SELF FROM EASTERN AND WESTERN THOUGHTS
1st Semester AY: ’22- ’23
‘’
WESTERN THOUGHTS
LIBERALISM
 Liber – Latin – Free
o Free people who were
noble, generous, and
gracious
o Unrestricted,
unimpeded, unbridled
o Ability to choose and
decide
 th
16 century concept and
existing until present
 Being free is to be able to live
one’s life as one sees fit.
 Feeling of power and control
 Two aspects:
o Positive:
 Individual’s capacity
to act on his will
 Capacity of acting in
order to take control
of one’s life
 Capacity to act
morally or rationally
o Negative:
 Absence of restraints
or obstacles
 Does not recognize human
nature as normally
understood
 Self can be anything that
person wants to be
 Disallowing or speaking
against to it is an attack
against the primacy of the
life
 Self is the result of:
o Extreme individualism
TRANSCRIBED BY: JULIENNE HAU
o Sole arbiter of reality
o Radical and problematic
ideology
 Empowerment
o Theme of liberalism
o People can freely live
their lives as they see fit
for themselves
 Radical liberated self
o Liberated self-
experiences
o Alienated by others but
also alienated everybody
else
o Self is ought up in his
own world
CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM
 Combines the arbitrariness
of personal knowledge along
with power of the state to
promote guaranteed
individual right.
o Danger lies precisely in the
fact that people now
assert their rights to live
any kind of life that they
see fit.
EASTERN THOUGHTS
CONFUCIANISM
 Code of ethical conduct
 Properly act according to
their relationship with other
people
 Having a harmonious social
life
 Identity and self- concept are
interwoven with identity and
 status of community, culture,  Self is seen as an illusion,
pride, and failures born out of ignorance, of
 Self-cultivation trying to hold and control
o Ultimate purpose of life things, or human-centered
but still the characteristics needs
of a man of virtue (chun  Self is the source of all
tzu) is still embedded in sufferings
social relationship  To attain the state of
o Subdued self – personal Nirvana:
needs are repressed for o Forget about the self
the good of many o Forget the cravings
TAOISM of the self
 Doing what is natural and o Break the
going with the flow in attachments with the
accordance with the Tao world
 Human beings can control o Renounce the self
their lives through self- Western Thought Eastern Thought
exercise and moral behavior
Looks at the Sees other person
 Self is part of the universe, world in dualities as part of yourself
one of the forms and wherein you are as well as the
manifestations of the Tao distinct from things you may
 Selflessness other person, the create a drama in
o Living a balanced life with creator is which everyone is
society and nature separated from interconnected
o Being open and accepting the object he with their specific
to change created, in which roles.
o Forgetting about self is
distinguished and
prejudices and egocentric
acknowledged.
ideas
o Thinking about equality as
well as complementarity
among humans
BUDDHISM
 Two kinds:
o Theravada –
traditional
o Mahayana –
contemporary