Understanding

the Self

Maria Gisela S. Albano- Axibal, RN, MAN

Defining the self: personal and
developmental perspective on self and
identity
• We were first taught as kids to articulate and write our
names
• Growing up, we were told to refer back to this name when
talking about ourselves.
• Our parents painstakingly, thought about our names- famous
celebrity; respected politician; historical personality, or even
a saint
• Our names represent who we are. Human beings attach names that
are meaningful to birthed progenies because name are supposed to
designate us to the world.
• Our names signify us
• Death cannot even stop this bond between the person and her name.
Names are inscribed even into one’s gravestone.
• A name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is
with bearer.
• The self is thought to be something else than the name.
• The self is something that the person perennially molds, shapes, and
develops.
• The self is not a static thing that one is simply born with like a mole in
one’s face or is just assigned by one’s parents just like a name.
• Everyone is tasked to discover one’s self.
 Life – period between birth and death
• Superstitious Belief: a belief or way of behaving that is
based on fear of the unknown and faith in magic or luck a
belief that certain events or things
- Animism – paniniwala sa mga natural entities.
- Offering sa isang diyos
- Anting-anting – thinking ‘masesave sila’
- Friday the 13th
Activity#2
• How would you characterize your self?
• What makes you stand out from the rest? What
makes your self special?
• How has your self transformed itself?
• How is your self connected to your body?
• How is your self related to other selves?
• What will happen to your self after you die?
Philosophy
(600 BC)
‘Love for Wisdom’ in Athens of Ancient Greece
- Searching for answers that are both cognitive and scientific and
nature.
- Greeks in Miletus
o searched natural explanations to events and phenomena around
them.
o Observed changes in the world and wanted to explain these
changes by understanding laws of nature, instead of supernatural
explanations from the gods.
o Study of change led to “idea of permanence”
 Permanent object, pero it changes into different particles,
entity, or forms.
o Different branches of science.
Socrates

• He was born c. 470 bc, Athens [Greece]—died 399 bc, Athens)

• Father of Western Philosophy and being the first moral
philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought.
• Since he didn’t write down any of his work and teachings, the
philosopher remains an enigmatic figure, known only from the
writings of his students, particularly Plato and Xenophon.
• Socrates wanted to establish an ethical system that would be
based on human reason rather than the theological doctrine
of the time. He strongly believed that the greatest leaders
are the ones who possess knowledge, virtue and a complete
understanding of themselves.
• Socrates stated that an individual’s choice is motivated by
the desire for happiness, but the right choices to achieve
happiness can only be made when one truly knows himself.
14 Socrates quotes to get to know yourself a little
better:

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

The unexamined life is not worth living.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad
one, you’ll become a philosopher.
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he
would like to have.
Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to
break them down.
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
 14 Socrates quotes to get to know yourself a little
better:

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about
life, ourselves, and the world around us.
The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving
yourselves.
My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we
may learn how to care for ourselves.
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly
reprove thy faults.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing
It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.
Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a
good man, either in life or after death.
Socratic Method
- Discovering what is essential in the world and in people.
- Socrates would ask questions and engage them in a discussion.
- Act as if he didn’t know anything and would get the person to clarify their ideas
and resolve their logical inconsistencies.
- Questions should be skilled at detecting misconceptions and revealing them by
asking the right questions.
- Goal: Bring person closer to the final understanding.
- Make people think, seek, and ask again.
- Continue learning and searching for answers.
View of Human Nature
- Socrates’ mission in life was to seek the highest knowledge and convince others to seek his
knowledge with him.
- Allowed him to question people’s beliefs and ideas, exposing their misconceptions, and get them
to know themselves better.
- True self is not the body, but the soul.
- Oracle of Delphi
o Men who claimed to be wise are ignorant and not knowledgeable.
o Socrates was the wisest.
- Real understanding comes from within.
o Forces people to use their innate reason by reaching inside themselves to their deepest
nature.
Plato
• Supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul
• He added that there are three components of the souls: the rational
soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. He emphasized 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 soul 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 the ideal state is attained, then the human person’s soul
becomes just and virtuous.
Plato
- Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
- Aristocles – real name
- Nicknamed “Plato” because of his physical built which means wide/broad.
- Left Athens for 12 years after Socrates death.
- Established a school named “The Academy”
- Comes from a rich family.
Plato’s Metaphysics
- Philosophical study on the causes and nature of things.
- Forms refer to what are real.

• Objects that can only be grasped intellectually.

