The Nothingness Of Personality By Jorge Luis Borges

Blake Pendleton 9 November 2017 Prof. Trocchia Phil 101-0006 In his work, The Nothingness of Personality, Jorge Luis Borges toys with the notion of the self, contending there is no whole self. He goes further in stating that, â€Å"[h]e who defines personal identity as the private possession of some depository of memories is mistaken† (1). However, I would argue that memories do in fact play a substantial role in developing human personalities, and that without memories, our self and personality is incomplete. While Borges is correct in stating that our memories are fleeting and that one never completely remembers an event in its entirety, the feelings and emotions accompanying such event impact the formation of our identities. While life†¦show more content†¦What Borges fails to recognize in this argument is the far-reaching implications on a person that stem from the experience of the event rather than simply the event itself. For instance, the aforementioned soldier will undoubtedly have an imprecise recollection of the eve nts that transpired during combat, but the emotional impacts of everything he or she witnessed will last much longer on personality than any physical injuries or actions. What this means is that the specific details are not as important as Borges makes them out to be; the emotional strain and overall premise of the memory is far more substantial. Attempting to further gain credibility in his argument, and in contrast to my argument, Borges argues that fear and emotions cannot constitute the self because they are fleeting or short-lived. To this he states, â€Å"I, for example, am not the visual reality that my eyes encompass, for if I were, darkness would kill me and nothing would remain in me to desire the spectacle of the world, or even to forget it† (5). To this, I will respond in saying that Borges is correct in that the fear and emotions we experience at one point in our life do not withstand the tale of time. As time progresses, specific details in an event fade from ou r memory, but there will always be that constant underlying feeling a person experiences when reminded of a particularly fearful memory. Again, the specific details Borges focuses on do not