“Consistency” and maintenance of the personal identity in Nicolai Hartmann’s Philosophie der Natur

In Nicolai Hartmann’s work, person and personal identity are regularly appearing issues. In the Ethics (1926), Hartmann writes a severe criticism of any metaphysical personalism, but also (following Scheler) of Kant’s formalism. Keeping in the background such discussion, this contribution focuses on how, in Philosophie der Natur (1940), Hartmann analyzes the form of persistence of entities such as the person, or the self, in the ontological sphere of the real being (time, space, natural becoming, and the changing social and cultural conditions). Starting from the refusal of any absolute substantiality, Hartmann succeeds in ‘isolating’ highly dynamic forms of relative ontological duration. Among them, the consistency [Konsistenz] of the person, i. e., the process of reaffirmation of the identity of the self with the series of the past selves. This activity is concretely performed through the insertion of biographical contents, for instance recollections, into one’s identity. The result is a sequence of horizontal sections, each one constituted by the person’s inner life of the moment; inside each section, some important events stand out that, in the subsequent activity of selfmaintenance, will play the role of inner marker for that age.