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GE-1-Lesson-1 Understanding The Self

The document discusses different philosophical perspectives on the self from Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes. Socrates believed the unexamined life was not worth living and that people are composed of body and soul. Plato added that the soul has three components. Augustine and Aquinas viewed humans as having both a material body and an immortal soul. Descartes defined the self as a thinking thing, distinct from the body.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
36 views2 pages

GE-1-Lesson-1 Understanding The Self

The document discusses different philosophical perspectives on the self from Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes. Socrates believed the unexamined life was not worth living and that people are composed of body and soul. Plato added that the soul has three components. Augustine and Aquinas viewed humans as having both a material body and an immortal soul. Descartes defined the self as a thinking thing, distinct from the body.
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GE 1 (Understanding the Self)

Lesson 1: The Self from various Philosophical Perspectives.


The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the
fundamental nature of the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that defines
the multiplicity of the things in the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest
thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks. The greeks were the ones who seriously
questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand and respond to
perennial questions of curiosity, including the question of the self.
Below are the different perspectives and views of philosophers about the self:
1. Socrates and Plato
 Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the Problem of the self. He was the
first philosopher who ever engaged in questioning about self. To Socrates, and this
become his life-long mission, the true task of philosopher is to know oneself.
 Plato claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth
living.
 Most men in his reckon, were really not fully aware of who they were 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 be 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 important aspects of his personhood.
For Socrates this means that all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect of
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 thar
man is dual in nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused,
Plato added that there are three components of the soul:
1. the rational soul forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the
human person,
2. the spirited soul which is in charge of emotions and;
3. the appetitive soul in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and
having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, then the
human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.
2. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
 Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
when it comes to man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the
newfound doctrine of Christianity, 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 thirteenth 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 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 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.

3. 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 First Philosophy, he claims that there
is so much that we should doubt.
 Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the
self, for even if one doubts itself, 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 that he exists.
 The self is a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito the thing that thinks,
which is the mind, and the extenza or extension of the mind, which is the body.
 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, affirms, denies, wills, refuses;
that imagine also, and perceives” (Descartes2008).

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