Philosophers’ views about

the Self
What is a human person?
- person is a being characterized by
consciousness, rationality, and a
moral sense, and traditionally
thought of as consisting of both a
body and a mind or soul.
- the kind of being that has the moral
right to make its own life-choices and
to live its life without being
provoked/interfered by others
What is self?
- a complete and individual personality,
especially one that somebody
recognizes as his or her own and with
which there is a sense of facility or
ease

Your self is your basic personality or

nature, especially considered in
terms of what you are really like as a
person. Your self is the essential part
of the your very nature which makes
you different from everyone else and
everything else.
Understanding the philosophical
underpinnings of the formation of the Self
allows us to develop an understanding
and enjoyment of things, the absence of
which, impoverishes many lives.

Such things as aesthetic experiences,

communication with different kinds of
people, lively discussions of current
issues, discerning observations of human
behavior, and intellectual zests.

In these and other ways, the study of

philosophy immeasurably contributes to
academic pursuits.
 He was one of the
SOCRATES founders of Western
Philosophy. Plato
“As for me, all portrayed him as the
I know is that I foremost contributor in
know nothing” the field of ethics. His
most important
contribution to the
Western intellectual
process was his Socratic
method which he used in
various occasions to
examine the concepts like
justice and goodness.

“There is only one good - knowledge,

and one evil – ignorance”
SOCRATES
Socratic method is a method of
reasoning: a means developed by Socrates
of arriving at the truth by continually
questioning, obtaining answers, and
criticizing the answers

It involves solving a problem by breaking it

into a series of questions. The answers
are usually brought forward by the answer
that the seeker required. The formu-
lation of hypothesis in today’s
scientific method derives from this
approach.
TYPES OF SOCRATIC QUESTIONS

Questions for • Why do you say that?

clarification: • How does this relate to our discussion?

Questions that probe • How can you verify or disapprove that

assumptions: assumption?
• What could we assume instead?

Questions about • What would be an alternative?

viewpoints and • What is another way to look at it?
perspectives: • Would you explain why it is necessary
or beneficial, and who benefits?
• Why is … the best?
• What are the strengths and
weaknesses of...?
• How are...and ...similar?
TYPES OF SOCRATIC QUESTIONS

Questions that probe • What would be an example for that?

reasons and • What is....analogous to?
evidence: • What do you think causes this to
happen...? Why?

Questions that probe • What generalizations can you make?

implications and • What are the consequences of that
consequences: assumption?
• What are you implying?
• How does...affect...?
• How does...connect with what we
learned before?

Questions about the • What is the point of this question?

question: • Why do you think I asked this
question?
• What does...mean?
• How does...apply to everyday life?
SOCRATES
Socrates believed in the immortality of the soul,
and claimed that God had sent him as a divine
emissary. He also said that virtue cannot be
taught, similar to how successful military
fathers cannot produce sons with their own
qualities.
For Socrates, MORAL EXCELLENCE was a
divine legacy than parental nurturing
Socrates never asked people to be wise, instead
he asked them to follow the path of a
lover of wisdom. He often thought of
himself as a true matchmaker, but
distinguished himself from a panderer.
SOCRATES

The SELF emerges , according to Socrates ,

when humans possess certain virtues and
leads a virtuous life. And, such life is spent in
the search of goodness to be better and
happier.

Virtues (the qualities of being morally good or

righteous) are the most valuable possessions
of human beings and life the pursuit of
should be spent in the search of
goodness. The best way to live a
happier life is to focus on self-
development than material wealth.
 PLATO
Plato came from an affluent
and politically inclined clan in
Athens. He was into grammar,
music and gymnastics. Also
he was trained by renowned
teachers during his time. His
wit and modest character
were widely known and he
had a long standing
mentoring
relationship with
“If the world is not perfect,
Socrates.
it is not because of God or
the ideals, but because the
raw materials were not
perfect.”
PLATO
Plato founded the Academy on a plot land
containing a sacred grove just outside the city
walls of ancient Athens . Which had once
belonged to the Athenian hero Akademos. The
Academy was one of the earliest and most
famous and organized schools in Western
Civilizations and was the prototype for later
universities.

