GEC 1 – UNDERSTANDING THE SELF Module 1: Content

MODULE 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

I. Starting AccUrAtely (Introduction)

A. Lesson Introduction:
Who are you? What is your name?
Before we even had to be in any formal institution of learning, among the many things that
we were first taught as kids is to articulate and write our names. As we grew up, we were told to
refer back to this name when talking about ourselves. Our parents may have painstakingly thought
about our names. Should we be named after a famous celebrity, a respected politician or historical
personality, or even a saint? Were you named after one of them?
Our names represent who we are. Human beings attach names that are meaningful to birthed
progenies because names are supposed to designate us in the world. Likewise, when our parents
call our names, we were taught to respond to them because our names represent who we are.
As a student, you are to always write your names on your answer sheets, projects, or any
output for that matter. Your name is a term assigned to label you as an individual and is what you
carry with you as your identity.
On the other hand, the self is not a static thing that one is simply born with like a mole on one’s
face or is just assigned by one’s parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to discover one’s
self. Have you truly discovered yours?

B. Intended Outcomes/Learning Objectives:

At the end of this lesson, you are expected to be able to:
1. explain the importance of understanding the self;
2. describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points of view of the
various philosophers across time and place;
3. compare and contrast the representations of the self in different philosophical schools;
and
4. manifest enthusiasm in knowing oneself by completing the tasks assigned.

II. StimUlating LeArning (Motivation)

Imagine yourself in this scenario:
You are about to submit yourself to your dream job interview. There are only a few slots available but
there is a long queue of applicants waiting at the lobby. You are given a form to fill in with these necessary
data: personal information (name, age, address, birthday, hobbies, favorites, etc.) and answers to
questions such as “Why should we select you?” and “What could be your contribution to the company?”
and “Describe the company after a year of hiring you”.

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Which part/parts of the form do you think is/are easy to answer? Which part/parts is/are difficult?
Kindly take your time to reflect on these.

Analysis:
It is easy to access factual information about ourselves: name, age, date of birth, parents’ names, etc.
But, it is actually difficult to pull out those that are truly important or essential: What distinguishes you from
others? What makes you unique?
You, as you, should know yourself better and deeper than anyone else. We lack the time to examine
ourselves – most of our days are filled with responding to the expectations of others, doing norms that are
dictated by the society, and establishing things that are set for us by our biological and socio-economic
conditions (These are normal, but could sometimes detach us from the core of our identity).

III. IncUlcAting Concepts (Inputs/Lesson Proper)

Since the ancient until the postmodern times, philosophers and scholars grappled to understand the
meaning of life. They have attempted to answer the question “Who am I?” Let’s find out these ideas that
may have influenced the ways we look at our lives today.

1. SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.E.)

He is the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self. Socrates was more concerned with the
problem of the self. According to him, the true task of the philosopher is to
“know oneself”.
Socrates affirmed, as claimed by Plato in his dialogues, that the
unexamined life is not worth living. Living a life without knowing your
“self”, your purpose, your nature of being, is “sleepwalking”. These
“sleepwalking” individuals exist, but there is no life or meaning in their
existence. They are only going through the motions of life but they lack happiness, significance and virtue.
To live and die inside is the worst thing that could happen to a man.
So, check on yourself. Are you “sleepwalking”?
In terms of the components or divisions of self, Socrates believed that every man is composed of a
“body” and a “soul”. Every human person is dualistic—composed of two important aspects of his
personhood: an imperfect, impermanent aspect called the “body” and a perfect and permanent aspect
called the “soul” (Dualism).

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2. PLATO (428-347 B.C.E.)

Plato is Socrates’ student who supported Dualism, an idea that man is
of dualistic nature composed of body and soul. For Plato, however, the soul
(psyche in Greek) has three elements: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and
the appetitive soul.
Rational Self—composed of reason and intellect that
governs the affairs of humans; enables humans to think, make wise
choices and understand eternal truths.
Spirited Self –also called Passion, is in charge of our emotions (love,
aggressiveness, empathy, etc.).
Appetitive Soul—in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping and even
sexual activities.

The focus of Plato is on the harmony of these three components of the soul. When the ideal state is
attained (meaning when the three components are working in harmony with each other), the person’s soul
becomes just and virtuous. Imagine that you plan to travel by using a chariot being pulled by two horses.
How can you arrive at your intended destination? Of course, your chariot must have wheels and the two
horses must gallop harmoniously with each other. Take these three elements (the chariot and the two
horses) as the three components of the soul, working in harmony to achieve the ideal state. Plato called
this giving JUSTICE to your human person.

3. ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Northern Africa (354-430)

Following Plato’s ideas and infusing these with Christian doctrines,
Augustine agreed that man has a bifurcated nature or the self is divided into
two:
Body:
● Can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality (the world)

● Bound to die on Earth

Soul:
● Anticipated to live eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God.

