MODULE 2.

A: The Self from Philosophical Perspective

I. Introduction/Module Overview
Philosophy ignites the inquisitive mind to discover the ultimate causes, reasons, and
principles of the things around us. It also goes beyond the scientific investigation by exploring all
areas of knowledge like politics, religion, psychology, physics and many more. The word
philosophy means “love of wisdom” which refers to the desire for truth by incorporating never
ending inquiries to provide answers to the questions about the nature of human existence.
Ancient philosophers attempted to explain social and natural phenomena coming up with their
own definitions of how the world works and which factors contribute to such phenomena. Thus,
it was inevitable to come up with various conceptions of what it means to be human. The nature
about the self is one of the most interesting topics among the philosophers.
This module presents the philosophical perspective of the self to help students identify
one’s own self to attain self-knowledge. It further provides different views of the philosophers
about the nature of self.
II. Desired Learning Outcome
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
a. discuss the different representations and conceptualizations of the self from various
disciplinal perspectives;
b. synthesize the different concepts of the self from the philosophical perspective; and
c. demonstrate critical and reflective thought and analyzing the development of one’s self
and identity by developing a theory of the self.

III. Learning Contents and Tasks

Before proceeding to the different views of the philosophers regarding the self it is fitting
to define first what is philosophy. The composite roots of Philosophy, philein and sophia,
literally mean “love (or pursuit) of wisdom.” Overtime, the viewpoint of philosophy has evolved
to mean different things. In short, philosophy can be viewed as wonder, a dynamic process, truth,
and wisdom.
There are many definitions of philosophy. The two that apply to the scope of this
question are: “The love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline,”
or, “investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on
logical reasoning rather than empirical methods” (thefreedictionary.com).
 The Western philosophers particularly the Ancient Greek philosophers did not only focus
their understanding on concepts. They also spent their time struggling on how to understand the
‘self’. Needless to say but it all started with these three great philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle.
Ancient Period
In ancient Greek philosophy there could be no specific and systematic articulation on the
concept of the self. Rather, we find these two prominent questions “what is the fundamental truth
about human nature?” or “What defines the fundamental identity of an individual?” These
questions, give us an idea of how the ancient Greek philosophers understood the “self”, thay is, a
as human persons capable of reason and action.
There are three prominent concepts that are used during this period in order to explain
and understand the concept of the self. First is the dialectic method of Socrates which can be
understood in relation to his concept of the ‘soul’. Second is the World of Forms and Ideas of
Plato. Lastly, the concept of Substance by Aristotle.
Socrates: Know Thyself
The key for us in order to understand the concept of the self according to Socrates is
understand his concept of the “Soul”.
First it should be cleared out that what Socrates meant in the concept of the soul is not
similar as to how Christianity understand the term or in any way related to a religious
understanding of the term.
According to Frederick Copleston, a famous scholar of philosophy, the understanding of
Socrates’ concept of the soul refers to the “thinking and willing subject”.
In this concept of the soul of Socrates it is then clear as to what he is trying to drive at.
The soul for him is the intellectual and moral responsibility of a person. Therefore, for Socrates
the essence of humans is the capacity to think and the capacity to decide/to will. In this case it is
the soul that which is responsible agent in knowing and also on how a person acts either it is
good or bad.
The soul for Socrates is the person’s true self. This can be related to his famous statement
“know thyself”. This is because when a person turns to oneself Socrates believed that we will
eventually discover our true self. And that is why he urges us to take care of our soul because it
is the essence of the human person and thus it says something about our attitude.
If we are able to take care of our soul according to Socrates we will attain the “Good
Life”. It is for him the cultivation of knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. How do we achieve this? It
is to devote considerable amount of time attention, energy resources in order to make our soul
good and beautiful as possible. This is expressed in one of his famous line, “The unexamined life
is not worth living.” And in order to achieve a good life we must “know thyself”. The reason for
this is obvious since for Socrates virtue is identical with knowledge and thus it makes these two
intrinsic to humans. Since it is intrinsic to humans, human person can discover the truth, he or
she then will do what she/he thinks is right thing to do and thus the famous dictum of Socrates:
“knowing what is right is doing what is right.”
Thus, the true self according to Socrates is one that is lived in accordance with
knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. The true self according to him is the virtuous self.
Plato: The Self is an Immortal Soul
Plato supports the concept of Socrates of the soul. For Plato he conceives the self as the
