Duração e Unidade Dinâmica na Construção da Identidade Pessoal

Abstract

This dissertation addresses the issue of personal identity, questioning the capacity of traditional models to reconcile the continuity of the subject with the constant flux of changes. The study is based on a critical evaluation of the modern metaphysical tradition—initiated by John Locke and intensified by Derek Parfit — to demonstrate how the search for static criteria of reidentification (physical or psychological) results in the fragmentation of the unity of the self. Initially, the research investigates the logical paradoxes and aporias resulting from the spatialization of time, demonstrating that memory, when considered as mere evidence of past events, fails to maintain identity in the face of qualitative change. In a second moment, Henri Bergson's philosophy is employed to ground an ontological alternative based on the concept of duration (durée). By moving from a metaphysics of substance to a metaphysics of becoming, we affirm that identity is not found in an immutable core, but in a dynamic and processual unity. By redefining memory as the automatic conservation of the past in the present, it is concluded that personality is an uninterrupted continuity of transformations. In this way, identity ceases to be a fixed state to be understood as the very flux of consciousness that forms and maintains itself over time.