Lesson 2: The Self According to Philosophy

Philosophy is defined as the study of knowledge or wisdom from its Latin roots,
philo (love) and sophia (wisdom). This field is also considered as “The Queen of All
Sciences” because every scientific discipline has philosophical foundations.

Various thinkers for centuries tried to explain the natural causes of everything that exist
specifically the inquiry on the self preoccupied these philosophers in the history. The Greek philosophers
were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand
reality by exercising the art of questioning that satisfies their curiosity, including the questions about self.
The following lecture will present the different philosophical perspectives and views about self.

Socrates

▪ A philosopher from Athens, Greece and said to have the greatest influence on European thought.
▪ According to the history he was not able to write any of his teachings and life’s account instead, he
is known from the writings of his student Plato who became one of the greatest philosophers of his
time. Socrates had a unique style of asking questions called Socratic Method.
▪ Socratic Method or dialectic method involves the search for the correct/proper definition of a thing.
In this method, Socrates did not lecture, he instead would ask questions and engage the person in a
discussion. He would begin by acting as if he did not know anything and would get the other person
to clarify their ideas and resolve logical inconsistencies (Price, 2000).
▪ The foundation of Socrates philosophy was the Delphic Oracle’s that command to “Know Thyself”.
Here, Socrates would like to emphasize that knowing or understanding oneself should be more than
the physical self, or the body.
▪ According to Socrates, self is dichotomous which means composed of two things: The physical
realm or the one that is changeable, temporal, and imperfect. The best example of the physical
realm is the physical world. The physical world is consisting of anything we sense – see, smell,
feel, hear, and taste. It is always changing and deteriorating. The ideal realm is the one that is
imperfect and unchanging, eternal, and immortal. This includes the intellectual essences of the

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 universe like the concept of beauty, truth, and goodness. Moreover, the ideal realm is also present
in the physical world. One may define someone as beautiful or truthful, but their definition is
limited and imperfect for it is always relative and subjective. It is only the ideal forms themselves
that are perfect, unchanging, and eternal.
▪ For Socrates, a human is composed of body and soul, the first belongs to the physical realm because
it changed, it is imperfect, and it dies, and the latter belongs to ideal realm for it survives the death.
Socrates also used the term soul to identify self.
▪ The self, according to Socrates is the immortal and unified entity that is consistent over time. For
example, a human being remains the same person during their childhood to adulthood given the
fact that they undergone developmental changes throughout their lifespan.

Plato

▪ A student of Socrates, who introduced the idea of a threepart soul/self that is composed of reason,
physical appetite and spirit or passion.
o The Reason enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and achieve a true
understanding of eternal truths. Plato also called this as divine essence.
o The physical Appetite is the basic biological needs of human being such as hunger, thirst,
and sexual desire.
o And the spirit or passion is the basic emotions of human being such as love, anger,
ambition, aggressiveness and empathy.
▪ These three elements of the self works in every individual inconsistently. According to Plato, it is
always the responsibility of the reason to organize, control, and reestablish harmonious relationship
between these three elements.
▪ Plato also illustrated his view of the soul/self in “Phaedrus” in his metaphor: the soul is like a
winged chariot drawn by two powerful horses: a white horse, representing Spirit, and a black horse,
embodying appetite. The charioteer is reason, whose task is to guide the chariot to the eternal realm
by controlling the two independent-minded horses. Those charioteers who are successful in setting
a true course and ensuring that the two steeds work together in harmonious unity achieve true
wisdom and banquet with the gods. However, those charioteers who are unable to control their
horses and keep their chariot on track are destined to experience personal, intellectual, and spiritual
failure.

