2. 2
PHILOSOPHERS’ PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF
The way you choose to spend your life contributes to
the development of your identity and self-understanding.
Your past is a contributory factor to who you are today, but
who you will be tomorrow greatly depends on your
perspective about yourself.
Understanding the Self
ARTP
4. ARTP
SOCRATES (470-399 B.C.)
Understanding the Self 4
• Believes in dualism that aside from the physical body ( material
substance),Each person has an immortal soul ( immaterial
substance)
• The body belongs the the physical realm and the soul is to the ideal
realm.
• There is a life after death of your physical body. There is a world after
death.
• “In order for you to have a good life, you must live a good life, a life with
purpose, and that purpose is for you to do well. Then there you will be
happy after your body dies.”
6. ARTP Understanding the Self 6
• He believed that the self is immortal and it consists of 3 parts:
• Rational soul – the divine essence that enables you to think deeply,
make wise choices and achieve an understanding of eternal truths.
• Physical Appetite - your basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst,
and sexual desire and;
• Spirit or Passion – your basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition,
aggressiveness, and empathy.
PLATO (428/427-348/347 BC)
8. ARTP Understanding the Self 8
• constructed in terms of hylomorphism in which the soul of a human being is
the form or the structure of the human body or the human matter,
ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC)
Hylomorphism
Theory developed by aristotle which conceives every physical entity or being as a
compound of matter (potency) and immaterial form (act), with the generic form as
immanently real within the individual.
10. ARTP Understanding the Self 10
• He was a great explorer in his youth and young adulthood; he spent great times with
his friends and up to the extent of fathering an illegitimate child.
• His explorations led to his conversion to Christianity wherein he spent the remainder
of his day serving the bishop of Hippo and writing books and letters including his idea
of the self.
• He thought the body as the“slave” of the soul but ultimately, regarded the body as the
“spouse” of the soul both attached to one another.
• He believed that the body is united with the soul, so that man may be entire and
complete. His first principle was, “I doubt, therefore I am.”
12. ARTP Understanding the Self 12
• Descartes was a scientist in his professional life and during his time, scientists
believed that after death the physical body dies, hence the self also dies.
• He was a devout Catholic who believed in the immortal souls and eternal life.
By having the idea of both the thinking self and the physical body, Descartes
was able to reconcile his being a scientist and a devout Catholic.
• The self is a thinking thing, distinct from the body. The thinking self or soul is
nonmaterial, immortal, conscious while the physical body is material, mortal,
non-thinking entity, fully governed by the physical laws of nature.
• “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I Am) is the keystone to his concept of
the self. The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of being
aware of oneself.
14. ARTP Understanding the Self 14
• According to Locke, the human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (“blank slate”). The
self or personal identity is constructed primarily from sense experiences which
shape and mold the self throughout a person’s life.
• Personal identity is made possible by self-consciousness. In order to discover the
nature of personal identity, you to have to find out what it means to be a person.
A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has abilities to reason and to reflect.
A person is also someone who considers itself to be the same thing at different
times and different places.
• Consciousness means being aware that you are thinking; this what makes your
belief possible that you are the same identity at different times and in different
places. The essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself as thinking,
reasoning, reflecting identity.
16. ARTP Understanding the Self 16
• He left the University of Edinburg at the age of 15, to study privately. Although he
was encouraged to take up law, his interest was philosophy. It is during his private
study that he began raising questions about religion.
• For him, there is no “self” only a bundle of perceptions passing through the theatre
of your minds.
• According to him, humans are so desperately wanting to believe that they have a
unified and continuous self or soul that they use their imaginations to construct a
fictional self. The mind is a theatre, a container for fleeting sensations and
disconnected ideas and your reasoning ability is merely a slave to the passions.
Hence, personal identity is just a result of imagination.
18. ARTP Understanding the Self 18
• Although Kant recognizes the legitimacy in Hume’s account, he opposes the
idea of Hume that everything starts with perception and sensation of
impressions, that’s why he brought out the idea of the self as a response against
the idea of Hume.
• For Kant, there is unavoidably a mind that systematizes the impressions that
men get from the external world.
• Therefore, Kant believed that the self is a product of reason because the self
regulates experience by making unified experience possible.
• We construct the self. The self exists independently of experience and the self
goes beyond experience.
20. ARTP Understanding the Self 20
• Freud develops his theories during a period in which he experienced heart
irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression. He read William
Shakespeare in English throughout his life.
• Based on him, the self is composed of three layers, conscious, preconscious and
unconscious.
• The conscious mind includes thoughts and actions that you are currently aware of; the
preconscious mind includes mental activities that are stored in your memory, not
presently active but can be accessed or recalled; while the unconscious mind includes
activities that you are not aware of.
• According to him, there are thoughts, feelings, desires, and urges that the conscious
mind wants to hide, buried in your unconscious, but may shed light to your
unexplained behavior.
22. ARTP Understanding the Self 22
• His father was a general practitioner but had a keen interest in
philosophy and astronomy that he passed it on to his children; they had
an impressive library where Ryle enjoyed being an omnivorous reader.
• He graduated with first class honors in the New Modern Greats School of
Philosophy, Politic, and Economics.
• His concept of the self is provided in his philosophical statement, “I Act
therefore I am.” Ryle views the self as the way people behave, which is
composed of a set of patterned behavior.
• Basically, for Ryle, the self is the same as your behavior.
24. • Churchland became a professor at the University of California where he
later became the department chair and member of the Cognitive Science
Faculty, a member of the Institute for Neural Computation. His
membership to these organizations prompted him to dwell on the brain
as the self.
• Churchland’s theory is anchored in the statement, “the self is the brain.”
The self is inseparable from the brain and the physiological body because
the physical brain gives the sense of self.In short, the brain and the self
are one. Once the brain is dead, the self is dead
ARTP Understanding the Self 24
26. ARTP Understanding the Self 26
When he won the school’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement” in
Philosophy it traced his commitment to the vocation of Philosophy.
His concept, “the self has embodied subjectivity” explained that all your
knowledge about yourself and the world is based on your subjective
experiences and everything that you are aware of is contained in your
consciousness.
For him, your body is your general medium for having a world.