He believed that happiness exists only in God’s love. Therefore, according to him, the goal of every
human person is to attain communion and bliss with God by living his life on earth in virtue. He created, in
his book “The Confessions”, a theology of self—a total, complete view of the self in relation to God.
Do you also consider your relationship with your God a basis in examining yourself?

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4. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)

Aquinas is another Christian priest who introduced Christian doctrines
with philosophical ideas in understanding the self. He supported Aristotle’s
ideas of rejecting the dualistic belief that self is a dualistic entity composed
of body and soul. He maintained instead the idea of Aristotle that there are
two basic categories of things:
Matter (hyle) which represents all matter; and
Form (morphe) which represents the essence of a
thing, what makes the thing what it is.

This view is called Hylomorphism. It asserts that individual organisms

are composed of matter (body) and form (soul) which only exist in relation to one another. Humans are
composed of a united, inseparable union of components of self rather than divided, dualistic self. It also
asserts that the soul (anima) is what separates living thing (e.g. humans) from non-living ones.
The soul is what enlivens the body. For living things, to live is to exist. So the soul is that by
which the human body actually exists. Now a form is this sort of thing. So the human soul is
the form of the body. (Aquinas, De anima, 1, 369)

5. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

Descartes is the “father of modern philosophy”. His philosophical ideas
were encapsulated in his major philosophical work, Meditations on First
Philosophy. His philosophy is focused on understanding the nature of
reasoning process and its relation to the human self. He questioned the
integrity of beliefs accepted on “faith”.
He emphasized that the only thing that we should not doubt or question
is the existence of self. For even if we doubt our self, it only proves the
existence of a thinking self, and a thinking self should not be doubted. His
famous line is cogito, ergo sum which literally means “I think, therefore I am”. This simply means that
because you are thinking, there is no doubt that you exist. No rational person will doubt his/her own
existence as a conscious, thinking entity (even if we are dreaming, hallucinating or being manipulated by
some external entity). However, the physical body is just secondary to your personal identity.
According to Descartes, here are some of the manifestations that you are “thinking”:
You understand situations in which you find yourself.
You doubt the accuracy of ideas presented to you.
You affirm the truth of a statement made about you.
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You deny an accusation that someone has made.

You will yourself to complete a task you have begun.
You refuse to follow a command that you consider to be unethical.
You imagine a fulfilling career for yourself.
You feel passionate emotions toward another person.

The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of being aware of our selves: Being self-
conscious in this way is integral to having a personal identity. Having a self-identity and being self-
conscious are mutually dependent on one another.
Do you believe that your self is more than or even beyond your physical sense of yourself?

6. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

John Locke, a British philosopher and physician, is famous in his tabula rasa
theory of the mind. Tabula rasa (literally means blank slate) concept of the
mind suggests that humans are born with an empty or clean mind. The mind is
only filled in through experiences as one grows and interacts with the
environment.
In the study of self, John Locke holds the idea that personal identity (the self)
is a matter of psychological continuity. For him, personal identity is founded on
consciousness, and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.
Consciousness is being aware that one is thinking. It always accompanies
thinking and is an important part of the thinking process. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we
are the same identity in different times and different places.
Do you agree that you are the same you last night before you go to bed and in the morning when
you wake up? How about last year when you were still in high school? How about during the summer
vacation? If you believe so, then it is because of your consciousness of being the same person in all those
different contexts. Consciousness is very important in creating a coherent self-identity.
Additionally, personal identity, according to him, is the concept about oneself that evolves over the
course of an individual’s life. It may include aspects of life that man has no control over, such as where he
grew up or the color of his skin, as well as the choices he makes, like how he spend his time and what he
believes.
Reflect on yourself. How influential are your experiences in the development of your concept of
identity or self?

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7. DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

David Hume is a Scottish philosopher, an empiricist, who believes that
one can know only what comes from the sense and experiences. (Empiricism
is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be
possible if it is sensed and experienced.) Hume argues that the self is not an
entity over and beyond the physical body. Men can only attain knowledge by
experiencing. For example, Jack knows that Jill is another human person not
because he has seen her soul. He knows she is just like him because he sees
her, hears her and touches her.
To Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions or a collection of different perceptions,
which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement
(Hume and Steinberg, 1992). For him, man has no “clear and intelligible” idea of the self. He posits that no
single impression of the self exists; rather, the self is just the thing to which all perceptions of man are
ascribed. Moreover, even if there was such an impression of the self, it would have to remain constant
over time to constitute identity.
He said further that experiences are categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
Impressions are basic objects of your experience or sensation. They, therefore, form the core of
your thoughts; and are vivid because they are products of your direct experience with the world (e.g. pain,
pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, etc.).
Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and vivid
as your impressions. When one imagines the feeling of being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
Simply, impressions are your direct experiences while ideas are acquired through indirect means. For
example, your impression of your trip to Paris, France is more vivid than your ideas about it based on
what you see in YouTube videos, magazines, or your friend’s stories of their vacation trips.
It is believed that there is a unified, coherent self, a soul or mind just like what some of the previous
philosophers thought. But to Hume, what one thinks as a unified self is simply a combination of all
experiences with a particular person because to him, there is no self.

8. IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

To Kant, the self is a regulating and organizing factor of the apparatuses
of the mind.
The idea of Hume that the self was a combination of impressions was
problematic for Kant. Although he recognizes the truth to Hume’s account that

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everything starts with perception and sensation of impressions, Kant believes that there is a mind that
organizes these impressions that men get from the external world.
For example, time and space are ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds.
He calls these the apparatuses of the mind. Along with the different apparatuses of the mind goes the
“self”.
Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own
existence.
Kant believes that the self is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge
and experiences. The self is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

9. GILBERT RYLE (1900-1976)

Gilbert Ryle is a British philosopher who solved the mind-body dichotomy
that has been running for a long time in the history of thought by blatantly
denying the concept of an internal, non-physical self. For Ryle, what truly
matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life. He said
that looking for and trying to understand a self as it really exists is like visiting
your friend’s university and looking for the “university”. One can roam around the
campus, visit the library and he football field, and meet the administrators and
faculty and still end up not finding the “university”. This is because the campus,
the people, the systems, and the territory all form the university.
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. To him, the self is how you behave.

10. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY (1908-1961)

Merleau-Ponty is a French phenomenological philosopher who asserts

that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long time is a futile
endeavor and an invalid problem.
Unlike Ryle who simply denies the “self”, Merleau-Ponty instead says that
the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
another. One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience.
This means that all experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening toward
his existence to the world. Because of these bodies, men are in the world. The
living body (or lived body), his thoughts, emotions and experiences are all one.

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So, how do you know that you are really in love? According to Merleau-Ponty, you need to have a
precise description of your immediate responses: physically, emotionally, and cognitively.
I am currently in love, and

✔ I feel ________________________________________________________.

✔ I think _______________________________________________________.

✔ My physical responses are ______________________________________.

✔ I spontaneously _______________________________________________.

By doing so, you can have a clearer understanding of what “being in love” is all about, by using the
concepts based on the reality of your lived experiences.
Try doing that in other phenomenon of your experiences such as:

● Being the eldest/youngest/only child

● Poverty

● Living with a broken family

● Being a teenager

● Being a member of LGBTQIA+ community, etc.

11. PATRICIA CHURCHLAND

Through time, more ideas and views about self emerged. There
are those who believe that all aspects of the universe are composed
of matter and energy that can be fully explained by physical laws
(Materialism, or Physicalism as its more contemporary counterpart).
These philosophers (and even psychologists) believe that mental
states are identical to physical brain states. They believe that there is
no immaterial self that exists independently from the brain or the
body.
Patricia Churchland’s ideas of self are grounded on the
perspectives of materialism or physicalism. She argued that to fully understand the mind, one must

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understand the brain, using concepts of neuroscience to explain mental concepts such as freewill. She
asserted that there is no mind or soul beyond the physical brain. Therefore, she proposed that the brain is
the self; the brain is each of us.

IV. Using/Applying Knowledge (Application/Integration)

Note:

Prepare for a quiz/activity after discussion of the topic.

V. EvalUAting Understanding (Assessment)

Note:

Prepare for a quiz/activity after discussion of the topic.

VII. SUggested Enrichment Activities (Suggested activities, links, etc.)

Note:

Instructions will be posted by the instructor via LMS or other social learning/media platforms.

VIII. Conclusion:
Self has been philosophically defined in many ways. Though we were provided with these
fundamental concepts and principles about the self, finding the true meaning of our existence is a personal
endeavor. It is our personal task to find out and understand who we really are. Doing so can help us define
ourselves better. No one else can, not even our parents. In this time of digital socialization, instead of
knowing other people’s lives, take time to listen to yourself. Look inwardly and search that “self” that waits
for your attention. Be yourself. While doing so, reflect on this idea by Friedrich Nietzsche: “We are
unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves; this has good reason. We have never searched for
ourselves—how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves?”
Lastly, this search to understand the self is not entirely possible without “the knowledge of the holy”
(Proverbs 9:10) for this knowledge is supreme and it is where all wisdom is actually anchored.

References:
Alata, E., Caslib, B., Serafica, J. & Pawilen, R,A. (2018). Understanding the self (1st edition). Rex Book Store,
Inc.

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Brawner, D., & Arcega, A. (2018). Understanding the self. Quezon City: C & E Publishing.
Chaffee, J. (2016). The philosopher's way: Thinking critically about profound ideas , 5th ed. USA: Pearson
Education.
Villafuerte, S., Quillope, A., Tunac, R., & Borja, E. (2018). Understanding the self. Quezon City: Nieme
Publishing House Co.

—End of Module 1—

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