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St. Augustine

▪ He is considered as the last of the great ancient philosophers whose ideas were greatly Platonic. In
melding philosophy and religious beliefs together, Augustine has been characterized as
Christianity’s first theologian.
▪ Like Plato, Augustine believed that the physical body is different from the immortal soul. Early in
his philosophical development he described body as “snare” or “cage” of the soul and said that the
body is a “slave” of the soul he even characterized that “the soul makes war with the body”. Later
on he came to view the body as “spouse” of the soul, with both attached to one another by a “natural
appetite.” He concluded, “That the body is united with the soul, so that man may be entire and
complete, is a fact we recognize on the evidence of our own nature.”
▪ According to St. Augustine, the human nature is composed of two realms:
1. God as the source of all reality and truth. Through mystical experience, man is capable of
knowing eternal truths. This is made possible through the existence of the one eternal truth
which is God. He further added that without God as the source of all truth, man could never
understand eternal truth. This relationship with God means that those who know most about
God will come closest to understanding the true nature of the world.
2. The sinfulness of man. The cause of sin or evil is an act of mans’ freewill. Moral goodness can
only be achieved through the grace of God.
▪ He also stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love and he created humans
for them to also love. Problems arise because of the objects humans choose to love. Disordered
love results when man loves the wrong things which he believes will give him happiness.
Furthermore, he said that if man loves God first and everything else to a lesser degree, then all will
fall into its rightful place.

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Rene Descartes

▪ A French philosopher, mathematician, and considered the founder of modern philosophy.

▪ Descartes, famous principle the “cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I exist” established his
philosophical views on “true knowledge” and concept of self.
▪ He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one must doubt everything even own existence.
Doubting makes someone aware that they are thinking being thus, they exist. The essence of
existing as a human identity is the possibility of being aware of our selves: being self-conscious in
this way is integral to having a personal identity. Conversely, it would be impossible to be self-
conscious if we did not have a personal identity of which to be conscious. In other words, the
essence of self is being a thinking thing.
▪ The self is a dynamic entity that engages in metal operations – thinking, reasoning, and perceiving
processes. In addition to this, self-identity is dependent on the awareness in engaging with those
mental operations.
▪ He declared that the essential self or the self as the thinking entity is radically different from the
physical body. The thinking self or soul is a non-material, immortal, conscious being, independent
of the physical laws of the universe while the physical body is a material, mortal, non-thinking
entity, fully governed by the physical laws of nature.
▪ He also maintained that the soul and the body are independent of one another and each can exist
and function without the other. In cases in which people are sleeping or comatose, their bodies
continue to function even though their minds are not thinking, much like the mechanisms of a clock.
▪ He identified the physical self as part of nature, governed by the physical laws of the universe, and
available to scientific analysis and experimentation, and the conscious self (mind, soul) is a part of
the spiritual realm, independent of the physical laws of the universe, governed only by the laws of
reason and God’s will. And because it exists outside of the natural world of cause-and-effect, the
conscious self is able to exercise free will in the choices it makes.

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John Locke

▪ An English philosopher and physician and famous in his concept of “Tabula Rasa” or Blank Slate
that assumes the nurture side of human development.
▪ The self, according to Locke is consciousness. In his essay entitled On Personal Identity (from his
most famous work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding) he discussed the reflective analysis
of how an individual may experience the self in everyday living. He provided the following key
points:
1. To discover the nature of personal identity, it is important to find out what it means to be a
person.
2. A person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the abilities to reason and to reflect.
3. A person is also someone who considers themself to be the same thing in different times and
different places.
4. Consciousness as being aware that we are thinking—always accompanies thinking and is an
essential part of the thinking process.
5. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are the same identity in different times and
different places.
▪ Although Locke and Descartes believed that a person or the self is a thinking intelligent being who
has the abilities to reflect and to reason, Locke was not convinced with the assumptions of Plato,
St. Augustine and Descartes that the individual self necessarily exists in a single soul or substance.
For Locke, personal identity and the soul or substance in which the personal identity is situated are
two very different things. The bottom line of his theory on self is that self is not tied to any particular
body or substance. It only exists in other times and places because of the memory of those
experiences.

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David Hume

▪ He was a Scottish philosopher and also an empiricist.

