"If there is something that we call soul, that's memory — it makes up your identity," Eco, 73, says, his voice twisted by a thick Italian accent and interrupted by quick, explosive chortles. "All your befores, all your afters — without memory you are an animal. You have no human soul. Even for a believer, you cannot go to hell without memory. Why to suffer so much if you don't know why you suffer? It doesn't make sense. If, in time, you lose your memory, there's no meaning in paradise and no meaning in hell."
no memory=no self? I hadn't thought about this much before...to what extent are we our memories? And if our memories are such an essential element of our identity, what do we make of the fact that memory is so fallible?
My own understanding of the self, such as it is, is rather informed by certain strains of Buddhist thought, and this relationship seems fitting in that context: the self, like memory, is contingent, fleeting, impermanent. Which is not to deny either of them any sort of reality or potency; both are real conventionally, but not in some idealist, Platonic, metaphysical sense.
If I were to forget everything would there still be any me to remember? Anybody up for some Madhyamika/Nagarjuna/Buddhist metaphysics talk? Me neither I guess.
Madhyamika? What? Yo mama kid.
