composed of two important aspects of his personhood.

For Socrates, this means all individuals have an

Lesson 1: PHILOSOPHY imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body,
while maintaining that there is also a soul that is a
Socrates and Plato
perfect and permanent.

Prior the Socrates, the Greek Plato, Socrates’s student, basically took off
thinkers, sometimes collectively called from his master and supported the idea that man is
the Pre-Socrates to denote that some dual nature of body and soul. In addition to what
of them preceded Socrates while Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added that there are
others existed around Socrates’s time three components of the soul; the rational soul, the
as well, preoccupied themselves with spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum
the question of the primary substratum, arche that opus “The Republic” (Plato 2000), Plato emphasizes
explains the multiplicity of things in the word. These that justice in the human person can only attained if
men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously
and Empedocles, to name a few, were concerned with with one another. The rational soul forged by reason
explaining what the world is really made up of, why the and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human
world is so, and what explains the changes that they person, the spirited part which is in charge of emotions
observe around them. Tired of simply conceding to should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul in
mythological accounts propounded by poet- charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping,
theologians like Homer and Hesiod, these men and having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal
endeavored to finally locate an explanation about the state is attained, then the human person’s soul
nature of change, the seeming permanence despite becomes just and virtuous.
change, and the unity of the world amidst is diversity.
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
After a series of thinkers from all across the
Augustine’s view of the human
ancient Greek world who were disturbed by the same
person reflects the entire spirit of the
issue, a man came out to question something else.
medieval world when it comes to
This man was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics,
man. Following the ancient view of
Socrates was more concerned with another subject,
Plato and infusing it with the
the problem of the self. He was the first philosopher
newfound doctrine of Christianity,
who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about
Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature.
the self. To Socrates, and this has become his life-long
An aspect of man dwells in the world and is imperfect
mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know
and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the
oneself.
other is capable of reaching immortality.

Plato claimed in his dialogs that Socrates

The body is bound to die on earth and the soul
affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth living.
is to anticipate living eternally in a realm of spiritual
During his trial for allegedly corrupting the minds of the
bliss in communion with God. This is because the body
youth and for impiety, Socrates declared without regret
can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is
that his being indicted was brought about by his going
the world, whereas the soul can also stay after death
around Athens engaging men, young and old, to
in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent God. The
question their presuppositions about themselves and
goal of every human person is to attain this
about the world, particularly about who they are (Plato
communion and bliss with the divine by living his life
2012). Socrates took it upon himself to serve as a
on earth in virtue.
“gadfly’’ that disturbed Athenian men from their
slumber and shook them off in order to reach the truth
Thomas Aquinas, the most
and wisdom. Most men, in his reckoning, were really
eminent thirteenth century scholar
not fully aware of who they were and the virtues that
and stalwart of the medieval
they were supposed to attain in order to preserve their
philosophy appended something
souls for the afterlife. Socrates thought that this is the
to this Christian view. Adapting
worst that can happen to anyone; to live but die inside.
some ideas from Aristotle,
Aquinas said that indeed, man is
For Socrates, every man composed of two parts: matter and form. Matter, or
is composed of body and soul. hyle in Greek, refers to the “common stuff that makes
These means that every human up everything in the universe.” Man’s body is part of
person is dualistic, that is, he is this matter. Form on the other hand, or morphe in
Greek refers to the “essence of a substance or thing.” David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, has a
It is what makes it what it is. In the case of the human very unique way of looking at man. As an empiricist
person, the body of the human person is something who believes that can one can know only what comes
that he shares even with animals. The cells in man’s from the senses and experiences, Hume argues that
body are more or less akin to the cells of any other the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought
living, organic being in the world. However, what of it. The self is not entity over and beyond the physical
makes a human person a human person and not a body. One can rightly see here the empiricism that
dog, or a tiger is his soul, his essence. To Aquinas, runs through his veins. Empiricism is the school of
just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body; thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can
it is what makes us humans. 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
RENE DESCARTES just like him because he sees her, hears her, and
touches her.
Rene Descartes, Father of
Modern Philosophy conceived of
To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a
the human person has having a
handle of impressions. What are impressions? For
body and a mind. In his famous
David Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences,
treatise, the Meditations of First
he finds that they can all be categorized into two;
Philosophy, he claims that there is
impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic
so much that we should doubt. In
objects or our experience sensation. They therefore
fact, he says that since much of what we thinks and
form the core of our thoughts. When one touches an
believe are not infallible, they may turn out to be false.
ice cube, the cold sensation is an impression.
One should only believe that since which can pass the
Impressions therefore are vivid because they are
test of Doubt (Descartes 2008). If something is so
products of our direct experience with the world. Ideas,
clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is
on the other hand, are copies of impressions. Because
the only time when one should actually by a
of this, they are not as lively and vivid as our
proposition. In the end, Descartes though that the only
impressions. When one imagines the feelings of being
thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self,
in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
for even if one doubts oneself that only proves that
there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and
What is the self then? Self, according to
therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus, his famous,
Hume, is simply “ a bundle or collection of different
cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore, I am.” The fact
perceptions, which succeed each other with an
that one thinks should lead one to conclude without a
inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
trace of doubt that he exist. The self then for Descartes
movement.” (Human and Steinberg 1992). Men simply
is also a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito,
want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, a
the thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the
soul or mind just like what the previous philosopher
extenza or extension of the mind, which is the body. In
thought. In reality, what one thinks is a unified self
Descartes’s view, the body is nothing else but a
simply a combination of all experience with a particular
machine that is attached to the mind. The Human
person.
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, understand
(conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that
imagines also, and perceives” (Descartes 2008).

IMMANUEL KANT

Thinking of the “self” as a

mere combination of impressions
DAVID HUME was problematic for Immanuel
Kant. Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume’s account time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem. Unlike
that everything starts with perception and sensation Ryle who simply denies the “self,” Merleau-Ponty
of impressions. However, Kant thinks that the things instead says that the mind and body are so
that men perceive around them are not just randomly intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
infused into the human person without an organizing another. One cannot find any experience that is not an
principle that regulates the relationship of all these embodied experience. All experience is embodied.
impressions. To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that One’s body is his opening toward his existence to the
organizes the impressions that men get from the world. Because of these bodies, men are in the world.
external world. Time and space, for example, are ideas Merleau-Ponty dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that
that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our has spelled so much devastation in the history of man.
minds. Kant calls these the apparatuses of the mind. For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but
plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts,
Along with the different apparatuses of the emotions, and experiences are all one.
mind go ages the “self.” Without the self, one cannot
organize the different impressions that one gets in
relation to his own existence. Kant therefore suggest
that 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.

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 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.

MERLEAU-PONTY

Merleau-Ponty is a
phenomenologist who
asserts that the mind-
body bifurcation that has
been going on for a long