Abstract

The present article explores some currently disputed issues regarding the relationship between temporality, memory, and the self. To exemplify and to concretely examine the problems under consideration, a phenomenological analysis of dementia illnesses is proposed. The first objective of this article is to develop an appropriate concept of the self, apt to describe the experience of dementia patients. To this aim, the different positions in the debate regarding the preservation of the self in dementia patients are first critically assessed. Subsequently, it is shown how the phenomenological distinction between the basic sense of self, often indicated as the minimal self, and the higher forms of narrative self-consciousness and identity can fruitfully contribute in this debate. The second objective of the article is a more concrete qualification of the minimal self. Particularly, the determination of the minimal self as un-extended in time is challenged. On the basis of the phenomenology of time and implicit bodymemory, and still exemplarily referring to the analysis of dementia illnesses, it will be argued that a concrete description of basic self-experience necessarily needs to take its spatio-temporal unfolding into account.