Self Submitted By: Hajra Sultan, 21190
Self Submitted By: Hajra Sultan, 21190
So the question now is, is self-something that keeps evolving or is it actually something that is
fixed or already known? With all these mixed views on self, these philosophers really have made
quite a mess of the concept of the self.
In contrast to these western philosophers, are eastern philosophers. Thus, there are two major
conceptions of human self, one being western conception of self and the other being eastern
conception of self. Western conception of self is that either human evolves on the basis of
creativity, or human is solely unique due to the creative attribute and anthropocentric nature.
Whereas eastern conception of self consists of 3 major sects, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
Jainism believes that in order to actualize true self, one needs to suspend everything else, and
get close to religion to quench the thirst of soul, under Jainism true essence of self is a true
religion. Real self is the one that is the conqueror of inner enemies namely anger, pleasure and
lust.
On the other hand, Hinduism believes the human has four goals, dharma, wealth, happiness and
freedom from ignorance, and once you achieve these goals and freedom, you unite with your
ultimate self and free yourself from reincarnation.
Buddhism critiques Hinduism and believes in blind faith, killing your inner demons and uniting on
the basis of religion, just as Jainism does, it believes your consciousness and soul are the main
aspects of the human self, whereas, body, passion and perception are all temporary.
Now, after discussing all these philosophers and concepts of “SELF”, the question is, how we
take the self to be? And is there a sustainable design for self or not?
To answer this, I believe, we all are just figuring out ourselves as we go along. We reflect on who
we were in the past and compare that to who we want to be in the future. We then split the
difference and that’s exactly who we are now. That is what our “self” is.
And about sustainability, I believe, there is no sustainable self. There is no such thing as a fixed
structure as I said ‘we all try to figure out ourselves as we go along’, hence we keep evolving, and
we keep changing as our goals for future continue to change as well.
Being self-sustainable means to be independent of all external factors, however, one to form his
self depends on his past and future goals, thus, achieving a self-sustainable self remains a myth.