Understanding

the Self
Module 1
The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives
Ronald Ralph B. Escobal

Lesson Outcomes:

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. Discuss the different philosophical standpoints about the self;

2. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different philosophical
standpoints;
3. Analyze the relevance of various philosophical standpoints to your sense of self.
Understanding the Self Module 1 - Philosophical Perspectives of the Self

Philosophy has always sought to answer life’s difficult questions and pursued answers to
these no matter how seemingly futile the quest may be. Philosophy is often called the
mother of all disciplines mainly because all fields of study began as philosophical
discourses. Ancient philosophers attempted to explain natural and social phenomena,
coming up with their own definitions of how the world works and what factors contribute
to such phenomena. Thus, it was inevitable to come up with various conceptions of what it
means to be human, and in doing so, the different definitions of the self.

Different philosophers introduced specific characteristics and meanings of the self,

which, over time, transformed from pure abstractions to explanations that hold scientific
proofs. The philosophical quest is aimed at unraveling the nature of the self by looking, not
just on the everyday goals of a human person, but to determine what ultimately is its
nature, its goals, and its essence.

Socrates (469-399 BCE) Know Thyself

Fun fact: Socrates never wrote a book and most of the things we know about him came from
Xenophon and his prized student – Plato. This is also the reason why it is sometimes difficult to
differentiate Socrates’ idea from Plato’s.

Socrates is principally concerned with man. He directed philosophy’s attention from the
universe to an examination of our existence in the universe. The question of who man is,
was held in such high esteem by Socrates that he also said, “An unexamined life is not
worth living.” Here, there is an urgent call to examine one’s life, for it is in the examination
that we can know ourselves.

For him, there was soul (psyche) first before man’s body. Man’s existence was first in the
realm of ideas and exists as a soul or pure mind. This soul has knowledge by direct intuition
and all these are stored in his mind. However, once he came to the material world or the
world of senses, he forgot most of what he knew. This resulted in lack of knowledge or
ignorance which causes problems to man. But, knowledge can be restored through the
process of dialectic method – a sort of intellectual midwifery trying to painfully coax
knowledge out of man. This process, which is also known as Socratic method is an exchange
of question and answer that ultimately aims to make the person remember all the
knowledge that he has forgotten, including his former omniscient self.
Plato (427-347 BCE) The Ideal Self, the Perfect Self

“If we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and
contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself.”

An important part of his philosophy is the dichotomy of the Ideal world or the world of
Forms, and the Material world. The world of Forms is the permanent, unchanging reality as
opposed to the world of Materials which keeps on changing. The Material world is what we
see around us, and for Plato, it is just a replica of the real world found in the world of
Forms.

This dichotomy is reflected in his idea of the nature of man. He believed that human
beings are composed of two things, a body and a soul. It is the soul which is the true self –
the permanent, unchanging Self. The changing body, however, or the one we see in the
material world, is not the real self but only a replica of our true self. The soul exists before
birth and leaves room for the possibility that it might survive bodily death. The body is
seen as some sort of a prison. We can free ourselves from imprisonment of our bodily
senses through contemplation. Contemplation entails communion of the mind with
universal and eternal ideas. We continue to exist even in the absence of our bodies because
we are Souls only.

Augustine (354-430 AD) Love and Justice as the Foundation of the Individual Self

“But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in
myself and His other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and
error.”

Taking his cue from the two worlds of Plato, he now differentiated what is the real world
and the temporary world. According to him, our world (world of materials) is not our final
home but just a temporary home where we are just passing through. Our real world is
found in the world where God is. Only God is fully real – as the unchanging, permanent
being and he sees God as the ultimate expression of love.

Out of love, God created man. Man is in fact, created in the image of God. He has an
immortal soul whose main pursuit is to have an everlasting life with God. In this world,
man pursues happiness, but this can only be achieved in God alone.

St. Augustine believes that a virtuous life is a dynamism of love. It is a constant following
of and turning towards love while wicked life is a constant turning away from love. Loving
God means loving one’s fellowmen; and loving one’s fellowmen denotes never doing any
harm to another or, as the golden principle of justice states, doing unto others as you would
have them do unto you.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) I think, therefore I am.

