PHILOSOPHICAL

PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF

Prepared by:
MAILLEN GRACE G. QUILALA
Instructor
Learning Outcomes:

■ Describe the different philosophical perspectives of the

self from various philosophers.
■ Compare and contrast how the self has been described
by different philosophers.
■ Relate the different philosophical perspectives to one’s
personal life and experiences.
ACTIVITY 1. Answer the following questions:
1. How do I respond when I don’t get what I want?
2. How do I deal with negative people?
3. How much of self-control do I have with things that I know are bad for me, but tend to
indulge in?
4. How do I deal with challenges in my life?
5. How do I respond when plans change or plans get cancelled without any say so?
6. How do I deal with change? New classmates, new responsibility, new rules, new
technology. Do I tend to avoid it, welcome it, fear it, like it, complain about it, stress out
about it, worry about it?
7. How do I deal with rejection?
8. How do I spend my free time?
9. How do I deal with other people’s mistakes and unpleasant behavior?
10. How do I respond when I make mistake or when I fail at something?
SOCRATES
■ “Father of Western Philosophy”
■ He was a classical Greek
philosopher and is one of the
founders of Western philosophy.
■ He is known chiefly through the
writings of his students Plato
and Xenophon, and the plays of
Aristophanes.
■ Socrates spent his days walking about the marketplace of
Athens urging people to question and examine how they
were living.
■ His activities got him into trouble and led to his trial,
imprisonment and death.
■ He was the most egalitarian of philosophers and believed
that anyone could do philosophy, and in fact, we all had
obligation to use philosophy to examine our own lives.
■ Socrates is an often in the role of questioner. He questions
because he knows nothing, he has nothing to learn, but it
can help its followers discover the truths they have in them.
■ Socratic Method – logical process of
u sin g qu estion s an d an swer s to
explore a subject.
■ Socrates believed that man has to
look at himself to understand his long-
standing mission, to “Know Thyself.”
■ For him, “an unexamined life is not
worth living.”
■ He also believed that an individual’s
personhood is composed of the body
and soul, in which the soul for him is
immortal. With this, he insisted that
death is not the end of existence.
PLATO
■ He became a pupil and friend of Socrates
■ He is a dualist, same with Socrates, he
also believed that man is composed of
body and soul.
■ He believed that the soul exists before
birth and after death. Resembling the
idea of reincarnation, he ascertained that
the soul lives within a body and upon
death, the soul moves onto another body
afterwards.
■ According to Plato, the human soul or the psyche is
divided into three parts:
1. Rational soul– part of us that thinks deeply, makes
wise choices, and achieves a true understanding of
eternal truths.
2. Appetitive soul – includes our basic biological needs
such as hunger, thirst , and sexual desire.
3. Spirited soul – includes our basic emotions such as
love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness and empathy.
■ For justice in the human person to be attained, these
parts of the soul should be in tune with one another.
ARISTOTLE
■ Another Greek philosopher who believed that
the soul is merely a set of defining features
and does not consider the body and soul as
separate entities.
■ He is interested in compounds that are alive
(plants and animals)--- these are the things
that have souls, and their souls are what
make them living things.
■ H u m a n s d i f fe r f ro m ot h e r l i v i n g t h i n g s
because of their capacity for rational thinking.
■ He introduces the three kinds of soul:
1. Vegetative soul – found in plants; includes the physical
body that can grow
2. Sentient soul – found in animals; includes sensual
desires, feelings, and emotions
3. Rational soul – present only in humans; includes the
intellect that allows man to know and understand
things
■ He suggests that the rational nature of the self is to lead a
good, successful, and fulfilling life (self-actualized).
■ The pursuit of happiness is a search for a good life that
includes doing virtuous actions.
AUGUSTINE
■ He is also known as Augustine of Hippo,
bishop of Hippo Regius in Nor thern
Africa.
■ An ancient Christian theologian who
played a significant role in the
development of early Western philosophy.
■ H e b e l i eve d t h a t m a n i s b i f u rc a te
(divided into two branches) in nature,
which is our physical body and the soul.
■ He believes that the goal of each person is to be with God
again someday and achieve divinity and in order to do that
we must live our lives virtuously.
■ According to him, a virtuous life is the dynamism of love.
Loving God means loving one’s fellowmen; and loving one’s
fellowmen denotes never doing any harm to another.
■ Augustine emphasized the importance of free will, the ability
to choose between good and evil.
■ Originally, according to St. Augustine, men were equally free
to choose good or evil. But humans are now constantly
attracted towards evil, that is, toward excessive satisfaction
of our lower desires for material things and pleasures.
RENE DESCARTES
■ A French philosopher considered as the
founder of modern philosophy.
■ He was also a mathematician and a
scientist.
■ He conceived of the human person as
having a body and a mind.
■ His famous philosophical statement is: “I
think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum).
■ Rene thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is
the existence of the self, for even if one doubts oneself, that
only proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks
and therefore, that cannot be doubted.
■ The self then for him is also a combination of two distinct
