When I Became Fascinated by the Philosophical Problem of Personal Identity

Reading Passage Questions

When I became fascinated by the philosophical problem of personal identity , I also became dismayed by the unwillingness or inability of many writers on the subject to address the question of just why the problem should concern us at all.Rather than being an necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying one person as the same object at two different points in time.

So even as I worked on a PhD on the subject, located within the Anglo-American analytic tradition, I sneaked Kierkegaard in through the back door. For me, Kierkegaard defined the problem more clearly than anyone else. Human beings are caught,he said , between two modes or "spheres'' of existence. The "aesthetic"is the world of immediacy. Of here and now.The ``ethical" is the transcendent,eternal world.We cant live both,but neither fulfills our needs since "the self is composed of infinitude and finitude", a perhaps hyperbolic way of saying that we exist across time,in the past and future, but we are also inescapably trapped in the present moment.

The limitations of the "ethical" are perhaps most obvious to the modern mind.The life of eternity is just an illusion,for we are all too mortal,flesh and blood creatures. To believe we belong there is to live in denial of our animality. So the world has increasingly embraced the aesthetic. but this fails to satisfy us,too.If the moment is all we have,then all we can do is pursue pleasurable moments.ones that dissolve as swiftly as they appear,leaving us always running on empty,grasping at fleeting experiences that pass.The materialistic world offers innumerable opportunities for instant gratification without enduring satisfaction and so life becomes a series of diversions. no wonder there is still so much vague spiritual yearning in the west: people long for the ethical but cannot see beyond the aesthetic.

In evocative aphorisms,Kierkegaard captured this sense of being lost, whichever world we choose:"infinitude's despair is to lack finitude, finitude's despair is to lack infinitude". Kierkegaard thus defined what I take to be the central puzzle of human existence: how to live in such a way that does justice to our aesthetic and our ethical natures.

“When I became fascinated by the philosophical problem of personal identity” - is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.
This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 3 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Q1) The passage suggests that anyone attempting to evaluate existential choices must confront which of the following dichotomies?

A) The rhetoric of dialectics and the opacity of semiotics.
B) The subjective point of view and the objective point of view.
C) The aesthetic perspective and the religious perspective.
D) The evanescence of the aesthetic and the eternity of the ethical.
E) Only opacity of semiotics point of view.

Q2) All of the following statements can be logically inferred from the passage EXCEPT ?

a) The author is a research scholar in philosophy.
b)Kierkegaard is not an Anglo-American philosopher.
c) One can find remarkable spiritual enlightenment in the east.
d) Kierkegaard was a master of literary flourishes and wilful paradoxes.
e) In the context in which it appears "animality" most nearly means "being bestial".

A) a, d and e
B)b,c,d and e
C)b and c
D) Only e
E) a,b and d

Q3) It can be inferred that the "sense of being lost" (Highlighted) in the passage is being ascribed to

A) The unwillingness of people to take responsibility for their existential choices.
B) An inability to abandon aesthetics altogether in favor of the ethical.
C) an inability to strike an equilibrium between the aesthetic and the ethical.
D) the fluidity of social identities.
E) the sense of animality and opacity of semiotics.

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