Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN PHILIPPINES

College of Arts and Communication
University Town, Catarman N. Samar

First Semester, SY 2022 - 2023

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (GE 3)

MODULE 1: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

Hanah Elizabeth Bugna-Sosa

CAC, Part-Time Lecturer

Name of Student:
Course & Section:
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

UNIT 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

Module 1: Philosophical Perspective

Introduction 4

Objectives 5

Socrates, Plato, St. Augustine 5

Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant 9

Freud, Ryle, Churchland, Merleau-Ponty 13

Summary 17

Learning Task Assessment 18

References 20

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UNIT 1:
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

“Who Am I?”

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1
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

INTRODUCTION

We might have been overwhelmed by the new environment that we are in

today being in college. There are so many things to adjust to in a big university. The
systems sometimes are completely different from what were used to in the Senior High
School. Intellectual discourses, academic requirements, course demands and healthy
competitions are present in all corners of the campus. There are also systems that are
sometimes totally new to us.

Added to the new and challenging pressures brought about by the academic
systems are the pilings of so many questions that we unconsciously hang on the air
because it’s either we do not have the answer or we are absolutely confused by our
answers. We start to realize the importance of relationships. We question the authority
of our parents and teachers. We want to achieve a lot but do a little. We want to
explore countless applications with technology. We want to tell the world about
something very important but we feel so powerless to do so. We thought we have so
much at home but we realize that we are just as ordinary as anyone else in school. All
these confusions bring about existential questions that we may want to explore.

In this lesson, we shall once and for all get in touch with ourselves. Let us go
back to those hanging questions that we almost wanted to forget. We will spend time
to reflect on the issues that we think are important to us. And to aid is in this endeavour,
we will seek the wisdom of Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Descartes,
Locke, Hume, Kant, Freud, Ryle, Churchland, and Merleau-Ponty. They have all
braved to answer the question “Who am I?” way ahead of us. We learn with them s
we also attempt to answer this same question.

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OBJECTIVES:

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

A. Articulate the various Philosophical views about the self;

B. Examine one’s thoughts and experiences according to the Philosophical
views of the self; and
C. Propose and answer to the question “Who Am I?”

Since the ancient times until the postmodern discourses, many Philosophers
grappled to understand the meaning of human life. They attempted to answer the
question “Who am I?’ and most of their views have influenced the way we look at our
lives today.

SOCRATES, PLATO, AUGUSTINE

The dictum “Know Thyself” as we hear today is an ancient greeting of the

highly civilized Greeks. It was believed that the temple gods greet the people with
this salutation as they enter the holy sanctuary. The ancient Greek philosophers
manifested to the people their various interpretation of the greeting.

In the onset, the greeting may seem to be only epistemological. Knowing

oneself is only about measurable facts that pertain to the self such as age, height,
color, blood type or cholesterol level. But the philosophers insisted that knowing
oneself is more than just the basic facts. To know thyself is first an imperative and then
a requirement. It is imperative to know the limits of the self so that one knows what one
is capable of doing and what one is not. The real meaning of knowing thyself, then, is
a requirement for self-moderation, prudence, good judgement, and excellence of
the soul (Ortiz de Landazuri, 2014).

The original Greek expression γνῶθι σεαυτόν claimed to have very rich content
that is almost indistinguishable in the English language. The expression is almost
interchangeably translated as “know thyself” or “self-control”. This means that the
greeting is not only an imperative of self-knowledge but is also a requirement that one
has to have self-moderation. Anything that is excessive is not good. Thus it is just
prudent to strike the balance of things. Too much power might lead to abuse; too
many friends might decrease the quality of relationships; too many problems might
bring about depression, too much knowledge might make one think, as in the ancient
rulers, that there is nothing else to know about, and so on. It is just wise then to put
oneself in moderation so that one is capable of self-control and sound judgement.

The prudence and judgement aspects of knowing thyself are already

extensions from self-knowledge to ethics. The expression is an ethical requirement to
be wise in choosing moderation, and to be able to make good judgements in desiring
what is good and avoiding that which will only bring harm. Moderation in the
expression of love for sweethearts, for example, will bring the best of other in the curse
of their loving companionship. Once a partner is only overpowered and subjugated

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by the other, then there will never be prudence and good judgement in the
relationship. The ethics in knowing thyself is very important because such will bring the
person to the excellence of the soul.