knower. Henceforth, there is a link between the self and knowledge. This is due to Plato’s
concept of the self that is practically fashioned at the center of his reflections on the nature of the
rational soul which he considered as the highest form of cognition. He agrees that the self is a
dichotomy of body and soul. The former is material and destructible while the other is the
immaterial hence indestructible. However, Plato elaborated that the self is a three-part soul;
reason, appetite, and spirit.
Reason or the rational soul is located in the head that enables the human person to think,
reflect, analyze, and do other cognitive functions. The spiritual soul resides in the chest. This
enables the human person to experience the feeling of being happy, joy, sad, angry, and
emotions. The last one the appetitive soul exist in in the abdomen. This is the soul which allows
the human beings to experience pain, the state of being hungry, and this includes biological
needs
The explanation that can be used in order to explain the role of the rational soul is
illustrated in his work Phaedrus entitled the Allegory of the Chariot. The charioteer’s role is that
of a driver in which he leads his teams towards the realm of the gods, a place where according to
Plato illumination and reality resides together with the truth.
Now according to Plato since the rational soul is the highest among the three it enables to
control the spiritual and appetitive soul.
Aristotle: the human person as a “rational animal”
Aristotle was the most brilliant student of Plato nonetheless he did not inherit his master’s
position due to political reason.
Aristotle’s concept of the self can be summed up as: human person is a “rational animal”.
In simple terms it can be said that what makes the human person is simply his or her being
animal that thinks, one’s rationality comprises the self.
His understanding of the self can be better understood in relation to the concept of the
soul. According to him all living being has souls and thus plants and animals has it. Aristotle
distinguishes three level of souls, namely, vegetative soul, sensitive soul, and rational soul. In the
vegetative soul lies the plants while in the animals and humans are sensitive and rational soul.
According to Aristotle plants has souls known as vegetative soul since it has the three
basic elements for something to be called as a “living being”. These are the capacity to grow,
reproduce, and feed itself. These attributes can also be found in the sensitive souls but unlike the
vegetative soul, sensitive souls have this capability of sensation. In contrast to the two the
rational soul has this capacity of thinking. According to Aristotle it is the highest level of soul
present in the humans. So what then separates humans from plants and animals? It is the capacity
to think, so for him humans are animals that thinks.
What distinguishes Aristotle’s concept of the self in comparison to Plato is his assertion
that the human person is not a soul distinct from the body. Rather, the self or the human person is
a composite of body and soul and that it makes them inseparable from each other. In this
assertion we can say that he was led to interpret the “true self” of humans as the soul that
animates the body. Thus, we cannot talk about the self with a soul only or a self with a body
only. For him, the self is a composite of the body and the soul, it is what makes the human
person a unified creature.
Medieval Period
There are many philosophers in this period foremost of whom are Saint’s Augustine of
Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. It is said that Augustine Christianized Plato while Aquinas he used
the work of Aristotle in order to explain Roman Catholic faith.
Among the distinguishing character of the medieval philosophers especially those
serving the Church is that they use philosophy in order to explain the faith, theology.
St. Augustine: Our heart is restless until it rests in you
Augustine in his famous book the Confessions particularly book II he narrated his
journey towards his understanding of the self. In the journey towards the understanding of the
self this book is very instrumental. He explained there how the self, the entire human person, is
analogously described as the heart, is always restless until it rests in God.
He said that man/humans will always be bound to that connection to God. Humans will
always have that desire in going back to God. As such Augustine said that the things we desire
are merely substitutions or distractions of our true longing for God. Unconsciously, its God we
want and the only one who can satisfy us.
St. Thomas Aquinas: Ourselves in relation to others
Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-knowledge is
dependent on our experience of the world around us. He rejects a view that was popular at the
time, i.e., that the mind is “always on,” never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the
background. Instead, Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is triggered and shaped by our
experiences of objects in our environment. He pictures the mind as a sort of undetermined
mental “putty” that takes shape when it is activated in knowing something. By itself, the mind is
dark and formless; but in the moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees
itself engaged in that act. In other words, when I long for a cup of mid-afternoon coffee, I’m not
just aware of the coffee, but of myself as the one wanting it. So for Aquinas, we don’t encounter
ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as agents interacting with our
environment. That’s why the labels we apply to ourselves—“a gardener,” “a patient person,” or
“a coffee-lover”—are always taken from what we do or feel or think toward other things.

