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PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SELF-OWNERSHIP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2005

Edward Feser
Edward Feser
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University
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Abstract

Defenders of the thesis of self-ownership generally focus on the “ownership” part of the thesis and say little about the metaphysics of the self that is said to be self-owned. But not all accounts of the self are consistent with robust self-ownership. Philosophical accounts of the self are typically enshrined in theories of personal identity, and the paper examines various such theories with a view to determining their suitability for grounding a metaphysics of the self consistent with self-ownership. As it happens, only one such theory is suitable: the hylemorphic theory of Aristotle and Aquinas. To adopt such a theory, however, is to see that self-ownership may in some respects have implications different from those many of its defenders take it to have.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 2005 , pp. 100 - 125
Copyright
© 2005 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation

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Footnotes

For comments on earlier versions of this essay, I thank Christopher Kaczor, Ellen Frankel Paul, the participants at an Institute for Humane Studies current research workshop in January 2004, and the other contributors to this volume.