ABSTRACT
Human identity is the kind of notion which contains both a promise and a menace. When an identity is found, discovered, or created, it gives a person or a group of persons self-confidence about who or what they really are, where their defining roots lie, what sorts of ties and commitments this entails, and in what aspects is one different or similar to others. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem indeed to have been eras of organised collective hatred, but at the same time they have also been centuries during which the liberal democratic societies have triumphed. Community-spirited thinkers have always tended to romanticize collective identity, seeing it somehow as more 'authentic', and linking it to groups of people who are thought to be reliable, trustworthy and dependable. Personal identity is based on the self-image of the individual. Collective identity is similarly based on the self-image of the members of a collective.
