WHO AM I?

Answering the question 'Who am I?' can lead to

a solid self-concept and self-understanding. For
many people, answering this question isn't very
easy. For others, a solid understanding of who
they are is a big part of their lives.

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 The SELF from
various perspectives
From the perspective of
PHILOSOPHY

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 THIS WEEK’S
AGENDA

01
SOCRATES &PLATO
The duality of self
02
AUGUSTINE
The self in three parts
03
THOMAS AQUINAS
Matter and Form
04
DESCARTES
Cogito et Extenza

05
JOHN LOCKE
Person vs Man
06
DAVID HUME
Sense and Experience
07
IMMANUEL KANT
Organization of self
08
SIGMUND FREUD
The Ego compromise

09
GILBERT RYLE
The University Problem
10
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
The Singularity of Self

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 “To find yourself, think for yourself.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

—SOCRATES
Σωκρατης
SOCRATES (399 - 469 BC)
derived from σως (sos) "whole,
unwounded, safe" and κρατος
(kratos) "power"

GREEK PHILOSOPHER
Socrates is, perhaps, the most well known
philosopher to come out of Athens, present-day
Greece. He had a student named Plato

FATHER OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

Credited as one of the founders of Western
Philosophy, the first moral philosopher, of the
Western ethical tradition of thought. According to
him, the true task of the Philosopher was to know
oneself.
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 The DUALITY of SELF
PHYSICAL
This is the tangible aspect of
our self. This is the part that
The connection of the Body
is mortal and can be/is
and Soul ends with Death.
constantly changing.
Imperfect, and
impermanent SOUL
believed to be immortal.
The soul is unchanging
while it is attached to
your body and thus in the
physical realm, Perfect
and Permanent
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“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”

—PLATO
Πλάτων
PLATO (428 - 347 BC)
From πλατύς or platús, meaning
“broad, wide”

GREEK PHILOSOPHER
Athenian Philosopher during the classical
period in Ancient Greece. Socrates’ student. Is
credited for the documentation of Socrates’
philosophies

FOUNDER OF THE ACADEMY

founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the
Academy, the first institution of higher learning in
the Western world. Aristotle studied there for
twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his
own school, the Lyceum
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 The HUMANS in three parts
The body is the physical
part of the human that is only
concerned with the material
world, and through which we
are able to experience the
world we live in. It is through
the body that
we experience our
base desires.
BODY: APPETITIVE SELF
This is the part of us that
thinks, analyzes, looks The part that gets
ahead, rationally weighs angry when it perceives an
options, and tries to injustice being done. This is the
gauge what is best and part of us that loves to face
truest overall. and overcome great challenges,
the part that can steel itself to
adversity, and that loves
victory, winning,
MIND: RATIONAL SELF challenge, and
honor

SOUL: SPIRITED SELF

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3 9
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only
one page.”

—St. AUGUSTINE of HIPPO

a fourth century philosopher
Augustine (354—430 C.E.)
whose groundbreaking philosophy
infused Christian doctrine with
Neoplatonism.

PHILOSOPHER
a Roman African, early Christian theologian
and philosopher from Numidia whose writings
influenced the development of Western
Christianity and Western philosophy.

MOST IMPORTANT CHURCH FATHER

He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in North
Africa and is viewed as one of the most important
Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his
writings in the Patristic Period.
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 The SELF according to AUGUSTINE
BODY
The body continuously To live with the body in
yearns to be with the virtue will reward the soul
divine. It is imperfect, and it with eternal life with God..
dwells on Earth.

SOUL
The soul is capable of
reaching immortality. It
anticipates living
eternally in a realm of
spiritual bliss with God.

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“The things that we love tell us what we are.”

—THOMAS AQUINAS
 Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)
The name Aquinas identifies his
ancestral origins in the county of
Aquino in present-day Lazio,
Italy.

PHILOSOPHER
He is an immensely influential philosopher,
theologian, and jurist in the tradition of
scholasticism, within which he is also known
as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor
Communis.

FATHER OF THOMISM
His influence on Western thought is considerable,
and much of modern philosophy developed or
opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of
ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political 14
theory
 MATTER and FORM

It is the ‘stuff’ out of which a

MATTER
thing is made. matter is simply
that which stands to be
structured in a certain way.

is signified by the organisation

that the matter takes. form is
the principle whereby the
matter has the particular
structure that it has
FORM
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“Cogito, ergo sum”

—DESCARTES
“I think; therefore I am” was the end
of the search Descartes conducted
for a statement that could not be
doubted. He found that he could
not doubt that he himself existed,
as he was the one doing the
doubting in the first place.
The cogito is of value only to
show that humans can never
be certain of anything that they
believe that they know.
It's important because it's
Descartes' attempt to put an
endpoint to scepticism by
finding something that must be
true.
Cogito, ergo
sum. Cogito, ergo sum is a
Latin philosophical proposition
by René Descartes usually
translated into English as "I
think, therefore I am". ... The
concept is also sometimes
known as the cogito.
philosopher, mathematician, and
René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
scientist.

FRENCH PHILOSOPHER
One of the most notable intellectual
figures of the Dutch Golden Age. A
native of the Kingdom of France, he
spent about 20 years (1629–1649) of his
life in the Dutch Republic

FOUNDER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century
continental rationalism, later advocated by
Spinoza and Leibniz, and was later opposed by the
empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes,
Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. 20
 COGITO et EXTENZA
The self is a thinking
thing. It doubts,
understands, wills, denies,
perceives, etc.

