GEC 1

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

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 Unit I: THE SELF FROM THE VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

Module 1
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF

Introduction

The history of philosophy particularly the western philosophy is replete with

men and women who inquired into the fundamental nature of self. A with the
question of the primary substratum that defines the multiplicity of things in the
world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of
western philosophy: the Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who started to seriously
question myths and then moved away from them in attempting to understand reality
and responded to the perennial questions of curiosity, including the question of the
self.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

1. explain why it is essential to understand the self;
2. describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points-of-view
of the various philosophers across time and place;
3. compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different
philosophical schools; and
4. examine one’s self against the different views of self that were discussed in
class.

Learning Content

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Socrates and Plato

Prior to Socrates, Greek thinkers, sometimes the collectively called the Pre-
Socratics to denote that some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around
Socrates’s time as well, preoccupied themselves with the question of the primary
substratum, arché that explains the multiplicity of things in the world. These men
like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to name a few,
were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is
so, and what explains the changes that they observed around them. Tired of simply
conceding to mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians like Homer and
Hesiod, these men endeavored to finally locate an explanation about the nature of
change, the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity of the world amidst
its diversity.

After a series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were
disturbed by the same issue, a man came out to question something else. This man

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was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics, Socrates was more concerned with another
subject, the problem of the self. He was first the philosopher who ever engaged in a
systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has become his life-long
mission, the true task of a philosopher is to know oneself.

Plato claimed in his dialogues that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life
is not worth living. During his trial for allegedly corrupting the minds of the youth
and for impiety, Socrates declared without regret that his being indicted was brought
about by his going around Athens engaging men, youth and old, to question their
presuppositions about themselves and about the world, particularly about who they
are (Plato 2012). Socrates took it upon himself to serve as a “gadfly” that disturbed
Athenian men from their slumber and shook them off in order to reach the truth and
wisdom. Most men, in his reckoning, were really not fully aware of who they are and
the virtues that they were supposed to attain in order to preserve their souls for the
afterlife. Socrates thought that this is the worst that can happen to anyone: to live but
die inside.
For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every
human person is dualistic, that is, he is composed of two aspect of his personhood.
For Socrates, this means all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to
him, and the body while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent.
Plato, Socrates’ student, basically took off from his master and supported the
idea that man has a dual nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier
espoused, Plato added that there are three components of the soul: the rational soul,
the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum opus, “The Republic” (Plato
2000), Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be attained if the
three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul
forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person, the
spirited part which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay, and the appetitive
soul in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex are
controlled as well. When his ideal state is attained, then the human person’s soul
becomes just and virtuous.

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

St. Augustine of Hippoand St. Thomas Aquinas

Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval
world when it comes man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with
the doctrine of Christianity, St. Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature.
An aspect of man dwells in the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be
with the Divine and the other is capable of reaching immortality.
The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally
in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God. This is because the body can
only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is the world, whereas the soul can
also stay after death in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent God. The goal of
every human person is to attain this communion and bliss with the Divine by living
his life on earth in virtue.
Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent thirtieth century scholar and stalwart of
the medieval philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. Adapting some
ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas said that indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter

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and form. Matter or hyle in Greek, refers to the common stuff that makes up
everything in the universe. Man’s body is part of this matter. Form on the other
hand, or morphe in Greek refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what
makes it what it is. In the case of the human person, the body of the human person is
something that he shares even with animals. The cells in man’s body are more or less
akin to the cells of any other living, organic being in the world. However, what makes
a human person and not a dog, or a tiger is his soul, his essence. To Aquinas, just as
in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body; it is what makes us humans.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY

RENE DESCARTES
Rene Descartes, Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived of the human person
as having a body and a mind. In his famous treatise, The Meditations of the First
Philosophy, he claims that there is so much of what we should doubt. In fact, he says
that since much of what we think and believe are not infallible, they may turn out to
be false. One should only believe that since which can pass the test of doubt
(Descartes 2008). If something is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then
that is the only time when one should actually buy a proposition. In the end,
Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the
self, for even if one doubts oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self, a
thing that thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus, his famous, cogito
ergo sum, “I think therefore, I am.” The fact that one thinks should lead one to
conclude without a trace of doubt that he exists. The self then for Decartes is also a
combination of two distinct entities, the cogito, the thing that thinks, which is the
mind, and the extenza or the extension of the mind, which is the body. In Descartes’s
view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind. The human
person has it but it is not what makes man a man. If at all, that is the mind. Descartes
says, “But what then, am I?” A thinking thing. It has been said. But what is a
thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms, denies,
wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives” (Descartes 2008).

DAVID HUME
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, has a very unique way of looking a man.
As an empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from the senses
and experiences, Hume argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors
thought if it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body. One can
rightly see here the empiricism that runs through his veins. Empiricism is the school
of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed
and experienced. Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing. For example, Jack
knows that Jill is another human person not because he has seen her soul. He knows
she is just like him because he sees her, hears her, and touches her.
To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. What are
impressions? For David Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that
they can all be categorized into two: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic
objects of our experience or sensation. They therefore form the core of our thoughts.
When one touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an impression. Impressions
therefore are vivid because they are products of our direct experience with the world.
Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are not as

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lively and vivid as our impressions. When one imagines the feeling of being in love
for the first time, that still is an idea.
What is the self then? Self, according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or
collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” (Hume and Steinberg 1992).
Men simply want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, a soul or mind just
like what the previous philosophers thought. In reality, what one thinks is a unified
self is simply a combination of all experience with particular person.

IMMANUEL KANT
Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination of impressions was problematic
for Immanuel Kant. Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume’s account that everything
starts with perception and sensation of impressions. However Kant thinks 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. To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that
men get from the external world. Time and space, for example, are ideas that one
cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds. Kant calls these the apparatuses of
the mind.
Along with the different apparatuses of the mind goes the “self.” Without the
self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his
own existence. Kant therefore suggests that it is an actively engaged intelligence in
man that synthesizes all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self is not just what
gives one his personality. In addition, it is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for
all human persons.

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY

GILBERT RYLE
Gilbert Ryle solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long
time in the history of thought by blatantly denying the concept of an internal, non-
physical self. For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in
his day-to-day life.
For Ryle, looking for and trying to understand a self as it really exists is like
visiting your friend’s university and looking for the “university.” One can roam
around the campus, visit the library and the football field, and meet the
administrators and faculty and still end up not finding the “university.” This is
because the campus, the people, the systems, and the territory all form the
university. Ryle suggests that the “self” is not an entity one can locate and analyze but
simply the convenient name that people use to refer to all the behaviors that people
make.

MAURICE JEAN JACQUES MERLEAU-PONTY

Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty is a phenomenologist who asserts that
the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long time is a futile endeavor
and an invalid problem. Unlike Ryle who simply denies the “self,” Merleau-Ponty

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instead says that the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated
from one another. One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied
experience. All experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening toward his
existence to the world. Because of these bodies, men are in the world. Merleau-Ponty
dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much devastation in the history
of man. For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain misunderstanding.
The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.