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This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenröthe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heißt Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heißt Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.

Over his philosophical career, David Wiggins has produced a body of work that, though varied and wide-ranging, stands as a coherent and carefully integrated whole. Its parts cannot be studied in isolation, and a central aim of this thesis is to examine how three vital elements of his systematic metaphysics interconnect: his conceptualist-realism, his sortal theory ‘D’, and his account of personal identity – his human being theory. Yet critics murder to dissect, and Wiggins’ project is often unfairly decomposed into its parts. Thus, this study aims both to introduce his thoughts without neglecting the relations between them, and to rectify the various misinterpretations of them by – among others – Paul Snowdon, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker. In clarifying and exploring these connections another sunken, yet central, vein is revealed. It is argued that Wiggins’ metaphysics bears on, and is borne upon, by various discussions in the philosophy of biology. This is a connection that he himself adverts to, but which commentators have rarely investigated. Attending to it, one finds in his analyses of natural substances a novel form of biological anti-reductionism, which stands as a productive alternative to emergentism. Closer attention to his construal of substances – specifically organisms – also reveals a worry. At the core of Wiggins’ account of personal identity is the consilience he sees between the concept of a person and the concept of a natural substance (a human being). It is argued below that organ transplantation disturbs the Aristotelian distinction between natural substance and biological artefact, and thus tests the heart-string of his human being theory.

This thesis is an exploration of sensory-embodied identity grounded in an empirical study of self-body experience of public toilet spaces, through which I challenge dominant conceptions of the 'individual' put forth by the Western philosophical tradition, social constructionism, and post-structuralism. Those conceptions of the self-body which tend to reproduce Cartesian dualism and apply reductionist, representationalist understandings to materiality, typically render the body into passive flesh, rending a materiality in need of constant shaping, management, and control. To challenge these understandings, I put forth a posthumanist, material-feminist approach which takes the body not as the mere basis of the self, but rather the Source of all experience, knowledge, and understanding. Rather than matter being understood as a stable thing or object directed by the rational subject or social power, this approach recognises the active, ongoing unfinished nature of materiality. This exploration is organised through Norbert Elias' concepts of homo clausus (closed person) and homines aperti (people opened) as frameworks for elucidating the experiences of individuals and introduces a Latin neologism - corpora infinita (boundless bodies) - to push his processoriented sociology further via a posthumanist-materialist lens. The empirical study focuses explicitly on individual experiences of sensory-embodiment through a universal daily practice within society: public toileting. My empirical research focuses on sex-segregated public toileting experiences of men, women, gender non-conforming, and trans individuals who have a range of sexual identities. The investigation takes the form of forty-five semistructured interviews and over two hundred 'toilet use' surveys, completed in New York City, London, and South East England. Through a meditation on socially contingent toileting habits and associated emotions, I suggest that experiences within public toilets expose the fissures of individual identity construction and understanding according to both homo clausus and homines aperti identity structures and, in doing so, reveal an opportunity for the reconceptualization of embodied identity as corpus infinitum.

If Hob and Nob both read the same newspaper article claiming that a witch has come into town, then the following sentence can be true, even if the article is fabricated and there are no witches:

1. (1) Hob thinks that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.

This dissertation focuses on the concept of authenticity and its implications for our projects of self-creation, particularly those involving the use of "enhancement technologies" (such as stimulant drugs, "mood brighteners", or brain stimulation). After an introduction to the concept of authenticity and the enhancement debate in the first part of the thesis, part 2 considers the main analyses of authenticity in the contemporary philosophical literature. It begins with those emphasizing self-creation, and shows that, despite their merits, such views cannot adequately deal with certain types of cases, which require a third option, “true self” accounts, emphasizing self-discovery. However, it is argued that in their existing versions, accounts of this third sort are also unsatisfactory. Part 3 of the thesis proposes a new account of the "true self" sort, intended to improve upon existing ones. Common problematic assumptions about the concept of the true self are critiqued, after which a new analysis of that concept is presented, based on seven different conditions. Two specific definitions of authenticity, respectively emphasizing self-expression and the preservation of one's true self, are provided, and its relation to various associated notions, such as integrity or sincerity, are examined. Finally, part 4 looks at the implications of the previous parts for the enhancement debate. In particular, it discusses the prospect of technologically enhancing our personality and mood dispositions. Do such interventions always threaten our authenticity, as some worry? A negative answer is provided to that question. Various potential pitfalls hinted at by the inauthenticity worry are discussed and acknowledged. It is, however, argued that such enhancements could still in principle be used in a fully authentic manner, and that they have the potential to bring about genuine improvements in our mood but also to our moral capacities and our affective rationality more generally.

This thesis explores the grounds for justifying the ascription of mentality to non-human agents. In the first part, I set my research within the framework of scientific naturalism and the computational theory of mind. Then I argue that while the behaviour of certain agents demands a computational explanation, there is no justification for attributing mentality to them. I use these examples to backup my claim that some authors indulge in unnecessary ascription of mentality to certain animals (e.g. insects) on the main grounds that they possess computational capacities. The second part of my thesis takes up recent literature exploring the line that divides computational agents with and without mentality. More precisely, I criticise the proposals put forward by Fodor, Dretske, Burge, Bermúdez and Carruthers. My main argument takes the form of a reductio ad absurdum by showing that their criteria apply to artefacts to which the attribution of mentality is unjustified. Overall, I conclude that even though the views advanced by the mentioned authors help to elucidate the computational grounds that could make the emergence of a mind possible, they do not offer a satisfactory criterion for the ascription of mentality to some computational agents but not others. In the final part I develop my own proposal for grounding the attribution of mentality. My strategy consists in drawing upon the distinction between personal and subpersonal levels of explanation, according to which properly psychological descriptions have whole-agents as their subject matter, use a distinctive theoretical vocabulary, and are constrained by norms of rationality. After showing that the personal-subpersonal distinction is compatible with a naturalistic framework, I adapt the distinction so that it can be applied to non-human agents, and conclude that it imposes constraints in cognitive architecture that point in the direction of cognitive access, generality and integration.

In 'Oneself as another' Paul Ricoeur considers the nature of selfhood concluding that it can only be understood as polyvalent. He uses narrative identity to show that because selves both “act and suffer” human identity is intimately tied with encounter with the Other. The ethical dimension is explored in a mediation between Aristotelian teleological ethics and Kantian deontological morality, resulting in phronēsis or practical wisdom. The book ends with a number of aporias, including the problem of identifying the internal voice, heard in the conscience – the voice of attestation. In a related paper, which provided the impetus for this thesis - “The self in the mirror of the Scriptures” - Ricoeur considers the issues of identity from a religious perspective. The thesis critically reviews the development of Ricoeur’s thought, moving from philosophy through hermeneutics to ethics, and its implications for theology, moving from questions of the will, to biblical hermeneutics and Christian ethics. It questions the concept of narrative identity and is particularly concerned with the place of the incompetent narrator in community. It concludes that we must take seriously Ricoeur’s insistence that biblical faith adds nothing to the consideration of what is good or obligatory, but belongs to an economy of the gift in which love is tied to the naming of God. However, to consider what this might mean in pastoral and ethical terms for those who understand themselves as summoned selves, and seek to find their image in the mirror of scripture, the thesis concludes with extended exercise in biblical hermeneutics, drawing on Ricoeur’s consideration of genre as a poetic mode. The thesis suggests that the comic parables help us to hope for more than we experience in our frailty, while the tragic parables illuminate our incapacity and enable us to forgive others their failure.