Fact: Rene Descartes was hired to tutor Queen Christina of Sweden but soon after, he died of
pneumonia because his health couldn’t take the 5am start of lesson required by the queen.

Descartes believed that the self is a thinking entity distinct from the body. His first
famous principle was “Cogito, ergo sum,” which means “I think, therefore I am,” emphasizes
the consciousness of his mind which leads to an evidence of his existence – despite the fact
that he is doubting the existence of everything physical, including his own body.

The mind and the body are separate and very distinct from one another but he also
believes that the mind is conjoined with the body in such an intimate way that they casually
act upon each other. The body can be described in a precise, structured manner (like a
mathematical formula) but the mind is not contained like that, and it’s allowed to pursue its
own thoughts.

The essence of the Self is in its being a thinking being – the self being the Mind more than
the Body, then that is why – the human soul requires a science of its own, very much unlike
that of mathematical science. When the body is gone, the mind may continue to exist and
function.

John Locke (1632-1704) Personal Identity

“What worries you, masters you.”

Fact: He is known as the “Father of Classical Liberalism” because of his contribution to the formation
of human rights.

John Locke holds that personal identity (the self) is a matter of psychological continuity.
For him, personal identity is founded on consciousness (memory), and not on the
substance of either the soul or the body.

He subscribes to the memory theory that holds we are the same person as we were in
the past for as long as we can remember something from that past. The memory renders us
self-conscious that we are that one and the same person. Personal identity is explained in
terms of psychological connection between life stages. The idea is as long as I have
overlapping memories, then I am the same person. That memory makes me aware of my
existence.

David Hume (1711-1776) The Self is the Bundle Theory of Mind

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any
other office than to serve and obey them.”

He is an empiricist and regarded the senses as our key source of knowledge. Hume is
skeptical about the existence of the self, specifically, on whether there is a simple, unified
self that exists over time. For him, man has no “clear and intelligible” idea of the self. He
posits that no single impression of the self exists; rather, the self is just the thing to which
all perceptions of a man is ascribed.

He does believe in the existence of the mind and what’s inside the mind is divided into
two: impressions and ideas. Impressions are those things we perceive through our senses
as we experience them. On the other hand, ideas are those things that we create in our
minds even though we are no longer experiencing them.

In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume argues that when he looks into his mind, he
finds a stream of impressions and ideas, but no impressions corresponding to a self that
endures through time. The self keeps on changing, like how one looks, one feels, one thinks
– they constantly change. He concludes that the self is nothing over and above the stream of
perceptions we enjoy. An “enduring self” is just a fiction produced by our imagination.
There is no permanent and unchanging self. A person is a bundle of perception. We cannot
observe a permanent self because we continuously undergo change. In conclusion, there is
no self.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Respect for Self

“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and
ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

For his idea of the self, Kant believes that man is a free agent, capable of making a
decision for himself. His philosophy centers and revolves around the inherent dignity of
human being. As a free agent, man is gifted with reason and free will.

Every man is thus an end in himself and should never be treated merely as a means – as
per order of the Creator and the natural order of things. This rule is plain dictum of reason
and justice. Respect others as you would respect yourself. A person should not be used as a
tool, instrument, or device to accomplish another’s private ends. Thus, all men are persons
gifted with the same basic rights and should treat each other as equals.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) The Psychoanalytic Theory of Self

“The ego is not master in its own house.”

Fact: It is claimed that one of the proofs for the unconscious is what we call ‘slip of the tongue’. This
happens when instead of saying Shaun, you blurted out Steve. This means that subconsciously, you
are thinking of Steve.

Freud asserts that the human psyche (personality) is structured into three parts
(tripartite). These structures – the id, ego, and superego – all develop at different stages in
a person’s life.

These three structures are systems and not physical parts of the brain. Although each
part comprises unique features and contributes to an individual’s behavior, they interact to
form a whole.