Renaissance Period
The distinguishing mark that separates Renaissance period to that of Medieval period is
the assertion that knowledge is no longer exclusive to Church. There are factors that enabled the
change. It was this time that the printing press was invented, which makes knowledge available
to everyone including the masses. Compared to the other historical periods in Europe, during the
Renaissance, many people can read and write even if they are not priests or royals. This new
status quo ushered many alternative ideas to flourish, aside from those coming from the church’s
authorities.
One of the most distinctive intellectual movements within the Renaissance was
humanism, which was originally called “humanities”, that is, the study of humanity. The main
emphasis of humanism was secular education using Greek and Latin classics, many newly
rediscovered, rather than medieval sources. Scholars during the Middle Ages had also drawn
from classical Greek and Roman sources, but their larger aim was to use these ancient writers to
bolster Christian theology, and they either ignored or criticized classics that were inherently in
conflict with theology. Renaissance thinkers, by contrast, appreciated the full spectrum of
ancient writers in and of themselves, irrespective of their application to theology. There were
five traditional subjects in humanities education, namely, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and
moral philosophy. The most significant impact humanism had on philosophy was the revived
study of ancient Greek philosophical schools, thanks to the publication of new editions and
translations of classical texts. The invention of the printing press during this time made these
books much more available to readers, and the influence of classical philosophy spread like
wildfire. Humanistic philosophers latched onto the earlier schools of Greek philosophy, almost
as though they were pretending that the middle ages never existed. They variously associated
themselves with Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, or Skepticism, interpreting
the classical texts and expanding on them. We will look at four representative humanist thinkers
here.
Our discussion highlights three ingenious philosophers of their time - Francis Bacon,
Rene Descartes, and Thomas Hobbes. There are three concepts you need to remember in this
period: (1) Inductive method, (2) doubt, and (3) selfish human nature.
Rene Descartes: The Self is the Thinking Thing
French philosopher Rene Descartes is the father of modern philosophy and has brought a
new perspective to philosophy and the self. He wants to penetrate the nature of reasoning process
and understand its relationship to the human self. The Latin phrase “Cogito ergo sum” which
means “I think therefore I am”, is the main point of Descartes’ concept of the self. He believes
that the self is a thinking entity distinct from the body, a thing that doubts, understands, affirms,
denies, refuses, imagines and perceives.

John Locke: The Self is Consciousness

According to the English philosopher John Locke, the mind at birth is tabula rasa or a
blank slate. He feels that the self or personal identity is constructed primarily from our
experiences. For him, conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys to
understanding the self. He also believes that the essence of the self is its conscious awareness
and memory of itself and that consciousness accompanies thinking and makes possible the
concept people have of a self.
David Hume: Bundle Theory of the Self
The Scottish philosopher David Hume suggests that what people experience is just a
bundle or collection of different perceptions. He posits that man has no clear and intelligible idea
of self. There no single impression of the self exists. He argues that it cannot be from any of
these impressions that the idea of the self is derived and consequently, there is no self. What one
thinks of unified self is simply a combination of all experiences; a bundle of perceptions like
links in a chain. A person can never observe oneself without some other perceptions; thus, self is
just a bundle or collection of different perceptions.
Paul Churchland: The Self is the Brain
The Canadian Philosopher Paul Churchland advocates the idea of eliminative materialism
or the idea that the self is inseparable from the brain and the physiology of the body. Each of us
has a brain, and so if the brain is gone, there is no self. For him, the physical brain and not the
imaginary mind gives the people the sense of self. The mind does not really exist because it
cannot be experienced by the senses.