That which thinks. It is

what makes a man, a
MIND BODY Nothing more than an
extension of the mind.
man. The body is responsible
for creating reality what
the mind thinks.

SELF
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“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody
has a right to, but himself.”

—JOHN LOCKE
Considered one of the first of the
John Locke (1632 - 1704)
British empiricists, following the
tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is
equally important to social
contract theory.

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHER
His writings influenced Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish
Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the
American revolutionaries.

FATHER OF LIBERALISM
His work greatly affected the development of
epistemology and political philosophy. His
contributions to classical republicanism and liberal
theory are reflected in the United States
Declaration of Independence.
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 PERSON vs MAN
PERSON
The person is linked to
Memories. It is a forensic
A man who has been in front of you
concept - it is used in the
for a number of hours, and does not
law to identify guilt and
remember, is the same man, but not the
innocence. What determines
same person.
the person that you are is
what you remember MAN
An idea of bodily
continuity. The idea of
Man means the Physical
aspect of a human being.
If bodily continuity exists,
then it is man.
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“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a
man.”

—DAVID HUME
 David Hume (1711 - 1776)
was a Scottish Enlightenment
philosopher, historian, economist,
and essayist, who is best known
today for his highly influential
system of philosophical
empiricism, scepticism, and
naturalism.

SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHER
Hume strove to create a total
naturalistic science of man that
examined the psychological basis of
human nature. Against philosophical
rationalists, Hume held that passion
rather than reason governs human
behaviour.

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 SENSE and EXPERIENCE
Man can only attain knowledge from experience.

Self, then, is a collection of

different perceptions that is ever
changing, and forever moving

Copies of impressions, they are

IDEAS
not as vivid as our impressions.

The basic object of experience.

They form the core of our
thoughts. Impressions are vivid
because they are products of
our direct experience.
IMPRESSION
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“Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”

—IMMANUEL KANT
 IMMANUEL KANT (1724 - 1804)
an influential German philosopher
in the Age of Enlightenment.

GERMAN PHILOSOPHER
Kant's views continue to have a major
influence on contemporary philosophy,
especially the fields of epistemology,
ethics, political theory, and post-modern
aesthetics.

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 Organization of SELF
Self, then, is an
Everything starts with the
Organizes the impressions that actively engaged
perception and sensation of
men get from the external intelligence in man
impressions
world that synthesizes all

IMPRESSIONS MIND knowledge and

experience

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The goal of all life is death.

—SIGMUND FREUD
 SIGMUND FREUD (1856 - 1939)
an Austrian neurologist and the
founder of psychoanalysis, a
clinical method for treating
psychopathology through
dialogue between a patient and a
psychoanalyst.

AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHER
Freud postulated the existence of libido,
a sexualised energy with which mental
processes and structures are invested
and which generates erotic attachments,
and a death drive, the source of
compulsive repetition, hate, aggression
and neurotic guilt.
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 The EGO compromise
ID EGO
is concerned with instant In contrast to the instinctual id and the
gratification of basic moral superego, the ego is the rational,
physical needs and urges. It pragmatic part of our personality. It is
operates entirely less primitive than the id and is partly
unconsciously conscious and partly unconscious. It’s
what Freud considered to be the “self,”
and its job is to balance the demands of
the id and superego in the practical
context of reality.
SUPEREGO
The superego is concerned with
social rules and morals—similar to
what many people call their ”
conscience ” or their “moral compass.”
It develops as a child learns what
their culture considers right and
wrong.
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“A person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may
have a bad head for facts.”

—GILBERT RYLE
He was a representative of the
generation of British ordinary
GILBERT RYLE (1900-1976)
language philosophers who shared
Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach
to philosophical problems, and is
principally known for his critique
of Cartesian dualism, for which he
coined the phrase "the ghost in the
machine."

BRITISH PHILOSOPHER
Some of his ideas in the philosophy of
mind have been referred to as
"behaviourist". Ryle's best known book is
The Concept of Mind (1949), in which
he writes that the "general trend of this
book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly,
be stigmatised as 'behaviourist'."
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 The University Problem

Day-to-Day University
Ryle believed that the self Much like looking for a
was a manifestation, not of “University”, you go into a
a physical being but of your campus, look at buildings,
actions day-to-day. see different rooms, but you
Behavior won’t find the “University”.

It is not an entity you can

locate and analyze, it is
simply a name for
everything that you are,
and everything that you do.
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“The body is our general medium for having a world.”

—MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
 MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY (1908-1961)
A French phenomenological
philosopher, strongly influenced by
Edmund Husserl and Martin
Heidegger.

FRENCH PHILOSOPHER
The constitution of meaning in human
experience was his main interest and he
wrote on perception, art, and politics. At
the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy
is a sustained argument for the
foundational role perception plays in
understanding the world as well as
engaging with the world.

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 The Singularity of SELF

One cannot find an

The body and the mind
experience that is not
are so intertwined that
they cannot be separated MIND BODY embodied. The body, hist
thoughts, emotions, his
from each other.
experiences are all one.

SELF
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THANKS!
Does anyone have any questions?

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