entities, the COGITO, the thing that thinks, which is the mind,
and the EXTENZA of the mind, which is the body, i.e. like a
machine that is attached to the mind.
■ Although the mind and the body are independent of each
other and serve their own function, man must use his own
mind and thinking abilities to investigate, analyze,
experiment, and develop himself.
 JOHN LOCKE
■ A British philosopher and physician who laid the
groundwork for an empiricist approach to philosophical
questions.
■ For Locke, personal identity is a matter of psychological
continuity (ability to remember past thoughts and
actions as our own).
■ He described personal identity as the cumulation of
c o n s c i o u s n e s s , i n fo r m e d t h ro u g h m e m o r i e s o f
experience.
■ His revolutionary theory is that the mind is a tabula rasa,
a blank slate on which experience writes--- sensations
and reflections being the two sources of all our ideas.
DAVID HUME
■ A Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and
essayist known especially for his philosophical
empiricism and skepticism.
■ As an empiricist, he believes that one can know
only through the senses and experiences.
■ According to him, the self in an illusion; there is
no actual self.
■ He suggests that self is nothing else but a
bundle of perceptions that can all be
categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
■ Impressions are basic objects of our experience or
sensation. It forms the core of our thoughts.
■ Ideas are copies of our impressions. Because of this, they
are not as lively and clear as our impressions.
■ According to Hume, the self is a bundle or collection of
various perceptions, which succeed each other with an
inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement. Thus, the self is simply a collection of all
experiences with a particular being.
IMMANUEL KANT
■ He was one of the most influential philosophers in the
history of Western philosophy.
■ He believed that there is self and that self is a product
of reasoning (consciousness is there).
■ According to him, we both have an inner and an outer
self which unify to give us consciousness
• The inner self is comprised of our psychological
state and our rational intellect
• The outer self includes our sense and the physical
world
■ He argued that apperception occurs in the inner self---
how we mentally assimilate new ideas into old ones.
SIGMUND FREUD
■ An Austrian neurologist who is credited with
developing the field of psychoanalysis (a method
of treating mental disorders).
■ Considered as one of the most influential thinkers
of the 20th century, even though many of his ideas
have been challenged in recent decades.
■ Though the conscious self also has important role
to play in our lives, it is the unconscious self that
holds the greatest fascination for Freud, and
which has the dominant influence in our
personalities.
■ He asserts that there are three hypothetical parts of personality:
1. Id – this operates according to pleasure principle as it
focuses on immediate gratification of its needs.
2. Ego – this operates according to reality principle as it finds
realistic ways of satisfying the instinct.
3. Superego – this is considered as the seat of the conscience,
which develops between ages 3 and 6, as children
incorporate their parents’ moral values.
■ Freud also argues that the development of an individual can be
divided into distinct stages characterized by sexual drives. As the
person grows, certain areas become sources of pleasure,
f r u s t r a t i o n , o r b ot h . Fr e u d i a n s t a g e s o f p s yc h o s ex u a l
development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
■ According to Freud, there is an opportunity for you to look for
evidence of unconscious functioning and that is through the
following:
• Slip of the tongue (parapraxis): Verbal or memory mistake
that is believed to be linked to the unconscious mind. These
slips supposedly reveal secret thoughts and feelings that
people hold.
• Dreams: Route to the unconscious. While information from
the conscious mind my sometimes appear in dreams, Freud
believed that it was often in disguised form.
• Neurosis: According to Freud, it is the formation of behavioral
or psychosomatic symptoms as a result of the return of the
repressed.
GILBERT RYLE
■ A British philosopher who was known for
his critique of Cartesian dualism.
■ Mind-body dualism – “ghost in the
machine”
■ He believed that self comes from behavior-
-- it makes us who we are.
■ “Our knowledge of other people and our
selves depends on noticing how they and
we behave.”
■ For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life. For him, looking for and
trying to understand the self as it really exists is like visiting
your friends’ university and looking for the “university.”
■ Ryle says that 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.
PAUL CHURCHLAND
■ A Canadian philosopher known for his studies in
neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind.
■ Disagrees with dualism (mind and body as
separate entities), bur rather holds to
materialism (nothing but matter exists).
■ Eliminative materialism – claims that mental
states, beliefs and desires do not exist at all.
■ The physical brain is where we get our sense of
self.
■ He believes that by empirically investigating how
the brain functions, we will be able to predict
and explain how we function--- we are our brain.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
■ A French phenomenological philosopher.
■ He believes that the definition of the self
is all about one’s perceptions of his or
her experiences and how we interpret
those experiences.
■ According to him, the mind and the body
are intertwined or connected and that
they cannot be separated from one
another--- both are part of creating who
you are.