Eastern/Oriental Thoughts on the Self

The philosophers we discussed so far all came from the European tradition. Now, you
will learn ideas about the Self closer to home, in Asia. This sub lesson focuses on the alternative
schools of thought in Eastern antiquity, notably Siddhartha Gautama Buddha and Confucius’s
teachings. There are three concepts to remember about Oriental Philosophers: (1) nirvana or
enlightenment, (2) middle way, and (3) virtues.
More than a religious founder, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, started a philosophy on dealing
with suffering in the world. Leaving his luxurious life in an Indian palace behind, he sought inner
peace through meditation until he reached the point of nirvana, the highest form of
enlightenment. (Burns, 2004)
Becoming the “awakened one” or a “Buddha” is the ultimate goal for Buddhists. How do we
achieve it? The answer is simple but very difficult to do – abandon luxury in life. However, this
does not mean that you need to reject everything in the world. You need to leave some for
yourself, at least having enough food to eat, live, and meditate. Giving up riches in life and
moderating your needs is what Buddhist calls the middle way.
Buddha explained about the path toward enlightenment by teaching Four Noble Truths in the
World. First, “There is constant suffering in the world.” Second, “There is a cause for this
suffering.” Third, “We can end our suffering.” Lastly, “We can end our suffering by following
the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’” shown in the infographic below (Chatterjee & Datta, 1948; Edelglass
& Garfield, 2009; Laumakis, 2008):
The concept of self in Eastern philosophy
In Eastern philosophy, the most well-known conceptions of the self are represented by the views
of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism (Ho, 1995; Mosig, 2006).
Confucianism. The concept of self, according to Confucianism, is related to the social aspect of
human existence. The self is conceived as a “relational self” – “one which is intensely aware of
the social presence of other human beings” (Ho, 1995: 117). In this way, the individual self is
dependent on all other selves. The self is thus an obedient self, which follows the appeals of
social requirements, rather than its own needs and desires. The ideal self, according to this
doctrine, can be achieved through a harmonization of one’s everyday communication with other
individuals in society at large (Ho, 1995: 118).
Taoism. Taoism accentuates the falsehood of language, way before the philosophy of linguistic
analysis and the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida. The so-called “Tao”, the essence of life and
the universe, or the Way, cannot be described by human language. That is why paradoxes,
contradictions, anecdotes, metaphors and aphorisms are used. Tao is ineffable. According to the
doctrine of Taoism, “the self is but one of the countless manifestations of the Tao. It is an
extension of the cosmos” (Ho, 1995: 120). Taoism, in its idiosyncratic style of exposition,
describes the self in the following way: “The perfect man has no self; the spiritual man has no
achievement; the true sage has no name” (Ibid.). The ideal of Taoism, therefore, is the
achievement of a lack of self or “selflessness”.
Buddhism. Buddha advised that one should abstain from dealing with metaphysics, because this
activity is futile (Radhakrishnan, 1996: 236-261). Nonetheless, Buddhism argues that the self as
such does not exist, that it is an illusion – “The self does not exist apart from the states of
consciousness […] [It] represents incessant series of transient psychological states – this is
everything, which we subsume under the term ‘self’” (Radhakrishnan, 1996: 219-220; accent in
the original; cf. Hume, 1738/2003: 179-188; see Giles, 1993); there is no god, nor matter, neither
is there a phenomenal world. Thus, the doctrine of “no-self” or “no-soul” emerged (Ho, 1995:
121; see Giles, 1993). No-self is achieved through a self-negation in the state of nirvana, which
is a “state of absolute, eternal quiescence-a transcendent state of supreme equanimity beyond the
comprehension of ordinary people unawaken from the illusion of selfhood” (Ho, 1995: 121). The

schools of Mahayana define this state not as nirvana, but rather as “emptiness” (Ho, 1995: 122).
Nirvana, in turn, is a very close state to what is called mystical experience (Dimkov, 2015, 2017,
2019c). Mystical experience is defined as follows (Gellman, 2014, italics P.R.D.; Dimkov, 2017:
315-316):
Hinduism. Hinduism explains the self through a monistic philosophy (metaphysics). Like
Buddhism, Hinduism views the essence of human life as consisting in suffering and asserts that
this is caused by having a fallacious conception of the self: “The true self is permanent and
unchanging, the non-true self is impermanent and changes continually” (Ho, 1995: 124).
Hinduism in the face of Vedanta postulates an essence, which stands after the so-called
transcendental unity of consciousness (Kant) or the “Self-as-Knower”, namely the non-
changeable “Self-as-Witness” (Ho, 1995: 124). This kind of self is the true self, which cannot be
described, but can be experienced (cf. the conception of the “Observing Self” of Deikman
(Deikman, 1982)). The Upanishads discuss a zone of non-thought, in which the Self-as-Knower
and the Self-as-Witness unite and enter into a trans-cognitive state, in which there is no place for
any cognition (Ho, 1995: 125). This state is described also by other authors as e. g. a substantial
matrix of consciousness (Dimkov), a mold of man (Castaneda), a trans-subjective self (Stace)
and a field of consciousness (Formann) (Dimkov, 2015: 110-111; 2017: 317; 2019c: 71).
VI. References
https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/.
https://philonotes.com/index.php/2020/09/04/kants-concept-of-the-self/.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge/supplement.html.
https://philonotes.com/index.php/2020/09/04/socrates-concept-of-the-self/.
Ho, D. Y. F. (1995). Selfhood and identity in Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism:
Contrasts with the West. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 25(2), 115-134.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1995.tb00269.x.
Mosig, Y. D. (2006). Conceptions of the Self in Western and Eastern psychology. Journal of
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 26(1-2), 39-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0091266.
Deikman, A. (1982). The observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy. Boston: Beacon Press.
Dimkov, P. (2019a). Bipolar affective disorder with respect to the theories of the constitution of
selfhood via narratives. In Annual collection of papers of the Department of Philosophical and
Political Sciences (pp. 115-133). Faculty of Philosophy, South-West University “Neofit Rilski”.