WHO

AM
I?
A JOURNEY TOWARDS
UNDERSTANDING
THE
SELF
 THE NAME
• Our parents painstakingly thought
about our names because names
are supposed to designate us in
the world.
• The attachment between us and
our names are forever that even
death cannot separate.
• Our names signify us.
• However, the Self is thought to be
something else than the name.
• Everyone is tasked to dscover
one's self.
THE SELF from Philosophical Perspectives
• Philosophy - Literally means the love of wisdom.
The earliest thinkers in the history of Philosophy were
concerned about the fundamental nature of the self.
SOCRATES
• He was more concerned with the For him, every human is dualistic.
problem of the self.
• He was the first philosopher who MAN
ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self.
• TO KNOW ONESELF - is his true
BODY SOUL
task thus, an unexamined life is - Imperfect and - Perfect and
not worth living impermanent Impermanent
aspect
• According to him, the worst that aspect
can happen to anyone is “to live
but to die inside”
 PLATO
• Supported Socrates' idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul.
• Plato added that there are three component of the soul:
the Rational Soul - forged by reason and intellect has to govern the
affairs of the human person
the Spiritual Soul - in charge of emotions
the Appetitive Soul - in charge of basic desires such as eating, drinking,
sleeping, and having sex
Note: If the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one
another, a JUST and VIRTUOUS SOUL can be attained.
ST. AUGUSTINE
• Argued that man is a bifurcated nature. The Body and Soul
• An aspect of man dwells in the world and is important and continuously
yearns to be with the Divine and the other is capable of reacting
immortality
THOMAS AQUINAS
• Adapted some ideas from Aristotle, he said that indeed, man is composed
of two parts: matter and form.

MAN

MATTER (HYLE)
- Common stuff FORM (MORPHE)
that makes up - It is what makes it
everything in the what it is
universe
 RENE DESCARTES
• Father of Modern Philosophy • COGITO ERGO SUM - “I think
therefore, I am”
• Conceived of the human person as
having a body and a mind
• In his famous treatise, the Meditations of
First Philosophy, he claims that there is
so mouch that we should doubt SELF
• He thought that the only thing that we
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 COGITO EXTENZA
cannot be doubted. - The thing that - Extension of
thinks, which is the mind, which
• In Descartes' view, the body is nnothing is the body
else but a machine that is attahed to the the mind
mind.
DAVID HUME
• Empirical view of the Self
• He sees the self as nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
• For Hume, Self is a bundle or collection of
different perceptions, which succeed each Experiences
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and
are in a perpetual flux and movement.
Impressions
- The basic Ideas
objects of our - Copies of
experiences or empressions
sensation
IMMANUEL KANT
• He finds Hume's idea of 'self' as a mere combination of impressions was
problematic. He recognized the veracity of Hume's account that everything
starts with perception and sensation of impressions. However, Kant thinks
that the things that men perceive around them are not just randomly
infused into the human person without an organizing principle that
regulates the relationship of all these impressions.
• Kant suggests that it is an actively engaged intelligence in man that
synthesizes all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self is not just wha
gives one his personality. In addition, it is also the seat of knowledge
acquisition for all human persons.
GILBERT RYLE
• He solved the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long time
in the history of thought by blatantly denying the concept of an internal,
non-physical self. For him, what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.
MERLEAU-PONTY
• He asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long
time is an invalid problem.
• He argued that the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be
separated from one another.
JOHN LOCKE
• He introduced the concept of Tabula Rasa and only through the
accumulation of experience does the person.

• MAN - Physical Entity

• PERSON - Conscious Thinking Thing
• SUBSTANCE - Unchanging thing (ex. soul)

• The person is a moral or forensic entity. Locke suggested that a person

is responsible for what his conscious doing in the past, because he is
his consciousness (based on memory).
SIGMUND FREUD
• Freud is a physician and psychoanalyst who argued that an individual's
past memories and experiences are believed to stay put in their
unconscious mind.
• Freud believe that the human mind is composed of three elements:
• the Id - Pleasure Principle
• the Superego - Moral Principle
• the Ego - Reality Principle
PAUL CHURCHLAND
• He asserted that the self is inseparable from the subtance of the brain and
the physiology of the body.
• According to him, the brain is the self. If the brain is gone, so is the self.