreaking work builds on themes developed by Amartya Sen to provide a creative pursuit of Indian reasoning that will appeal to anyone studying politics, philosophy, and Asian political thought.

The world may be more riven by murderous violence than ever before, yet Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues in this sweeping philosophical work that its brutalities are driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Sen argues in his new book that conflict and violence are sustained today, no less than the past, by the illusion of a unique identity. Indeed, the world is increasingly taken to be divided between religions (or 'cultures' or 'civilizations'), ignoring the relevance of other ways in which people see themselves through class, gender, profession, language, literature, science, music, morals or politics, and denying the real possibilities of reasoned choices. In Identity and Violence he overturns such stereotypes as the 'the monolithic Middle East' or 'the Western Mind'. Through his penetrating investigation of such subjects as multiculturalism, fundamentalism, terrorism and globalization, he brings out the need for a clear-headed understanding of human freedom and a constructive public voice in Global civil society. The world, Sen shows, can be made to move towards peace as firmly as it has recently spiralled towards war.

Identity is considered prima facie the most important philosophical principle in traditional logic and metaphysics. The reflexive ability of the subject implies that he or she can relate to himself or herself and to others, thus establishing the basis for the formation of individual and social identity. The present essays, which contains papers held at the conference of the "Institut International de Philosophie" at the University of Zadar, in 2007, present a range of positions and arguments regarding the possibilities of philosophical interpretation of identity.

This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.