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Category: death

The Relational Identity of Persons and the Importance of Personal Projects

The Relational Identity of Persons and the Importance of Personal Projects

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What follows are some first steps in thinking through an aspect of the possible relational identity of persons. I imagine there is a great deal of confusion herein. But so it goes with many beginnings. The question “What is it to be an…..?” is often, if not always, difficult to answer. Pick any object around the house, a chair, for example, and ask what is it that makes it a chair, and you can discover the difficulty. But when we…

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Buddhism and Aristotle on the Appropriateness of Suffering Grief: A Further Mark Against Buddhism

Buddhism and Aristotle on the Appropriateness of Suffering Grief: A Further Mark Against Buddhism

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In the well-known parable of the arrow, the Buddha responds negatively to the usefulness of answering certain metaphysical questions. The point that he makes is that they are not important for furthering the goal of alleviating dukkha (suffering/existential dissatisfaction): Whether the view is held that the world is eternal or not, Malunkyaputta, there is still birth, old age, death, grief, suffering, sorrow and despair – and these can be destroyed in this life! I have not explained these other things…

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Nietzschean Buddhism: An Experiment

Nietzschean Buddhism: An Experiment

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I have long been drawn to Buddhism and to Nietzsche’s ideas. After much thought, I propose a reconciliation; I propose the creation of a Nietzschean Buddhism. How could this be a possibility? After all, the third noble truth of Buddhism is that there is a way out of suffering, and the fourth noble truth gives us the way out. Suffering is optional, as is staying in samsara, the eternal recurrence of rebirth and a life of suffering. How is that…

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The Relational Nature of Personal Identity Part II

The Relational Nature of Personal Identity Part II

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In the original essay on the relational nature of personal identity, from October 10th, 2010, I wrote the following: What are some of the typical components of personal identity? 1) Body 2) Consciousness associate with/centered in one body (including will and self-consciousness). 3) Memories of consciousness (as the direct causal product of 2) But it seems to me that we should also include things such as: 4) Sets of beliefs 5) Attitudes/dispositions 6) Emotional make up 7) Ways of thinking…

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The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

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Taoism strikes me as similar to quantum mechanics in at least one respect: if you claim to grasp it, then you don’t. Nevertheless, that doesn’t preclude approaching an understanding of either. In his What is Taoism? H.G. Creel has an excellent chapter entitled, “The Great Clod”—a chapter that is quite helpful in regard to one aspect of Taoism. In explaining the meaning and role of “the Great Clod” in Taoism, Creel quotes, in order to set up a contrast, a…

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When Death Comes

When Death Comes

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The first poem I ever learned by heart was Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.” When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of…

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The Relational Nature of Personal Identity and What it Means for Us and the Death of Those We Love

The Relational Nature of Personal Identity and What it Means for Us and the Death of Those We Love

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Life as tapestry: the whole cloth is the great clod, our lives patterns of thread in relation to each other—the patterns, the threads of those dearest to us are interwoven with our own, and in places here and there the interwoven threads merge as our identities flow into each other…. The above is meant to be a poetic expression of the following, hopefully, more philosophically rigorous idea.  Having lost my ex-wife, Jennie, to suicide seven months ago (and “ex-wife” does…

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Three Attitudes Toward Suffering — Choices, Choices, Choices

Three Attitudes Toward Suffering — Choices, Choices, Choices

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If we can be certain of anything, then it is of death (of course) and……not taxes (for one might live where there are no taxes)…..but suffering: death and suffering confront us as part of what it is to be human.  Just as we must eat and drink to live, so too we must suffer and eventually die.  Much may come between birth and death—real love and fulfillment would be “nice”—but two of the most important questions we should ask ourselves…

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