▪ His claim about self is quite controversial because he assumed that there is no self! In his essay
entitled, “On Personal Identity” (1739) he said that, if we carefully examine the contents of [our]
experience, we find that there are only two distinct entities, "impressions" and "ideas".
▪ Impressions are the basic sensations of our experience, the elemental data of our minds: pain,
pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on.
▪ On the other hand, ideas are copies of impressions that include thoughts and images that are built
up from our primary impressions through a variety of relationships, but because they are derivative
copies of impressions, they are once removed from reality. Image Source:
https://www.britannica.com/
▪ Hume considered that the self does not exist because all of the experiences that a person may have
are just perceptions and this includes the perception of self. None of these perceptions resemble a
unified and permanent self-identity that exists over time.
▪ He further added that there are instances that an individual is limited in experiencing their
perception like in sleeping. Similarly, when someone died all empirical senses end and according
to him, it makes no sense to believe that self exists in other forms. As an empiricist, Hume provide
an honest description and analysis of his own experience, within which there is no self to be found.
▪ Hume explained that the self that is being experienced by an individual is nothing but a kind of
fictional self. Human created an imaginary creature which is not real. “Fictional self” is created to
unify the mental events and introduce order into an individual lives, but this “self” has no real
existence.

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Sigmund Freud

▪ A well-known Australian psychologist and considered as the Father and Founder of

Psychoanalysis. His influence in Psychology and therapy is dominant and popular in the 20th to
21st century.
▪ The dualistic view of self by Freud involves the conscious self and unconscious self.
▪ The conscious self is governed by reality principle. Here, the self is rational, practical, and
appropriate to the social environment. The conscious self has the task of controlling the constant
pressures of the unconscious self, as its primitive impulses continually seek for immediate
discharge.
▪ The unconscious self is governed by pleasure principle. It
is the self that is aggressive, destructive, unrealistic and
instinctual. Both of Freud’s self needs immediate gratification
and reduction of tensions to optimal levels and the goal of
every individual is to make unconscious conscious.
▪ Freud proposed how mind works, he called this as
provinces or structures of the mind. By illustrating the tip of
the iceberg which according to him represents conscious
awareness which characterizes the person in dealing with the
external world. The observable behavior, however, is further
controlled by the workings of the subconscious/unconscious
mind.
▪ Subconscious serves as the repository of past experiences,
repressed memories, fantasies, and urges. The three levels of
the mind are:

1. Id. This is primarily based on the pleasure principle. It demands immediate satisfaction and is
not hindered by societal expectations.
2. Ego. The structure that is primarily based on the reality principle. This mediates between the
impulses of the id and restraints of the superego.
3. Superego. This is primarily dependent on learning the difference between right and wrong, thus
it is called moral principle. Morality of actions is largely dependent on childhood upbringing
particularly on rewards and punishments.

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 ▪ According to Freud, there are two kinds of instinct that drive individual behavior – the eros or the
life instinct and the thanatos of the death instinct. The energy of eros is called libido and includes
urges necessary for individual and species survival like thrist, hunger, and sex.in cases that human
behaior is directed towards destruction in the form of aggression and violence, such are the
manifestations of Thanatos.

Gilbert Ryle

▪ A British analytical philosopher. He was an important figure in the field of Linguistic Analysis
which focused on the solving of philosophical puzzles through an analysis of language.
▪ According to Ryle, the self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or disposition
for a person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances.
▪ He opposed the notable ideas of the previous philosophers and even claimed that those were results
of confused conceptual thinking he termed, category mistake.
▪ The category mistake happens when we speak about the self as something independent of the
physical body: a purely mental entity existing in time but not space.

