GE 113: Understanding the Self

Abstraction

Let’s find out how the philosophers define or describe self during the early
and modern times. They are the prime movers on the different views of the self.

I. Socrates
Greek Philosopher and one of the very
few individuals who shaped the Western
thought. Most information from him are
second hand and from the writings of his
student Plato. He is known for his Socratic
method, where an idea is tested by asking
series if questions to determine underlying
Figure 1. Socrates by Kedumuc10,
beliefs and the extent of knowledge to guide 2016 (https://bit.ly/3g3spjN), CC0

the person toward better understanding.

a. Some of his ideas are:
i. The soul is immortal
ii. The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
iii. Virtue is necessary to attain happiness
b. He believed that philosophy has a very important role to play in the
lives of the people. His most quoted phrase is “the unexamined life
is not worth living.” He said that: self-knowledge or the examination
of one’s self, as well as the question about how one ought to live
one’s life, are very important concerns because only by knowing
yourself can you hope to improve your life. One should consciously
contemplate, turn your gaze inward, and analyse the true nature and
values that are guiding in life. Self-knowledge would open your eyes
to your true nature. Your real self is not even your body. The state of
your inner being determines the quality of your life.
c. Socrates said existence is of two kinds:
i. Visible- it changes; this is the state of human being; seen by
the naked eye like the body.
ii. Invisible- constant; the mind; the soul
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

d. The goal of life is to be happy. How does one become happy? A

virtuous man is a happy man. Virtue is defined as moral excellence,
and an individual is considered virtuous if his/her character is made
up of the moral qualities that are accepted as virtues, i.e. courage,
temperance, prudence, and justice.
e. Death, for Socrates is a trivial matter for the truly virtuous has realized
that the most important thing in life is the state of his/her soul and the
acts taken from taking care of the soul through self-knowledge.

II. Plato
A student of Socrates. His philosophical
approach is what they call "collection and
division." In this method, the philosopher
"collects" all the common ideas with common
characteristics and then divides them into
various genres until a subset of ideas are
specified.
Figure 2. Plato by Raphael, 2019 He is best known for his “Theory of Forms”
(https://bit.ly/2E7mRaD), CC0
which asserted that the physical world is not
really the “real” world because the ultimate exists beyond it.
a. The “soul” according to him is the most divine aspect of the human
being. His concept of divine is not a spiritual being but rather one that
has an intellectual connotation.
b. The three parts of the soul:
i. The appetitive (sensual) – enjoys sexual experiences like
food, drink and sex.
ii. The rational (reasoning) – use of reason
iii. The spirited (feeling)- understands the demands of passion;
loves honor and victory.
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

III. St. Augustine

He is also known as St. Augustine of
Hippo. One of the Latin Fathers of the Church,
one of the Doctors of the Church, and one of
the most significant Christian thinkers. He was
most influenced by Plato’s Theory of Forms. He
asserted that they were concepts existing
within the perfect and eternal God where the Figure 3. St. Agustine by Sandro
Boticelli, 2002.
soul belonged. The soul held the truth and was (https://bit.ly/3iLO95u), public domain

acceptable of scientific thinking. His concept of the “self” was an inner,

immaterial “I” that had self-knowledge and self-awareness. The human
being is both a soul and body, and the body possessed senses, such as
imagination, memory, reason, and mind through which the soul
experienced the world.
a. The aspects of the soul/ soul according to St. Augustine are:
i. It is able to be aware of itself
ii. It recognizes itself as a holistic one
iii. It is aware of its unity
b. St Augustine espoused the following contentions:
i. Human beings through the senses could sense the material,
temporal objects as we interacted with the material world;
ii. The immaterial but intelligible God would only be clear or
obvious to the mind if one tune into his/her immaterial
self/soul;
iii. Human beings who is both soul and body is meant to tend to
higher, divine and heavenly matters;
iv. A person is similar to God as regards to the mind and its ability
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