For the ancient Greeks, the soul is the

essence of the person. Like any other loving
relationships, one must be able to bring
about the excellence of the soul of the other
as a result of such relationship. To know
thyself, therefore is to examine whether we
have achieved moderation, have prudently
chosen what is good, and have brought
about excellence of the soul.

To be able to demonstrate this, Socrates proposed

a very emphatic philosophy. In Plato’s Apology,
Sec. 38a, Socrates narrates:

…[A]nd if again I say that to talk everyday about virtue

and the other things about which you hear me talking and
examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and
that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me
still less. This is as I say, gentlemen, but it is not easy to
convince you. Besides, I am not accustomed to think that I
deserve anything bad. If I had money, I would have
proposed a fine… Plato

Here Socrates insisted that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This is
perhaps the most satisfying philosophical assertion that Socrates claimed in order to
protect human beings from the shallowness of living their lives. An examined life is a
life that is duty bound to develop self-knowledge and a self dignified with values and
integrity. Not only that; living a good life means having the wisdom to distinguish what
is right from wrong. Socrates further argued that the unexamined life is no better off
than animal life.

When we become readily contented with the information we receive from the
social media, for example, and submit to how virtual reality defines life, develop needs
and wants, classify morality, delineate universal values, and mystify human reason, we
are not better off than the dogs who become contented with the crumbs provided
by their “masters”.

Insisting on the examined life, Socrates maintained that only those who have
at least achieved self-moderation and distinguished what is good from bad, in this
case – Socrates referred to the life of the philosophers, are capable of condemning
those who are pretentious to be knowing themselves when the fact is contrary. On his
account of Socrates’ claim, Plato writes:

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Only a self-controlled man, then, will know himself and will be

capable of looking to see what he actually knows and what he doesn’t
know. By the same token only a self-controlled man will be capable
of examining others to see what a person knows and thinks he knows
(assuming that he does have knowledge), and whether there are
things which he thinks he knows, but doesn’t really. And no one
else will be capable of doing this (Charmides 167a).

Here in fact, Socrates wanted to tell the lawmakers, the community leaders,
those who claimed to be learned, and especially his accusers to recognize their
ignorance. What hinders these experts in seeing reality is the belief that they already
know everything. Such a belief will eliminate altogether the desire for self-moderation
and ethical prudence. Then, Socrates rightly pronounced that “I know what I do not
know.” This perhaps is what makes Socrates the wisest among philosopher. For
Socrates, only in the recognition of one’s ignorance that a person can truly know
oneself.

Influenced by the wise pronouncements of Socrates, Plato proposed his own

philosophy of the self. He started on the examination of the self as a unique
experience. The experience will eventually better understand the core of the self
which he called the Psyche.

For Plato, the Psyche is composed of three elements. These are the Appetitive,
Spirited and the Mind.

1. APPETITIVE – includes one’s desires, pleasures, physical satisfactions, comforts,

etc.

2. SPIRITED – is part of the psyche that is excited when given challenges, or fights
back when agitated, or fights for justice when unjust practices are evident. In
a way, this is the hot blooded part of the psyche.

3. MIND – this is what Plato considers as the most superior of all the elements. He
refers to this element as the nous which means the conscious awareness of the
self. The nous is the superpower that controls the affairs of the self. It decided,
analyses, thinks ahead, proposes what is best, and rationally controls both the
appetitive and spirited elements of the psyche.

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We take as an example- college life- to

illustrate Plato’s Psyche. College student want to
hang out with their friends, spend time on
computer games, eat the favorite food, do
thrilling activities that will excite the whole gang.
These satisfy the appetitive element of the
psyche. However, when professors throw
challenging projects and assignments that
would require tremendous time and effort, the
spirited psyche kicks in to face the challenges
head on. All these are going on because the
mind or the nous is orchestrating these pursuits
according the quality of the nous a person has.
In other words, in order to have a good life, one
has to develop he nous and feel it with the
understanding of the limits of the self and ethical
standards.

