What Is It to Be a Human Being? Rom Harré on Self and Identity

Abstract

Rom HarréRom Harré has held different views at different times on selfSelf and identityIdentity. He liked to keep these terms open and flexible, in line with his opinion that, “for the most part, selves are fictions”. These fictions take form (and change their form) in the ongoing flow of activities that peoplePeople produce in interaction with one another—which is one reason why it is difficult, if not precarious, to use well-defined concepts to capture these “fictions.” Concepts tend to fix what they are meant to identify. In fact, this is the reason why we usually need and want well-defined concepts. But how then, drawing on Rom HarréRom Harré, do we have to conceive of such unstable and unfixable phenomena as selfSelf and identityIdentity? How do we combine concepts and fictions?