• Theory of Forms

- Characteristics:
o Forms are ageless - eternal
o Unchanging – Permanent
 Source of all reality and knowledge.
o Unmoving and indivisible – inseparable.
•
- Realm of Shadow
o Changing sensible things
o Imperfect
o Flawed
o True reality.
o Walang perfect. Reality is more than what the physical world can show us.
- Realm of Forms
o Composed of real things.
o Eternal things which are permanent and perfect.
o Source of all reality and true knowledge.
Plato

- He believed the knowledge lies within person’s

soul
- Considered human beings as microcosms of the
universal macrocosms (everything in the
universe can be found on people (earth, air, fire)
Soul
- Reason – rational and motivation for goodness and truth
- Spirited – non-rational and is the will or the drive toward action.
- Appetites – irrational and lean towards the desire for pleasures of
the body.
• Plato believed that people are intrinsically good. Sometimes however,
judgements are made in ignorance and Plato equates ignorance with
evil.
• “It is not enough to know the truth, you must strive to become the
truth.”
Plato’s Love
- Begins with a feeling or experience that there is something
lacking.
o Drives the person to seek for that which is lacking.
o Thoughts and efforts are then directed towards the
pursuit of which is lacking.
- Deeper the thought, the stronger the love.
- Love is a process of seeking higher stages of being.
Christian Philosophers
- Concern was with God and man’s relationship with God.
- They didn’t believe that self-knowledge and happiness were
the ultimate goals of man.
- Greek Philosophers – man as good and evil through
ignorance of what is good.
- Christian Philosophers – man as sinner who reject/go
against a loving God’s commands.
Augustine
• Born in 354 in Tagaste, Numidia (now Algeria) Raised and educated in Carthage.
• Mother (Monica) was Christian, father (Patricius), was a pagan
• Augustine was brought up as a Christian at first, then chose Manichaeism, a Persian
dualist religion
• Educated in philosophy and rhetoric and was a teacher
• Taught in Milan, met Ambrose, Bishop of Milan;
• Ambrose and Monica pressure Augustine to be Christian
• Augustine choose Neoplatonism instead
• Neoplatonism is an interpretation of Plato’s philosophy with religious elements which
took shape in the 3rd century bc. It is an idealist monism Though Augustine eventually
rejects Neoplatonism, it is clear that Plato’s thought influences his own philosophy
• Augustine finally converts to Christianity
• baptized in 387 Moves to Hippo, Africa
• becomes priest in 391 and Bishop of Hippo in 395
• Dies in 430 when the Vandals overrun Roman Africa
• Canonized in 1303; declared a Doctor of the Church
• Most Famous Works of Augustine:
The Confessions—memoir of his childhood, sinful adulthood and conversion to
Christianity
The City of God—an interpretation of human history as a conflict between two
Cities, the earthly City of Man and the heavenly City of God. Written after the sack of
Rome in 410, to console Christians with the ultimate triumph of the City of God.
Augustine’s Basic Philosophy As with Plato
• Augustine believes in the soul’s participation in a world of forms and
ideas. That is, the intellect is able to grasp eternal truths.
• HOWEVER for Augustine, God and God’s Word impart this intellectual
light to humans. This is called illumination
Illumination is how we can come to know not only universal principles (a
priori)ty but also that which challenges our human reason (for example, the
Trinity)
• God created the world out of nothing, in a freely willed act of love
Augustine’s Philosophy of Human Nature
• God creates the human soul at the moment it comes to animate the
body. Yet the soul is immortal and does exist beyond the death of the
body
• The soul reflects God’s Triune nature as Being, Knowledge and Love.
In the soul this is manifested as Being Reason Will The primacy of
these three is the Will, because of its connection to Love.
Augustine and Free Will
• Augustine believes that humans have Reason and Will, but that there
is a primacy of will over reason in humans
• Humans know what the right thing to do is, but they can choose
whether to do it. God gave humans free will, but thanks to the Fall
and Original Sin, humans are more inclined to do evil over good.
• Human agency (reason and will, natural human goodness, moral
behavior) alone is insufficient for salvation from sin. Humans MUST
depend on God’s grace for salvation. God, who is omnipotent and
omniscient and atemporal, has predestined some for heaven

