Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-18T01:56:28.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SELF-OWNERSHIP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2005

Edward Feser
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University

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
Copyright
© 2005 Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.