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The relation between religion and ethics
Concept of self and self identity
Concept of self and self identity
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Recommended: The relation between religion and ethics
Personal Identity in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
What establishes a person’s identity? What changes this personal identity? Psychologically, we have the ability to change our beliefs. Physically, our human bodies change. How do we frame the issue to better understand man’s inability to decipher his own self-identity, and more importantly, how do we know when and precisely where this change in identity occurs? Issues of personal identity are apparent in Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. Gulliver, the ambitious protagonist, has an insatiable desire for exploration, and throughout his four travels to four very different lands, he allows himself to be shaped by his environment, ironically in a negative way. In fact, his perspectives have changed so much that Gulliver is no longer the same person at the end of the novel as he was at the beginning. The period in which the book was written, the 18th century, is characterized by the intellectual study of the nature of man, as well as the progress of morality. Taking this into consideration, and examining Gulliver’s character, will bring to light issues of morality.
Furthermore, examining Gulliver’s change in behavior and temperament from Derek Parfit’s reductionist point of view will offer further insight into non-religious ethics, since this 20th century philosopher holds ideas that are in accordance with the Age of Enlightenment and Reason, despite the lapse of two centuries.
Parfit, author of Reasons and Persons, presents the concept of “Relation R,” or psychological continuity; this is key to understanding the change in personal identity of Gulliver, which occurs by degrees, and not in absolutes. Because of this, we cannot judge Gulliver based o...
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... changed to so large an extent, we could no longer hold him responsible to his former commitments. This idea of Parfit’s is revolutionary, since it makes us rethink our instinct to label concepts in absolutes, and changes our perception of morality and punishment. Indeed, Parfit sought to effect change in society at large, arguing that most of us have a false belief about our own nature, and our identity over time, and when we understand and realize the truth, we realize we should change our beliefs. Gulliver’s lack of innate morality allowed him to be shaped by his surroundings, but the changes he experienced reflect the base nature of mankind and its ability to corrupt the good. Gulliver’s Relation R, symbolic of evil nature, forced his original self to break the promises he had made; the lack of justice in this situation showcases the need for moral progress.
...ver a true definition of identity and his own real identity, he is still as naïve and as gullible as he was at the beginning. He is the “same human individual, [seen] [differently] only in appearance” (Griffon 161). Every person who he had encountered had held a unique perception of him and even if that is not how he had desired to be perceived it is his own actions that originally driven them to that belief. Yes, he still has a unique identity of his being held in his core, but it is just as real as the identity that others hold around him but only relevant by the existence of belief. Identity is a tool only relevant to those who use it, if man functioned away from society then identity becomes pointless, illogical. Yet as the Narrator chooses to live as a part of society, he is still solely responsible for creating the path that serves to define him negatively.
Many people have different views on the moral subject of good and evil or human nature. It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be. Hobbes and Locke both picture a different scene when they express human nature.
We will give Hobbes’ view of human nature as he describes it in Chapter 13 of Leviathan. We will then give an argument for placing a clarifying layer above the Hobbesian view in order to account for acts of altruism.
The definition of a utopia is an imagined place or state in which everything is perfect. In book four of Gulliver’s travels Gulliver discovers a group of people called the Houyhnhnms and the group displays qualities of a possible utopia. The Houyhnhnms are very rational in their thinking, and try their best to stay away from entertainment and vanity. However the Houyhnhnms could not be considered creators of a utopia because they emphasized unrealistic rules and because of their treatment of the Yahoo people within their society. Instead it is the Lilliputians people who display the most signs of a potential utopia in Gulliver’s Travels.
From the start of leaving his family to began the voyage, Gulliver had no idea that he would be dealing with such complex issues and facing such challenges that he was first confronted with and the evils of human kind as his crew locks him in his cabin and takes over his ship. As we will later see, the first goal of the new captain is to "turn pirates and plunder the Spaniards" (P192). Here we can see that it is the desire of man to do unjust things and these actions do no lie within the concept of a species that truly understand reason.
As to the perception of virtues and vices, Hume argues that sympathy, or theory of the mind, plays a significant role. Characters that are useful to the human society are virtues, because these socially beneficial actions would please observers by sympathy and consequently elicit their approval, which in turn brings pleasure to the good deed doer. On the contrary, those traits that are destructive to society are vices, because vicious deeds ca...
Many philosophers and psychologist from Jean Piaget to William James have theorized what makes a person who they are, their identity. Jean Piaget believed that the identity is formed in the sensorimotor stage and the preoperational stage. This means that a child is forming his identity as late to the age of seven (Schellenberg, 29) However, identity is strongly impacted by society such as school, church, government,and other institutions. Through our interactions with different situations our personality develops (Schellenberg 34). "In most situations there is a more diversified opportunity for the development of social identities, reflecting what the individual wants to put forth to define the self as well as what others want to accept,"(Schellenberg 35). Therefore, humans, much like animals, adapt to different situations based on who they are with. Individuals are always changi...
Past the political satire and laughable motifs in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, the purpose of this story is to show everything ignoble and tactless of the human species in general and that humans are truly disgusting. Also exploring the idea of a utopia. Swift uses the literary device of political satire to show how childish and ignorant human acts were. This is because during Swift's time in the eighteenth century, Britain was modernizing at this time. The reader follows the four narrative travels of the main character, Lemuel Gulliver. Each of the four voyages Gulliver has traveled to, is a different society that portrays one of the main ideals of the eighteenth century in Britain. The four places Gulliver has traveled to were Lilliput; being Gulliver's first voyage, Brobdingnag; his second voyage, Laputa; the third voyage, and lastly to the land of the Houyhnhms; being his last voyage and afterwards traveling back home to England. The experience from being exposed to these four societies has had a huge impact on how Gulliver now sees humans.
