Although philosophers have not been much concerned with issues relating to vampire identity, there has been considerable philosophical discussion about the problem of personal identity—the question of what makes an individual
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the same individual over time. This is often referred to as the problem of
reidentification: what conditions must be met so that an individual in one
context, under one name or description, and at one particular time, can be reidentified as the same individual in a different context, under a different name or description, or at a different time? As an example, consider author Anne Rice. Born Howard Allen O’Brien in 1941, she adopted the name Anne as a young girl. She started her adult life as an insurance claims agent but soon switched to writing. In the 1970s she authored numerous vampire tales including Interview with a Vampire. Then, in 1998, she rediscovered Catholicism. Since 2002 she has decided to write directly for Jesus Christ,
consecrating her work to him.10 So what makes it the case that, throughout
all these changes, the same person has remained?
Philosophically, issues concerning personal identity date back at least to the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704). In his Essay Concern-
ing Human Understanding, Locke claims that personal identity consists in
consciousness: “As far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done” (1975, 39–40). Locke’s notion of consciousness is usually understood in terms of memory. What it means for someone’s consciousness to extend backward to one of her past actions is for her to remember it, experientially, from the inside. In contemporary discussion Lockean-inspired views typically broaden their focus from con- tinuity of memory to continuity of psychology more generally. Derek Parfit, whose work on personal identity has been extremely influential, explicitly includes continuity of character, intention, belief, and desire along with continuity of memory (1984, 204–9). Parfit’s view has become known as the psychological theory of personal identity: an individual at one time is identical to an individual at another time if and only if there are chains of psychological continuity between them.
Although the psychological theory is by far the dominant view in con- temporary philosophy, some philosophers argue that the focus on psycho- logical continuity is mistaken. Proponents of the bodily theory argue that an individual’s personal identity consists in the continuity of his body, not the continuity of his psychology. Eric Olson, for example, notes that em- bryos and anencephalic babies “are human animals that manage to survive without having any psychological features at all,” a point that casts doubt on the psychological theory (1997, 18). Olson describes his own view in terms of biological continuity: a person’s survival through time consists in
94 Amy Kind
the continuity of his “purely animal functions—metabolism, the capacity to breathe and circulate one’s blood, and the like” (16).
Although there is much to say about the relative merits of these two views, the events depicted in the Buffyverse generally support the psycho- logical theory of personal identity. In season 4 of Buffy, the rogue vampire slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku) uses a mystical ring to “swap bodies” with Buffy (“This Year’s Girl”). While Faith is wearing the ring, she and Buffy clasp hands. A glowing light flows through them, and then their “energies” switch. Although it takes everyone else a while to catch on, the magic of the ring has transported Buffy into Faith’s body and Faith into Buffy’s. Likewise, in season 3 of Angel, an elderly man who longs for his youth performs a spell in order to swap bodies with Angel and thereby escape the assisted living facility in which he’s confined (Angel: “Carpe Noctem”). And in an odd turn of events in Angel, season 5, Angel is temporarily turned into a felt puppet (“Smile Time”). Though he no longer has a human body, he retains all of his psychological states. All of these body swap scenarios presuppose that personal identity consists in psychological continuity. We identify Buffy by where her psychology is, even if it is temporarily housed in Faith’s body, and we identify Angel by wherever his psychology is, whether in his own body, the frail body of an elderly man, or the felt body of a puppet.
In fact, psychological theorists have long used thought experiments involving body swaps to motivate their views. Locke himself notes that “should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince, ac- countable only for the prince’s actions” (1975, 44). Here Locke also intro- duces the notion of accountability, and we can see how naturally one is led to a psychological theory of personal identity when thinking about moral responsibility. In fact, it may even seem that giving an adequate account of moral responsibility requires us to adopt a psychological theory of personal
identity.11 For example, assuming we knew about the body swap, we would
be strongly disinclined to hold Buffy responsible should Faith commit a murder while inhabiting Buffy’s body. Fingerprints and DNA would confirm that Buffy’s body committed the crime, but can they show that Buffy herself was responsible for the action? In this case, though the murder would have been committed by Buffy’s body, it seems implausible to suppose that it was something that Buffy herself did. For the action to be her own she must be
psychologically connected to it in some way.12
The psychological theory, however, suggests that Angel and Angelus are one and the same vampire. Although many psychological connections are
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broken when Angel becomes Angelus or vice versa, there is still psychologi- cal continuity between them because they share memories. “I remember everything Angelus did,” says Angel. “Every family butchered, every child slaughtered, every throat ripped out. I remember every detail” (Angel: “Awakening”). And this in turn seems to suggest that Angel is responsible for Angelus’s actions. If the psychological theory of identity is correct, and if that theory suggests that Angel is identical to Angelus, then it would seem that any action undertaken by Angelus must be an action attributable to Angel. When it comes to all those butchered families, all those slaughtered children, all those mangled throats, Angel must be held responsible.