In Search of True Self (Essay Sample)

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In Search of True Self
The article, 'In Search of True Self', describes Mark Pierpont as a Christian evangelist who is sexually attracted to other men but tries to refrain himself from sleeping with men due to his religious beliefs. The author attempts to find out how a person should find out which aspect counts as his or her true self. The author analyzes how one person may think that Mark should ignore his Christian beliefs and become true to the person he is by giving in to his desires of having sex with men. However, another person may think that Mark would be betraying the person he is if he sleeps with a man.
The author of this article tries to analyze what the term 'true self' really means or instead how different people understand the phrase. According to the author, people understand the meaning of 'true self' depending on what they believe in or rather whom they are. To be able to define how different people understand the meaning of the phrase, he put the hypothesis to test by teaming up with his colleagues and pursuing a project in the field of 'experimental philosophy'. The author gave various questions about true self to conservatives and liberals, in which the two kinds of people were supposed to see the questions differently.
Conservatives believed that when a man who was having sexual relationships with men stopped the behaviour, got married to a woman, and did not have sex with men any more, then his true self eventually emerged. However, the liberals believed that if a man stopped prioritizing on his financial success and started using his money to benefit others, then his true self emerged.
According to the author, the two cases show that conservatives had different beliefs from liberals since different people tend to understand differently wha