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Quote by Sheila Heti

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Pure Colour

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Author

Sheila Heti
Sheila Heti

Sheila Heti is a Canadian writer born on December 25, 1976. Her works are known for their unique narrative style and profound self-reflection. more

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“We say that a human being is a person and a distinctive, fixed self with a name and a life. He has an identity. But what is this self really made of, except from the basic elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus etc. and their subatomic particles? If a person is a specific, static, unchanged entity and existence, then what if an accident or a disease completely alters his body features? What if fear or madness changes his thoughts and perceptions? If dementia takes away his memories, or if drugs alter his emotions? And what if life circumstances, good or bad luck, modify his motives, his plans and his desires? Is it still the person we say he is? Or is selfhood a ghost, a useful fiction of the brain? An ever-shifting kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings and perceptions? Flashes of hopes and desires? A bundle of alternating opinions and ideologies, of conflicting instincts and urges? If we take away all these from him, what would be left behind? If every drop of the ocean evaporates, is not the whole ocean gone? The immutable selfhood is a very old illusion and the last of illusions we ‘re going to abandon; if we ever will…”

SelfQuotesChangeIdentityIllusionFluxPersonhoodSelfhoodImmutability
Book:A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms
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