Philosophers and Their Philosophical

views about Self

(Understanding the Self)

Lester M. Verian
BSA 1-10
Ms.
SOCRATES
Biography:

Socrates (469/470-399 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and is considered the father of
western philosophy. Plato was his most famous student and would
teach Aristotle who would then tutor Alexander the Great. By this progression, Greek
philosophy, as first developed by Socrates, was spread throughout the known world
during Alexander's conquests. Socrates was born c. 469/470 BCE to the sculptor
Sophronicus and the mid-wife Phaenarete. He studied music, gymnastics, and
grammar in his youth (the common subjects of study for a young Greek) and followed
his father's profession as a sculptor.

Philosophical view about Self:

Socrates’ influence was reflected in his famous statement "The unexamined life is not
worth living." Socrates believed that philosophy – the love of wisdom – was the most
important pursuit above all else. For some, he exemplifies more than anyone else in
history the pursuit of wisdom through questioning and logical argument, by examining
and by thinking. His 'examination' of life in this way spilled out into the lives of others,
such that they began their own 'examination' of life, but he knew they would all die one
day, as saying that a life without philosophy – an 'unexamined' life – was not worth
living.
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.

References:

https://www.ancient.eu/socrates/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_worth_living
 PLATO

Biography:

Plato, was born in 428/427 BCE, Athens, and died in 348/347. Plato was an
ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE), teacher
of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of
philosophical works of unparalleled influence. Building on the demonstration by
Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the
understanding necessary for a good human life,
Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes
were due to their not engaging properly with
a class of entities he called forms, chief
examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and
Equality.

Philosophical view about Self:

Plato believes that knowledge lies within the

person’s soul. He pointed out that human
beings are microcosms of the universal
microcosm which means that evrything found in the universe is also found in human-
earth, water, air, fire, mind and spirit. According to him, humans have the immortal,
rational souls which plato is created in the image of divine. Plato describes human
soul to have three components:

1. The reason- is rational and is the motivation of goodness and truth.

2. The spirited- is non rational and the will or the drive towards action. This part of the
soul is initially neutral but can be influenced or pulled in two directions.
3. The appetites- are irrational and lean the desires of the pleasures of the body.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plato
https://philosophycourse.info/platosite/3schart.html

ARISTOTLE

Biography:

Aristotle was born in 384 and died in322 B.C.E.Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient
Greek philosophy, making contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics,
biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. He was a
student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. He was more empirically-minded
than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting Plato's theory of forms.

Philosophical view about Self:

Aristotle’s Individuality of the Self undeniably diverged from Plato in his view of what
a human being most truly and fundamentally is. Plato, at least in many of his
dialogues, held that the true self of human beings is the reason or the intellect that
constitutes their soul and that is separable from their body. Aristotle, for his part,
insisted that the human being is a composite of body and soul and that the soul
cannot be separated from the body. Aristotle’s philosophy of self was 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, i.e., the functional organization in
virtue of which human beings are able to perform their characteristic activities of life,
including growth, nutrition, reproduction, perception, imagination, desire, and
thinking. Aristotle on Finding One’s True Self Aristotle outlines ideas and problems
related to the individuality of human life in various contexts in his works. In his
discussion on moral responsibility in the Nicomachean Ethics III, he distinguishes
various ways in which one may be ignorant of facts related to one’s action. A human
being can be ignorant of who she is, what she is doing, what or whom she is acting on,
as well as with what instrument, to what end and how she is doing it. However,
Aristotle thought that only mad people can be ignorant of all of these things, and he
does also not seem to allow the possibility of being ignorant of the agent. As to
self-knowledge, Aristotle holds it as obvious that one can recognize oneself as the
subject of one’s acts, beliefs, judgments, perceptions, memories, emotions, and
desires without much possibility of error. He in fact subscribes to a very strong form of
immediate self-consciousness. Whenever a human being acts, or has a belief or a
perception, he is more or less necessarily aware of both the fact that he is acting or
having a belief or a perception.

References:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-8596-3_6
https://www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/

AURELIUS AUGUSTINE
Biography:

Saint Augustine of Hippo (/ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430 AD)[1] was a
Roman African, early Christian theologian and philosopher from Numidia whose
writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy.
He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most
important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Period.
Among his most important works are The City of God, On Christian Doctrine and
Confessions.

Philosophical view about Self:

Saint Augustine in his view about self is focused on two realms;

1. God as the source of all reality and truth. St. Augustine discovered through mystical
experience that we have the ability to know eternal truths. And this is made through
the experience of God. According to him, without God as the source of all truth, man
will never understand eternal truths. He also said that those with close relationship
with God is capable of understanding most eternal truths about the world.
2. The sinfulness of man. According to him, the cause of man’s sin or evil is the
freewill. Evil, therefore does not live in God’s creatures but rather in man. Moral
goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.

