THE SELF FROM VARIOUS
person can only be attained if only the three
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
The Soul is Immortal: SOCRATES
 Concerned with the problem of the self
 First philosopher who ever engaged in a
systemic questioning about the self
 The true task of a philosopher is to know
oneself
 Unexamined life is not worth living
 Each person possesses an immortal soul
that survives beyond the death of the body
 Reality is dualistic, made up of two
dichotomous realms
 One realm is changeable, transient, and
imperfect (e.g., physical world - comprising
all that we can see, hear, taste, smell, and
feel)
 In contrast, the unchanging, eternal, perfect
realm includes the intellectual essences of
the universe (e.g., truth, goodness, and
beauty)
Plato added that there are three
components of the soul:
a) Rational soul
b) Spirited soul
c) Appetitive soul
• Rational soul - our divine essence that
enables us to think deeply, make wise
choices, and achieve a true understanding
of eternal truths.
 Spirited soul -our basic emotions such as
love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and
empathy.
 Appetitive soul- our basicbiological needs
such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire
When conflict occurs, Plato believes it is the
responsibility of our Rational soul/Reason to
sort things out and exert control, reestablishing
a harmonious relationship among the three
elements of our selves.
Plato emphasizes that justice in the human
parts are working harmoniously with one
another.
ASSESSMENT:
a) Describe an incident in your life which you
experienced a vigorous conflict between
the three dimensions of your self identified
by Plato: Reason, Appetite, and Spirit.
b) Describe an experience in your life which
Reason prevailed over Passion and
Appetite.
c) Describe an experience in your life in which
the three elements of your self identified by
Plato worked together in a productive and
harmonious fashion, enabling you to
achieve a great success.
Saint Augustine's Synthesis of Plato and
Christianity.
• Augustine was convinced that Platonism
and Christianity were natural partners.
• Agreed that man is of bifurcated(dual)
nature.
• 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.
St. Thomas Aquinas' Synthesis of Aristotle
and Christianity
• Tended towards Aristotle's metaphysical
views serve as an intellectual to structure
for Christianity's ideas of the self and
reality.
• In Aristotle's metaphysical system, there are
two basic categories of things:
a. Matter (in Greek, hyle),
which refers to the
common "stuff" that
makes up the material
universe
b. Form (in Greek, morphe),
which refers to the
essence of a thing, that
which makes it what it is.
Taken together, matter and form combine to create
formed matter or substance - that is, all of the
familiar things we see in the universe.
Hylomorphism-individual organism consist of
both matter and form, which can only exist in
relation to one another.
• The form or structure that distinguishes
living things from nonliving ones is what
Aristotle called "soul".
• To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is
what animates the body; it is what makes
us humans.
Rene Descarte's Modern Perspective on
the Self
• Founder of Modern Philosophy
• Concerned understanding with the thinking
process we use to answer questions
• Agreed with the great thinkers before him
that the human ability to reason constitutes
the extraordinary instrument we have to
achieve truth and knowledge.
• Descartes wanted to penetrate the nature
of our reasoning process and understand its
relation to human self.
• If our thinking instrument is flawed, then it
is likely that our conclusions will be flawed
as well.
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is
necessary that at least once in your life you
doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
-René Descartes
Cogito, ergo sum "I think, therefore I am."
• The essence of existing as a human identity
is the possibility of being aware of our
selves.
"But what, then, am I? A thinking thing, it
has been said. But what is a thinking thing?
It is a thing that doubts, understands
(conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses,
that imagines also, and perceives."
-René Descartes
• Your self identity is dependent on the fact
that you are capable of being aware you are
engaging in these mental operations while
you are engaged in them.
• Descartes believes that you body is
secondary to your personal identity.
• The thinking self- or soul – is a nonmaterial,
immortal, conscious being, independent of
the physical laws of the universe.
• The physical body is a material, mortal,
nonthinking entity, fully governed by the
physical laws of nature.
ASSESSMENT:
a) Describe one way your
mind significantly affects
your body.
b) Describe some of the
ways your body
significantly affects your
mind.
There Is No Self: David Hume
• An empiricist who believes that one can know only
what comes from the senses and experiences.
Empiricism is the school of thought that espouses
the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is
sensed and experienced.
According to Hume, if we carefully examine the
contents of our experience, we find that there are
only two distinct entities, "impressions" and "ideas":
Impressions - basic sensations of our
experience: pain,
pleasure, heat,
cold, happiness,
exhilaration.
grief, fear,
- "lively" and "vivid"
Ideas - copies of impressions; less "lively"
and "vivid"
- include thoughts and images that
are built up from our primary
impressions through a variety of
relationships
• Self, according to Hume, is simply "a bundle
or collection of different perceptions, which
 succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement."
• According to Hume, mind is "a kind of
theatre, where several perceptions
successively make their appearance, pass,
repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite
variety of purposes and situations."
We Construct the Self: Immanuel Kant
Where does the order and organization of our world
come from?
behave in a certain way in certain
circumstances.
• In Ryle's words: “A person therefore lives
through collateral histories, one consisting
of what happens in and to his body, and
other consisting of what happens in and to
his mind. The first is public, the second is
private."
• Ryle suggests that the "self" is not an entity
one can locate and analyze but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer
to all the behaviors that people make

• According to Kant, it comes in large

measure from us. The Self Is Embodied Subjectivity: Merleau-
• Kant thinks that the things that men
Ponty.
perceive around them are not just randomly
infused into the human person without an • A phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-
organizing principle that regulates the body bifurcation that has been going on for a long
relationship of all these impressions. time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem..
• To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that
organizes the impressions that men get
from the external world.
• Our minds actively sort, organize, relate,
and synthesize the fragmented, fluctuating
collection of sense data that our sense
organs take in.
• According to to Kant, this meaning-
constructing activity is precisely what our
minds are doing all the time: taking the raw
data of experience and actively synthesizing
it into the familiar, orderly, meaningful
world in which we live.
• We didn't have to learn these a priori ways
of organizing and relating the world - they
came as software already installed in our
intellectual operating systems.
• Our self is the weaver - who, using the loom
of the mind, weaves together the fabric of
experience into a unified whole so that it
becomes my experience, my world, my
universe.

The Self Is How You Behave:Gilbert Ryle

Behaviorism: The self is is defined in terms of the
behavior that is presented to the world.

• The self is a pattern of behavior, the

tendency or disposition for a person to