Persons, Personal Identity, Persistence, and Eternal Recurrence in Stoic Philosophy with Dr. Vanessa de Harven

The Stoics, famously, are corporealists: they say that only bodies exist and that the soul, its virtues, and all our attributes are bodies too. How, then, does a corporealist account for personal identity? First, a person is a composite of body and soul—but both are bodies. Second, personal identity, or uniqueness (synchronic identity) is secured by the peculiar intrinsic suchness of that composite body, qualitatively distinct from every other. Third, persistence, or diachronic identity, is secured by that same intrinsic suchness remaining exactly as it is through various other changes happening all the while (both quantitative changes, e.g. growth and diminution, and qualitative changes, e.g. standing from sitting, becoming wise). Strikingly, and fourth, this numerical identity also holds across worlds so that Socrates in this world, though he dies in the interim and does not persist, is numerically identical to the infinitely many Socrateses that are born, live, and die just the same way in the infinitely many next and previous worlds—an unexpected kind of life after death!

When:
April 8, 2026

Where:
DSPT Blackfriars Gallery

Time:
12:30pm to 1:30pm

For more information, please email us at [email protected]