IV. Rene Descartes

He is a French philosopher, mathematician
and scientist. He is considered as the father of
modern Western Philosophy. He is often
regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the
use of reason to describe, predict, and
understand natural phenomena based on
observational and empirical evidence.
Figure 4. Rene Descartes by Frans a. Rene Descartes made these significant
Hals, 2020 (https://bit.ly/31Ymsj8), CC0
contributions:
i. Doubt is a principal tool for disciplined inquiry; this method is
called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt/ or methodological
scepticism. A systematic process of being sceptical about the
truth of one’s belief in order to determine which beliefs could
be ascertained as true.
ii. Known for his famous line of “Cogito ergo sum” – I think,
therefore, I am. He asserted that everything perceived by the
senses could not be used as proof of existence because
human senses could be fooled. Doubting once existence can
be done so that a thinking entity is there and doing the act of
doubting.
iii. His claims about the self are- constant, not prone to change
and not affected by time; only the immaterial soul is the source
of our identity.

Table 1.

Some distinctions between the soul and the body as described by Descartes
The Soul The Body

It is a conscious, thinking substance It is a material substance that changes

that is unaffected by time over time
It is known only to self (only you know It can be doubted; the public can correct
you own mental event and others claims about the body
cannot correct your mental states
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

It is not made up of parts. Its views the It is made up of physical, quantifiable

entirely of itself with no hidden or divisible parts
separate compartments. It is both
conscious and aware of itself at the
same time

V. John Locke
He is a philosopher and physician and
one of the most influential Enlightenment
thinkers. Also known as the Age of Reason,
this intellectual movement dominated the ideas
in Europe during the 18th century.
a. Locke expanded the definition of the “self”
to include the memories of that thinking
thing. He believed that the “self” is identified
Figure 5. John Locke by Godfrey
with consciousness and this “self” consists Kneller, 2020 (https://bit.ly/34bhnqj),
CC0
of sameness and consciousness.
b. His contentions are:
i. The self consists of memory
ii. The person existing now is the same person yesterday for
he/she remember the thoughts, experiences or actions of the
earlier self
iii. A person’s memories provide a continuity of experience that
allows him/her to identify the same person over time.
iv. The person can be held accountable for past behaviors for as
long as he/she can remember
v. Punishing behaviors one had no recollection of doing is
equivalent to punishing the person for actions that was never
performed.
vi. A person who cannot remember as the same as that of a
person who never committed the act which means the person
is ignorant.
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

VI. David Hume

He is a Scottish philosopher, economist and
historian in the Age of Enlightenment; a fierce
opponent of Descartes Rationalism;
Rationalism is a theory that reason, rather than
experience, is the foundation of all knowledge.
He is also one of the three figureheads (Locke
and George Berkeley) who influenced the
Figure 6. David Hume by Allan British Empiricism movement. Empiricism is
Ramsay, 2012 (https://bit.ly/3iRuIYO),
public domain the idea that the origin of all knowledge is a
sense experience. It emphasized the role of experience and
evidence in forming concepts.
a. To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
He categorizes it into two – impressions and ideas. Impressions are
the basic objects of our experience or sensation. They form the core
of our thoughts. Impressions are vivid because they are products of
our direct experience with the world. Ideas are copies of impressions.
b. Self, per Hume is simply “a bundle of collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.”

VII. Immanuel Kant

He believes that the things that men
perceive around them are not just randomly
infused into the human person without an
organizing principle that regulates the
relationship of all these impressions. There is
necessarily a mind that organizes the
impressions that men get from the external
Figure 7. Immanuel Kant by Johann
world. Without the self, one cannot organize Gottlieb Becker, 2020
(https://bit.ly/2Y9lbEV), public domain
the different impressions that one gets in
relation to his own existence. He therefore suggests that it is an actively
engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge and
experience.
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

a. Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality):

i. Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in
inner sense, and;
ii. Consciousness of oneself and one’s states by performing acts
of apperception. (Apperception is the mental process by which
a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body
of ideas one already possesses).
b. Two components of the “self”:
i. Inner self- The “self” by which you are aware of alternations in
your own state,
ii. Outer self- It includes your senses and the physical world.
c. He also proposed that the “self” organizes information in three ways:
i. Raw perceptual input,
ii. Recognizing the concept, and
iii. Reproducing in the imagination.

