PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 1
SOCRATES
Who is he?
● No historical document if he really
existed
● 469 - 399 B.C.E
● There were no known writings
● Plato highly regarded him
● He is credited for his many
contributions to western philosophy
Gnothi seauton (ancient greek aphorism)
● Meaning: know thyself
● Socrates pointed out that if an
individual knows who he or she is,
all the basic issues and difficulties in
life will vanish and everything will be
clearer.
Technique in asking questions
● Who am I?
● What is the purpose of my life?
● What am I doing here?
● What is justice?
Self-knowledge
● Means knowing one’s degree of
understanding about the world and
knowing one’s capabilities and
potentials.
● Self is achieved and something to
work on.
Possession of knowledge is virtue and
ignorance is vice
● One must first have the humility to
acknowledge his or her ignorance as
to acquire knowledge.
Socrates is a Dualist
● He raised the question, “What is it
that when in a body, makes it living?”
He believed that man has a soul,
which is divine, immortal, intelligible,
uniform, indissoluble, and ever
self-consistent and invariable. He
argued that the ruler of the body is
the soul. For him, the soul
pre-existed the body, and soul is
what makes the body alive. If the
soul gives life to the body, it makes
the body and soul dependent on
each other.
● However, their striking differences
show that they are two different
substances united in the body as the
soul gives life into it. For the body,
according to Socrates, is human,
mortal, multiform, unintelligible,
dissoluble, and inconsistent.
● Death is the release of the soul from
the body. The soul controls these
emotions and actions through proper
judgment and reason.
PLATO
Who is he?
● An ancient Greek Philosopher
● Student of Socrates and teacher of
Aristotle
● 428 - 347 B.C.E.
Plato’s Idealism
● He insisted that the empirical
reality we experience in the
experiential world is fundamentally
unreal and is only a shadow or a
mere appearance while ultimate
reality is real as it is eternal and
constitutes abstract universal
essences of things.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 1
● Example: The dogs in this world are
unreal, but the essence of a dog is
real.
● Tree, House, Mountain, Man,
woman, Ship, cloud, Horse, Dog,
Table and Chair, would all be
examples of putatively
independently-existing abstract
perfect ideas. All things that exist in
the physical world are therefore
unreal as they are immaterial
blueprints of objects in the physical
world. The concrete objects in this
world are mere copies of these
abstract universal essences.
● Plato added that ideas are objects
of the intellect known by reason
alone and are objective realities
that exist in a world of their own
terms of the concept of the self,
Plato was one of the first
philosophers who believed in an
enduring self that is represented by
the soul. He argued that the soul is
eternal and constitutes the enduring
self, because, even after death, the
soul continues to exist.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Memory and Expectations
● The existence of past and future for
St. Augustine is only possible
through memory and expectations.
● Introspection became one of the
important ideas in psychology which
pertains to the inquiry of the soul
then of the mind, consciousness and
thought. This confirms the
superiority of humans over other
organisms since humans have
self-consciousness.
● St. Augustine argued that as far as
the consciousness can be extended
backward to any post action or
forward to actions to come, it
determines the identity of the
person.
RENE DESCARTES
Who is he?
● A French philosopher and
mathematician
● 1596 - 1650 C.E.
● Cogito, ergo sum - “I think, therefore
I am”
● Fun fact: He allegedly never left bed
before 11 A.M. but invented analytic
geometry and the Cartesian
Coordinate System, and discovered
some basic laws of optics. He was a
tutor of Queen Christina of Sweden.
Cogito, Ergo Sum
● The existence of anything that you
register from your senses can be
doubted. One can always doubt
about the certainty of things but the
very fact that one doubts is
something that cannot be doubted.
Only humans have the Hubris
(excessive pride) - of thinking such
irrelevant questions on existence
and purpose of life.
● Humans have satisfied themselves
with their own answers to their own
thinking. Humans have the audacity
and impertinence to try to figure out
the meaning of life and are actually
self-aware of their own existence.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 1
Self
● He believed that the self is: “A
thinking thing or a substance whose
whole essence or nature is merely
thinking.”
● The self is real and not just an
illusion. He also reassures us that
the self is different from the body.
Hence, self and body exist but differ
in existence and reality. The self is a
feature not of the body but of the
mind and thus a mental substance
rather than a physical substance.
Mind and Body
● For Descartes, the self is nothing
else but a mind-body dichotomy.
Though (mind) always preceded
action (body). Humans are
self-aware and they are the masters
of their own universe. Western
Philosophy is largely influenced by
Descartes.
PAUL AND PATRICIA CHURCHLAND
Who are they?
● Paul was born on 21st of October
1942 in Vancouver, Canada. While
Patricia was born on 16th of July
1943 in Oliver, British Columbia,
Canada).
