Identity and conflict

Social Research, Spring, 2007 by Isaac Levi

The 613 commandments of Jehovah constitute a set of value commitments regulating all sorts of activities rendered systematic because they are injunctions imposed on the Hebrews by God. The systematization is fashioned out of beliefs as to what is true (that God enjoined the 613 commandments) and a value commitment to obey the will of God. Someone who is not an Israelite might adopt these beliefs and this value commitment without undertaking to conform to the 613 commandments because these commandments are imposed on the Israelites. However, only if the person identifies himself or herself as belonging to the children of Israel will the beliefs of fact and the value commitment entail an obligation to conform to these commandments.

For the Israelite to give up one of the commandments (which can be reformulated as a value commitment) would entail modifying the systematization--perhaps by calling into question whether conformity to the value commitment was enjoined by God or whether one ought to obey God's commandments. The agent X might come to doubt that he or she is an Israelite so that even if thesis that God enjoined the commandment remains a full belief and that God ought to be obeyed remains unquestioned, the agent calls into question the truth of the claim that he or she is an Israelite and can, therefore, call into question whether X is obliged to obey the 613 commandments without irrationality. Or, even if X does not doubt the fact that X is an Israelite as a factual claim, X judges that X has control over whether X remains an Israelite and chooses to leave the community. Any one of these modifications incurs a cost to X that constitutes a deterrent to modification.

Among the possible ways of giving up one of the commandments specified are two that are related to X's identity. One calls for X to give up the full belief that X is an Israelite. In so doing, X is denying that, as a matter of fact, X is an Israelite. X is denying a factual identification with the children of Israel.

But even if X is convinced that he is an Israelite, he or she may decide to opt out of the Israelite community and thereby cease being committed to maintaining conformity with the 613 commandments. X cannot thereby deny the fact that X was an Israelite or that X may continue to be truly described as being an Israelite. Nonetheless, X judges that it is up to him or her to decide whether to remain loyal to the Israelites or to disassociate him or herself from them. Call identification in this sense commitment identity.

Akeel Bilgrami claims that "identities in politics in the subjective sense of identity come from deep value commitments that individual or groups have to their religions, or their nationalities, their race their gender, and so forth" (Bilgrami, 2004: 183). I take it that Bilgrami is thinking of identity in the sense in which an agent chooses to associate or disassociate oneself from a group. By referring to value commitments to a group, Bilgrami seems to have in mind reference to a group that figures in the scope specification of a value commitment in the sense in which I am proposing to understand this notion. That is to say, the decisionmaker undertakes the value commitment or system of value commitments associated with the group in question by that agent or refuses to give up the commitments if they are already undertaken.