The Problem of Personal Identity in the Context of the Integrative Approach

Abstract

This article analyses some categorical and methodological aspects of the problem of identity in the contemporary discourse of the humanities. The paper is relevant, on the one hand, due to the extreme heuristic significance of the concept of identity for studying various aspects of variability and stability in the development of sociocultural subjects and, on the other hand, due to numerous disputes over the essence of this construct and the limits of its application. The integral nature of the phenomenon of identity leads to the need to develop a methodological and conceptual apparatus that would provide a productive version of interdisciplinary interaction, a synthesis of psychological, cultural and historical approaches. Having scrutinized a number of modern psychological and cultural approaches to studying personal identity, the authors conclude that contemporary research on the problem of identity follows the trend of the integrative, systems analysis. The integrative analysis allows us to create a complete picture of the process of self-identification and at the same time trace in detail and describe its individual aspects. The combination of the axiological and the activity concepts of culture within the framework of the synthetic approach allows us to formulate a definition of identity as a sociocultural and social group integration, which forms an individual’s sociocultural subjectivity. The concept of identity as a synthetic theoretical and methodological construct maintains the focus of research attention on the fundamental and irremovable integration of a person into the cultural space, while allowing other options and methods for such an entry. The proposed concept of personal identity in the integrative version is considered as a kind of synthetic methodology, which is a productive way of developing an identity theory and can become a prerequisite for overcoming an identity crisis in cognitive and value aspects.