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Another concrete example of a highly self-

controlled nous is the life of St. Augustine. He hailed
from Tagaste, Africa in 354 BC. He succumbed to
vices and pleasures of the world. Augustine was
unsettled and restlessly searched for the meaning of
his life until his conversion to Christianity. In his
Confessions, he pronounced: You have made us for
Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds
rest in You.

The development of the self for St. Augustine is

achieved through self-presentation and self-
realization. He was not afraid to accept to himself
and tell the people about his sinfulness. However the
realization of the wasted self is achieved through his
conversion to thee faith. This his journey toward the
understanding of the self was centered on his religious
convictions and beliefs. St. Augustine

This could be true to all religions when

Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu believers (or any
other traditional or indigenous religion) struggle
between the pleasures of the body and the
demands of the soul in pursuit of ultimate happiness
of the self, one must be able to recognize the love of
that supreme being or the divine and morally or
ethically respond to that love.

To St. Augustine man’s end goal is happiness.

Only in God can men attain true and eternal
happiness, made possible in his contemplation of the
truth and the divine wisdom. i.e. God himself.
Christianity is the full and true philosophy. It is the full
revelation of the true God. Human beings alone,
without God, are bound to fail.

DESCARTES, LOCKE, HUME AND KANT

Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, deviated from theocentric

philosophies on the years before him. He was in fact able to redress the question
concerning the self in a very different rational method. He started his quest of
discovering the self by his methodic doubt.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes claimed that we cannot really

rely on our senses because our sense perceptions can often deceive us. There are
times when we hear something when in fact there is nothing, and that we are only
deceived by our sense of hearing. There are also times when we see someone or
something in the peripheries of our eyes when in fact there is nothing resembles with
what we thought we saw. This will be true to our sense of smell, touch, hearing and so

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on. Therefore, Descartes refused to believe in the certainty of his sense of perceptions
and started to doubt everything.

Everything must be subjected to doubt. Our existence, our religion, our world,
our God, our special someone, even our teacher! There will never be certain in this
world as long as it passes our senses. Further, Descartes cannot even distinguish
between the events in his dream in reality. He claimed that when dreaming, it felt so
real that even our heartbeat, breathing, and feelings are just so comparable to the
real events.

When we dream about our crush, we feel the intensity of

the dream that we would wake up frustrated realizing that it was
only a dream. Likewise, when we dream about our most
dreaded experience in life, we would wake up happy after
realizing that it was only a dream.

Here, Descartes started to doubt whether the events he experiences at the

moment are only products of his dreams and therefore illusions. He started to doubt
about the very realities that he had been accepting as true as only illusionary
creations of an evil genius who designed all these false impressions in the world.
Eventually Descartes is left with nothing but his doubt

Nonetheless, this same doubt redeemed him from slumber. He claimed that
since he could no longer doubt that he is doubting, there should be a level of
certitude that there must be someone who is doubting – that is him. Then he said
“Cogito, ergo Sum.” This is translated as “I think therefore I am” or “I doubt therefore I
exist.” Only after the certitude of the “doubting I” can all the other existence (e.g.
God, the universe, things, events, etc.) become certain.

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Descartes’ discovery of the cogito revolutionizes the way we view ourselves

and the world around us. It has also dramatically changed the way we evaluate
ourselves. The primary condition, therefore of the existence of the self, at least
according to Descartes, is human rationality. Simply put, we need reason in order to
evaluate our thoughts and actions. We need reason to live fully the demands,
challenges and call of our religion. We need reason in order to exist and to continue
to survive the generations to come by protecting our environment. We need reason
in order to protect ourselves from our being savage to one another. We need reason
to build and live at our peace.

Contrary to the primacy of reason as proposed by

Descartes, one British philosopher and politician, John Locke,
suggested another way of looking if the self. Locke opposed
the idea that only reason is the source of knowledge of the
self. His proposition is that the self is comparable to an empty
space where everyday experiences contribute to the pile of
knowledge that is put forth on that empty space. Experience,
therefore, is an iportant requirement in order to have sense
data which, through the process of reflection and analysis,
eventually becomes sense perception. John Locke

These sense data are further categorized by Locke into two:

It has to be noted here that the validity of sense perception is very subjective.
Perception is changing from one individual to another.

