Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical together in harmonious unity achieve true wisdom

Perspective and banquet with the gods.

Socrates  Plato believed that genuine happiness can

only be achieved by people who consistently
 Fist philosopher who ever engaged in a make sure that their Reason is in control of
systematic questioning about the self their Spirits and Appetites
 Every man is composed of body and soul
 For Socrates, reality is dualistic, made up of Saint Augustine (Dualistic)
two dichotomous realms.
 Adopted Plato’s vision of a bifurcated
 Body – changeable, transient, and imperfect,
universe in which “there are two realms, an
mortal
intelligible realm where truth itself dwells,
 Soul – unchanging, eternal, immortal and this sensible world which we perceive by
 For Socrates, our bodies belong to the sight and touch,”
physical realm: They change, they’re
 The body to die, the soul to live eternally in
imperfect, they die. Our souls, however,
a transcendent realm of Truth and Beauty.
belong to the ideal realm: They are
 Describes the body as a “snare” and a “cage”
unchanging and immortal, surviving the
for the soul.
death of the body.
 The body is united with the soul, so that man
Plato (Dualistic) may be entire and complete.

 Three elements of our selves Saint Thomas Aquinas

 Reason—Our divine essence that enables us
 Rejected Plato’s Radical Dualism
to think deeply, make wise choices, and
 There are two basic categories of things:
achieve a true understanding of eternal
 • Matter (in Greek, hyle), which refers to the
truths.
common “stuff” that makes up the material
 Physical Appetite—Our basic biological
universe
needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual
 • Form (in Greek morphe), which refers to
desire.
the essence of a thing, that which makes it
 Spirit or Passion—Our basic emotions such
what it is.
as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and
 Hylomorphism, a compound term derived
empathy
from the Greek words hyle (matter) and
 The Chariot Analogy
morphe (form or shape)
Plato says, “We will liken the soul to the
 That the body is united with the soul, so that
composite nature of a pair of winged horses
man may be entire and complete
and a charioteer.” One horse represents
 Aquinas views persons as material
Passion, the other Appetite, and the
substances whose souls emerge from the
charioteer who tries to control them is
unified relationship of form and prime
Reason.
matter.
Meaning: The charioteer is Reason, whose task is to  The Latin for “soul” is anima, and Aquinas
guide the chariot to the eternal realm by controlling believes that every living thing has a soul
the two independent-minded horses. Those since the soul is the principle of life—that is,
charioteers who are successful in setting a true what distinguishes a living (animate) thing
course and ensuring that the two steeds work from a nonliving (inanimate) thing
 You are alive because you have a soul.
 Rene Descartes pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief,
fear, exhilaration, and so on. These
 “founder of modern philosophy.”
impressions are “lively” and “vivid.” Ideas
 the natural light of reason
—Ideas are copies of impressions, and as a
 Descartes wanted to penetrate the result they are less “lively” and “vivid.” Ideas
nature of our reasoning process and include thoughts and images that are built
understand its relation to the human up from our primary impressions through a
self. variety of relationships, but because they are
 For if our thinking instrument is flawed, .derivative copies of impressions they are
then it is likely that our conclusions will once removed from reality.
be flawed as well.  All of our experiences are perceptions, and
 Cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I none of these perceptions resemble a
am.” - first principle of Descartes’s unified and permanent self-identity that
theory of knowledge because he is exists over time.
confident that no rational person will  What is our mind? According to Hume, it’s “a
doubt his or her own existence as a kind of theatre, where several perceptions
conscious, thinking entity—while we are successively make their appearance, pass,
aware of thinking about our self. repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite
 The essence of existing as a human variety of postures and situations.”
identity is the possibility of being aware
of our selves: Being self-conscious in this Immanuel Kant
way is integral to having a personal
 He acknowledges Hume’s point that all
identity.
knowledge of the world begins with
 Descartes believes that your physical sensations: sounds, shapes, colors,
body is secondary to your personal tastes, feels, smells. For Hume, these
identity sensations are the basic data of
 The thinking self—or soul—is a experience, and they flow through our
nonmaterial, immortal, conscious being, consciousness in a torrential rushing
independent of the physical laws of the stream.
universe. The physical body is a material,  we live in a fairly stable and orderly
mortal, non thinking entity, fully world in which sensations are woven
governed by the physical laws of nature. together into a fabric that is familiar to
 For him, your soul and your body are us. And integrated throughout this fabric
independent of one another, and each is our conscious self who is the knowing
can exist and function without the other. subject at the center of our universe.
David Hume  Our minds actively sort, organize, relate,
and synthesize the fragmented,
 Empiricist fluctuating collection of sense data that
 For him, self is a “bundle or collection of our sense organs take in
different perceptions, which succeed each  Self is like a synthesizer
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are  Our minds actively synthesize and relate
in a perpetual flux and movement.” these sensations in the process of
 Two Distinct Identities : Impressions— creating an intelligible world.
Impressions are the basic sensations of our
experience, the elemental data of our minds:
  It’s your self that is actively organizing all
of your sensations and thoughts into a
picture that makes sense to you.
 Self is transcendental – The self is the
product of reason, a regulative principle
because the self “regulates” experience
by making unified experience possible.
Other such “transcendental regulative
ideas” include the ideas of cosmos and
God.
 Self is a subject, an organizing principle
that makes a unified and intelligible
experience possible.
Gilbert Ryle

 Logical Behaviorism - focused on creating

conceptual clarity
 deny—or ignore—the existence of an internal,
nonphysical self, and instead focus on the
dimensions of the self that we can observe. No
more inner selves, immortal souls, states of
consciousness, or unconscious entities: instead,
the self is defined in terms of the behavior that
is presented to the world, a view that is known
in psychology as behaviorism.
 Does not believe in Dualism of Plato and
Socrates
 Human bodies are in space and are subject to the
mechanical laws which govern all other bodies in
space and are accessible to external observers.
But minds are not in space, their operations are
not subject to mechanical laws, and the
processes of the mind are not accessible to other
people—it’s career is private.
 What you feel will reflect to your doings.

Merleau-Ponty
 (KAMO BUTANG UG INFO ANI GUYS KAY
NALIBOG KOS IYA. ESCUSED BIYA MI ATO)