Personal Identity in Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels...

Personal Identity in Jonathan Swifts Gullivers Travels What establishes a person’s identity? What changes this personal identity? Psychologically, we have the ability to change our beliefs. Physically, our human bodies change. How do we frame the issue to better understand man’s inability to decipher his own self-identity, and more importantly, how do we know when and precisely where this change in identity occurs? Issues of personal identity are apparent in Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift. Gulliver, the ambitious protagonist, has an insatiable desire for exploration, and throughout his four travels to four very different lands, he allows himself to be shaped by his environment, ironically in a negative way. In fact, his†¦show more content†¦The eighteenth century is called the Age of Enlightenment and Reason due to its emphasis on physical science, experimentation, and rational thought to obtain knowledge. Intellectuals of the day focused on human reason and knowledge, rather than making deducti ons or theorizing, and prioritized worldly happiness over religious salvation. Because of this, Christian morality was undermined, and even the major religious dogma of the day – deism – minimized original sin and merely recognized the existence of God and an afterlife. Leading intellectual thinkers from the seventeenth century, such as Descartes, were denounced in their deductive reasoning and non-experimentalist approaches to gaining knowledge. Further, Descartes believed in the soul as a separately existing entity that lives on in the afterlife. Parfit, a 20th century British philosopher, disagrees with Descartes’ idea of the soul, and the link to a personal identity. Instead, Parfit emphasizes the existence of mental and physical entities, the brain and the body. Parfit applies non-religious ethics to his approach in understanding the nature of man. He seeks to change society at large by ultimately changing the way humans look at their nature. Parfit argues that a person’s identity consists not of a separate brain and body,Show MoreRelatedFemale Representations in â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels†2336 Words   |  10 PagesFemale representations in â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels† In Jonathan Swift’s satire, â€Å"Gulliver’s Travels†, the representation of women can be seen, at a superficial level, as offensive and extremely misogynistic and in broad lines corresponding to the image of the woman in Swift’s contemporary patriarchal society. The woman was almost objectified, thus reduced to her physical appearance and its status as obedient wife, whose sole purpose was to attend to her husband’s need. 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