THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES: PHILOSOPHY AND THE SELF

Socrates:
 1st philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self
 he asserts that “the true task of the philosopher is to know “ONESELF”
 he posits that “the true task of the unexamined life is NOT worth living”
 he notes that “every man/woman in composed of body and soul
 he explained that “All individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect, the body, while
maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Plato:
 He argues that man/woman is dual nature and soul
which has 3 components:
o The rational soul
o The spirited soul
o Appetitive soul

 In his magnum apres, The Republic, Plato emphasizes that “justice in the human person can
only be attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another”

Aristotle:
 A student of Plato
 The body and soul are inseparable elements but are one thing
 The soul is simply the form of the body, and is not capable of existing without the body
 The soul is that which makes a person a person. The soul is the essence of the self.
 He suggests that the rational nature of the self is to lead a good, flourishing, and fulfilling
life.
 Without the body, the soul cannot exist.

The soul dies along with the body.

“Soul and body, I suggest react sympathetically upon each other. A change in the state of the soul
produces a change in the shape of the body and conversely, a change in the shape of the body
produces a change in the state of the soul.”
KINDS OF SOUL:
 Vegetative - Physical body
 Sentient - Emotion
 Rational - It makes man human

St. Augustine:
 Integrated the idea of Plato and Christianity.
 St. Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
 The soul is united with the body so that man may be entire and complete
 He agreed that “man is of bifurcated in nature”
 He believed that humankind is created is created in the image and likeness of God.
 He posits that “the body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally
in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God.” further, he asserts that the goal of
every human person is to attain this communion and bliss with the Divine by living his life on
earth in virtue

St. Thomas Aquinas:

 The doctor of the church and the most eminent 13 th century scholar and stalwart of the
medieval philosophy
 He elucidates that man is composed of two parts:
○ matter
○ form
 Matter refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the universe while form
refers to the essence of a substance or thing; it is what makes it what it is

 In the case of the human person, the body of a human person is something that he/she
shares even with animals

 Now, what makes a human person a human person and not an animal is his/her soul his/her
essence. for Aquinas, the SOUL is what animates the body, it is what makes us humans.

Rene Descartes:
“The act of thinking about self – of being self-conscious – is in itself proof that there is self.”

 Descartes’ (2) Distinct Entities

○ Cogito - the thing that thinks
○ Extenza - the extension
This resulted to his famous “COGITO ERGO SUM” or I think therefore I am.
David Hume:
 Self is simply a bundle or collections of different perceptions, which succeed each other
with an inconceivable rapidly and are in a perpetual flux and movement

 The idea of personal identity is a result of imagination

There is no Self
Immanuel Kant:
“We Construct the Self”
 Self is not just what gives one his personality but also the seat of knowledge acquisition for
all human persons.

 The Self constructs its own reality creating a world that is familiar and predictable through
our rationality, the self transcends sense experience

John Locke:
“The self is consciousness.”
 The human mind at birth is tabula rasa or a blank slate
○ Locke theorized that when they are born, all babies know absolutely nothing
○ He argued that the inside of a baby’s brain was empty - ready to learn everything
through experience.

 he felt that the self is constructed primarily from the sense experiences
The Self is Consciousness

CONSCIOUSNESS
o necessary to have a coherent personal identity or knowledge of the self as a person.
what makes possible our belief that we are the same identity

Gilbert Ryle:
“The Self is the way people behave”
 self is not an empty one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the behaviors that people make

 “I act therefore I am”, in short, the self is the same as bodily behavior the self is the way
people behave
Paul Churchland:
“The Self is the Brain”
 The self is inseparable from the brain and the physiology of the body
 All we have is the brain and so, if the brain is gone, there is no self
 The physical brain and not the imaginary mind, gives us our sense of self
 The mind does not really exist

It is the brain and not the imaginary mind that gives us our sense of self

Maurice Merleau-Ponty:
“The Self is embodied Subjectivity”

 The mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long period of time is a futile
endeavor and an invalid problem

 All knowledge of ourselves and our world is based on subjective experience the self can
never be truly objectified or known

The self can never be truly objectified or known in a completely objective sort of way

George Herbert Mead: The Social Self

George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily
affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of the several distinguish
pragmatist.
“The Self is born of society. The self is inseparable from society and bound up with
communication. It builds on social experience. This largely a matter of taking the role of
other with increasing sophistications, broadening out from significant others to greater
complexity”

THE SOCIAL SELF

 Created through social interaction

 Process started in childhood, with children beginning to develop a sense of self at about the
same time that they began to learn language
 THREE KEY POINTS IN THE SOCIAL SELF THEORY:

 The self emerges from social experience. It is not part of the body and it does not exist at
birth.

 Social experience involves communication and the exchange of symbols. People create
meaning.

 To understand the intention, you must imagine the situation from another person’s point of
view. By taking the role of the other: the self I reflective and reflexive.

STAGES in MEAD’s THEORY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF

Preparatory Stage:
 Children mimic / imitate others

Play Stage:
 Children pretend to play the role of a particular or a significant other
 Particular or significant other are perspectives and particular role a child learns and
internalizes

Game Stage:
 Children play organized games and take on the perspective of the generalized other

Dual nature of the Self: Dual nature of the Self:

The perspectives and expectations of
a network of others (or a society in
general) that a child leans and then
takes into account when shaping
his/her own behavior
The belief that we experience the self
as both subject and object, the "I"
and "me"
George Cooley: Looking-glass Self

 “One’s sense of self depends on seeing one’s self reflected in interactions with others”
 The image people have of themselves is based on how they believe others perceive them.

