The Kinds of Things

What are we? Doepke approaches the riddle of personal identity by way of a general theory of identity, and in so doing he challenges the influential Humean view of identity developed in Parfit's Reasons and Persons.

We normally think of ourselves and the things around us as objects which persist through fairly long stretches of time. Hume, along with Heraclitus and Buddha, denied this degree of permanence. Doepke argues for a view of the self that is more in harmony with both Kant and common sense.

With rigorous arguments, The Kinds of Things strongly supports the commonsense belief that, in normal human life, persons persist: even changes in our deeply-held affections and ideals do not erode the basis of our identity.