Immanuel Kant

▪ A German Philosopher who made great contribution to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology,
and ethics. Kant is widely regarded as the greatest philosopher of the modern period.
▪ Kant maintained that an individual self makes the experience of the world comprehensible because
it is responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful whole.
▪ It is the self that makes consciousness for the person to make sense of everything. It is the one that
help every individual gain insight and knowledge. If the self failed to do this synthesizing function,
there would be a chaotic and insignificant collection of sensations. Additionally, the self is the

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 product of reason, a regulative principle because the self regulates experience by making unified
experience possible and unlike Hume, Kant’s self is not the object of consciousness, but it makes
the consciousness understandable and unique.
▪ Transcendental apperception happens when people do not experience self directly, instead as a
unity of all impressions that are organized by the mind through perceptions. Kant concluded that
all objects of knowledge, which includes the self, are phenomenal. That the true nature of things is
altogether unknown and unknowable (Price, 2000).
▪ For Kant, the kingdom of God is within man. God is manifested in people’s lives therefore it is
man’s duty to move towards perfection. Kant emphasized that people should always see duty as a
divine command (Price, 2000).

Paula and Patricia Churchland

▪ An American Philosopher interested in the fields of philosophy of mind, philosophy of science,

cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and perception.
▪ Churchlands central argument is that the concepts and theoretical vocabulary that people use to
think about the selves using such term as belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy actually
misrepresent the reality of minds and selves. He claims that the self is a product of brain activity.
▪ The behavior of the self can be attributed to the neuropharmacological states, the neural activity in
specialized anatomical areas.
▪ Neurophilosopy was coined by Patricia Churchland, the modern scientific inquiry looks into the
application of neurology to age-old problems in philosophy. The philosophy of neuroscience is the
study of the philosophy of science, neuroscience, and psychology. It aims to explore the relevance
of neurolinguistic experiments/studies to the philosophy of the mind.
▪ Patricia Churchland claimed that man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as self. The
biochemical properties of the brain according to this philosophy of neuroscience is really
responsible for man’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
▪ Paul Churchland is one of the many philosophers and psychologists that viewed the self from a
materialistic point of view, contending that in the final analysis mental states are identical with,
reducible to, or explainable in terms of physical brain states. This assumption was made due to the
physiological processes of the body that directly affecting the mental state of the person. The advent
of sophisticated technology and scientific research gives hope to understand the connection
between the physical body and the mind/brain relationship that integrated in the self.

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 ▪ Being an eliminative materialist, he believes that there is a need to develop a new vocabulary and
conceptual framework that is grounded in neuroscience. This new framework will be a more
accurate reflection of the human mind and self.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

▪ A French philosopher and phenomenologist.

▪ He took a very different approach to the self and the mind/body “problem.” According to him, the
division between the “mind” and the “body” is a product of confused thinking. The self is
experienced as a unity in which the mental and physical are seamlessly woven together. This unity
is the primary experience of selves and begin to doubt it when an individual use their minds to
concoct abstract notions of a separate mind and body.
▪ Developed the concept of self-subject and contended that perceptions occur existentially. Thus, the
consciousness, the world, and the human body are all interconnected as they mutually perceive the
world. According to him, the world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in the ongoing
process of man’s becoming.
▪ Phenomenology provides a direct description of the human experience which serves to guide man’s
conscious actions. He further added that, the world is a field of perception, and human
consciousness assigns meaning to the world. Thus man cannot separate himself from his
perceptions of the world.
▪ Perception is not purely the result of sensations nor it is purely interpretations. Rather
consciousness is a process that includes sensing as well as interpreting/reasoning.

References/Sources:
Arcega, A M., Cullar, D. S., Evangelista, L. D. & Falculan, L. M. (2018). Understanding the Self. Malabon
City: Mutya Publishing House Inc.
Gazzingan, L. B. et al. (2019). Understanding the Self. Muntinlupa City: Panday-Lahi Publishing House,
Inc.
Alata, E.J.P., Caslib, B.N., Serafica, J.P.J., Pawilen, R.A. (2018). Unsertanding the Self. Rex Book Store
Inc., Sta Mesa Heights, Quezon City, Philippines

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