THE SELF

ACCORDING TO
PHILOSOPHY
＊ In athens of ancient greece, approximately 600 BCE, marked the birth of philosophy
(Love of Wisdom) as it influenced Western thought and still has until today.

＊ For instance, Greek philosophers in Miletus chose to seek natural explanations to

events and phenomena around him instead of seeking for supernatural explanations from
the Gods as what was passed down through the generations

＊ These philosophers observed changes in the world and wanted to explain these
changes by understanding the laws of nature. Their study of change led to the idea of
permanence.
＊ As these early philosophers labored to search for explanations into how the world
works through understanding the elements, mathematics, heavenly bodies and even
atoms, another group of philosophers shifted their search and focused on man.

＊ They sought to understand the nature of human beings, problems of morality and life
philosophies. From trying to understand nature and the universe, questions now center o
the inner world of man such as: Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want out of life?
＊ When philosophical thoughts shifted to the nature of human beings, Athens was the
center of western thought. In the 5th century BCE, Athens enjoyed the status of being a
city state and a democracy(Moore and Bruder,2002).

＊ Athenians settle arguments by discussion and debate. People who are skilled in doing
this were called sophists, the first teachers of the west. These debates led to the
examination and critiquing of accepted standards of behavior within the society of Athens.
SOCRATES
＊ A philosopher from Athens, Greece and said to have the greatest
influence on European thought.

＊ According to the history he was not able to write any of his

teachings and life’s account instead, he is known from the writings of his
student Plato who became one of the greatest philosophers of his time.
Socrates had a unique style of askingquestions called Socratic Method.

＊ Socratic Method or dialectic method involves the search for the

correct/proper definition of a thing. In this method,Socrates did not
lecture, he instead would ask questions and engage the person in a
discussion. He would begin by acting as if he did not know anything and
would get the other person to clarify their ideas and resolve logical
inconsistencies (Price, 2000).
“the unexamined life is not worth
living”.
＊ Socrates believed that his mission in life was to seek the highest knowledge and convince
others who were willing to seek knowledge with him. The touching of the soul, may mean
helping the person to get in touch with his true self. The true self, Socrates said, is not the
body but the soul. Virtue is inner goodness and real beauty is that of the soul.

＊ When the Delphi Oracle named Socrates wisest men of all, Socrates became more confused.
Socrates knew the importance of this but was also aware of his ignorance of it. He then realized
why he was the wisest. It was because he was the only one who knew that he did not know.
＊ The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic Oracle’s that
command to “Know Thyself”. Here, Socrates would like to emphasize
that knowing or understanding oneself should be more than the physical
self, or the body.
According to Socrates, real understanding comes from within the
person. His Socratic method forces people to use their innate reason
by reaching inside themselves to their deepest nature. The aim of
Socratic method is to make people think, seek, and ask again and
again and again.
Some may be angered and frustrated, but hwat is important is for
them to realze that they do not know evrything, that there are things
that they are ignorant of, to accept this and to continue learning and
searching and searching for answers.
PLATO
Plato’s real name is ARISTOCLES (428-348 BCE). He was nicknamed Plato because
of his physical built which means ‘wide/broad’.

Plato’s metaphysics (philosophical study on the causes and nature of things is known as
the Theory of forms. Forms, according to Plato, it is what are real. They are not objects
that are encountered with senses but can only be grasped intellectually.

1.The forms are ageless and therefore are eternal

2.The forms are unchanging and therefore permanent

3.The forms are unmoving and indivisible

Plato also introduced to the West the existence of two realms. This is known as Plato’s
Dualism.

1.The Realm of the shadows is composed of unchanging, sensible things which are
lesser entities and therefore imperfect and flawed

2.The Realm of Forms is composed of eternal things which are permanent and perfect.
It is the source of all reality and true knowledge

Plato believed that people are intrinsically goo. Sometimes, however, judgments are
made in ignorance and Plato equates ignorance with evil.
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE
In knowing the truth, the Person must
become the Truth
LOVE

LOVE
LOVE is the way by which a person can move from a state of imperfect knowledge and
ignorance to a state of perfection and true knowledge. LOVE is the force that paves the
way for all beings to ascend to higher stages of self-realization and perfection.