He also said that man, searches for happiness. But, this happiness, according to him
can only be found in God. Problems arise because of the objects human choose to
love. Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will
give him happiness. St. Augustine explains:
1. Love of physical objects leads to the sin of man.
2. Love for other 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.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine
Book of undestanding the self

THOMAS AQUINAS

Biography:

St. Thomas Aquinas, also called Aquinas, Italian San Tommaso

d’Aquino, byname Doctor Angelicus (Latin: “Angelic Doctor”), (born 1224/25,
Roccasecca, near Aquino, Terra di Lavoro, Kingdom of Sicily [Italy]—died March 7,
1274, Fossanova, near Terracina, Latium, Papal States; canonized July 18, 1323;
feast day January 28, formerly March 7), Italian Dominican theologian, the
foremost medieval Scholastic. He developed his own conclusions
from Aristotelian premises, notably in the metaphysics of personality, creation,
and Providence. As a theologian he was responsible in his two masterpieces,
the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra gentiles, for the classical
systematization of Latin theology; and as a poet he wrote some of the most gravely
beautiful eucharistic hymns in the church’s liturgy. His doctrinal system and the
explanations and developments made by his followers are known as Thomism.
Although many modern Roman Catholic theologians do not find St. Thomas
altogether congenial, he is nevertheless recognized by the Roman Catholic
Church as its foremost Western philosopher and theologian.

Philosophical view about Self:

Self-Knowledge. Thomas Aquinas’ view of self focuses on knowing oneself in a

deeper way. Thus, asking oneself “who am really I?” is one way according to him to
know self. Aquinas, then, would surely approve that we’re not drawn to search online
for answers to the question, “Who am I?” That question can only be answered “from
the inside” by me, the one asking the question. At the same time, answering this
question isn’t a matter of withdrawing from the world and turning in on ourselves. It’s
a matter of becoming more aware of ourselves at the moment of engaging with reality,
and drawing conclusions about what our activities towards other things “say” about
us. There’s Aquinas’s “prescription” for a deeper sense of self.

References:

http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2014/01/thomas-aquinas-toward-a-deeper-sense-of-self/

https://www.google.com.ph

RENE DESCARTES
Biography:

René Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, France. He
was extensively educated, first at a Jesuit college at age 8, then earning a law degree
at 22, but an influential teacher set him on a course to apply mathematics and logic to
understanding the natural world. This approach incorporated the contemplation of the
nature of existence and of knowledge itself, hence his most famous observation, “I
think; therefore I am.”

Philosophical view about Self:

“I think, therefore I am.” Rene Descartes believes that to doubt is to think. He said that
a thinker is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, wills, refuses and that also
imagines and feels. The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for exiztence of
the self. Decartes considered the soul/mind (also the self) as a substance that is
separate from the body. Based on this, Decartes believed that all bodily processes
are mechanical. The body according to him, is like a machine that is controlled by the
will and aided by the mind.
References:

https://www.biography.com/people/ren-descartes-37613
Diariosoficiasis.com
Understanding the Self book.

DAVID HUME
Biography:

David Hume, (born May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711, Edinburgh,
Scotland—died August 25, 1776, Edinburgh), Scottish philosopher, historian,
economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and skepticism.

Philosophical view about Self:

According to David Hume, the part of human nature is what other philosophers called
the soul; Hume termed it the self: He concluded that man does really have ab idea of
the so-called self because ideas rely on sense impressions and people have to sense
impression of a self. In looking for the self, Hume only discovered sense impressions.
He believed that just like casually, the self is also a product of the imagination. He also
stated that there is no such thing as personal identity behind perceptions and feelings
that come and go. So, for Hume, there is no permanent self.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Hume
https://www.iep.utm.edu/hume/
https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/themes/
Understanding the self book

JOHN LOCKE

Biography:

John Locke, (born August 29, 1632, Wrington, Somerset, England—died October 28,
1704, High Laver, Essex), English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of
modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an inspirer of both
the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United States. His
philosophical thinking was close to that of the founders of modern science,
especially Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and other members of the Royal Society.
His political thought was grounded in the notion of a social contract between citizens
and in the importance of toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of what he
advocated in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688–89 and in the United States after the country’s declaration of
independence in 1776.
Philosophical view about Self:

According to him, morals, religious and political values must come from experiences.
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 dependes on
conformity or non-conformity of person’s behavior towards some law. According to
him, there are three laws:

1. Law of Opinion- where actions that are praiseworthy are called virtues and those
that are not are called vices.
2. Civil Law- where right actions are enforced by people in authority.
3. Divine Law- set by God on the actions of man. This is deemed to be the true law of
human behavior. The divine law is eternally true and the one law that man should
always follow.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Locke#ref59085
https://www.google.com.ph
Understanding the self book

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
Biography:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (born March 14, 1908, Rochefort, Fr.—died May 4, 1961,
Paris), philosopher and man of letters, the leading exponent
of Phenomenology in France. Merleau-Ponty studied at the École Normale
Supérieure in Paris and took his agrégation in philosophy in 1931. He taught in a
number of lycées before World War II, during which he served as an army officer. In
1945 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Lyon and in 1949
was called to the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1952 he received a chair of philosophy at
the Collège de France. From 1945 to 1952 he served as unofficial co-editor (with
Jean-Paul Sartre) of the journal Les Temps Modernes.