Example: When one reads a text message: “Congratulations! You won 1M pesos
in an online lottery.” from an unknown number, one text receiver may hastily reply in
excitement and elation while the other text receiver may just totally ignore it as a hoax
or even treat it was a virus! Perception, therefore, is very subjective to Locke.

This provides the most lenient leeway for every individual to be independent in
self-examination, self-management and self-control. The individual person, for Locke,
is not only capable of learning from experience but also skillful enough to process
different perceptions from various experiences to form a more complex idea. These
ideas then will become keys to understand complex realities about the self and the
world.

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Challenging the position of John Locke, David Hume, a

Scottish philosopher and historian, put forward his skeptical
take on the ideas forming the identity of the self. Hume
claimed that there cannot be a persisting idea of the self.
While Hume agreed that all ideas are derived from
impressions, problematically, it follows that the idea of the
self is also derived from impressions. However, impressions are
subjective, temporary, provisional, prejudicial and even
skewed – and therefore cannot be persisting.
David Hume

Inasmuch as we wanted to be persistent, constant and stable with our

knowledge about ourselves, Hume Asserted that this is just impossible. As long as we
only derive our knowledge from sense impressions, there will never be the “self.” This
means that for Hume, all we know about ourselves are just bundles of temporary
impressions. Perhaps this supports the difficulty of answering the question “Who am
I?” because what we can readily answer are impressions such as name, height, color
of hair, affiliations, skills, achievements and the like. All these are temporary and non-
persisting. In fact, Hume harshly claimed that there is no self.

Hume could have made us all agnostic about our

knowledge of the self, and be content with whatever
fragmented idea at least we have about ourselves had it not
by the rescue efforts of Immanuel Kant. Kant is a Prussian
metaphysicist who synthesized the rationalist view of
Descartes and the empiricist views of Locke and Hume. His
new proposition maintained that the self is always
transcendental. In fact he calls his philosophy the
Transcendental Unity of Apperception.
Immanuel Kant

His theory explains that being or the self is not in

the body, it is outside the body and even outside the
qualities of the body – meaning transcendent. For Kant,
ideas are perceived by the self, and they are
connecting the self and the world. The similarity of ideas
between individuals is made possible because, for
Kant, we all have the sensory apparatus by which we
derive our ideas. This means that we need not to reject
our ideas, unlike Hume, no matter how temporary and
non-persistent they are because there is unity in ideas.

Kant further argues that even if we eliminate everything, or in the case of

Descartes, doubt everything, there will still be space and time that will remain in us.
The space and time belong to us. These are categories that cannot be outside of the
self, and they help provide the perception of the self. Perception here does not
belong to the world; it belongs to the self through its temporal-spatial faculty. Rightly,
Kant is able to claim that all things in the world are in themselves and part of it belongs

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to the self. This is possible because the mind possesses the order and unity of all raw
sensations. In other words, the thing-in-itself cannot provide the idea but is only the
spatial-temporal faculty of the self that makes the idea sensible.

In short, Kant is only saying that our rationality unifies and makes sense the
perceptions we have in our experiences and make sensible ideas about ourselves
and the world. This ingenious synthesis saved the empirical theories of the sciences
and the rational justification innate ideas. Kant also solved the problem of the ability
of the self to perceive the world.

FREUD, RYLE, CHURCHLAND and MERLEAU-PONTY

Just as the Philosophers celebrate the “unity of the

self as achieved by Kant, psychologist Sigmund Freud
lamented the victory and insisted on the complexity of the
self. Freud, refusing to take the self or subject as technical
terms, regarded the self as the “I” that ordinarily constitute
both the mental and physical actions. So we say “I run”, “I
eat”, “I decide”, “I feel the tingling sensation” or “I refuse to
cheat because it is wrong.” Admittedly, the question “Who
am I?” will not provide a victorious unified answer but a
complicated diverse features of moral judgements, inner
sensations, bodily movements and perceptions. The “I” will
never be the same and it will continue to change overtime.
In other words, Freud sees the “I” as a product of multiple
interacting processes, systems and schemes. To
demonstrate this Freud proposed two models:
Topographical and Structural Models (Watson, 2014). Sigmund Freud

Topographical Model. According to Freud’s concept of hysteria, the individual

person may both know and do not know certain things at the same time. We may
say, for example, that we know the disadvantage and perils of missing classes without
any reason, but we are not really sure why we still do it anyway. We are certain about
the many wrongs that may be brought about by premarital sex, i.e. early pregnancy,
sexually transmitted infections, ruined relationships and depression, but we never
understand why there is this something somewhere inside us that makes many of us
do what we know is wrong.

