A possible thesis of this reading is ‘personal identity is flexible on a number of levels but remains based on a solid foundation of rarely changing principles.’ The author says, “if you are like me and you have a strong attachment to the belief that we persist through time …, then it becomes interesting to look for alternatives to the illusion theory of personal identity” (122). In this quote, the author is suggesting that the illusion theory of identity, which he has just explained, is not sufficient to completely meet the challenge of discovering personality. The illusion theory was already described as suggesting that the person who lives today is not the same person who lived 10 years ago or will be living 10 years into the future, but that we change into a different person all the time. In suggesting that this theory is not sufficient to explain our sense of identity, the author suggests that there is something deeper that holds everything together even though the outer aspects might change a great deal. This idea is relevant today because people are still searching for a sense of who they are. As the world becomes more confusing with increased technology and faster communications, the question of who we are and why is this important becomes even more important than ever.
Works Cited
Rauhut, Nils Ch. “The Problem of Personal Identity.” Ultimate Questions: Thinking about Philosophy, 4th ed., Pearson, 2021, pp. 113–36.