Dayao . Zalven Lemuel S.

1BSCS2 August 23,2019

PHILOSOPHERS VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. Not a
static thing that one is simply born with. Everyone is tasked to discover one’s self.
The philosophical Perspective is the Inquiry into the fundamental nature of the self.
The inquiry has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy
Greeks. Views on the self can be best understood by revisiting its prime movers
and identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers

For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every
human is dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important aspects of
personhood. This means all individuals have an imperfects impermanent aspect to
him, and the body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent. Plato, Socrates’s student, basically took off from his master and
supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul. Nonetheless, Plato
Socrates and Plato
added three components of the soul and that is the rational soul, the spirited soul,
and the appetitive soul.in his magnum opus, “The Republic” (Plato 2000), Plato
emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be attained if soul forged
by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person, the spirited
part which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul
in charge of base desires like eating, drinking , sleeping , and having sex are
controlled as well.

To Augustine’s point of view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the
medieval world when it comes to man. Augustine agreed that man is of a
bifurcated nature (dived by two). The body is bound the die on earth and soul
Augustin and Thomas is to anticipate living eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with
Aquinas God. From Aquinas view that adapts some ideas from Aristotle. Aquinas said
that “indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and form. The soul is
what animates the body; it is what makes us humans.

Father of Modern Philosophy, The human person has it but it not what makes man
a man. If at all that is the mind. Rene Descartes is also a combination of two
Rene Descartes distinct entities, the cogito, and the thing that thinks, which is the mind and the
extenza or extension of the mind which is the body. To Rene Descartes’s view,
the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind.

The idea of the self doesn’t persist overtime. There is no you that is the same
person from birth to death. He said the concept of the self is just an illusion. This
could be either liberating or terrifying, depending on how you look at it. To David
Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions, consisting of a
zillion different things – my body, my mind, and my emotions, preferences,
David Hume memories, even labels that are imposed on me by others. What are
impressions? For David Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds
that they can all be categorized into two: impressions and ideas. Impressions are
the basic objects of our experience or sensation. They therefore form the core of
our thoughts. Example: When one touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an
impression.
I Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination or impressions was problematic for
mmanuel Kant Immanuel Kant. Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume’s account that everything
starts with perception and sensation of impressions. However, Kant thinks that the
 things that men perceive around them are not just randomly infused into the
human person without and organizing principle that regulates the
relationship of all these impressions. Thus, the self is not just what gives one
his personality. In addition, it is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all
human persons.

Gilbert Ryle For Ryle, looking for and trying to understand a self as it really exists is like visiting
your friend’s university and looking for the “university”. The “self” is not and
entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the behaviors that people make. One can roam
around the campus, visit the library and the football field, and meet the
administrators and faculty still end up not finding the “university”.

Merleau-Ponty Unlike Ryle who simply denies the “self”, Merleau-Ponty instead says that the
mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another.
Once cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience. All
experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening to toward are in the world.
Merleau-Ponty dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much
devastation in the history of man. For him, The Cartesian problem is nothing else
but plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.
Self
Something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops

Not a static thing that one is simply born with

Everyone is tasked to discover ones self.

Philosophical Perspective
Inquiry into the fundamental nature of the self

The inquiry has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy
greeks.

Views on the self can be best understood by revisiting its prime movers and
identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers

Ancient times to the contemporary period.

Socrates
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"

KNOW THYSELF

Question everything

"Only the pursuit of goodness bring happiness"

Socratic Method: Question and Answer; Leads students to think for themselves.
Plato
"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and
knowledge."

Dualism
man is a dual nature, composed of BODY AND SOUL
Tripartite Soul
REASON, SPIRIT, APPETITE

Reason (ruling class) - desires to exert reason and attain rational decisions

Spirit (military class) - desires supreme honor

Appetite (commoner) - desires body pleasures such as food, drink, sex, etc.
Aristotle
"All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature,
compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire."

Contributed the foundation of both symbolic logic and scientific thinking.

The best way to gain knowledge was through "natural philosophy", which is what
we would now call science.

Happiness, which is dependent in an individual's virtues, is the central purpose of

human life and a goal in itself.
St. Augustine of Hippo
"The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend
itself."

An important figure in the development of Western Christianity.

His philosophy of man brings together wisdom of the Greek philosophy and the
divine truths contained in the scripture.

The absolute and immutable is the living God, the creator of the entire universe.

To love God means to love one's fellowmen, and to love one's fellowmen means
never to do any harm to another.

"Do unto others, what you want others do unto you"

Rene Descartes
Father of modern philosophy

"Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum" (I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I
am)

The Self is defined as a subject that thinks.

The self that has full competence in the powers of human reason.

Having distanced the self from all sources of truth from authority and tradition, the
self can only find its truth and authenticity within its own capacity to think.

"The fact that I am doubting, cannot be anymore open to doubt."

John Locke
Personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity

Personal identity (or the self) is founded on consciousness

Identity over time is fixed by awareness of the past

Locke posits an "empty" mind, a tabula rasa, which is shaped by experience, and
sensations and reflections being the two sources of all our ideas.

"Our concept of personal identity must derive from inner experience."

David Hume
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence"

Rejects the notion of identity over time

There are no "persons" that continue to exist over time, there are merely
impressions.

"The self is bundle of impression"

Immanuel Kant
"To be is to do."

Consciousness is the central figure of the self.

Two kinds of consciousness:

Internal and External Self.
Internal self
composed of psychological states and informed decisions; remembering our own
state, how can we combine the new and old ideas with our mind
External self
made up of ourselves and the physical world where the representation of objects
Gilbert Ryle
"I made it, and so I am."

Rejects the theory that mental states are separable from physical states.

Concluded that adequate descriptions of human behavior need never refer to

anything but the operations of human bodies.

His form of Philosophical Behaviorism (the belief that all mental phenomena can
be explained by reference to publicly observable behavior) became a standard
view for several decades.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
"We know not through our intellect but through our experience."

His work is commonly associated with the philosophical movement called

"existentialism" and its intention to begin with an analysis of the concrete
experiences, perceptions, and difficulties of human existence.

Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are
intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged"

Our perception of the self is a collection of our perceptions of our outside world.