Freud’s solution to this predicament is to divide the “I” into conscious and the
unconscious. The unconscious keeps what it knows by what Freud calls “censorship”
so that the conscious will be left on its own. Clearly, the self for Freud will never be
arbitrarily taken as a unified whole. There will always be fragments and discontinuity
and struggle inside the same “I.”

Structural Model. Similar to the disintegration of the self in Topographical Model,

Freud’s Structural Model will also represent the self in three different agencies:

1. ID – is known as the primitive or instinctive component.

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2. EGO – is described by Freud as that part of the id which has been modified by
the direct influence of the external world. Many interpreters of Freud see the
ego as the “I”.
3. SUPEREGO – also known as the “above I”. Superego synthesizes the morals,
values and systems in society in order to function as the control outpost of the
instinctive desires of the id (McLeod, 2007).

We often equate the ego as the self, the subject or the “I.” However, Freud
does not readily approve this equation because while the three agencies are distinct
from one another, oftentimes, the ego is not able to control the instincts of the id, and
cannot even manipulate the thoughts of the superego. This even leaves the ego as
only a marginal and impotent agency of the mind- not the ideal philosophical self or
soul that we want to figure out, Freud remarked that it is even the id- this devil,
instinctual, unthoughtful, fearless and primitive agency of the mind-that is the core of
our being (Freud, 2011).

The sensationalization of the self as unifying agent and a powerful command

center of the other agencies simply do not exist in Freud’s Structural Model. Although
the ego initiates the command, it simply lacks the power to control and put limits to
the rage of the id. Moreover, the ego will only content itself with the very limited
information revealed by the vast databank of information in the unconscious. The ego
owns a scanty knowledge about the unconscious which oftentimes are incomplete
and inaccurate.

Let us take the hypothetical example of a child who is born in a happy, loving
and affluent family. He is well provided by his well-mannered parents who are
respected professionals in their fields. The family never misses the Sunday ritual of
going to mass. He is raised with plenty of time to work and play and study. He is sent
to an expensive private school until he found himself kicked out by the school
because of drug addiction and cutting classes. He steals the family fortune to afford
his vices. He destroyed the many lives of his friends. He disrespects his parents and
siblings and accuse them of not loving him. He ended up broke, wasted, imprisoned
and a menace to the society. Now we ask: where is the self? How can we understand
the “I” in this example? What is in the self that was not able to control the piles of self-
destructive activities of the child? What is in the experiences of the child that made

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him deviant of the otherwise ideal upbringing? How can we know? Freud claims that
there is nothing else above the “I” that will consolidate the three agencies. There is
only the plurality of these antagonistic and independent agencies.

LET’S TAKE A BREAK!

Watch a clip from Disney Pixar’s Inside Out animated film and compose a short
reflection about the film.

LET US CONTINUE…

In an attempt to offer an explanation to some

behaviors that are difficult to justify by reason, Gilbert
Ryle, a British philosopher, proposed his Positive View
in his “Concept of the Mind.” It started as a stem
critique of Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body.
Ryle said that the thinking I will never be found
because it is just a “ghost in the machine.” It means he
finds the philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. The
mind is never separate from the body. He proposed
that physical actions or behaviors are disposition of the
self. These dispositions are derived from our inner
private experiences. In other words, we will only be
able to understand the self based from the external
manifestation – behaviors, expressions, language,
desires, and the like. The mind therefore, is nothing but
a disposition of the self.
Gilbert Ryle

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Ryle continued that the mind will depend on how words are being told, expressed and
delivered. In a way, he demystified the operations of the mind because the operations of the
mind are simply manifested b the dispositions of knowing and believing.

Example: We take the visitor on a tour around the city. We bring him to the City Hall, to
the park, to the known schools, to big malls, to beautiful gardens, to night life venues, to the
known landmarks and to your house. After the tour , your visitor will ask: Where is the City? All
those parks and malls and places consist the city. This same observation is true to the disposition
of the mind. All the manifestations in physical activities or behavior are the dispositions of the
self, the basis of the statement:

“I act therefore I am” or “You are what you do”.