● They are Canadian-American
philosophers whose work has
focused on integrating the
disciplines of philosophy of mind and
neuroscience in a new approach that
has been called Neurophilosophy.
Eliminative Materialism
● "A radical claim that ordinary,
common sense understanding of the
mind is deeply wrong and that some
or all of the mental states posited by
common sense do not actually exist"
Folk Psychology
● Or Common Sense is something
that is FALSE. Most people think
that we have a stream of
consciousness that contains images
and conceptions of things about
which we have beliefs and attitudes.
It is also a fold belief that our sense
of the world and of ourselves is a
direct representation of how the
world is formed.
Self
● For the Churchland's, self is nothing
else but the BRAIN, or simply, the
self is contained entirely within the
physical brain. In Patricia
Churchland's book entitled:
"Touching a Nerve: The Self as
Brain" (2013). In her book, she
mentioned that to understand the
self, one must study the brain, not
just the mind.
MAURICE MERLAU - PONTY
Who is he?
● Born on 14th of March 1908 and
died last 3rd of May 1961. He was a
French Phenomenological
Philosopher. The constitution of
meaning in human experience was
his main interest.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 1

Body body, situated, physical

● He distinguished the body into two nature.
types:
○ Subjective Body (as lived
KEY POINTS
and experienced)
○ Objective Body (as
observed and scientifically ● Ponty - Body
investigated) ● Churchland - Brain
● For him, these two are not different ● Descartes - Thinking
bodies." The former is the body ● Augustine - Introspection
as-it-is-lived. ● Plato - Reality
● Socrates - Self
Self as Embodied Subjectivity
● It sees human beings neither as
disembodied minds (existing without
body) nor as complex machines.
● For Merieau-Ponty, we are living
creatures whose subjectivity
(consciousness) is actualized in the
forms of their physical involvement
with the world
● The body is a general medium for
having a world and we know it is not
through our intellect but through our
experiences.

Subject (a self) Essentially Requires a

Body
● Consciousness cannot simply be
immaterial but must be embodied,
Rather than using!
● THINK, we use “I CAN" which
means you can go somewhere else
as a being possessing a body.
● Mind and Body are essentially
correlated. Consciousness is both
perceiving and engaging.
● "I am my body”
○ He accepts the idea of
mental states but he also
suggests that the use of the
mind is inseparable from our
THE SELF FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 2
GEORGE MEAD’S SOCIAL SELF
● Mead is a sociologist,
● The self is not biological but social.
● Self is something that is developed
through SOCIAL INTERACTION.
● Self is also developed as one grows
and ages.
● Self is constructed by directly
engaging in the world through
interaction and through reflections
on those interactions.
Self
● Mead explained that self has two
parts:
○ Self-awareness: Conscious
knowledge of one's own
character, feelings, motives
and desires.
○ Self-image: The idea one
has of one's abilities,
appearance and personality.
● The self grows by engaging in social
interactions, where symbols (like
language) are exchanged.
● Understanding these symbols
requires the ability to empathize and
take on the perspective of others.
● For successful interactions,
individuals must accurately interpret
the meanings of symbols and the
intentions of others.
Role-playing
● The process of role-playing plays a
crucial role in establishing common
symbols and making interactions
successful.
● The process of role-playing plays a
crucial role in establishing common
symbols and making interactions
successful.
● It is the process in which one takes
on the role of another by putting
oneself in the position of the person
with whom he or she interacts.
● Through role-playing, the individual
develops a concept of self.
● By putting oneself in the position of
others, one is able to reflect upon
oneself.
3 Stages of Development
● Imitation or Preparatory Stage
○ A child imitates the behavior
of his or her parents like
sweeping the floor
● Play Stage
○ The child plays the roles of
others such as acting as a
teacher, soldier, carpenter,
etc.
● Game Stage
○ The child comes to
themselves from the
perspective of other people.
"I" and "Me" Self
● All humans experience internal
conversation which involves the I
and Me, which he called phases of
self.
● The self is a social process between
the I and Me.
● The "I” is the subjective part of the
self. It is unsocialized and responds
and acts spontaneously. It
represents the self that is free and
unique.
● The Me is the objective and
conventional part of the self, which
assumes to view and analyze one's
THE SELF FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 2
own behaviors and internalized
attitude toward others. It is the self
that results from the progressive
stages of role-playing or role-taking.
Generalized Others
● Mead described it as an organized
community or social group which
gives to the individual his or her
unity of self.
● The attitude of the generalized other
is the attitude of the entire
community.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY’S
LOOKING GLASS SELF
● The Looking-glass Self is a social
psychological concept.
● In this view, the self is developed as
a result of one's perceptions of other
people's opinions.
● People are the way they were at
least partly because of other
people's reactions to them and to
what they do.
● When people pick up feedback from
others, they incorporate it into their
sense of self.
The self is built through social
interaction which involves three steps.
