This book is an examination of personal identity, exploring both
who we think we are, and how we construct the sense of ourselves
through art. It proposes that the notion of personal identity is a
psycho-social construction that has evolved over many centuries.
While this idea has been widely discussed in recent years, Andrew
Spira approaches it from a completely new point of view. Rather
than relying on the thinking subject’s attempts to identify
itself consciously and verbally, it focuses on the traces that the
self-sense has unconsciously left in the fabric of its environment
in the form of non-verbal cultural conventions. Covering a
millennium of western European cultural history, it amounts to an
‘anthropology of personal identity in the West’. Following a
broadly chronological path, Spira traces the self-sense from its
emergence from the collectivity of the medieval Church to its
consummation in the individualistic concept of artistic genius in
the 19th century. In doing so, it aims to bridge a gap that exists
between cultural history and philosophy. Regarding cultural history
(especially art history), it elicits significances from its
material that have been thoroughly overlooked. Regarding
philosophy, it highlights the crucial role that material culture
plays in the formation of philosophical ideas. It argues that the
sense of personal self is as much revealed by cultural conventions
- and as a cultural convention - as it is observable to the mind as
an object of philosophical enquiry.
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