Understanding the Self

Words Associated with Self…….

 Control
 Image
 Worth
 Esteem
 Confidence
 Efficient
 Regulation
 And a lot more…….. Selfish?
 What is Self?

 You? Consciousness? Man? Soul? Loob? Body? Will? Mind?

INTRODUCTION

o The self is thought to be something else

than the name.
o The self is something that a person
perennially molds, shapes, and develops.
o The self is not a static thing that one is
simply born with like a mole on one's face
or is just assigned by one's parents just
o Everyone is tasked to discover one's self
Characteristics of Self

 SELF- separate, self contained, consistent, unitary and

private.
 Separate means self is distinct from others.
 Self is always unique and has its own identity. Self is also
self contained and independent because in itself it can
exist.
 Consistency means that a particular self’s traits,
characteristics, tendencies and potentialities are more
or less the same.
 Self is private, each person sorts out information, feelings
and emotions, and thought processes within the self.
The Self from Various
Philosophical
Perspective

Chapter 1
Lesson 1:
The Self from Various Philosophical
Perspective

o Explain why is it essential to understand the

self
o Describe and discuss the self from the
points-of-view of the various philosophers
o Compare and contrast how the self has
been represented in different
philosophical schools
o Examine one's self against the different
views of self
INTRODUCTION
o Words Associated with Self…….
- Control
- Image
- Worth
- Esteem
- Confidence
- Efficient
- Regulation
- And a lot more…….. Selfish?
INTRODUCTION

o Among the many things that we were first

taught is to articulate and write our names
o Named after a famous celebrity, a respected
politician or historical personality, or a saint
o Not just randomly pick a combination of letters
and number to denote our being
o Human beings attach names that are
meaningful to birthed progenies
INTRODUCTION

o Names are supposed to designate us in

the world
o We were taught to respond to them
because our names represent who we are
o Our names signify us
o A name is not the person itself no matter
how intimately bound it is with the bearer.
It is only a signifier
INTRODUCTION

o The self is thought to be something else

than the name.
o The self is something that a person
perennially molds, shapes, and develops.
o The self is not a static thing that one is
simply born with like a mole on one's face
or is just assigned by one's parents just
o Everyone is tasked to discover one's self
What Self are we discussing
here?

 You? consciousness? Man? Soul? Loob? Body? Will? Mind?

Philosophical Perspectives

o The history of philosophy is replete with men and women

who inquired into the fundamental nature of the self.
o The inquiry on the self has preoccupied the Greeks, the
earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy
o The Greeks attempted to understand reality and respond
to perennial questions of curiosity, including the question
of the self.
o The different perspectives and views on the self can be
understood by revisiting important conjectures made by
philosophers from the ancient times to the contemporary
period.
Socrates & Plato
 Socrates & Plato

Pre-Socratics - preceded Socrates while others

existed around Socrates's time as well
o Preoccupied with the question of the primary
substratum, arché that explains the multiplicity of
things in the world
o Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and
Empedocles
o Concerned with explaining what the world is really
made up of, why the world is so, and what explains
the changes that they observed around them.
 Socrates & Plato

Pre-Socratics - preceded Socrates while others

existed around Socrates's time as well
o Tired of simply conceding to mythological
accounts propounded by poet-theologians like
Homer and Hesiod,
o endeavored to finally locate an explanation
about the nature of change, the seeming
permanence despite change, and the unity of the
world amidst its diversity
 Socrates

Socrates was more concerned with the problem of

the self
o first philosopher engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self
o life-long mission, to know oneself
o the unexamined life is not worth living
o engaging men to question their presuppositions
about themselves and about the world,
particularly about who they are
 Socrates

o Athenian men not fully aware of who they

were. Socrates thought that this is the worst
that can happen to anyone: to live but die
inside.
o Every human person is dualistic: composed of
2 aspects of his personhood
1. Body - imperfect, impermanent aspect
2. Soul - is perfect and permanent
Plato

o 3 components of the soul:

1. Rational soul
2. Spirted soul
3. Appetitive soul
o In his magnum opus, "The Republic“:
justice in the human person can only be
attained if 3 parts of the soul are working
harmoniously
 Plato

