Who am I?
2 Answers
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There is no answer to this eternal question outside of the philosophical system that you will have to choose and “believe” in it or accept it as the most suitable for you.
The Greeks, who were among the first philosophically to raise this question, discovered this topic and it still remains open.
Self-knowledge is their main message. In the practicality of the Greeks, they began to answer it from the point of view of pragmatics-I am existing (existing) Parmenides, man is a social (political) being of Aristotle, man is a being endowed with an immortal soul of Plato, and so on.
The pre-modern religious consciousness answered this question in the following way: I am a creature created in the likeness and image of God. With all the ensuing consequences and complexities revealed in the grandiose clusters of Aquinas ' scholasticism.
In the Modern era, Descartes was thrown out of the triad “nature-man-God” of the latter and declared, I think-so I exist. That is, he proclaimed man to be a thinking and knowing subject. Bacon tied the methods of thinking and cognition to this understanding – and so the whole of modern science was born.
It brought the understanding of a person, on the one hand, as an almost completely studied physiological and biochemical mechanism, on the other hand, it studied his behavioral and value preferences, presenting him as a carrier of a particular culture. The research horizon has not yet been reached, which, to be precise, is by definition impossible.
Nevertheless, postmodernism has already begun to throw out of the” subject-object ” relations first one, then the other, and then managed to do both at once.
The founder of this destruction was, of course, Heidegger, who separated being and existence and proclaimed existence in being (of man here and now) like here-presence or dazain. In other words, you are not your ideas, your worldview, your position and so on “yours” – and even the name does not belong to you. After all, it is true that the answer to the serious question “who are you?” in front of “God” will be very naive if I answer “Natasha”.
Existentialists have caught this indentation of man, as a kind of “vitality”, in the fold of being and felt the fear and horror of such a position of “myself in it”.
Philosophy of the late 20th-early 21st century generally throws out the concept of the subject. Now it is difficult to voice even who the subject is – it seems to be there, but it doesn't seem to be there: for example, your social network account is you? And many of you know this very well in various aspects of the information world.
So, briefly summarizing, the answer to the eternal question “who am I”? – it is always in a certain philosophical paradigm, in which you, in fact, believe today or feel more or less comfortable in it.
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First you need to understand what, or more precisely, who I am not. And then it will be much easier to understand who I am.
There are five main points: 1) We see in the world that everything consisting of parts has no intrinsic value and serves others, like a desk, computer, car, etc. And we see that we are not a hand, not a head, and so on… 2) For a body made up of parts to work as a whole, there must be something that connects and supports the smooth functioning of all parts. What controls the parts must be indivisible.
3) The one who manages the components is not subject to changes in this world, is unchangeable. I am eternal, so I can observe the changes that are happening to me. And since I am eternal, I am afraid of death and reject it, because it is not natural for me. We also see that roles such as son, daughter, mother, and father are also temporary. Time changes such roles. Of course, this does not change the fact that we love and appreciate our relatives and friends. A person can have many families and it doesn't define us completely. These roles exist and affect us as long as those with whom we are connected by these roles are alive. However, we are in control of our own lives, and we are someone who remains an unchanging person. Professions and talents are also temporary, and do not define us as a steward. And they exist along the way, having a beginning and an end. They change, and I, as the controller of my body, am unchangeable. This is clearly seen in the example when a person gets to a desert island, then while he lives there, he is not a father, not a son, not a husband, and for example, not a programmer. All the roles were gone, but I remained the same and unchanged.
4) There is one who enjoys. Who needs it. An out-of-body observer. I want eternal happiness…
5) There is something that wants liberation. I want eternal life, knowledge and eternal bliss because I am a soul and am made of these three elements – eternity, knowledge and bliss. Just as the body is made of food, the mind is made of thoughts, and the mind is made of ideas. No human being can be happy living for himself, it also proves that the body is a machine, a tool. And I, the soul that wants to love and be loved. We are souls and we have a body. We came to this world to learn to love and serve out of love, the objects of our love…
You are what you eat. And because you eat feces, you're not only a calo-eater, you're also a fecal eater. So you're a cannibal. And since they said here that you are my compatriot, then you eat lard. So you're fat. And if you're a cannibal and you eat lard, you're a pig. And if you're a pig, you're either a beast or a politician. Since you were able to ask this question, then you are a politician. And if you're a cannibal politician, then you're a successful politician. If you are a successful politician in Ukraine, then you are either the president of Ukraine or a politician of a European country. But you are sitting on this site, so it is unlikely that the second option. Nice attempt to hide under a fake nickname, Pyotr Alekseevich.
The question is much deeper than it might seem. This becomes clear when you start analyzing popular responses. The most frequent one is “I am a human being”. One might argue that “human” is your biological species, but who are you? This is followed by a description – Vasya Petrov, I was born there, I look like this, I have such and such beliefs. But this is just a description, not an answer to the question. This is the same as giving out, for example, the roundness and color of the ball for the ball itself. The body? But you are not the body. You control it to a certain extent. To a certain extent, it controls you. How can you be something that controls you? What do we have next? A soul? But you don't really know what the soul is. It's just a concept in your head, a speculative idea. And when you say that you are a soul, it is also just a concept, a video sequence from your head. You might as well say “I'm a colander.” The image will appear again in my head, but a different one. And neither one nor the other is the answer to the question. Next , “I am the one who answers you this question.” Good. But who are you? Mind? The mind? When you think, it's like you can hear your thoughts in your head. Many people do not pay attention to this, but all thoughts are somehow pronounced inside the skull. And we can hear them. And what we perceive is not us. So who are we?
Advaita masters say that by answering this question, a person gains freedom from fear – that is, enlightenment. Because once you know your true nature, you realize that there is nothing more to be afraid of. The problem is that this question cannot be answered with intelligence and logic. The answer is given in some other way. The mind can only operate with negatives – ” I am not the body, I am not my name, I am not my profession, I am not my beliefs, etc.” So I can tell the author of the question that his cunning plan did not work. No one will give you a ready answer. Here you need to go and investigate the issue yourself. Each. For myself personally.
A brain that is piloted in a self-regulating organism, capable of self-awareness and thought processes, through the perception and processing of external information.
Type: Chordal
Class: Mammals
Squad: Primates
Family: Hominids
Gender: People
Type: Reasonable person
The information is taken from Wikipedia. Judging by the name – a male representative, unless of course you use a nickname like the singer of the same name