Why is the search for identity interminable? It is not that the object sought, the wo 我 – our chosen identity – does not exist. Certainly it does not pre-exist in nature or culture – not, at least, once a rupture with tradition has occurred and role-based identities are thrown into question. But the wo 我 exists at each moment as the identity chosen by the wu 吾 – the innate, unknown, undefined self that is always trying to fashion itself into a chosen identity yet always remains outside it. By an ever-renewed act of choice, and subject to external influences, the wu 吾 builds itself into a wo 我: an individual with a definite identity. The process is interminable because the choice at any moment is never secure from revision by future choice. As Kierkegaard puts it, ‘just when it seems on the point of having the building finished, at a whim it can dissolve the whole thing into nothing.’ The construction is always revisable, and as long as it is revisable we cannot say that it is complete. You can say it is complete according to some plan you have drawn, but then the plan could always be revised as well. You can have a plan for the plan, but now you are embarked upon a regress, heading towards infinity, not finality.
