The Nothingness Of Personality Jorge Luis Borges Summary

In the text, “The Nothingness of Personality,” Jorge Luis Borges suggests that a person cannot be whole based solely on their experiences or memories. In other words, an individual is not defined by one particular moment or event or experience that took place in their life, rather, they are constantly changing with the different things they observe and witness on a daily basis. Borges makes the claim that an individual’s personality is simply not real, I find this claim to be plausible because throughout the text Borges brings several examples from other philosophical minds suggesting very similar things. The first claim that Borges makes concerning personality is that a person is constantly changing, they are never remaining constant.

Unlike a person’s emotions, the events and experiences that take place around them are not in their control, they are simply part of the environment they are in. Borges quotes astrologer Agrippa of Nettesheim saying, “…I disdain, I know, I do not know, I pursue, I laugh, I tyrannize, I protest. I am philosopher, god, hero, demon and the whole universe.” To provide some context, Agrippa gives examples of various individuals or deities that had similar experiences or did things that he considers to have done himself. By ‘disdaining’ or ‘knowing’ or ‘tyrannizing’ he is comparing himself to philosophers, gods, demons, etc. Agrippa is making the argument that by experiencing things that entities such as Pluto or Momus or even Hercules have experienced he can consider himself one of them by sharing these commonalities. This shows a fallacy within the argument Agrippa is attempting to make. When Agrippa says that he is all of those things because he has experienced those events in his life, he is incorrect. He is not wholly those individual things, there are different parts of his being that resemble small pieces of them; or in other words, there is no whole self, just a culmination of various experiences. Furthermore, not only is there no whole self, but the ‘self’ does not