Personal Identity and Cultural Multiplicity from a Bergsonian Point of View

Individual identity and the multiplicity of cultural factors that influence the constitution of personhood raise the question of who we are as persons. Individual experience, however, is temporal. Hence, shouldn’t we conclude that we never remain identical to ourselves in such a process of becoming? In order to deepen the concept of personhood that is implied by this question, I will distinguish personhood as historically constituted (Bergson) from immanent ipseity as conceptualized by Michel Henry’s radical phenomenology. By taking a Bergsonian point of view on personhood, the alleged conflict between identity and cultural multiplicity is also subjected to a critique.