The concept of identity

 When I was a student, Schopenhauer was not taught. He was a crank, rather than a philosopher.

I gather that’s still the consensus among philosophy departments. However, the dissenters who thought Schopenhauer was an important thinker include Freud and Wittgenstein.

I can’t help anyone with Freud, and I am not a good enough scholar to know what Wittgenstein found interesting about Schopenhauer. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a single idea: Schopenhauer’s notion that individual identity is an illusion.

Schopenhauer’s reasons for that belief are bewildering. I doubt that Wittgenstein was interested in his reasons. I think Wittgenstein was interested that such a fundamental concept could be challenged.

Many common beliefs don’t have solid foundations. Often, the grounds for a belief change.

Consider the grounds for the belief that the world is flat.

The grounds, 5,000 years ago, might involve our own experience — and the limits of it.

The grounds, 2,000 years ago, might include our distrust of astronomers.

The grounds today might include too much time on the daffy side of the Internet.

You can see a change in the reasonableness of this belief.

In an earlier day, the claim that there’s something fishy about the concept of personal identity might have interested only a psychiatrist and a logician. 

Today, that claim might interest research scientists: biologists studying eusocial species, for example.

• Source: Schopenhauer is having a moment because of a new biography by David Bather Woods. The best review I’ve seen is here:

Terry Eagleton, “Pregnant With Monsters”; The London Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 22, 4 Dec. 2025.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n22/terry-eagleton/pregnant-with-monsters