UNDERSTANDING THE SELF- 1ST ASSIGNMENT

Name : Kevin Paul J Lazaga

Time : 2:00PM – 3:00PM
CN # : 2009

Instruction: Answer the following questions below. 40 points

: Write on one whole sheet of paper. Submit on Schoology and bring the original copy on September 31-Wednesday
during our face-to-face classes.

Discuss the philosopher's perspective on the real nature of the concept of "self”.
1. Socrates
-The key to understanding Socrates’s concept of the self is through the philosopher’s take on the
“soul”. Socrates believed that the real life self is not the physical body, but rather the psyche, or
the soul.
-According to Socrates, we need to take care of our soul to attain the “good life”. As we can see,
this is the ultimate goal of Socrates philosophy. As he said, the human person must see to it that
his/her life is geared towards knowledge of the good life.

2. Plato
-A student of Socrates, also studied and explained thoroughly what is the true essence of self,
which is then founded by his mentor. Plato suggested that the “self is fundamentally an
intellectual entity whose nature exists independent from physical world.”
-Plato’s concept of self can be gleaned from his notion of soul. As we can see, the body and the
soul can be separated. In fact, Plato believes that the soul is just residency in the body
temporarily.
-According to Plato, the soul, conceived of as self has three parts, namely
The rational soul, the spiritual soul, and the appetitive soul.

3. St. Augustine
-Augustine's sense of self is his relation to God, both in his recognition of God's love and his
response to it achieved through self-presentation, then self-realization. Augustine believed one
could not achieve inner peace without finding God's love.
-He also creates a new concept of individual identity: the idea of the self. This identity is
achieved through a twofold process: self-presentation, which leads to self-realization.

4. Rene Descartes
- Descartes argues that the self can be correctly considered as either a mind or a human being,
and that the self’s properties vary accordingly. The self is constituted by the beings that jointly
produce this mental life, and derives its unity from it.

5. John Locke
- “According to Locke, personal identity (the self) “depends on consciousness, not on substance”
nor on the soul. We are the same person to the extent that we are conscious of the past and
future thoughts and actions in the same way as we are conscious of present thoughts and
actions.”
 - “John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. He considered
personal identity (or the self) to be founded on consciousness and not on the substance of
either the soul or the body.

6. David Hume
- David Hume gave his account of the self by arguing that the self is a bundle of perceptions
which succeed each other to give us our identity. He argued that the different perceptions
enable the self to exist and when people stop perceiving, the self is lost.

7. Immanuel Kant
-According to Kant, The human person has a two-fold nature namely:
Homo noumenon and homo phaenomenon.
- According to him, we all have an inner and an outer self which together form our
consciousness. The inner self is comprised of our psychological state and our rational intellect.
The outer self includes our sense and the physical world. When speaking of the inner self, there
is apperception.

8. Sigmund Freud
- Freud believed that the mind is responsible for both conscious and unconscious decisions that
it makes on the basis of psychological drives. The id, ego, and super-ego are three aspects of the
mind Freud believed to comprise a person's personality.
- Sigmund Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness: the conscious,
preconscious, and unconscious. Each of these levels corresponds and overlaps with his ideas of
the id, ego, and superego.