There is, in fact, another model of permanence in time besides that of character. It is that of keeping one’s word in faithfulness to the word that has been given. I see in this keeping the emblematic figure of an identity which is the polar opposite of that depicted by the emblematic figure of character. Keeping one’s word expresses a self-constancy which cannot be inscribed, as character was, within the dimension of something in general but solely within the dimension of “who?” Here, too, common usage is a good guide. The perseverance of character is one thing, the perseverance of faithfulness to a word that has been given is something else again. The continuity of character is one thing, the constancy of friendship is quite another. In this regard, Heidegger is right to distinguish the permanence of substance from self-subsistence. This major distinction remains, even if it is not certain that “anticipatory resoluteness” in the face of death exhausts the sense of self-constancy. This attitude thus expresses a certain existential investment of the transcendentals of existence which Heidegger terms “existentialia,” among which we find selfhood. Other attitudes — situated at the same juncture of the existentiell and the existential, as all the Heideggerian analyses revolving around Being-toward-death — reveal just as much about the fundamental conjunction between the problematic of permanence in time and that of the self, inasmuch as the self does not coincide with the same. In this respect, keeping one’s promise, as was mentioned above, does indeed appear to stand as a challenge to time, a denial of change: even if my desire were to change, even if I were to change my opinion or my inclination, “I will hold firm.” It is not necessary, for the promise to be meaningful, to place keeping one’s word within the horizon of Being-toward-death. The properly ethical justification of the promise suffices of itself, a justification which can be derived from the obligation to safeguard the institution of language and to respond to the trust that the other places in my faithfulness. This ethical justification, considered as such, develops its own temporal implications, namely a modality of permanence in time capable of standing as the polar opposite to the permanence of character. It is here, precisely, that selfhood and sameness cease to coincide. And it is here, consequently, that the equivocalness of the notion of permanence in time is dissipated.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
amandla
