Understanding the Self

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THE SELF from
Various
PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVES

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The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who
inquired into the fundamental nature of self. Along with the
question of the primary substratum that defines the multicity
of things in the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied
the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks!

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What is Philosophy?
 PHILOSOPHY

• study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence,

especially in an academic discipline.
• a particular theory that someone has about how to live or how to deal with
a particular situation.
• academic discipline concerned with investigating the nature of significance
of ordinary and scientific beliefs.
• investigate the legitimacy of concepts by rational argument concerning
their implications, relationships as well as reality, knowledge, moral
judgment, etc.

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 ◦ Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides,
Heraclitus, and Empedocles
◦ They were concerned with
answering questions:
 What is the world really made up of?
Pre-  Why is the world he way it is?
Socratics  What explains the changes that
happen around us?

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 ◦ While the Pre-Socratic philosophers were concerned much about what
the world is made up, all these and all that, Socrates was more
concerned on the philosophy that man should know himself.
◦ His dictum, “Know Thyself”.
◦ He said that an “unexamined self is not worth living”.
◦ During Socrates time most men were not aware of who they were and
the virtues that they were to attain in order to preserve their souls for
the afterlife.
Socrates ◦ For Socrates, to live but die inside is the worst that can happen to
anyone.
◦ For him, man is dualistic (made of body and soul). Meaning, all
individuals have imperfect and impermanent aspect of him and the
body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent.

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 ◦ A student of Socrates. He supported the idea that man is a dual
nature: body and soul.
◦ In addition, he added that there are three components of the
soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul and the appetitive soul.
◦ He said that justice can only be attained when the three parts
are working harmoniously with each other
◦ The rational soul forge by reason and intellect has governed

Plato
the affairs of the human person, the spirited part which is the
in charge of emotion should be at bay, and the appetitive soul
is in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and
having sex are controlled as well.
◦ When such ideal harmony of the three components of the soul,
then, the soul becomes just and virtuous.

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 • Influenced by the ancient view of Socrates and
Plato, infused his idea of man with the new found
doctrine of Christianity.
• He agreed that man is of bifurcated nature. One
aspect of him dwells in the world and is imperfect
St. Augustine and continuously yearns to be with the Divine
and the other is capable of resting immortality.
• His famous line “My soul is restless until it rest in
You.”

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 • He is considered the most imminent thirteenth
century scholar and stalwart of medieval
philosophy to St. Augustine’s Christian view.
• He said that man is composed of two parts:
matter and form.
St. Thomas • Matter or “hyle” in Greeks-refers to the
common stuff that makes up everything in the
Aquinas universe while form, “morphe” which refers to
the essence of a substance or thing which
differentiates us from other animals and that is
our soul which animates the body that makes
us humans.

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Modern Philosophy

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 ◦ The father of Modern Philosophy-conceived the idea that the
human person is having a body and a mind.
◦ He claimed that there is so much that we should doubt. There are
many things we believe yet they turned out to be false. If something
is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is the only
time when one should actually buy aa proposition.

Rene ◦ He claimed that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the
existence of the self, for even if one doubts oneself, that only proves
Descartes that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and therefore, that
cannot be doubted. Thus, his famous cogito ergo sum “I think
therefore I am”. The fact that one thinks should lead one to
conclude without a trace of doubt that he exist.

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 ◦ Descartes claimed that the self is a combination of
two distinct entities, the cogito, the thing that
thinks which is the mind and extenza or extension
of the mind, the body.
◦ His view is that the body iss nothing else but a
machine that is attached to the mind.
Rene Descartes
◦ He said that the mind is the thinking thing, that
doubts, understands, affirms, conceives, denies,
imagines and perceives, etc.

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 • A Scottish philosopher who has a very unique way of
looking at man.
• He is an empiricist who argues that one can only
know what comes from the senses and experiences.

David (Empiricism is the school of thought that expose the

idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is
sensed and experienced). When one imagines the
Hume feeling of being in love for the first time, that is still
an idea.
• To Hume, the self is a unified, coherent self, a soul or
mind, just like what other philosophers believed. In
reality, what one thinks is a unified self is simply a
combination of experiences wit a particular person.

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 • Thinking that the self is only impressions was
problematic for Kant. He recognizes Hume’s
account that everything starts with perception and
sensation of impression, however, for him, the
things that men perceive around them are not just
Immanuel ordinarily infused into the human person without
an organizing principle that regulates the
Kant relationships of these impressions.
• For Kant, there is necessarily a mind that
organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world.
• Kant suggests that it is an actively engaged
intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge
and experiences.

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 ◦ Solves the body-mind dichotomy by denying the
concept of an internal, non-physical self.
◦ For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a
person manifests in his day-to-day life.
Gilbert ◦ He suggests that the “SELF” is not an entity one

Ryle can locate and analyze but simply the convenient

name that people use to refer to all the behaviors
that people make.

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 ◦ He says that the mind and body so intertwined
that they cannot be separated from one another.
◦ For him, one cannot find any experience that is
not an embodied experience. One’s body is his
Merleau- opening towards his existence to the world. He
doesn’t recognize dualism because for him, it is
Ponty nothing but misunderstanding.
◦ For him, the living body, his thoughts, emotions
and experience are all one.

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 Therefore, studying the different philosophical perspectives of these prominent
theorists gives you the opportunity to examine how your personal identity has been
shaped by a variety of people and experiences. You will also have the opportunities to
think about and discuss their values, interests, hopes for the future, as well as, their
strengths and challenges. You learn about how your psychological needs motivate and
drive their behavior. You will learn critical knowledge about change and how important it
is in today’s workplace and situation to be adaptive and to embrace change as a personal
and professional growth experiences.

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THANK YOU!

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