Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship
Document Type
Undergraduate Research Paper
Abstract
In this paper, I disassemble classical notions of identity, and propose a new mode of identity-creation through change itself. While static characteristics or categories are traditionally utilized in forming identities, the existence of change creates problems for maintaining them. Rather than continue following that same pattern of category formation, I argue that flux, and a history of changes a thing or being has undergone, can contain innately a sense of identity. I use the science fiction of Octavia Butler, the works of the Presocratic philosophers, Timothy Morton’s ecological philosophy, the communicative philosophy of Martin Buber, the writings of Hannah Arendt, an existentialist Buddhism, and the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. By instantiating one’s identity through change, the natural eradication of boundaries over time will become less likely to trigger existential crises. It would place an individual more in line with the natural flow of reality.
University
University of Washington Tacoma
Course
TPHIL 466 Philosophy of the Future
Instructor
Benjamin Meiches
Recommended Citation
Waggoner, Lucas
(2018)
"Perpetual Change: Moving beyond Object Dependent Identity,"
Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship: Vol. 2:
Iss.
1, Article 9.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/access/vol2/iss1/9