ipl-logo

Enduring Self Research Paper

1237 Words5 Pages

What makes you the same person today as you were yesterday? Are you even the same person as yesterday? If we were to answer no to that question, then wouldn’t that mean you would have different friends the next day and that you wouldn’t even remember who your old friends were. If we’re not the same person from day to day then all of our relationships and society as a whole will be turned upside down and must be false, since an enduring self is the foundation for society. The traditional western view believes that there is an enduring self. Some with this view believe it’s our bodies that cause us to have an enduring self. Others believe it’s our souls that are within us that cause us to have a sense of an enduring self from day to day. And others with this view believe it’s our memories of yesterday and 5 years ago that proves we have an enduring self. Some views of human nature deny the existence of a self altogether. Central to Buddhist teaching, their view is that the self is in a constant state of flux and disintegration, the self is not permanent. To say we have no self has serious implications. This undermines all of our inner feelings that we are who we are, and no one else can be us. This implies, that sense the self is not permanent then one day I can be one person and the next day I can be another, since the self is always changing. This is why I would have to say there is an enduring self. There is something that causes us to have a …show more content…

What about our justice system, which operates on the basis that if you committed a crime 5 years ago you are still guilty of it today because it was you, that did it. What about our relationships with close friends and family members, will they be gone the next day because we have become a different person. And what about our memories, how do we remember things we did 5 or 10 years ago, if we don’t have an enduring

Open Document