muse

Here is my latest line of philsophical thought — what defines who a person truly is? Their own self-concept? Or the way they present themselves to others? Do actions spak louder than internal thought?

My point is this — how we see ourselves is totally … well … subjective. Perhaps we hold an indeal of ourselves, one that we do not actually achieve — and striving towards it rather than taking the pessimistic viewpoint that we are falling short of it.

If we hold this ideal self so closely, then how can we be sure we have an unbiased view of who we are currently? Would we not paint our self-portrait with the most flattering contours when painting only for ourselves? This being true, then would the self that others see — our actions and spoken words, be more true than our internal thoughts? Is truth an empiracal, external thing judged by the impartial other? Or is truth how we define and control our subjective image of our own ambiguous soul?

Or is the true nature of a person known only to God, rendering any of our opinions moot?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2002 at 7:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.