DE Weekly: Identity, Plutarch, & the Ship of Theseus

Last week, I wrote about how certain stories and writings permeate the boundaries of their genres and allow us to apply an existentialist critique of them. Another such story we’ll discuss today is the “Ship of Theseus”.

Like the Allegory of the Cave from last week, you might have heard of this popular thought experiment before. Often viewed as a paradox, this story was popularized by Plutarch, a Greek philosopher in the Roman Empire who is most famous for his biographies.