Personal identity: an issue that demands revision in today’s philosophical and interdisciplinary dialogue

Today we are witnessing an unprecedented crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Its unparalleled and unpredictable character, added to its expansion and the way it has affected contemporary society, also emphasizes the underlying question, who are we? Why and in what sense? In the current context, where, on the one hand, there is a loss of confidence in the ways in which we govern ourselves, as well as an uncertainty regarding the direction that this crisis may take and the threshold to which it can lead us, the question certainly arises as to whether what we are has a background on which to support ourselves; if anything, that "who" that we claim to be and to whom we bear witness in our work can withstand the test of the unpredictable and unexpected, of what has plunged us into a situation as unusual as it is incomprehensible. As tragic as this situation affects us worldwide, it affects us both collectively and personally. With all the momentum with which this even strikes us, do we not live it precisely as a challenge to the security whereby we usually respond to the question of our personal identity? Is it not at such an exceptional moment as this, when the question of personal identity worries us greatly as soon as our temporal condition takes on real importance, which, irreversible as such, offers us in turn the opportunity to reverse the situation we are involved in? Is it not during this worldwide crisis, which we first experienced as a personal rupture, which in turn gives us the opportunity to appreciate the tension we live in, but which is present, however, most of the time, invisible to us, namely, that of being engaged in a habitual, inhabited space, consolidated by a sense that we inherit, at the same time that we believe we are called to innovate on that? Isn't this time the one that certainly makes history in our personal and social fabric? However, it seems that we also can, in an unprecedented way, experience this crisis as an identity crisis insofar as it enhances its problematic dimension. The articles we present here have the quality of confronting this question from multiple perspectives that, irreducible between them, still manage to give certain lucidity to that which we comprehend around the question of “who am I?, which is especially necessary at this moment. In this sense, the texts put us, in one hand, on the phenomenological-eventual scope just like it has been elaborated by the French thinker, Claude Romano, who interrogates the human being in his capacity to embrace the events that shock the subject’s existencial unfolding. On the other hand, we have collected articles that revolve around the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricœur, focusing their attention both on the ontological condition of human beings, as well as on the perspective of his hermeneutics of action and narrative. We finally conclude with a text by Shaumann which questions the relationship between identity and alienation, interrogating the philosophies of Paul Ricœur and Martin Heidegger.