• Rational soul - reason and intellect has to

govern the affairs of the human person
• Spirited soul - emotions should be kept at bay
• Appetitive soul - in charge of desires like
eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex are
controlled as well
o When ideal state is attained, the human
person's soul becomes just and virtuous
Augustine & Thomas Aquinas
St. Augustine
o reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
o Following the view of Plato and infusing it with the
doctrine of Christianity
o Man is of a bifurcated nature:
• an aspect of man dwells in the world and is
imperfect and continuously yearns to be with
the Divine
• the other is capable of reaching immortality
St. Augustine
Body:
• bound to die on earth and can only thrive in
the imperfect, physical reality that is the world
Soul:
• anticipate living eternally in a realm of spiritual
bliss in communion with God
• soul can also stay after death in an eternal
realm with the al-transcendent God
o The goal of every human person is to attain this
communion and bliss with the Divine by living his
life on earth in virtue
Thomas Aquinas
o In the case of the human person:
• the body of the human person is something
that he shares even with animals. The cells in
man's body are more or less akin to the cells of
any other living organic being in the world.
• What makes a human person a human person
and not a dog, or a tiger is his soul, his
essence.
o The soul is what animates the body; it is what
makes us humans.
Thomas Aquinas
o the most eminent 13th century scholar and
stalwart of the medieval philosophy
o Adapting some ideas from Aristotle: man is
composed of 2 parts:
• Matter or hyle (Greek) common stuff that
makes up everything in the universe."
• Form or morphe (Greek) the essence of a
substance or thing." It is what makes it what it is.
Rene Descartes
Descartes
o Father of Modern Philosophy
o The Meditations of First Philosophy: he claims that
there is so much that we should doubt
o he says that since much of what we think and
believe are not infallible, they may turn out to be
false.
o If something is so clear and lucid as not to be
even doubted, then that is the only time when
one should actually buy a proposition
o the only thing that one cannot doubt is the
existence of the self
Descartes
o for even if one doubts oneself, that only proves
that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks
and therefore, that cannot be doubted
o Cogito ergo sum, " think therefore, I am."
o The fact that one thinks should lead one to
conclude without a trace of doubt that he exists
o The self: combination of 2 distinct entities
• Cogito - the thing that thinks, which is the mind
• Extenza or extension of the mind - which is the
body
Descartes
o In Descartes's view,
• Body is nothing else but a machine that is attached
to the mind
• Mind is what makes a human person a man
o Descartes says:
But what then, am I? A thinking thing. It has been said.
But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts,
understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses;
that imagines also, and perceives“.
David Hume
David Hume
o Scottish philosopher and empiricist who believes
that one can know only what comes from the
senses and experiences,
o argues that the self is nothing like what his
predecessors thought of it
o The self is not an entity over and beyond the
physical body.
o Empiricism is the school of thought that espouses
the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it
is sensed and experienced. Men can only attain
knowledge by experiencing.
David Hume
o the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
What
o experiences can all be categorized into 2:
• Impressions
▪ basic objects of our experience or sensation
▪ form the core of our thoughts.
▪ Are vivid because they are products of our direct
experience
• Ideas
▪ copies of impressions
▪ are not as lively and vivid as our impressions
David Hume
o Self, according to Hume, is simply "a bundle or
collection of different perceptions, which succeed
each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are
in a perpetual flux and movement." (Hume and
Steinberg 1992).
o Men simply want to believe that there is a unified,
coherent self, a soul or mind just like what the
previous philosophers thought
o In reality, what one thinks is a unified self is simply a
combination of all experiences with a particular
person.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
o Recognizes the veracity of Hume's account that
everything starts with perception and sensation of
impressions
o thinks that things that men perceive are not just
randomly infused without an organizing principle that
regulates the relationship of all these impressions
o there is necessarily a mind that organizes the
impressions
Immanuel Kant
o Example: Time and space, are ideas that one
cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds.
o Kant calls these the apparatuses of the mind.
o Along with the different apparatuses of the mind
goes the "self.“
o Without the self, one cannot organize the different
impressions that one gets in relation to his own
existence
Immanuel Kant
o Kant therefore suggests that it is an actively
engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all
knowledge and experience.
o Thus, the self is not just what gives one his
personality.
o In addition, it is also the seat of knowledge
acquisition for all human persons
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle
o solves the mind-body dichotomy that
o blatantly denying the concept of an internal, non-
physical self
o what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life
o For Ryle, looking for and trying to understand self as
it really exists is like visiting your friend's university
and looking for the "university."
Gilbert Ryle
o One can roam around the campus, visit the library
and the football field, and meet the administrators
and faculty and still end up not finding the
"university."
o This is because the campus, the people, the
systems, and the territory all form the university.
o the "self" is not an entity one can locate and
analyze but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the behaviors that people
make
Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty
o Merleau-Ponty dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that
has spelled so much devastation in the history of
man.
o For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but
plain misunderstanding.
o The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.
Merleau-Ponty
o a phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-
body bifurcation is a futile endeavor and an invalid
problem
o the mind and body are so intertwined that they
cannot be separated from one another
o One cannot find any experience that is not an
embodied experience. All experience is
embodied.
o One's body is his opening toward his existence to
the world.