Plato’s love begins with a feeling or experience that there is something lacking. The
deeper the thought, the stronger is the love.

For Plato, LOVE is the way of knowing and realizing the truth. Love is a process of
seeking higher stages of being. The greater the love, the more intellectual component it
will contain.

To love the highest is to become the best.

＊ A student of Socrates, who introduced the idea of a threepart soul/self
that is composed of reason, physical appetite and spirit or passion.

The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and
achieve a true understanding of eternal truths. Plato also called this as divine
essence.
The physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of human being such
as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
The spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human being such as love,
anger, ambition, aggressiveness and empathy.

＊ These three elements of the self works in every individual

inconsistently. According to Plato, it is always the responsibility
of the reason to organize, control, and reestablish harmonious
relationship between these three elements
 ＊ Plato also illustrated his view of the soul/self in “Phaedrus” in his metaphor: the
soul is like a winged chariot drawn by two powerful horses: a white horse,
representing Spirit, and a black horse,embodying appetite. The charioteer is reason,
whose task is to guide the chariot to the eternal realm by controlling the two
independent-minded horses. Those charioteers who are successful in setting a true
course and ensuring that the two steeds work together in harmonious unity achieve true
wisdom and banquet with the gods. However, those charioteers who are unable to
control their horses and keep their chariot on track are destined to experience personal,
intellectual, and spiritual failure.
Plato believed that people are intrinsically goo. Sometimes, however,
judgments are made in ignorance and Plato equates ignorance with evil.
ST. AUGUSTINE
OF HIPPO
＊ He is considered as the last of the great ancient philosophers whose ideas were greatly
Platonic. In melding philosophy and religious beliefs together, Augustine has been
characterized as Christianity’s first theologian.

＊ Like Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is different from the immortal
soul. Early in his philosophical development he described body as “snare” or “cage” of the
soul
and said that the body is a “slave” of the soul he even characterizedthat “the soul makes war
with the body”. Later on he came to viewthe body as “spouse” of the soul, with both
attached to one another by a “natural appetite.” He concluded, “That the body is united
with the soul, so that man may be entire and complete, is a fact we recognize on the
evidence of our own nature.”
According to St. Augustine, the human nature is composed of two realms:

1. God as the source of all reality and truth. Through mystical experience, man is
capable of knowing eternal truths. This is made possible through the existence of
the one eternal truth which is God. He further added that without God as the source
of all truth, man could never understand eternal truth. This relationship with God
means that those who know most about God will come closest to understanding the
true nature of the world.

2. The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral
goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.
＊ St. Augustine is in agreement with the Greeks that man searches for happiness. However,
he stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love and he created humans
for them also to love. Problems arise because of the humans choose to love. Disordered love
results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will give him happiness.

1.Love for physical objects leads to sin of greed

2.Love for the people is not lasting and excessive love for them is the sin of jealousy

3.Love for the Self leads to the sin of Pride

4.Love for God is the supreme virtue and only through loving God can man find real
happiness

.
RENE DESCARTES
＊ A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered
thefounder of modern philosophy.

＊ Descartes, famous principle the “cogito, ergo sum—“I

think, therefore I exist” established his philosophical views on
“true knowledge” and concept of self.
Using his dreams as guide, Descartes came up with a system using principles that were true
and meaningful way. He turned to mathematics. Through math, he discovered that the human
mind has two powers:

1.Intuition or the ability to apprehend direction of certain truths

2.Deduction or the power to discover what is known by progressing in an orderly way from
what is already known. Truths are arrived at using a step by step process.

Descartes believed that reasoning could produce absolute truths about nature, existence,
morality and God. The truths that can be discovered are a priori (nature). Ideas discovered
this way do not rely on some experiences because they are innate in the human mind.
＊ He also maintained that the soul and the body are independent of
one another and each can exist and function without the other. In
cases in which people are sleeping or comatose, their bodies continue
to function even though their minds are not thinking, much like the
mechanisms of a clock.
JOHN LOCKE
＊ Although Locke and Descartes believed that a person or the self is
a thinking intelligent being who has the abilities to reflect and to
reason, Locke was not convinced with the assumptions of Plato, St.
Augustine and Descartes that the individual self necessarily exists in a
single soul or substance. For Locke, personal identity and the soul or
substance in which the personal identity is situated are two very
different things. The bottom line of his theory on self is that self is not
tied to any particularbody or substance. It only exists in other times and
places because of the memory of those experiences
Locke believed that knowledge results from ideas produced a
posteriori (nurture) by objects that were experienced.