Bringing this argument a little further, couple Paul

and Patricia Churchland promoted the position they
called “eliminative materialism” which brings forth
neuroscience into the fore of understanding the self. For
centuries, the main concern of Philosophy and even of
psychology is the understanding of the state of the self,
and still they failed to provide satisfactory position in the
understanding of the self, for the Churchlands, these
philosophical and psychological directions will
eventually be abandoned only to be replaced by a
more acceptable trend in neuroscience that provides
explanation of how the brain works.
Paul and Patricia Pauland

This position is a direct attack against folk psychology. Eliminative materialism

sees the failure of folk psychology in explaining basic concepts such as sleep, learning,
mental illness and the like. Given the length of time that these sciences have
investigated these concepts and yet there is no definitive explanation offered to
understand the mind is tantamount to “explanatory poverty” (Weed, 2018). It is not
remotely impossible that folk psychology will be replaced by neurobiology. As the
Churchlands wanted to predict, when people wanted to ask what is going with
themselves, they might as well go for MRI Scan or CT Scan to understand the present
condition of the brain and how it currently works.

Interestingly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French

philosopher, seemed to support the emerging trends in
understanding the self. His philosophy, the Phenomenology of
Perception draws heavily from the contemporary research
Gestalt psychology and neurology. He developed a kind of
phenomenological rhythm that will explain the perception of
the self.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

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The rhythm involves three dimensions:

• Empiricist take on perception

• Idealist-intellectual alternative
• The synthesis of both positions

On the onset, Merleau-Ponty rejected classical empiricism because it eliminates

the indeterminate complexities of experience that may have an effect on
perception. In the same way, he also rejected the idealist-intellectual position
because it will only falsify perception based from one’s biases and prejudices. What
Merleau-Ponty proposes is treating perception as a casual process. It simply means
that our perceptions are caused by the intricate experiences of the self, and
processed intellectually while distinguishing truthful perceptions from illusory.
Therefore, the self is taken as a phenomenon of the whole – a Gestalt understanding
of perceptual synthesis.

SUMMARY

In closing, this section discussed the philosophical perspective of

understanding the self through historical approach. In the ancient medieval times, we
have identified the self as the perfection of the soul. To achieve this requires self-
examination and self-control. In the modern period, understanding the self is
recognized in the dialectic synthesis between rationalism and empiricism.
Contemporary philosophy takes a wide variety of theories in understanding the self.

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LEARNING TASK ASSESSMENT:

1. Textual Analysis. Choose ONLY two (2) of the following passages and explain the
passage. (15 points)

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is, that I know nothing.”
- (Socrates) Plato, The Republic

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding and
ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. [But how mistakenly!] I am
not the assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not subtle penetrating air
distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath
or anything at all that I can imagine. I am supposing all these things to be nothing.
Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am still something.”
- Rene Descartes, Mediations on First Philosophy

“Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will
understand why this illness was bound to come upon you, perhaps you will
thenceforth avoid falling ill.”
- Sigmund Freud, Character and Culture

“I discover that there are other minds in misunderstanding what other

people say and do.”
- Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of the Mind

“Whether it’s a question of my body, the natural world, the past, birth or death, the
question is always to know how I can be open to phenomena that transcend me
and that, nevertheless, only exist to the extent that I take them up and live them.”
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception

2. Discussion. Answer each of the following questions. (5 points each)

a. Compare and contrast the elements of the mind according to Plato and the
life of St. Augustine.

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b. Differentiate the concepts of the self according to Descartes and that of

Locke.

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_________________________________________________________________________
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________________________________________________________ .

c. For Hume, what is it that make “your” perceptions inaccessible to “me” and
vice versa?

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_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________ .

d. What are some of the criticisms that have been brought against Freud and
psychoanalysis?

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________.

3. Key terms. List some terminologies associated with each philosopher. Briefly
define or describe each term. (21+4 points)

Philosopher Key Terms (1pt) Definition (2pts)

SOCRATES

AUGUSTINE

DESCARTES

HUME

KANT

FREUD

MERLEAU-PONTY

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CREDITS TO: Ma’am Josephine Tan and others ♥

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