Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

part of a roughly coherent whole. They draw together disparate and discordant 
elements into the concordant unity of a plot. Narrative identity gives an answer to 
questions such as ‘Who has done this?,’ ‘Who is speaking?’. In Riceour’s words: 
‘The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her 
narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story 
that makes the identity of the character
’ (
1992
, 
147–48).

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121 
Ricoeur (1992) separates two distinct, although partially overlapping, senses of 
identity: 
ipse
(sameness, character) and 
idem
(self, self-constancy). 
Idem
refers to 
sameness and encompasses numerical identity, extreme resemblance, uninterrupted 
continuity and permanence over time. In contrast, 
ipse
is seen as constancy of the 
self, for example evidenced by honouring a promise even if one’s character 
(elements of 
idem)
has undergone a significant change. Positing 
ipse
-identity is to 
emphasise an ethical dimension of identity: an intentional commitment to constancy 
even though the character, values and commitments of a person (
idem
) have 
changed. Narrative identity, according to Ricoeur, is what links the permanence in 
time of the character (
idem
) and self-constancy (
ipse
). It emphasises that the 
changing agent is faced with an ethical decision about how to act in contact with 
others after the change.
There are four main putative ways in which identity can be undermined on 
Ricoeur’s view: (1) the failure to produce a narrative that satisfies the 
compositional criteria, (2) a threat to the ability to construe narrative, (3) change in 
character (
idem
), (4) the failure to resist change via promise-keeping and 
commitment (
ipse
). In this work I will examine the first way of undermining 
narrative identity, in order to illustrate problems faced by a truly ‘narrative’ account 
of identity.