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CHAPTER 1: SELF FROM DIFFERENT -Soul first before man’s body

PERSPECTIVES -Man’s existence was first in the realm of ideas as
What is a Philosopher? pure soul or mind. But he forgot almost everything
once he existed in the material world. This caused
-Traditionally, he is thought to be a lover of lack of knowledge or ignorance w/c causes
wisdom. problems to man.
-An intellectual who has devoted time to study the
meaning of life
Plato
-Has conducted in the field of philosophy in areas
like logics, ethics, methaphysics, epistemology -Supported the idea that man is dual nature(body
(theory of knowledge etc.) and soul)
-Dichotomy; world of forms and the material world.
1.World of forms- permanent unchanging
Philosophers And Their Ideas
reality
1.Socrates
2.World of Materials- keeps changing. It is what we
2.Plato see around us, and for him, this-where we live, is
just a replica of the real world found in the world of
3.Augustine of Hippo forms
4.Thomas Aquinas Changing body- not the real self but only a replica
5.Rene Desxcartes of it.

6.John Locke -the soul exists before birth and leaves room for the
possibility that it might survive bodily death
7.David Hume
8. Immanuel Kant
9. Sigmund Freud
Augustine of Hippo
10. Gilbert Ryle -body is bound to die on earth and the soul is

11. Paul Churchard to anticipate living eternally with God.

12. Maurice Merleau Ponty -body can only thrive in the imperfect
physical reality that is the world, whereas the
soul can stay after death in an eternal realm
Socrates: Know Thyself.
with God.
“The self is an immortal soul that exists over time” -
Socrstes, Plato, Augustine -Our world (world of materials) is not our

-first philosopher who engaged in systematic final home but just a temporary home where
questioning about the self we are just passing through.
-True task of Philosopher- Know oneself -Our real world is found in the world where there is
-Every man is composed of body and soul permanence and infinity- the world where God is.

-God is real and he is the ultimate expression of
love
-Moral Laws exist and is imposed on the
mind. Reason makes us recognize it which
helps us discern which is right or wrong.
-There is an eternal law which should be universally
followed because it came from God himself.
Thomas Aquinas
-Man is composed of two parts: matter and form
Matter- or hyle in Greek; “common stuff that makes
up everything in the universe” Man’s body is part of
this matter
Form- or morphe in Greek, on the other refers to
“essence of a substance or thing”
-to Aquinas; soul is what animates the body and
makes us humans.
Rene Descartes: I think, therefore; I
am
“The self is a thinking thing, distinct from the whole
body.”
-Father of modern philosophy
-Cogito ergo sum- emphasize the consciousness of
his mind which leads to evidence of his existence.
-Conceived of the human person as having a body
and a mind.
-You are your body and your mind. When the body
is gone, the mind may continue to exist and
function.
John Locke
“Personal identity is made possible by self-
consciousness.”
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-All knowledge must come from experience
(Empiricism). There are no innate ideas.
-Before there is any knowledge, the mind is first
considered as tabula rosa (blank slate), who’s
interactions with the world fill it with knowledge.
-unlike the first few philosophers- he thinks that our
identity is not locked in the mind, soul, or body
ONLY.
- included the concept of the person’s memory in
the definition of the self.
-subscribes to the Memory Theory- we are the same
person as we were in the past for as long as we can
remember something from the past.
David Hume
“There is no “self”, only a bundle of constantly
changing perceptions passing through the theatre of
our minds.”
-the self is not a entity over and beyond the physical
body.
-Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing.
Believes the existence of mind and what’s inside is
divided into two;
a.Impressions- those we perceive through our
senses as we experience them.
b. Ideas- are those that we create in our minds even
though we are no longer experiencing them.
-the self keeps changing, like how one , looks, one
feels , one thinks- they constantly change.
-The “enduring self” is just a fiction produced by
our imagination.
-There is no permanent self, a person is a bundle of
perception.
-The ‘I’ will be constantly changing because every
experience will change a person.
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- in conclusion, there is no self

Immanuel Kant
“The self is a unifying subject, an arguing
consciousness that makes intelligible experience
possible.”
-man is a free agent capable of making decisions for
himself. As a free agent, man is gifted w/ reason and
free will.
-moral person- one that is driven by duty and acts
towards the fulfillment of that duty.
-To know duty, we have to rationally deliberate on it
without expecting that a higher authority will hand
it over automatically to us and certainly we can’t let
the arbitrariness of emotions guide us.
-“self” is not an entity one can locate and analyze
but simply the convenient name that people use to
refer to all the behavior that people make.
Paul Churchland
“The self is the brain. Mental states will be
superseded by the brain states.”
-In partnership with his wife, he believes that the
self is the brain.
-The term “mind”, our moods, emotions, and
actions are affected by the state of the brain.
-by manipulating certain parts of our brain, our
feelings, actions and physical state are successfully
altered.

Sigmund Freud Maurice Merleau Ponty

“The self is multi- layered”
“The self is embodied subjectivity”
-father of psychoanalysis
-self is the product of our conscious human
-Famous idea is the tripartite division on the mind. experience. It is all about one’s perception of one’s
experience and the interpretation of those
ID- represents man’s biological nature; the impulses
experiences.
and the bodily desires.
- includes the things I will do with my body, how I
Ego- the self; the reality principle.
will act on it and how will I make it act in
Superego- represents the ethical component of consonance with other human beings.
personality and provides the moral standards by
-The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
which the ego operates.
experiences are all alone.
Gilbert Ryle
“The self is the way people behave”
-mind is not distinct from the body. Mind is not a
separate entity but is certainly a part of our body.
- we can only know a person through how a man
behaves, their tendencies ad reactions in certain
circumstances.
-Denies the concept of an internal non-physical self.
What truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.
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