Within Little Souls, Nicole Zefanya describes the growth of a curious and passionate child into a bland, indistinguishable adult who fails to find “home”. She attributes the assimilation of adults into a “black and white” world to the increase in their social duties, which cause their priorities to change. Zefanya claims that these adults age to forget their own identities and fail to define unique purposes because suddenly, all that matters is what is simple and comfortable. Zefanya attempts to reveal the nature of these adults as being physical “houses” with negligible souls that fail to transform them into “homes”. Despite this, she ends the song with a stroke of optimism, claiming that the death of the body can result in the life of the soul. Thus, Little Souls stimulates the subject of philosophical identity within human …show more content…
The platonic view would agree with this premise, as it asserts the existences of the World of Being, containing intangible values such as love, and the World of Becoming, consisting of physical and bodily things. The World of Being is the origin of the essence and it allows for it to be constant, as the intangible values do not change. The World of Becoming, however, is bodily and, in it, the essence is subject to surfaced change. The purpose of being in the World of Becoming is to rediscover one’s essence, but often, the other distracts one from this path of rediscovery. Let us take as an example a freshman student who is utterly alone. The freshman student observes the popular seniors who are worshipped by all and attempts to reciprocate their abuse of drugs to appear superior and to feel accepted. His new drug addiction disturbs the relationship he has with his parents, because he is no longer kind or emotionally intelligent - he has destroyed his essence due to his lack of acknowledgement of
In Susan Wolf’s article “The Meaning of Lives” she argues a meaningful life is engaged in positive projects to some degree of success. She also believes that the pursuits with meaning have an objective value that connects with the rest humanity. Susan Wolf’s did not write about her thoughts on the concept of plugging oneself into an experience machine like described by Christopher Grau in “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine”, but her argument for what gives meaning to a life makes it clear that she would argue someone should choose to not plug in. The reason a person would choose to plug into an experience machine is because they could live out all of their fantasies and avoid all the discomfort experienced in real life. But
Plato writes, “And suppose someone tells him that what he’s been seeing all this time has no substance, and that he’s now closer to reality and is seeing more accurately, because of the greater reality of the things in front of his eyes -- what do you imagine his
Socrates in the dialogue Alcibiades written by Plato provides an argument as to why the self is the soul rather than the body. In this dialogue Alcibiades and Socrates get into a discussion on how to cultivate the self which they both mutually agree is the soul, and how to make the soul better by properly taking care of it. One way Socrates describes the relationship between the soul and the body is by analogy of user and instrument, the former being the entity which has the power to affect the latter. In this paper I will explain Socrates’ arguments on why the self is the soul and I will comment on what it means to cultivate it.
Her inner self craves for freedom to drive past and achieve something. She envisions her song as a luxurious Cadillac, where she now wants a materialistic world. She is in her imaginary world until the heat of the urn in her hand bring back her to reality, where she starts comparing to her real life, hallow and vapid. She attempts to find comfort in her room, as she says “coffee cruises my mind visiting the most remote way stations, I think of my room as a calm arrival each book and lamp in its place.” She starts to reflect her possessions and the security they give her and what they represent in her life.
Plato breaks the justification of knowledge down into two types of realms that show what can be known by reason and what can be known by the five senses. These realms, then divided into two other unequal parts based on their clarity and truthfulness, make up what is known as The Divided Line. By understanding The Divided Line we can fully grasp the differences between the perceptual, also known as becoming, realm and the conceptual, also known as being, realm. The perceptual realm is the opinions and beliefs of people or it can be known as the visible realm.
In “Only Daughter” by Sandra Cisneros, she describes a series of events throughout her life that all relate to her relationship with her father. Cisneros begins her story by talking about how she was seen as “only a daughter”. She then transitions to talking about her education and her father’s opinion on what it is for and worth. Cisneros then ends it with a conclusion between her and her father which involved one of her stories. Throughout the story, Cisneros talks about what she believed her father thought about her and her career choices, and they turn out to be a bit different than what she thought.
In one moment it’s ripped away from them: the only thing keeping them young; the only thing keeping them shielded from the world. It’s the mother watching her fatherless daughter cry over his coffin. It is the boy being slapped by his loving father for the first time. I That thing is known as “loss of innocence”, but is it really a loss? All one loses is their naivety and artlessness.
In “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality”, Gretchen Weirob and Sam Miller conduct a philosophical debate about the possibility of a continued existence after death. Weirob argues that she herself cannot exist after death because her identity is composed of her body, rationality, and consciousness. In Derek Parfit’s “Personal Identity” he ponders how the concept of identity works, and how the true nature of our identity affects some of the most important questions we have about our existence. I believe that Velleman did a better job of exploring the idea of identity than Weirob did.
The intelligible world (the world of Forms) that gives the visible world it’s being.” (16) He believed that the soul exists without the body, and that we obtain wisdom from our thoughts and therefore we inherit this at the start of conception. Plato thinking were based on the divine being, who he believes made us, and the objects of the world. He believed, the soul was already formed, as what we see here on earth is just a reflection of what is already made.
In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, two cultures clash with each other in the struggle to save Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy. Although Lee and her family live in the United States, and thus receive medical care from Westerners, her family believes that Lee’s condition is sacred and special. The following miscommunications, both culturally and lingually, between the American doctors and the Lee family leave Lia Lee in comatose at the end of the book. However, Lia Lee could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the American doctors understood the Hmong culture. Essentially, the tragedy of Lia Lee can be attributed to the clash of American and Hmong cultures at both the surface and sub-surface level.
Plato’s short story the Allegory of the Cave, Plato portrays a scene in a cave to the reader that analyzes human actions. The story is about a group of men that are chained for their entire life. The only thing they are exposed to are shadows on the wall of a fire burning by people behind them. The people exposing these men are hiding the truth of the outside world. Plato reveals that humans are easily fooled into believing what they see.
Quickly, my siblings and I woke up. We heard loud arguing and ruckus from my parent’s room. Another sleepless night because my dad had come home sozzled and heated. This had become the norm in my home. My dad’s addiction was not only affecting him, but affecting his family as well.
The argument of whether or not a human has a soul has been argued throughout centuries. Derek Parfit discusses two separate theories of personal identity, Ego Theory and Bundle Theory. The argument of which present a more accurate account of personhood is very hard to determine. The Ego Theory has some flaws such the soul is separate from the body and is a immaterialist object within us. Bundle Theory is reinforced and proven by the split-brain case, however it can lead to the argument that there is no self.
For many years, the issue of self-identity has been a problem that philosophers and scholars have been to explain using different theories. The question on self –identity tries to explain the concept of how a person today is different from the one in the years to come. In philosophy, the theory of personal identity tries to solve the questions who we are, our existence, and life after death. To understand the concept of self-identity, it is important to analyze a person over a period under given conditions. Despite the numerous theories on personal identity, the paper narrows down the study to the personal theories of John Locke and Rene Descartes, and their points of view on personal identity.
Are persons essentially persons? Personal identity is a much-disputed debate within metaphysics and is still a cause of concern for many philosophers because it raises questions about what we essentially are and what being a person, persisting from one day to the next, necessarily consists of. In this essay I discuss the very influential view from Locke, who argues that persons are essentially persons. He concludes that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity.