Understanding the Self

“Understanding the Self” deals with the nature of identity, as well as the factors and forces that affect
the development and maintenance of personal identity. 

It is intended to facilitate the exploration of the issues and concerns regarding the self and identity to
arrive at a better understanding of oneself.

I. From the Perspective of Philosophy

1. For Socrates, the goal of philosophy was to "Know thyself". Knowledge of oneself can be achieved
only through the Socratic Method, that is to say, the dialogue between the soul and itself, or between a
student and his teacher.

2. Plato believed the soul exists before birth and after death. Thus he believed that the soul or mind
attains knowledge of the forms, as opposed to the senses. Needless to say, we should care about our
soul rather than our body

3. Aristotle defined the soul as the core essence of a living being, but argued against its having a
separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because
'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. 

4. St. Augustine in his Confessions takes this idea and expands it into an entire genre that critically
inquires what it means to be a person. This identity is achieved through a two-fold process: self-
presentation, which leads to self-realization. 

5. Descartes thought that the self is a thinking thing distinct from the body. His first famous principle
was” Cogito, ergo sum", which means “I think, therefore I am."

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