• Born in Italy in 1225; died 1274
• Dominican priest Aquinas had
access to the scientific works of
Aristotle
• For Aquinas, human nature (the
essence of humanity)
encompasses both levels.
• We are “naturally supernatural”.
• We cannot be fully satisfied with
any natural good.
• Our capacity to grasp the idea of
infinity or perfection is evidence
of our supernatural end, which is
union with God
• Theory of Mind and Knowledge Aquinas is a developmental empiricist: all
human knowledge begins with the use of the 5 senses, by which we come to
know our physical environment.
• We start with the natural sciences, and then move to metaphysics and
natural theology. Natural theology tells us only that God (a First Cause) exists.
It does not tell us much about the nature of God.
• But Not a Strict, Absolute Empiricist 1. The mind is not a blank slate: it brings
specific, pre-determined powers and potentialities to the business of learning
through the use of the senses. 2. Knowledge is always the product of the
joint operation of the senses and the intellect. 3. Ultimately, we can attain
some (very limited) knowledge of things beyond the range of our senses.
Rene Descartes
• René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and
scientist
• In his famous treatise, The Meditations of First Philosophy, he claims
that there is so much that we should doubt.
• In fact, he says that since much of what we think and believe are not
infallible, they may turn out to be false. One should only believe that
since which can pass the test of doubt.
• If something is so clear and lucid as not to be doubted, then that is
the only time when one should actually buy a proposition.
• In the end, Descartes thought that the only thing that cannot doubt
is existence of the self, for even one doubts oneself, that only proves
that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and therefore, that
cannot be doubted.
• The self is a combination of
two distinct entities:
 COGITO- also known as the
mind; the one that thinks
 EXTENZA- body; extension
of the mind
- machine that
is attached to the mind
“But what then am I? A thinking
thing. It has been said. But what is
a thinking thing? It is a thing that
doubts, understands (conceives),
affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that
imagines also and perceives”
- Descartes 2008
Descartes’ System
- Innate understanding of mind:
1. Intuition – ability to apprehend direction of
certain truths.
2. Deduction – the power to discover not known by
progressing in an order from what is already
known.
- A Priori – innate understanding of understanding
of our own abilities.
• View of Human Nature
- Deduced that a thinker is a thing
that doubts, understands, affirms,
denies, wills, refuses, and also
imagines and feels.
• Mind-Body Problem
- Body is the machine that is
controlled by the will and aided by
the mind.
David Hume
• a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and
essayist
• best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical
empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.
• He believes that one can know only what come from the senses and
experiences.
• He argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought
of it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body.
• Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing.
• Empiricism- school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge
can only be possible if it is sensed and experienced.
• Example: Jack knows that Jill is another human person not because he
has seen her soul. He knows she is just like him because he sees her,
hears her, and touches her.
• Hume believes that the self is nothing else but a bundle of
impressions.
Beauty in things exists in the mind which
contemplates them.
• Two categories to examine an experience:
• Impressions- vivid; resulted from direct experience with the world.
- Form the Core of our thoughts
• Ideas- copies of impressions because they are not as lively and vivid
as impressions.
- When one imagines the feeling of being_________ for the first
time, that still is an idea.
John Locke
John Locke
- What worries you masters you.
- Interested in politics and defender of the parliamentary
system.
- Published a book that signified the era of Enlightenment.
- Ideas are not innate, but mind at birth is a “Tabula Rasa”
(blank slate).
- A Posteriori – ideas around us are internalized based on observations and
experiences.
o Knowledge results from ideas produced a posteriori
 2 Process:
 Sensation – observed through senses.
 Reflection – mind looks at objects that were experienced to discover
relationships that may exist between them.
o No man’s knowledge can go beyond his experience.
• View of Human Nature – moral good depends on conformity of
person’s behavior towards law.
1. Law of Opinion – actions that are praiseworthy are called virtues and
these are not vices.
2. Civil Law – right actions are enforced by people in authority.
3. Divine Law – set by God.
• He was an influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment.
• In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, he argued that space, time, and
causation are mere sensibilities; "things-in-themselves" exist, but their
nature is unknowable.
• Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination of impressions was
problematic for Immanuel Kant.
• Kant recognizes 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
human person without an organizing principle that regulates the
relationship of all these impressions.
• There is a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world.
• Kant’s apparatuses of the mind (built in our minds)
 Time
 Space
 Self- without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one
gets in relation to his own existence
• Intelligence in man- synthesizes all knowledge and experience
• Self is not just what gives one his personality. It is also the seat of
knowledge acquisition for all human persons.
Gilbert Ryle
• Solves 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
• What truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-
to-day life.
• Ryle suggests that the “self” is not an entity one can locate and
analyze but simply the convenient name that people use to refer to all
the behaviors that people make.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
• a French phenomenological philosopher
• The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main
interest and he wrote on perception, art, and politics.
• Ponty believes that the mind and body are so intertwined that they
cannot be separated from one another. One cannot find any
experience that is not an embodied experience. All experience is
embodied. One’s body is his opening toward his existence to the
world. Because of these bodies, men are in the world.
• The body, his thoughts, emotions, and experience are all one