Political Identity

Political communities are objects, and objects are entities falling under a sortal concept. Substances are entities the identities of which do not depend on anything else but that determine the identity conditions of other non-substantial entities. Political communities are compound objects the identities of which depend somehow upon the identities of their parts; hence they are not substances. Human beings are substances and can be considered the constituents of a political community. Being part of a political community for a human being means being a citizen, namely, among other things, sharing some values and acquiring some habits that can be seen as a development of human nature. One important role in the development of the political identity of an individual is played by narratives as vehicles for the acquisition of those values and habits that contribute to defining the membership in a certain community. In this chapter, we investigate the relationship between political communities and their members, and we focus on narratives as a means, on the one hand, to mould political identity and, on the other, to make citizens virtuous.