DEFINING THE SELF:

PERSONAL AND
DEVELOPMENTAL
PERSPECTIVES ON SELF
AND IDENTITY
 Lesson Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
1. Explain why it is essential to understand the self;
2. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the
points-of-view of the various philosophers across time and place;
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in
different philosophical schools; and
4. Examine one’s self against the different views of self that were
discussed in class.
Introduction:
 Our names represents who we are.
 Human beings attach names that are meaningful to birthed
progenies because names are supposed to designate us in
the world.
 Our names signifies us.
 Death cannot even stop this bond between the person and
her name.
 The self is something that a person perennially molds,
shapes, and develops.
Every one is tasked to discover one’s self.
ACTIVITY
Do you Truly Know Your Self?
Answer the following questions about yourself as fully and precisely as you
can.
1. How you would characterized your self?
2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your self special?
3. How has your self transformed itself?
4. How is your self connected to your body?
5. How is your self related to other selves
6. What will happen to your self after you die?
ANALYSIS

Where you able to answer the questions above

with ease? Why? Which questions did you
find easiest answer? Which ones are difficult?
Why?
 The Self from Various Philosophical
Perspectives.

Socrates
- He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the
self.
- To Him, this has become his life-long mission, the true task of the philosopher is to
know oneself.
- The unexamined life is not worth living.
- He though that this is the worst that can happen to anyone: to live but die inside.
- For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human
person is dualistic.
Plato
- There are three components of the soul: The rational soul, the
spirited soul, and the appetitive soul.
- Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be
attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously
with one another.
- The rational soul forged by reason and intellect has to govern the
affairs of the human person.
- The spirited part which is in charge of emotions should be kept at
bay.
- The appetitive soul is in charge of base desires like eating,
drinking, sleeping, and having sex are controlled as well.
- When this ideal state is attained, then the human person’s soul
becomes just and virtuous.
Augustine
- View the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval
world when it comes to man.
- Augustine agreed that a man is of bifurcated (divided) nature.
- The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate
eternity in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God.

Thomas
- He is the most eminent thirteen century scholar and stalwart of
the medieval philosophy.
- Man is composed of two parts: Matter and Form.
- What makes a human a person is his soul.
RENE DESCARTES
- The father of modern philosophy.
- One should only believe that since which can pass the test of doubt.
- He says that since much of what we think and believe are no
infallible, they may turn out to be false.
- Rene Decartes though that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the
existence self.
- Cogito ergo sum “ I think therefore I am”
- The self for is also a combination of two distinct entities, the Cogito,
the thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza of extension
of the mind.
Descartes says,

“ But what then, Am I? A thinking thing. It has

been said but what is a thinking? It is a thing
that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms,
denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and
perceives”
DAVID HUME
- A Scottish philosopher.
- As an empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experiences.
 Empiricism - is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be
possible if it is sensed and experienced.
- He argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought of it.
 If one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized into TWO:
IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS.
 Impressions – are the basic objects of our experience or sensation.
 Ideas – are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and vivid as our
impressions.
 What is the self? According to Hume self is simply “ a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidly, and are in a perpetual flux
(change) and movement”.
Immanuel Kant
 ToKant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions
that men can get from the external world.
 Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that
one gets in relation to his own existence.
 The
self is not just what gives one his personality. It is also the seat
knowledge acquisition for all human persons.
Gilbert Ryle
- What truly matters to in the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life.
 To understand self as it really exist is like visiting your friend’s university and looking
for the “university”.

Merleau-Ponty
- Is a phenomenologist who asserts that mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for
a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem.
- He says that the mind and the body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated
from one another.
- One’s body is his opening toward his existence to the world.
- The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experience are all one.