Philosophical view abou Self:

When asked whether he was contemplating retirement on account of illness and the
ravages of advancing age, Pope John Paul II confirmed that he was, and bemoaned
the fact that his body was no longer a docile instrument, but a cage. Although it is
difficult to deny that a docile body that can be used instrumentally might be preferable
to its decaying alternative--a body that prevents us acting as we might wish to--both
positions are united by a very literal adherence to the mind-body duality, and the
subordination of one term of that duality; the body. Of course, such a dualistic way of
thinking, and the denunciation of the body that it usually entails, is certainly not
restricted to religious traditions. In the Phenomenology of Perception, which is
arguably his major work, Merleau-Ponty sets about exposing the problematic nature
of traditional philosophical dichotomies and, in particular, that apparently
age-old dualism involving the mind and the body. It is no accident that consideration
of this dualism plays such an important role in all of his work, since the constitution of
the body as an 'object' is also a pivotal moment in the construction of the idea of an
objective world which exists 'out there' (PP 72). Once this conception of the body is
problematized, so too, according to Merleau-Ponty, is the whole idea of an outside
world that is entirely distinguishable from the thinking subject.
The Phenomenology of Perception is hence united by the claim that we are our
bodies, and that our lived experience of this body denies the detachment of subject
from object, mind from body, etc (PP xii). In this embodied state of being where the
ideational and the material are intimately linked, human existence cannot be conflated
into any particular paradigm, for as Nick Crossley suggests, "there is no meaning
which is not embodied, nor any matter that is not meaningful" (Crossley 14). It should
be clear from this that Merleau-Ponty's statement that 'I am my body' cannot simply
be interpreted as advocating a materialist, behaviorist type position. He does not want
to deny or ignore those aspects of our life which are commonly called the 'mental' -
and what would be left if he did? - but he does want to suggest that the use of this
'mind' is inseparable from our bodily, situated, and physical nature. This means simply
that the perceiving mind is an incarnated body, or to put the problem in another way,
he enriches the concept of the body to allow it to both think and perceive. It is also for
these reasons that we are best served by referring to the individual as not simply a
body, but as a body-subject.
Virtually the entirety of the Phenomenology of Perception is devoted to illustrating that
the body cannot be viewed solely as an object, or material entity of the world.
Perception has been a prominent theme in Merleau-Ponty's attempts to establish this,
and even in his latest work, he still holds its primacy as our clearest relationship to
Being, and in which the inadequacy of dualistic thinking is most explicitly revealed.
However, despite the titles of two of his major works (Phenomenology of
Perception and The Primacy of Perception), perception, at least as the term is usually
construed, is paradoxically enough, not really a guiding principle in his work. This is
because the practical modes of action of the body-subject are inseparable from the
perceiving body-subject (or at least mutually informing), since it is precisely through
the body that we have access to the world. Perception hence involves the perceiving
subject in a situation, rather than positioning them as a spectator who has somehow
abstracted themselves from the situation. There is hence an interconnection of action
and perception, or as Merleau-Ponty puts it, "every perceptual habituality is still a
motor habit"
More significantly, the hand touching itself represents the body's capacity to occupy
the position of both perceiving object and subject of perception, if not at once, then in
a constant oscillation. However, as he puts it, "when I press my two hands together, it
is not a matter of two sensations felt together as one perceives two objects placed
side by side, but an ambiguous set-up in which both hands can alternate the role of
'touching' and being 'touched'" (PP 93). Mark Yount expresses Merleau-Ponty's point
well, when he suggests that "the reflexivity of this touching-touched exceeds the logic
of dichotomy: the two are not entirely distinguished, since the roles can be reversed;
but the two are not identical, since touching and touched can never fully coincide"
(MPHP 216-7). This double touching and encroachment of the touching onto the
touched (and vice versa), where subject and object cannot be unequivocally
discerned, is considered to be representative of perception and sensibility generally.
Pre-empting the more explicit ontology of The Visible and the Invisible (and with
which we shall become increasingly concerned), Merleau-Ponty hence tacitly argues
for the "reversibility" of the body, its capacity to be both sentient and sensible, and
reaffirms his basic contention that incarnate consciousness is the central phenomena
of which mind and body are abstract moments.
References:
https://www.iep.utm.edu/merleau/
https://www.google.com.ph