Virginia Woolf & the cosmopolitan self

This paper argues that Virginia Woolf's novels, Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, present her essential intuitions on personal identity in a cosmopolitan sense, which have influenced philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Paul Ricœur. The article discusses Woolf's belief in temporal, intersubjective, and historical identity, and her understanding of personal identity as a private and complex psychological phenomenon that is dependent on exteriority and only partially accessible through narrative or aesthetic means. It also examines the impact of Woolf's view of personal identity on individual psychological states, both affective and cognitive. The paper further argues that literature has an originality that precedes philosophical reflection, and crucially contributes to the philosophical debate, with philosophy playing a role in clarifying the concept and symbols of literary speech and linking its conceptions of the self.