The Id represents man’s biological nature, the impulses and the bodily desires. The
Superego represents the ethical component of the personality and provides the moral
standards by which the ego operates. In a man’s stages of development, the id and the
superego will find themselves clashing against each other, with the superego trying to
control the impulses of Id and the Id trying to satisfy its urges.

Th winner of this inner battle will be manifested in the Ego, which is the self. If ego
behaves, then superego won. If ego misbehaves, then Id won. This battle is all taking place
in the subconscious. The realm of the ego is found in the conscious.

Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) “Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies.”

In the earlier discussion, one of the main debates regarding man was whether there is a
dualism of mind-body, or is he only mind, body, memory? According to Ryle, the problem
was the categories that we put those concepts in. The mind is not like a specific, separate
entity but certainly a part of our body. Ideally, the separation of mind/soul and body could
be possible, but in practice – this is hardly the case. The only way by which we can know
the mind is working is through the behavior of the person, hence we can only know a
person through how a man behaves, their tendencies and reactions in certain
circumstances.

Paul Churchland (b.1942) “We do have an organ for understanding and recognizing
moral facts. It is called the brain.”

Known for his Eliminative Materialism, Churchland believes that the self is the brain.
With the advent of science and learning more about the nuances of the brain, it becomes
clear to Churchland that the term “mind”, our moods, emotions, actions, consciousness are
deeply affected by the state of our brain. That by manipulating certain parts of our brain,
our feelings, actions, and physical state are successfully altered. It is only a matter of time
before we can fully comprehend how the brain works for us to understand how it creates
the Self. He proposes that a new conceptual framework should be made which is based on
neuroscience.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) “We know not through our intellect but through
our experience.”

For him, a person is defined by virtue of movement and expression. To be a self is to be

more than one’s body. It includes all the things that I will do with my body, how I will act on
it and how I will make it act in consonance with other human beings. I am the sum of all
that I make my body do. This includes the interpretation of the past and how I actually
make decisions in the present. The self is grounded on the experiences from the past, the
possibilities for the future and the present cognition. He approaches the idea of self as a
continuous flow of movement and expression from infancy to adulthood.

The self is a product of our conscious human experience. The definition of self is all
about one’s perception of one’s experience and the interpretation of those experiences.

References

Arcega, A., Brawner, D. (2018). Understanding the Self. Quezon City: C & E Publishing

Castillo, J. C., Junghan-Pinugu, J., Macayan, J. (2019). Understanding the Self: Outcome-based Module. Quezon
City: C & E Publishing.

Descartin, I. K., Palean, E., Nazario, M., Valero, J. (2018). Introspection: Understanding the Self. Mandaluyong
City: Books Atbp. Publishing Corp.
 ASSESSMENT

I. Read the different statement below and answer the succeeding questions. In answering,
take note of the three discerning points between empiricism and rationalism. (At least 200
words, maximum of 250 words per item)

Rationalism Empiricism
The primary and most superior source of The only source of genuine knowledge
knowledge about reality is reason. about the world is sense experience.
Sense experience is an unreliable and Reason is an unreliable and inadequate
inadequate route to knowledge. route to knowledge unless it is grounded in
the solid bedrock of sense experience.
The fundamental truths about the world can There is no such thing as innate knowledge
be known a priori: either innate or self- because knowledge is derived from
evident to our minds. experience. The mind before experience is a
tabula rasa, a blank slate.

1. When you are studying or reviewing lessons, are you more likely to take the
rationalist viewpoint or empiricist viewpoint? Why?
2. How do you apply empiricism and/or rationalism in studying your lessons? Be
specific and concrete. Try to remember your habits and how you make sense of the
lessons.
3. Is it possible to make use of both philosophical approaches simultaneously? Why or
why not? Provide an analogy.

II. Based on your answers in the previous questions, you should be able to come up with
one philosophical statement of your sense of self. Write your philosophical view of the self
based on your philosophical statement. (At least 250 words, maximum of 300 words)

What is my philosophy of the self?

_Thank you, and God bless you_