Plato was bitterly disappointed with the

standards displayed by those who were in
public office, so he intended to train young
men in Philosophy and the sciences in
order to create better statesmen, as well
as to continue the work of his former
teacher Socrates.
PLATO
Plato denied the existence of the outside world
and reduced it to representations of subjectivity.
For him, ideas were available to us through
thought, while phenomena are available to us
through our senses. So, naturally , thought is a
vastly superior means to get to the truth.

“There’s the body , which is material, mortal

and moved. Then, there’s the soul, which is
ideal, immortal and unmoved.”

For Plato, The Self emerges as one that

utilizes ideas which had been well thought
of and utilizes one’s senses to recognize the
truth.
 ST. AUGUSTINE
St Augustine affirmed that the
world was created by God from
nothing: only through a free act
of His will. Time is a being of
reason founded in the things that
offer the mind the concept of time
such as past, present and future.
Augustine affirmed the absolute
unity and spirituality of the
human soul.

“The way to God

was to look into
oneself.”
ST. AUGUSTINE
He affirmed that the soul was simple and
immortal. He further believed that the sensitive
soul, besides having the five senses, was also
endowed with a sensitive cognition which was
common among animals.
Three Functions of the Intellective Soul :
a. Being
b. Understanding
c. Loving

These 3 functions corresponded with

a. intellective memory
b. intelligence
c. will
ST. AUGUSTINE
Among the three functions, primacy was given
to the will, which signifies love in man. The only
true evil, according to St. Augustine, is moral
evil, sin, an action contrary to the will of God.
“ The cause of moral evil is not God, who is
infinite Holiness, nor is it matter, for matter is a
creature of God; and hence good. Neither is
the will as a faculty of the soul evil for it too has
been created by God.”

“ The cause of moral evil is the faculty of free

will, by which man is able to deviate from
the right order to oppose himself to the
will of God.”
MAURICE MERLEAU PONTY

“We know not through our

intellect but through our
experience.”
MAURICE MERLEAU PONTY

Ponty posited that anything in this

world had a rigorous methodic, and
unrelenting feature under scrutiny.

He emphasized the body as the

primary site of knowing the world
(a corrective to the long philosophical
tradition of placing consciousness as
the source of knowledge) and
maintained that the body and that
which it perceived could not be
disentangled from each other.
MAURICE MERLEAU PONTY

According to Ponty, the self emerges

as one that perceives the world and
his existence in the world, as he looks
at the world through one’s body which
is involved in one’s existence.
RENE DESCARTES
He was educated in a
scholastic tradition which
combined scholastic
tradition with the
Philosophy of Aristotle.

“The human mind

has principles or a He built his own
priori knowledge, interconnected
independent of system of knowledge,
experience.” which comprised
knowledge of
metaphysics, physics
and other sciences.
RENE DESCARTES
Three Principles of Science :
a. medicine
b. mechanics
c. morals
Physics grounded the applied sciences of
medicine (the science of the human body),
mechanics (the science of machine) and
morals ( the science of the embodied mind.)
RENE DESCARTES
The central claim of what is often called
Cartesian dualism, in honor of Descartes,
is that the immaterial mind and the
material body, while being ontologically
distinct substances, causally interact.

Descartes held that the immaterial mind

and the material body are two completely
different types of substances and that they
interact with each other. He reasoned
that the body could be divided up by
removing a leg or arm, but the mind
or soul were indivisible.
RENE DESCARTES

According to Descartes, the Self emerges as

the human person who, not only possessed a
good mind, but used it well too.

To enhance one’s self one can read good

books to be able to carry conversations with
the finest minds of past centuries. The Self
is a real seeker of truth.

