ASMENS TAPATYBĖ PERMAINŲ METU: TARP LEMTIES IR PASIRINKIMO
PERSONAL IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF CHANGE: AMID THE DESTINY AND CHOICE

Summary/Abstract: Recently growing attention of social scholars for the issue of personal identity is related to the ever increasing complexity of social life and social relations. If a century ago students of identity issues were not much preoccupied with the matter of the integrity of personal identity, nowadays precisely this issue becomes of prime importance and evokes heated dispute. The confusion is inevitable once the premises of our predecessors about the nature of identity (that used to be closely associated with social roles) are accepted uncritically, not reconsidering them from the perspective of the present social reality. Perception of identity in close association with social roles, status, interests, consumption patterns and similar social facts is not adequate, at least not for posttraditional society of intense and permanent change. Much more appropriate is defining of personal identity through the prism of basic values of an individual. Values provide human existence with the meaning, serve as the guidelines for one’s everyday practices, safeguard the personality from a frustrating feeling of temporariness and fragmentation. Extrication of the notion of identity from social roles and status and basing it on values is necessary for adequate rationalization of the continuity of identity despite continuous change of performed social roles. Thus the main argument of the author is that the most essential factor integrating identity of an individual are one’s basic values.

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