本书对两千年西方思想史给出一次激进的重读。它不把哲学看作互相竞争的学说之接力，也不看作向真理缓步前进的行军，而提出另一条组织原则：哲学，是一场漫长的实验——不断建构、稳定、耗尽并替换各种「同一性」的形式。全书的核心判断朴素而深远：同一性不是永恒的。任何同一性——概念的、个人的、制度的、文明的——都有寿命：它经由特定的生成条件涌现，抵达暂时的稳定，进入疲劳，最终要么更新，要么被替换。
从这个角度看，西方哲学变成了一部「同一性机器」史：一套套在变动不居的世界里生产同一、确定与可重复的系统方式。承 SIO 本体论之脉，本书把同一性重解为生成性互动的产物——是在具体互动结构中被稳定下来的差异，而非主体或客体单方的属性。据此，作者引入意义三律（特征、自由、幸福）来解释同一性如何涌现、如何自我更新、又为何在更新失败时崩塌。经典哲人不再是超时代的权威，而是特定同一性政体的工程师：从希腊形而上学到近代理性主义，从德国观念论到意志与表象的哲学，每一套体系都按其同一性生产策略、隐藏的结构性遗漏与寿命极限被逐一剖析。
本书还给出一件新的分析工具——「同一性寿命判词」：让哲学体系可以按其生成完整度、可持续性与更新能力被评估。超出哲学之外，本书直指 AI 与 GPT 时代的危机：今天同一性可以被无限生成，而意义、稳定与更新反而稀缺——这个时代真正的挑战不再是智能，而是意义的可持续性。把哲学从一门解释的学科，转成一门生成治理的科学，本书为在加速时代里重思教育、科研、组织与个人成长提供了蓝图。它是「文明与人文」群里教你给思想量寿命的那一本。
The History of Western Philosophy: The Lifespan of Identity offers a radical re-reading of two thousand years of Western thought. Instead of presenting philosophy as a succession of competing doctrines or a gradual march toward truth, this book proposes a different organizing principle: philosophy as the long experiment of constructing, stabilizing, exhausting, and replacing forms of identity. At the center of the book lies a simple but far-reaching claim: identity is not eternal. Every identity-conceptual, personal, institutional, or civilizational-has a lifespan.
It emerges through specific generative conditions, achieves temporary stability, enters fatigue, and eventually requires renewal or replacement. Western philosophy, viewed from this angle, becomes a history of identity-machines: systematic ways of producing sameness, certainty, and repeatability in an ever-changing world. Drawing on SIO Ontology (Subject-Interaction-Object), the book reframes identity as a product of generative interaction rather than a property of subjects or objects alone. Identity is understood as the stabilization of difference within concrete interactional structures.
Building on this foundation, the author introduces the Three Laws of Meaning-Feature, Freedom, and Happiness-to explain how identities arise, how they renew themselves, and why they collapse when renewal fails. Classic philosophers are reinterpreted not as timeless authorities but as engineers of specific identity regimes. From Greek metaphysics to modern rationalism, from German idealism to the philosophies of will and representation, each system is analyzed in terms of its identity-production strategy, its hidden structural omissions, and the limits of its lifespan. The book introduces a new analytical tool-the "identity lifespan verdict"-which allows philosophical systems to be evaluated by their generative completeness, sustainability, and capacity for renewal.
Beyond philosophy, the book speaks directly to the crises of the AI and GPT era. Today, identities can be generated endlessly, but meaning, stability, and renewal have become scarce. The core challenge of our time is no longer intelligence, but sustainability of meaning. By transforming philosophy from a discipline of explanation into a science of generative governance, The Lifespan of Identity offers a blueprint for rethinking education, research, organizations, and personal development in an age of accelerating change.
This book reconstructs Western philosophy for civilizational renewal.