Erving Goffman: Constructing situations & Drama

 “People routinely behave like actors on a stage. Everyday social life become theatrical. There
are roles, scripts and actions. Daily life as a series of stagecraft rules.”

Presentation of the self in everyday life

 Believed that meaning is constructed through interaction

 ‘Interaction Order’

o What we do in the immediate presence of others

DRAMATURGY

 Focuses on how individuals take on roles and act them out to present a favorable impression
to their “audience”

 Goffman argues that people are concerned with controlling how others view them, a process
he called impression management.

“All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and
their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts”

- William Shakespeare

The Self is a Social Construction

FRONTSTAGE BACKSTAGE

People play different roles When people engage in back stage

throughout their daily lives and behavior, they are free of the
display different kinds of behavior expectations and norms that
depending on where they are and indicate front stage behavior.
the time of day
  Each definition of a situation lends itself to a different approach, and the consequences are
real.

 The self is a Social-construction dependent of the situation

WESTERN versus EASTERN

Western Thoughts
 Conducted Scientific investigations in the effort to understand the self and have developed
theories and the self and have developed theories and difference among them.

 They emphasized the importance of scientific methods of investigation to provide

satisfactory answers to understanding the self.

 The emphasis is individualistic rather than relational.

Eastern Thoughts
 Raise questions about the ultimate meaning of human life
 Developed theories of self as they have investigated what it means to be a human being.

EASTERN THOUHTS AIM AT TRANSFORMATIONS IN:

o Consciousness
o Emotions
o Feelings
o One’s relationship to other people and the world

Eastern Thoughts
 Emphasis is relational rather than individual.
 Self is considered not in isolation but in relation to others, society, and the universe
 Eastern theories are highly practical
 They do not utilize the scientific techniques of investigation.
 They offer a variety of techniques for cultivating a deeper understanding of the self
A CLOSER LOOK TO DIFFERENT EASTERN THOUGHTS:

BUDHISM

 Comes from the root word “budh’’ meaning awake

 Sidharta Gautama known as Buddha is the founder of Buddhism

FIVE (5) PARTS THAT COMPOSE THE INDIVIDUAL

1. Matter
2. Sensation
3. Perception
4. Mental constructs
5. Consciousness

 There is no self (or no soul).

 There is only nothing and all else is an illusion.
 There is nothing permanent, but change.
 “anicca”
 Literally means impermanence

 means that everything in life is always changing, that nothing can last forever.

 The ideal is to experience Nirvana, a state of transcendence devoid of self-reference.

How can we achieve NIRVANA:

 Through meditation

HINDUISM
 The religion of an ancient people known as the Aryans

“The goal of man is to have knowledge of the true reality.”

-Brahman

 Law of Karma is the most important doctrine of Hinduism.

  Hindus believe that Atman being an immortal soul continues to be reincarnated from
lifetime to lifetime until it is freed from the cycle of rebirth and reach a state of nirvana or
non-birth.

 Karma does not end with a body’s death, its influence may extend through incarnation of
the soul.

CONFUCIANISM
 System of thought and behavior originating in ancient China

“Do not do others what you would not want others to do to you”.
– Golden Rule
 Another important feature in Confucian thought is the individual’s greatest mission of
attaining self-realization wherein self-cultivation is instrumental.
 Self-cultivation could be accomplished by knowing one’s role in the society and act
accordingly.
 Moral character is perfected through continuously taking every opportunity to improve
oneself in thought and action.

TAOISM
 Chinese philosophy attributed to Lao Tzu
 The self is an extension of the cosmos, not of social relationships.
 The self is described as one of the limitless forms of the Tao.
 The Tao is commonly regarded as a nature that is the foundation of all that exists.
 The perfect man has no self and the selfless person leads to balanced life, in harmony with
both nature and society.

Psychological Views of Self

What is Psychology
 Refers to the Scientific study of people, the mind and behavior. (The British Psychological
Society)

 Psychology is the Scientific study of the behavior of individuals and their mental processes.
(American Psychological Association)

Sigmund Freud: The Psychoanalytic Theory of Self

 Father of Psychoanalysis

 Human Psyche (Personality) is structed into three parts – Id, ego and Superego
Three Levels of Mind
o Conscious – The level of mental life directly available to ask

o Preconscious – Things na nakalimutan na natin however madaling

alalahanin

o Unconscious – Deepest level of our minds: It is beyond our awareness

but nevertheless motivate us, motivate most of our words, feeling and
action

Provinces of mind
o Id – Pleasure Principle

o Ego – Reality Principle

o Superego – Moral Principle

Freudian Stages of Psychosexual Development

a. Oral (birth to 1 year)

 Erogenous Zone: Mouth

b. Anal (2 to 3 years)

 Erogenous Zone: Bowel and Bladder control

c. Phallic (3 to 9 years)

 Erogenous Zone: Genitals

d. Latency (3 to 9 years)

 Erogenous Zone: Sexual Feelings are inactive

e. Genital (Puberty to Death)

 Erogenous Zone: Maturing Sexual Interest