LESSON 1: THE PHILOSOPICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF INTRODUCTION

Understanding Yourself
BS in Accountancy | Ma’am Jayselle Angeles | Uself

UNIT 1: The Self on the Different Perspectives
Lesson 1: The Philosophical Perspective of the
Self Introduction
aspect, the body, while maintaining that there is also
a soul that is perfect and permanent.
Plato

Philosophy – love of wisdom

Socrates
Socrates was the first philosopher to engage in a
systematic questioning about the self and took it
upon to himself to serve as a “gadfly” who
disturbed Athenian men from their slumber and
shook them off in order to reach the truth and
Soul, according to Plato was
synonymous with the self. The only difference was
that the self is in the physical form and the soul is
in the ideal form. Self is something temporary and
the soul is eternal. He supported Socrates’ idea that
a man is a dual nature of body and soul. He added
that there are three components to the soul: the
rational soul, the spirited soul and the appetitive
wisdom. soul. He emphasizes that justice in the human
person can only be attained if the three parts of the
Socrates said that “an unexamined life is not worth soul are working harmoniously with one another.
living.” The rational soul is forged by reason and intellect.
The spirited soul is in charge of emotions. The
Through introspection, a person becomes virtuous
or come to know his values. appetitive soul consists of our desire that we need
enable to live.
Socrates was the first one to focus on the self, who
we are, who we should be and who we will become
in which he believes that every human has an St. Augustine
immortal soul aside from the physical body. He
believes that an individual’s reality is divided by
two parts. The physical realm and the ideal realm.
The physical realm consists of the world that we
are living in. It is the world that changes and
temporary. The ideal realm contains concepts about
the universe, truth, goodness and beauty. These are
the things that does not undergo changes and are
everlasting.
St. Augustine believes that there is an aspect of
For Socrates, every man is composed of body and man, which dwells in the worlds, that is imperfect
soul. This means that every human person is and continuously yearns to be with the divine while
dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important the other is capable of reaching immortality. There
aspects of his personhood. For Socrates, this means is this body that is bound to die on earth and the
that all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent soul that is anticipated to live eternally in a realm of
UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF Janelle | 1
 LESSON 1: THE PHILOSOPICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF INTRODUCTION
Understanding Yourself
BS in Accountancy | Ma’am Jayselle Angeles | Uself
spiritual bliss in communion with God. The body
can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality,
which is the world, whereas the soul can also stay
after death in an eternal realm with the transcendent
God.
Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes, the “Father of Modern
Philosophy.” He claims that there is so much that
we should doubt. In fact, he says that much of what
we think and believe, because they are not
infallible, may turn out to be false. One should only
believe that which can pass the test of doubt. But in
the end, Descartes, thought that the only thing that
one cannot doubt is the existence of the self. 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. The self is then
for Descartes is also a combination of two distinct
entities, the “cogito” or the thing that thinks and the
“extenza” or the extention of the mind (the body).
David Hume
The key contribution and a concept against
the previous philosophers by David Hume was
when he said that the self doesn’t exist. The self is
just a collection or combination of all the
perceptions of a particular person. He finds that
UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF
they can all be categorized into two: impressions
and ideas.
Impressions are the basic object of our
experience or sensation. They form the core of our
thoughts. When one touches an ice cube, the cold
sensation is an impression.
Impressions are vivid because they are the product
of our direct experience with the world.
Ideas are copies of impressions. They are not as
lively and vivid as our impression because we do
not experienced it yet in the real world. When one
imagines the feeling of being in love for the first
time, that still is an idea.
Immanuel Kant
Thinking of the self as mere combination of
impressions was problematic for Immanuel Kant.
He thinks that there is an organizing principle that
regulates the relationships of all the perceptions and
sensation of impressions. He said that the mind
organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world. He proposes that we are actively
synthesizing or organizing our knowledge and
experiences so that we can call it “mine”. For Kant,
we are the ones who create our reality in which we
are familiar and comfortable. Another was his
concept of the “Apparatus of the Mind” which
consists of ideas that cannot be found in the world
but is only built in our minds (e.g. time and space).
The “self” is an actively engaged intelligence in
man that synthesizes all knowledge and experience.
Thus, the self is not just what gives one his
personality, it is also the seat of knowledge
acquisition for all human person.
Janelle | 2
 LESSON 1: THE PHILOSOPICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF INTRODUCTION
Understanding Yourself
BS in Accountancy | Ma’am Jayselle Angeles | Uself

Gilbert Ryle

For Gilbert Ryle, our behaviors or what we

do in our day-to-day lives were the ones that makes
us a person

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

We cannot separate the mind and the body

and these two works as one for us to know
ourselves. According to Merleau-Ponty, the mind
and the body are so intertwined that they cannot be
separated from one another. One cannot find any
experience that is not embodied experience. All
experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening
toward his existence to the world.

UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF Janelle | 3