Locke stated that, “nothing exists in the mind that was not first in the
senses.”

The process involves two forms: sensation wherein objects are

experienced through the senses and reflection by which the mind looks
at the objects that were experienced to discover relationships that may
exists between them.
For Locke, knowing what is Good does not necessarily mean that people
will always do what is good. Morality has to do with choosing or willing the
good. Moral good depends on conformity or non conformity of a person's
behavior towards some law:

Law of Opinion- where actions that are praiseworthy are called virtues and
those taht ate not are called vice

Civil Law- where right actions are enforced by people in authority

Divine Law- set by God on the actions of Man.

DAVID HUME
 ＊ He was a Scottish philosopher and also an empiricist.

＊ His claim about self is quite controversial because heassumed that there is no
self! In essay entitled, “On PersonalIdentity” (1739) he said that, if we carefully
examine the contents of [our] experience, we find that there are only twodistinct
entities, "impressions" and "ideas".

＊ Impressions are the basic sensations of our experience, the elemental data of
our minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on.

＊ On the other hand, ideas are copies of impressions that include thoughts and
images that are built up from our primary impressions through a variety of
relationships, but because they are derivative copies of impressions, they are once
removed
from reality.
Impressions are immediate sensations of external reality. These are more vivid than the idea it
produces.

Ideas are recollections of these impressions

Without impressions, there will be no formation of ideas.

The part of human nature is what other philosophers called the soul; Hume termed it the ‘the
self’. He concluded that man does not really have an idea of the so-called self because ideas
rely on sense impressions of a self.

He also stated that there is no such things as personal identity behind perceptions and feelings
that come and go. So, for him, there is no permanent/unchanging self.
＊ Hume considered that the self does not exist because allof the experiences that a
person may have are just perceptions and this includes the perception of self. None of
these perceptions resemble a unified and permanent self-identity that exists over time.

＊ Hume explained that the self that is being experienced by an individual is nothing but
a kind of fictional self. Human created an imaginary creature which is not real.
“Fictional self” is created to unify the mental events and introduce order into an
individual lives, but this “self” has no real existence.
SIGMUND FREUD
＊ A well-known Australian psychologist and considered as the Father and Founder of
Psychoanalysis. His influence in Psychology and therapy is dominant and popular in
the 20th to 21st century.

＊ The dualistic view of self by Freud involves the conscious self and unconscious
self.

The conscious self is governed by reality principle. Here,the self is rational,

practical, and appropriate to the socialenvironment. The conscious self has the task of
controlling the constant pressures of the unconscious self, as its primitive impulses
continually seek for immediate discharge.

The unconscious self is governed by pleasure principle. It is the self that is

aggressive, destructive, unrealistic andinstinctual. Both of Freud’s self needs immediate
gratification and reduction of tensions to optimal levels and the goal of every
individual is to make unconscious conscious.
＊ Subconscious serves as the repository of past experiences, repressed memories, fantasies, and
urges. The three levels of the mind are:

1. Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It

demands immediate satisfaction and is not hindered by
societal expectations.

2. Ego. The structure that is primarily based on the reality

principle. This mediates between the impulses of the id
and restraints of the superego.

3. Superego. This is primarily dependent on learning the

difference between right and wrong, thus it is called
moral principle. Morality of actions is largely
dependent on childhood upbringing particularly on
rewards and punishments.
 Parts Functions Principles

ID Unconscious Unreality/Pleasure
principle

EGO Concious Reality Principle

SUPER EGO Pre/ Sub Concious Morality

Unconscious- Outside of your awareness at all times

Preconscious- all information that you are currently aware

of but that can be recalled

Conscious- current state of your awareness.

