UNDS111

PHILOSOPHY
The Self from various perspectives

Mara Escasinas RPm,MP

Prepared by
• From Athens, Greece
• PHILOSOPHY:
“Knowing oneself”
“Knowledge is a virtue, ignorance is
depravity”
• Key Components:
1. Our own abilities
2. Wisdom
3. Humility
*Socratic Method Socrates
470 BC – 399 BC
• From Athens, Greece
• Student of Socrates
• Father of Academy
• PHILOSOPHY:
“A person who is a follower of truth and wisdom will not
be tempted by vices and will always be just.”
• KEY COMPONENTS:
1. Virtue
2. Intelligence

3 Parts of the Soul

1. Appetitive Soul – part of the person that is driven by
desire and need to satisfy oneself.
2. Spirited Soul – attributed to the courageous part of the
person who wants to do change or right the wrongs.
3. Rational Soul – thinks and plan for the future. the
“conscious mind”.
Plato
428 BC
• Saint and Philosopher of the Church
• Born in North Africa of a pagan father
and a Christian mother
• PHILOSOPHY
“ Our notion of ourselves and our idea of
existence comes from a higher form of
sense in which bodily senses may not
perceive or understand, and the more
doubts and questions his life means
that, the person is actually living.”
• KEY COMPONENTS:
1. Being virtuous
2. Be able to stand by on what we St. Agustine
think is true.
• French Philosopher
• Renaissance man
• Father of modern philosophy
• Methodical Doubt – continuous process of
questioning what we perceive and accepting
the fact that doubting and asking are a part of
one’s existence.

“I think therefore I am.”

For him, the mind is “the real self”.

• Mind-body interactionism Rene Descartes

1. Body – perceives different senses
2. Mind – process it
• English Philosopher, and
Physician
• Empiricist – facts are gathered
through observation rather
from other method.
• Father of Classical Liberalism
• Tabula Rasa
John Locke
Scottish Philosopher
Empiricist – believes in concrete
evidences and observable
experiences that mold a person.

“There is no permanent self.”

David Hume
• German Philosopher
• Empiricist and Rationalist
• Transcendental Aperception – an
essences of our consciousness that
provides basis for understanding
and establishing the notion of
“self”

Immanuel
Kant
• Austrian Psychologist and Physician
• Father of Psychoanalysis
• Constructs of Personality
1. ID – child aspect of a person.
2. Ego – mediator between the ID and Superego.
3. Superego- conscience of one’s personality.
• Level of Consciousness
1. Conscious
2. Preconscious
3. Unconscious

“He believes that we are by product of our past. Our

actions are driven by the idea of resisting/avoiding pain, Sigmund
and are molded from our need for pleasure or being Freud
happy.”
• British Philosopher
• “self is the behavior presented by the person.”
• Ghost in the machine view – man is a
complex machine with different functioning
parts, and the intelligence, and other
characteristics of behavior is represented by
the ghost.”

Gilbert Ryle
• Canadian Philosopher
• “Self is defined by the movements of
our brain”
• Eliminative Materialism- believes
that most menta states that people
subscribe to, in turn do not actually
exist.
• Neurophilosophy Paul Churchland
• French Philosopher
• Existencialist and phenomenologist
• His idea of self regarded that the body and mind are
not separate entities but rather one and same.
• Phenomenology of Perception
1. Body – receives the experiences as well as
integrates it in different perception.
2. Perceived World – accumulation of perception
as integrated by the experiences of the body.
3. People – the world that enables one to integrate
and experience culture and relations. Maurice Merleu-
Ponty