SOCRATES

- He emphasize that knowing or understanding oneself should be more than the physical self, or the
body.

- According to him, self is immortal and unified entity that is consistent over time as he believes that a
human being remains the same person during their childhood to adulthood given the

fact that they undergone developmental changes throughout their lifespan.

- For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the first belongs to the physical realm because it
changed, it is imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm for it survives the death.
Socrates also used the term soul to identify self.

PLATO
- He introduce the idea of a three-part soul/self that is composed of reason, physical appetite and spirit
or passion.

~ The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and achieve a true understanding of
eternal truths. Plato also called this as divine essence.

o The physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of human being such as hunger, thirst, and sexual
desire.

o And the spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human being such as love, anger, ambition,
aggressiveness and empathy.

ST. AUGUSTINE
- Like Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is different from the immortal soul.

- According to him, human nature us composed of two realm: God as the source of all reality and truth
and The sinfulness of man

RENE DESCARTES
- He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one must doubt everything even own existence and
the essence of self is being a thinking thing.

- The self is a dynamic entity that engages in mental operations – thinking, reasoning, and perceiving
processes. In addition to this, self-identity is dependent on the awareness in engaging with those mental
operations.
JOHN LOCKE
- According to him self is consciousness.

- Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking—always accompanies thinking and is an essential
part of the thinking process.

Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same identity in different times and

different places.

DAVID HUME
- His claim about self is quite controversial because he assumed that there is no self!

- Hume considered that the self does not exist because all of the experiences that a person may have are
just perceptions and this includes the perception of self. None of these perceptions resemble a unified
and permanent self-identity that exists over time.

- Hume explained that the self that is being experienced by an individual is nothing but a kind of fictional
self. Human created an imaginary creature which is not real. “Fictional self” is created to unify the
mental events and introduce order into an individual lives, but this “self” has no real existence.

SIGMUND FREUD
- He has a dualistic view of self which involves the conscious self and unconscious self. The conscious self
is governed by reality principle. Here, the self is rational, practical, and appropriate to the social
environment. The unconscious self is governed by pleasure principle. It is the self that is aggressive,
destructive, unrealistic and instinctual.

GILBERT RYLE
- According to Ryle, the self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or disposition for a
person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances.

IMMANUEL KANT
- It is the self that makes consciousness for the person to make sense of everything. It is the one that
help every individual gain insight and knowledge. If the self failed to do this synthesizing function, there
would be a chaotic and insignificant collection of sensations.

- The self is the product of reason, a regulative

principle because the self regulates experience by making unified experience possible and unlike Hume,
Kant’s self is not the object of consciousness, but it makes the consciousness understandable and
unique.

PAUL AND PATRICIA CHURCHLAND

- He claims that the self is a product of brain activity. The behavior of the self can be attributed to the
neuropharmacological states, the neural activity in specialized anatomical areas.

MAURICE MERLEAU- PONTY

- According to him, the world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing process of
man’s becoming.

- He took a very different approach to the self and the mind/body “problem.” According to him, the
division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of confused thinking. The self is experienced as
a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly woven together. This unity is the primary
experience of selves and begin to doubt it when an individual use their minds to concoct abstract
notions of a separate mind and body.