VIII. Sigmund Freud

He is a philosopher, physiologist, psychologist,
one of the most influential thinker in the 20th
century. His most important contribution is
psychoanalysis, a practice devised to treat
those who are mentally ill through dialogue. He
did not accept the existence of any single
entity that could be put forward as the notion
of the “self.” His ground-breaking work in the
Figure 8. Sigmund Freud by Max
Halberstadt, 1921 field of psychoanalysis answered about the
(https://bit.ly/3l1JsXl), CC0
human psyche. In psychology, the psyche is
the totality of the human mind, both conscious and unconscious.
a. Three levels of consciousness:
i. Conscious which deals with awareness of present
perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories, and fantasies at
any particular moment;
ii. Pre-conscious/subconscious which is related to data that can
readily be brought to consciousness, and;
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

iii. Unconscious which refers to data retained but not easily

available to the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny.
b. He also proposed existence of unconsciousness:
i. A repository for traumatic repressed memories; and
ii. The source of anxiety-provoking drives that is socially or
ethically unacceptable to the individual.
c. He also structured the mind/ psyche intro 3 parts:
i. Id- operating on pleasure principle; if unpleasurable, there is
tension
ii. Ego- operating on reality principle; if it fails, anxiety is
experienced
iii. Superego- it incorporates the values and morals of society;
controls the Id impulses; persuades the ego to choose
moralistic goals and strive for perfection rather than simply
realistic ones.
d. Two systems of the Superego:
i. Conscience- if the ego gives in to the Id’s demands, the
superego may make the person feel bad through guilt.
ii. Ideal Self- an imaginary picture of how you ought to be. It
represents career aspirations; how to treat other people; and
how to behave as a member of society.
e. These are all products of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Freud. Where
a personality theory is based on the notion that an individual gets
motivated by unseen forces, controlled by the conscious and rational
thought.

IX. Gilbert Ryle

According to him what truly matters is the
behavior that a person manifests in his day to
day life. He suggests that the “self” is not an
entity one can locate and analyse but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer to all Figure 9. Gilbert Ryle by
Reginald John Whistler, 2015 (
the behaviors that people make. Your actions https://bit.ly/348tCUx), public
domain
define your own concept of “self.”
 GE 113: Understanding the Self

X. Paul Churchland
He is known for his studies in
neurophilosophy and the philosophy of the
mind. His philosophy stands on a materialistic
view or the belief that nothing but matter
exists. If something can be seen, felt, heard,
touched, or tasted, then it exists.
a. His idea is called eliminative materialism
Figure 10. Paul Churchland by
https://bit.ly/31ZfJWd or the claim that people’s common sense
understanding of the mind is false, and that certain classes of mental
states which most people believe in do not exist.

XI. Maurice Merleau-Ponty

He emphasizes that the body is the primary site
of knowing the world. His idea of the “self” is an
embodied subjectivity- a verb that means to
give a body. Subjectivity, is the state of being a
subject- an entity that possesses conscious
experiences such as perspectives, feelings,
beliefs, and desires. A subject acts upon or
affects some other entity, called the object. A Figure 11. Mareleu-Ponty, 2012
(https://bit.ly/2EhDOPy),
subject therefore, is something that exists, can Wikimedia Commons

take action, and can cause real effects (object).

a. The body and mind are so intertwined that they cannot be separated
from one another.
b. He dismissed the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much
devastation in the history of man. To him, the Cartesian problem is
nothing else but plain misunderstanding. The living body, his
thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.