Abstract
Abstract The enormous importance accorded to personal identity in law and in ethics can seem puzzling and perhaps unjustified when we observe how complex and fragmented human beings and their lives can be. Professor Schelling presents some very interesting grounds for doubt, by stating the case for a view that intrapersonal motivational conflict is like a contest between different selves, which may give scope for considerations of distributive justice between or among them and may also make it appropriate for other parties, including the state, to take sides in their disputes or help them to enforce their claims against one another. But I think it will be even more difficult than he suggests to reduce significantly the importance of the personal identity of the single individual who comprises these separate “selves.” Even if some legal or even moral fiction is at work in the idea of the sovereignty of the whole person, there are strong reasons for it.
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