MALA 6030
Identity and Truth
Essay 1
June 12, 2019
Discussion
question - Does it trouble me to think of myself as an evolving open system,
rather than an organism/person with fixed essential properties?
No. In fact I find
it reassuring. Each of us is a unique
individual. Our essential uniqueness is fixed and transcends all eternity, but
our physical uniqueness is forever changing. While this may seem paradoxical,
it is not. The elements that exist within our bodies have existed from the
beginning of time and they will go on existing after we physically cease to
exist. They may have existed in other objects in the past and different objects
in the future, but they are unique. We cannot discern their uniqueness because
we cannot trace them to their origin. We are the latest link in a continuum
that has existed from the beginning.
We continually
change and evolve through our experiences during this continuum. Some things we have control over and can
change. They may affect how we view the world and how others view us, but the
essence of our being remains the same. We can have parts of our body replaced,
rearranged or subjected to deterioration – sexual reassignment, quadruple
bypass surgery, cosmetic surgery, or dementia, but our personal identity does
not change. That is our essence.
Our collective
identity can change and this introduces complications. If we are born in one
country we can relocate to another. If our family supports a particular
political party or philosophy, we can choose to support the other party. If we
are raised in a Christian household, we can become Muslim. However, our experiences in an evolving open system are not without challenges. What if you are born
into an ethnic group but your ethnicity is not clearly defined and you can pass
as someone from another ethnic group, who determines your identity. How would you view yourself? What if you are born so that the only functional part of your body is your left foot, how does that affect how you think of yourself?
Every human is indeed a unique individual, and thanks to the endless varieties of subjective experience our descendants will continue to be so - even if they begin to clone themselves. That's a physical and personal form of uniqueness. Does it "transcend all eternity"? I'm not sure what that might mean. Some of course think they are eternal immaterial souls, essentially. I don't. We could talk about that, or you could take Atheism & Philosophy again ;) - but is it true that "our personal identity does not change" because it is our essence? The existentialists might put it differently, suggesting that our personal identity is ALWAYS liable to change, and that we're responsible for the choices and non-choices that account for our present identity and the degree to which it is or isn't stable.
ReplyDeleteWhat would the existentialists say about collective identity? Well, Sartre in his Marxist phases said quite a lot, but was always at some risk of contradicting other things he'd said about authenticity and non-self-objectification.
In any event, you're right: being part of an open evolving system who is also evolving is indeed a challenge. It's the challenge of character-building, and of the pursuit of happiness and what the Greeks called arete. It's what makes life so interesting, isn't it?
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