1. People imagine how they must
appear to others
2. They imagine the judgment on that
appearance
3. They develop themselves through
the judgment of others
● People imagine not only how others
see them and their actions but also
how others judge what they see,
whether with approval, doubt, or
hostility.
● As a result, Looking-glass Self is
made up of feelings about other
people's judgment of one's behavior.
● This concept provides an idea of
how the self develops in relation to
the perception of others.
POSTMODERN VIEW OF THE SELF
4 Basic Postmodernist Ideas about the
Self
Anderson (1997) addressed the issues of
change and multiple identities through these
4 basic postmodernist ideas:
1. Multiphrenia which refers to the
many different voices speaking
about "who we are and what we
are."
2. Protean, a self capable of changing
constantly to fit the present
conditions.
3. De-centered, a belief that there is
no self at all since the self is
constantly being redefined or
constantly undergoing change.
4. Self-in-relation which means that
humans do not live their lives in
isolation but in relation to people and
to certain cultural contexts
● For Mead, the self is shaped by
outside forces, that is why for him
there is no *I* self.
● The self is socially constructed.
● For postmodernists, people have no
fixed identities which are separable
from their surroundings and which
remain the same even though
THE SELF FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 2
certain characteristics and
conditions may change.
● In traditional society: a person's
status is determined by his or her
role. In modern society: by his or her
achievement
● In postmodern society: by fashion or
style since it changes and people
adapts to these changes or is left
with identity in question
● For Foucault, the self is a text written
from moment to moment according
to the demands of a multitude of
social contexts.
The post modern social condition is
dominated by two realities:
1. The rise of new media technologies
2. The dominance of consumerism
● The self in postmodern societies is
complicated by the advent of
electronic-mediated virtual
interactions of cyberselves and the
spread of information technology
(Lyon, 1997)
● Green (1997) posited that the self is
"digitalized" in cyberspace.
Email and Memory
● "Every little piece of information that
you post on the Internet becomes
raw data from which someone out
there can piece together an identity,
a virtual version of who you are."
CULTURAL IDENTITY AND NATIONAL
IDENTITY
Culture
● Derived from the Latin word cultura
or cultus meaning care or cultivation.
● As an individual interacts with
people and makes sense of how
they function in the context of their
social and cultural background, they
learn that they have both personal
identity and collective identity.
○ Personal identity: The way
they see themselves as an
individual.
○ Collective identity: The way
they see themselves as a
member of a certain group.
● Identity refers to "who the person is,"
or the qualities and traits of an
individual that make him or her
different from others.
● Among the many ways to distinguish
people is by geographical context or
based on where they come from
Cultural Identity
● Refers to the identity or feeling of
belongingness to a certain cultural
group.
● It is an individual's perception of
oneself anchored on the cultural
categories that shape one's overall
cultural identity.
● One's cultural identity is meant to be
multi-dimensional.
Cultural Identity Theory
● It explains why a person acts and
behaves the way he or she does.
● A single person can possess
multiple identities, which can make
him a part of many cultural groups.
Nation
THE SELF FROM THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
1st SEM – Lesson 2
● is a group of people built on the
premise of shared customs,
traditions, religion, language, art,
history, and more.
National Identity
● Refers to the identity or feeling of
belongingness to one state or
nation.
● National Identity "A body of people
who feel that they are a nation."
Rupert Emerson (political scientist)
● National Identity is socially
constructed. It is influenced and
shaped by material and non-material
cultures.
○ Material Culture National
Flag Emblem Seal. These
represent all the people who
are part of a nation.
○ Non-Material Culture
Embodies the shared
understanding of a group of
people which includes
Norms, Beliefs, Traditions
National Identity requires the process of
Self-categorization
● Self-categorization - one must
identify himself or herself with an
in-group and differentiate himself or
herself from the out-groups.
INDIVIDUAL SELF, RELATIONAL SELF
AND COLLECTIVE SELF
The Three Fundamental Selves
1. Individual Self
○ Reflects the cognitions
related to traits, states, and
behaviors that are stored in
memory
2. Relational Self
○ Reflects cognitions that are
related to one’s relationships
3. Collective Self
○ Reflects cognitions that are
related to one’s group
● Each self is important and
meaningful to human experience
Identity Struggles
● The truthfulness of how people
perceive you provides an opportunity
for self-reflection.
● Your response to how people
describe you will depend on your
own perception of yourself.
● Some people can be confrontational
or non-confrontational towards how
others identify them.
● People's actions in every situation
vary depending on physiological and
psychological states.
● An individual can be unsympathetic
because of particular individual
issues, but people, sometimes, fail
to consider any justification for why
one can be unsympathetic.
● This term is introduced by Anthony
Wallace and Raymond Fogelson.
● It characterizes the discrepancy
between the identity a person claims
to possess, and the identity
attributed to that person by others.