Lemuel Gulliver describes a wildly fanciful dream from a perspective that, when analyzed, illustrates his conceited character and ignorance at his surroundings. Throughout his dream, Gulliver expresses how much more civilized and privileged his race is compared to the Yahoos, yet does this in a factual way that does not hint at contempt. Similarly, he does not seem to realize how abnormal his situation is throughout the dream, and casually remarks on each aspect of his environment without actually paying attention to details or what is really going on. Despite how seemingly self-absorbed Gulliver appears in his account of his dream, at the end he does reflect on his own life compared to the Yahoo's, and he makes the connection of how closely related his species and their's are (Swift 2473). This connection gives insight into Gulliver's mind, and shows that Gulliver may possibly be more aware then he seems.
David Hume is considered a reputable and influential philosopher whose empirical approach provided a basis for a number of moral principles. Although the complexity of Hume’s expressive nature and intellectual thought is somewhat mindboggling to most readers, the importance of the account of justice can be seen as significant and of relevance to many values and morals in even today’s society. Hume’s discussion of moral virtues in his book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals addresses the importance of justice in terms that relate to its sole foundation and further exemplification of moral distinctions.
Houyhnhnm’s Land is a society unique to Gulliver’s adventures because he encounters not only horses reigning over society, but also that these supreme animals think more rationally and intellectually than the Yahoos and even Gulliver himself. Gulliver’s stay in Houyhnhnm’s Land represents the “perfect”, but emotionless and detached conventions of utopia. According to Dr. Joyce Hertzler’s The History of Utopian Thought, utopians hold a false view of society so that when developing their “perfect” social order they think nothing of “…over-riding natural affections and balking natural desires and impulses” (304). Life is really nothing but a systematic social order if devoid of all emotion, causing one to question the “perfection” of utopia. If one looks beneath the surface of the Houyhnhnm’s culture, one will find that Gulliver’s final journey does not describe an immaculate society, but rather a visionary world, meaning a world that is purely speculative and out of reach.
Of all the fictional peoples that Gulliver meets during his travels, author Jonathan Swift created a race of individuals who were consumed by living completely by reason and rationality. Gulliver finds this particular race as possibly the most favored of all the peoples that he encounters. “In his love of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver accepts an idea of perfection which makes it impossible for him to understand or participate in human life” (Nichols, 1154). According to Gulliver the Houyhnhnms have no point of being problematic, but in fact he refers to these individuals as different from humans because they are “mingled, obscured, or discolored by passion and interest” (Swift, IV, 8). It is this admired quality which makes Gulliver want to make this fascinating land his home. This paper will discuss the characteristics of Swift’s Houyhnhnms, the good and bad aspects of their life of reason, and the different characteristics of the Yahoo’s, in comparison.
In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift makes a satirical attack on humanity. In the final book, Swift takes a stab at humanity by simultaneously criticizing physiological, mental, and spiritual aspects of humans. Literary critics Ronald Knowles and Irvin Ehrenpreis both agree that the last book focused entirely on satirizing humanity. The Yahoo brutes that inhabit Houyhnhnm Land are a despicable species that have the physical appearance of humans. Though their behavior seems to be decadent and irrational, Swift shows that most of their behavior have parallels in the life of "civilized" humans. The Houyhnhnms seem to embody virtue and all the perfections that humans seek, but there are inconsistencies in their behavior that are reflective human faults. The Houyhnhnms do not look human in appearance, so Swift uses them to reveal hypocrisies of human thought. Throughout the book, Swift makes attacks on the religious perception of "man"; He also expresses disagreement with deist ideology. Ehrenpreis and Knowles have very similar opinions concerning Book IV of Gulliver's Travels, but Knowles expresses a more concrete interpretation of the satire.
Humanity is defined by one major factor: one’s understating of the self. By understanding one’s self, one can understand society and the world that surrounds themselves. There is one thing that can often distort one’s personality, one’s identity. By identifying as one thing a person can often change how they act or do certain things. This is often found to hide one’s true motives or intention, but it can also be used to hide hidden factors that aren’t as prevalent. One’s personality and identity are very closely linked, and tend to play off one another. This fact can be show in within multiple works. To name a few authors who demonstrate this fact: Clifford Geertz, Horace Miner, and Andrei Toom. Their works seek to dive deeper
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Ireland to English parents, Jonathan and Abigail. His father, Jonathan, died shortly after his birth, leaving his mother to raise him and his sister alone. In Ireland, Swift was dependent on a nanny for three years because his mother moved to England. The young man was educated because of the patronage of his Uncle, Godwin Swift. Godwin sent him to Kilkenny Grammar School at age six, which was one of the best primary schools in Ireland at the time. Although the transition from extreme poverty to a private school education was hard, he made it easier by becoming friends with William Congreve; a future poet. At age fourteen Godwin put him through Trinity College at Dublin where he completed his Bachelors Degree. Swift later completed his M. A. at Oxford in 1692. Swifts mother wanted him to be successful so, she sent him to go work as a secretary under Sir William Temple, an established essayist and graduate from Cambridge. Because Temple was a prominent parliamentary figure Swift was exposed too much literature during this time period (1689-1699), which shaped his books later on. While working under Sir William Temple, Swift lived in Moor Park, Farnham. During his time living at Moor Park he met Stella, also known as Ester Johnson, which influenced and inspired his work, Journal to Stella.