He also postulated that

we should doubt.
RENE DESCARTES

René Descartes, the originator of

Cartesian doubt, put all beliefs, ideas,
thoughts, and matter in doubt. He
showed that his grounds, or reasoning,
for any knowledge could just as well be
false. Sensory experience, the primary
mode of knowledge, is often erroneous
and therefore must be doubted.
The only thing that he believed he
could be certain of was that he was
doubting, leading to his famous
phrase "Cogito ergo sum."
(I think, therefore I am)
JOHN LOCKE
“All mankind… being all
equal and independent, no
one ought to harm another
in his life, liberty, or
possession

“All knowledge comes from experience.”

JOHN LOCKE
He was an empiricist all knowledge is derived
from the experience of the senses.

He emphasized on the philosophical

examination of the human mind as a
preliminary to the philosophical investigation
of the world and its contents.

Our mind is capable of examining,

comparing and combining these ideas
in numerous ways. Knowledge
consists of a special kind of
relationship between different ideas.
JOHN LOCKE
He used the theory of natural rights to argue
that government had obligations and limited
powers over their citizens, and can be
overthrown by citizens under certain
circumstances. He also provided powerful
arguments in favor of religious toleration,
allowing other people to think or practice other
religions and beliefs.

He believed that the Self emerges through

experiences. The self is crystallized
when an individual exercises the
principles of freedom which protects
individual property.
IMMANUEL KANT
As a philosophical idealist, Kant
believed that everything
depended on how individuals
interprets and responds
to his environment
based on their
personal opinions
and feelings.

“Science is organized knowledge.

Wisdom is organized life.”
IMMANUEL KANT

The Self emerges as a crystallized

knowledge of one self and others based
on one’s recurring observations.
DAVID HUME
David Hume professed
the same philosophy
with John Locke. He is
also an empiricist who
claimed that all that can be
known emanates from
what we have seen, and
not through something that
can only be appreciated
intellectually.”

“ A wise man
proportions his
belief to the
evidence”
DAVID HUME

He believes that the self emerges as one

accumulates recurring experiences as such
that these experiences had been internalized
and became part of one’s personhood.
SIGMUND FREUD
“One day in retrospect,
the years of struggle
will strike you as the
most beautiful.”
SIGMUND FREUD
Freud believed that the human behavior was
propelled by the drive to find pleasurable
experiences. He described this as a sexual
nature. He believed that this was the
foundation of every human development. He
postulated that each human behavior was
motivated by seeking pleasure. Irregularities in
one’s behavior could be interpreted as a lack
in the gratifications of said motives which
probably was not within the individual’s
realm of awareness.”
SIGMUND FREUD

The Self emerges as one that strives to

address unmet needs and finds pleasurable
experiences to gratify one’s needs as
determined by his aspirations, instincts—as he
goes through the different stages of growth
and development.
GILBERT RYLE
“ A person can see things only
when his eyes are open, and when
his surroundings are illuminated,
but he can have picture s in his
mind’s eye, when his eyes are shut
and the world is dark.”
GILBERT RYLE

He posited that anything perceived by the

human senses can be explained though the
behavior that was used to observe them.
Mental concepts can explain the behaviors one
manifests.

Therefore the self emerges as human

behaviors unfold as it reflects one’s innate
Self conception; it emerges as one manifests
behaviors descriptive of inner dreams,
hopes, aspirations and wishes.
PAUL CHURCHLAND

“The brain is the

engine of reason
and the seat for
the soul.”
PAUL CHURCHLAND

Paul Churchland believed that folklores and

mythical beliefs are fallacious for they are not
anchored on scientific and neurological
explanations.

He believed that folklores such as everyday

beliefs, practices, and rituals which were
passed to subsequent generations, are invalid
because they cannot be reduced to
neuroscientific phenomenon
PAUL CHURCHLAND

Paul Churchland posited that the Self emerges

not as something that is theoretically founded,
but as data innervated, since the Self cannot
be a product of imagination and opinions but
of empirical observations.