Understanding the Self

Lesson 1
From the Perspective of PHILOSOPHY
SOCRATES
 He is an ancient Greek Philosopher
 View of human nature – real understanding comes
from within the person
His Socratic (dialectic method) forces people to use
their innate reason by reaching inside themselves to
their deepest nature (he ask questions and engage the
person in a discussion)
The aim of the Socratic method is to make people
think, seek and ask again and to bring the person
closer to the final understanding
PLATO
He made use of Socrates’ dialectic method
View of Human Nature –knowledge lies within the
person’s soul
He described the soul as having three components
 Reason- rational and is the motivation
for goodness and truth
 Spirited- non- rational and the will or the
drive toward action
 Appetites- irrational and lean towards the
desire for pleasures of the body
He postulated that 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 or to seek the higher stages of being
Plato’s love begins with a feeling of experience that
there is something lacking that drives the person to
seek for that which is lacking
SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Their concern was with God and man’s relationship with God
That man should rely on God’s commands and his judgment of
what constitutes good and evil
They held faith supreme over reason and logic
His view of human nature focused on two realms:
 God as the source of all reality and truth – those who know most about God
will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world
 The sinfulness of man- The cause of sin or evil is an act of man’s freewill

The Role of Love

That man searchers for happiness and this can be found in God,
For God is love and he created humans for them to also love
RENE DESCARTES
The Father of Modern Philosophy
He discovered that the human mind has two powers
Intuition – the ability to apprehend direction of certain
truths
Deduction – the power to discover what is not known by
progressing an orderly way from what is already known
 View of Human Nature
“I think, therefore I am” was his legacy and the first
principle of his philosophy
 On mind- body problem, according to him, the soul/ mind is
separate from the body
JONH LOCKE
Locke contended that ideas are not innate but rather the
mind at birth is a ‘tabula rasa’ (blank slate)
He further state that “nothing exists in the mind that was
not first in the senses” (what the senses have
experienced are simple ideas which are the raw materials
from which knowledge begins)
On his view of human nature (since there are no innate
ideas, morals, religious and political values must come
from the sense experiences)
Moral good depends on conformity or non- conformity
of a person’s behavior
There are 3 Laws according to Locke:
1. Law of Opinion – actions that are praiseworthy are
called virtues and those that are not are called vice
2. Civil Law – where right actions are enforced by
people in authority (ex: courts and police)
3. Divine Law- set by God on actions of man that man
should follow
DAVID HUME
The human mind receives materials from the senses
and calls it perceptions.
 Types (these two make up the content of the human mind, without
impressions, there will be no formation of ideas)
o Impressions – immediate sensations of external reality
o Ideas – recollections of these impressions
• View of Human Nature
He concluded that man does really have the idea of the so-
called self because ideas rely on sense impressions and
people have no sense impression of a self
In looking for the self, he discovered sense impressions.
There is no permanent/ unchanging self
IMMANUEL KANT
View of the Mind
 The mind is not just a passive receiver of sense experience but
rather actively participates in knowing the objects it experiences.
Instead of the mind conforming to the world, it is the external
world that conforms to the mind
 View of Human Nature and Self
o He used the term transcendental apperception -that
people do not experience the self directly but as a unity
of all impressions that are organized by the mind
through perceptions.
o In the matter of God, he stated that the kingdom of
God is within man
SIGMUND FREUD (Psychodynamic
theory)
The factors that determine human behavior is thru the
workings of the unconscious mind
Repressed thoughts and memories have enough
psychic energy to impose its control on the person’s
consciousness
Kept hidden and unexpressed, these thoughts resurface
and are manifested as some form of psychopathology
and termed it as hysteria
View of Human Nature- he sees man as a product of
his past lodged within his subconscious
He presented the topography of the mind thru the use
of an iceberg
 Conscious level – (tip of the iceberg) represents conscious
awareness as he deals with external world
 Preconscious level- are the thoughts which are unconscious at the
particular moment in question, but which are not
repressed and are therefore available for recall and easily
'capable of becoming conscious‘
 Unconscious level – repository of past experiences, repressed
memories,
fantasies and urges
Structures of the mind
Id – primarily based on the pleasure principle as it
demands immediate satisfaction
Ego- is based on the reality principle as it mediates
between the impulses of the id and the restraints of the
superego
Superego – this is dependent on the morality principle
set by the childhood upbringing particularly on the use of
rewards and punishments
View of Human Nature
Freud sees man as a product of his past lodged within his
subconscious/ unconscious
Man’s behavior by his pleasure seeking life instinct and
his destructive death instinct is said to be born with his
ego already in conflict
GILBERT RYLE
English philosopher
View of Human Nature
 Freewill involves a moral responsibility that man’s actions must
be moral for it to be free
 Two types of knowledge
 Knowing- that – this is about knowing facts/ information
- or the intellect
 Knowing- how - using facts in the performance of some skill
or technical abilities
- ability
PATRICIA AND PAUL
CHURCHLAND
Contended the idea of NEUROPHILOSOPHY –
which seeks to guide scientific theorizing with
philosophy and guide philosophy with scientific
inquiry
View of Human Nature
what and who the person is on how he makes decisions,
controls impulses and how he sees himself is largely
determined by his neurons, hormones and overall genetic
make- up
In the person’s task of understanding himself, these
data provide information on how normal brain
functioning facilitates accepted social behavior and
how a compromised brain gives rise to aberrant
MAURICE MERLEAU – PONTY
French Phenomenological Philosopher
He emphasized on human body as the primary site of
knowing the world
View of Human Nature
 Developed the concept of body- subject and contended that
perceptions occur existentially
 Thus, the consciousness, the world and the human body are all
interconnected as they mutually perceive the world
 That all knowledge is perceived through the body with all its
sensory functions
 That consciousness is the process that includes sensing as well
as interpreting/ reasoning
 Understanding the Self

