Comments | stevencaldwell: Nothing to be Frightened of

stevencaldwell

Nothing to be Frightened of

Jan 18, 2009 16:35

Some further comments on death (and writing) by Julian Barnes -

'Whatever the writer's aesthetic - from subjective and autobiographical to objective and author-concealing - the self must be strengthened and defined in order to produce the work. So you could say that by writing this sentence I am making it just a little harder for myself to die.' p ( Read more... )

julian barnes, death, writing, nothing to be frightened of

Comments 1

mrteufel January 18 2009, 08:46:48 UTC

Just because something cannot be reduced further that a certain point before losing the distinctive properties that we use to define it, does not mean that something doesn't have a separate existance.

If you remove a limb from a dog, that limb is not a dog. If you remove part of an ocean, the ocean remains, and the part you remove is not an ocean.

If you remove part of a brain, you may change aspects of the 'I' belonging to that brain, but that brain will still have an 'I' if it functions at all.

'I' is an emergent property of a human brain.