＊ According to Freud, there are two kinds of instinct that drive individual
behavior – the eros or the lifeinstinct and the thanatos of the death instinct.
The energy of eros is called libido and includes urgesnecessary for individual
and species survival like thrist, hunger, and sex.in cases that human behavior is
directed towards destruction in the form of aggression and violence, such are the
manifestations of thanatos.
GILBERT RYLE
＊ A British analytical philosopher. He was an important figure in the field of Linguistic
Analysis which focused on thesolving of philosophical puzzles through an analysis of language.

＊ According to Ryle, the self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or
disposition for a person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances.

＊ He opposed the notable ideas of the previous philosophers and even claimed that those were
results of confused conceptual thinking he termed, category mistake.

＊ The category mistake happens when we speak about the self as something independent of the
physical body: a purely mental entity existing in time but not space
＊ The philosophical thought also mentioned that man is endowed with freewill. but ryle
thought that freewill was invented to answer the question of whether an action deserves
praise or blame. ryle agrees with kant who stated that freewill involves moral
responsibility which further assumes that man's actions must be moral for it to be free.

＊ He also distinguished between 'knowing that and knowing how. the former refer to
knowing facts/information latter to using facts in the performance of some skill or
technical abilities. A person may acquire a great bul of knowledge but without the ability
to use it solve some practical problems to make his life easier, this bulk of knowledge is
deemed to be worthless.
IMMANUEL KANT
＊ A German Philosopher who made great contribution to the fields of metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics. Kant is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern
period.

＊ Kant maintained that an individual self makes the experience of the world comprehensible
because it is responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful
whole.

＊ It is the self that makes consciousness for the person to make sense of everything. It is the
one that help every individual gain insight and knowledge. If the self failed to do this
synthesizing function, there would be a chaotic and insignificant collection of sensations.
＊ Additionally, the self is the product of reason, a regulative principle because the self regulates
experience by makingunified experience possible and unlike Hume, Kant’s self is not the object
of consciousness, but itmakes the consciousness understandable and unique.

＊ Transcendental apperception happens when people do not experience self directly, instead
as a unity of all impressions that are organized by the mind through perceptions. Kant concluded
that all objects of knowledge, which includes the self, are phenomenal. That the true nature of
things is altogether unknown and unknowable (Price, 2000).
In the matter of God, Kant stated that the kingdom of God is within
the man. God is manifested in people’s lives therefore it is man’s
duty to move towards perfection. Kant emphasized that people
should always see duty as a divine command.
PAUL AND PATRICIA
CHURCHLAND
＊ An American philosopher interested in thefields of philosophy of mind,philosophy of
science, cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and perception.

＊ Churchlands’ central argument is that the concepts and theoretical vocabulary that people
use to think about the selves—using such terms as belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy—
actually misrepresent the realityof minds and selves. He claims that the self is a product of brain
activity.

＊ The behavior of the self can be attributed to the neuropharmacological states, the neural
activity in specialized anatomical areas.

＊ Neurophilosopy was coined by Patricia Churchland, the modern scientific inquiry looks into
the application of neurology to age-old problems in philosophy. The philosophy of neuroscience
is the study of the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and psychology. It aims to explore the
relevance of neurolinguistic experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind.
＊ Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity
known as self. The biochemical properties of the brain according to this
philosophy of neuroscience is really responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and
behavior.

＊ It seems that what and who the person i: how he makes decisions, controls
impulses and how he sees himself is largely determined by his neurons, hormones
and over-all genetic make up. The man is a work of art constatntly evolving and at
the same time being molded by experiences of the world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
At the center of his philosophy is the emphasis placed
on the human body as the primary site of knowing the
world.
＊ A French philosopher and phenomenologist.

＊ Physical Body is an important part of the self.

Embodied Subjectivity
Embodied means giving a body to
Subjectivity is the state of being a subject.
One cannot FInd an experience that is not embodied experience. all experience is embodied.
One's body is opening towards his existence to the world these men, are in the world.

＊ He also asserted that whatever your mind perceived it will be enacted by your body e.g the
movie inside out whatever riley mind perceives her body will react according to it.

＊ He asserted that the mind is part of the body and the body is part of the mind. mind and body
cannot be seperated