Lesson 2
From the Perspective of SOCIOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY

It is one of the disciplines in the social sciences which

aims to discover the ways by which the social
surroundings/ environment influences people’s
thoughts, feelings and behavior
How the self has developed through the process of
socialization
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
Mead’s Social Self
Social Behaviorism is the approach Mead used to
describe the power of the environment in shaping
human behavior
He described the self as a “dimension of personality
that is made- up of the individual's self- awareness and
self- image
That the self cannot be separated from the society
He explained through a set of stages which the person
undergoes in the course of his development
The Preparatory Stage
 Children's behavior are primarily based on imitation
 They become familiar with the symbols (verbal and non- verbal)
that people use in their interactions and as bases of
communication

 The Play Stage

 Children begin to role play and pretend to be other people
 Role taking – as according to Mead is the process of mentally
assuming the perspective of another person to see how this person
might behave or respond in a given situation
 The play stage is significant in the development of the self
The Game Stage
The child is about eight or nine years of age and does
more than just role- take
The child now begins to see not only his own
perspectives but at the same time the perspective of
others around him
He has now the ability to respond not just to one but to
several members of his social environment (generalized
other)
Mead’s Theory of the Self
As children grow and mature, there is a change in the
self
They begin to see other people and is now concerned
about people’s reactions
People around him, particularly his family, play a major
role in the formation of the self and termed it as the
significant others
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

An American Sociologist who made use of the

sociopsychological approach to understanding how
societies work in the development of the self
People learn who they are through their social
interaction with other people and through the
impression and perceptions of others
He termed it as the looking- glass self
ERVING GOFFMAN
He observed that people early in their social interactions
learned to slant presentation of themselves in order to create
preferences and satisfy particular people
He referred to this as impression management – the process of
altering how the person presents himself to others
In his observation of people in everyday interactions, he sees
similarities of real social interaction to a theatrical
presentation or the so called dramaturgical approach
He also used the phrase facework – to describe another aspect
of the self in situations where face- saving measures are
resorted to in the maintenance of a proper image of the self in
frustrating or embarrassing situations
 Understanding the Self

Lesson 3
From the Perspective of ANTHROPOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
The field of social sciences that focuses on the study of
man (physical/ biological characteristics, his social
relationships and the influence of his culture from the
dawn of civilization up to the present
For what man now is the product of his past
Four sub- fields
Archeology
Biological anthropology
Linguistics
Cultural anthropology
ARCHAEOLOGY
Study of human history and prehistory
Scientific study of material remains (tools, pottery, jewelry,
stone walls, monuments) of past human life and activities)
How these may have contributed to the present ways of
how people conduct their daily lives
They discovered the unique ways in which human beings
adapted to changes in their environment in order for them
to survive (survival)
In contemporary society, people still aim for survival, for
their basic needs to be met and needs to live a mark/ legacy
in their society
Biological Anthropology
This sub- field focuses primarily on how the human body
adapts to the different earth environments
They look at the probable causes of disease, physical
mutation and death
They also want to know how human beings might have
evolved from their early forms (based on the discovered
fossilized remains)
They do comparative studies on human beings both dead
and living and other primates (apes and monkeys)
They are interested in explaining how the biological
characteristics of human beings affect how they lived
their lives
LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

This is linked to their ability to communicate for

human survival
They also study language and modes of
communication like words, sounds, symbols, writings
and signs
Tower of Babel
English as the universal language
Other forms of languages used in social media and the
language of the LGBT
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Culture is described as a group of people’s way of life

It includes their behaviors, beliefs, values, and
symbols that they accept (usually unconsciously) that
are socially transmitted through communication and
imitation from generation to generation)
Cultural anthropologists are interested in knowing
what makes one group’s manner of living and forms an
essential part of the member’s personal and social
identity
We are all product of our CULTURE
The following are the ways in which culture may
manifest itself in people:
Symbols – words, gestures, pictures or objects that have a
recognized/accepted meaning (can be copied by other
cultures who finds it fitted for their own culture)
 Examples: rings, colors
Heroes like Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio
 Fictitious characters like Spiderman, Darna
Rituals – (may be religious or social )baptism, weddings,
birthdays, graduations, etc.
Values – are considered to be the core of every culture
Ex: respect of elders, hospitality, nationalism