THE UNITY OF IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE AS THE ...

constituted by its particular relation to the not-I – i.e. to the various representations of the
“I.” So while, on the one hand, the “I” that has these representations remains the same
“I,” there is another sense in which it is always a different “I,” since at each moment it
exists in an essential relation to the specific representation it has at that moment.
We must grasp the “I” as the unity of its persistent identity and its continual self-
difference. This peculiar structure of the “I” derives from the fact that we cannot fully
abstract the “I” from its particular representations. There are two possible ways we might
try to abstract the “I” as a simple identity distinct from both the representation that the
cup is on the table and the representation that the cup is half-full. First, we might
construe the “I” as part of the content of our representations. On this view, the “I” would
be some constant representation that was always lurking around in addition to the
representations that “the cup is on the table,” and that “the cup is half-full.” This view
must be false for two reasons. First of all, inspection (or introspection) of our experience
doesn’t reveal such a representation. Of course we have various representations of the
states of our self – of our hunger, our beliefs, our memories, etc. However, these
representations are not constant and unvarying in the sense required by the possibility of
the “I = I.” As philosophers such as Hume and Kant have argued, careful introspection
of our consciousness does not reveal any persistent or constant representation of the
“I.” 257
257 Hume speaks directly and clearly on this point. In A Treatise on Human Nature, he says: “But
self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d
to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue
invariably the same, thro, the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner.
But there is no impression constant and invariable” (p. 164). Kant makes a similar point about the referent
of the “I” in his discussion of the paralogisms. He says: “For in that which we call the soul, everything is
in continual flux, and it has nothing abiding, except perhaps (if one insists) the I, which is simple only
because this representation has not content, and hence no manifold, on account of which it seems to
represent a simple object, or better put, it seems to designate one. This I would have to be an
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