Who One Is

If I am asked in the framework of Book 1, Who are you? I, in answering, might say I dont know who in the world I am. Nevertheless there is a sense in which I always know what I refers to and can never not know, even if I have become, e.g., amnesiac. Yet in Book 2, Who are you? has other senses of oneself in mind than the non-sortal myself. For example, it might be the pragmatic context, as in a bureaucratic setting; but Who are you? or Who am I? might be more anguished and be rendered by What sort of person are you? or What sort am I? Such a question often surfaces in the face of a limit-situation, such as ones death or in the wake of a shameful deed where we are compelled to find our centers, what we also will call Existenz. Existenz here refers to the center of the person. In the face of the limit-situation one is called upon to act unconditionally in the determination of oneself and ones being in the world. In this Book 2 we discuss chiefly ones normative personal-moral identity which stands in contrast to the transcendental I where ones non-sortal unique identity is given from the start. This moral identity requires a unique self-determination and normative self-constitution which may be thought of with the help of the metaphor of vocation. We will see that it has especial ties to ones Existenz as well as to love. This Book 2 claims that the moral-personal ideal sense of who one is is linked to the transcendental who through a notion of entelechy. The person strives to embody the I-ness that one both ineluctably is and which, however, points to who one is not yet and who one ought to be. The final two chapters tell a philosophical-theological likely story of a basic theme of Plotinus: We must learn to honor ourselves because of our honorable kinship and lineage Yonder.