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2 views3 pages

Uself Module 1

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2023303601
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© © All Rights Reserved
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UNIT 1: The Self on the Different Perspectives

Lesson 1: The Philosophical Perspective of the Self


Introduction
Philosophy – love of wisdom
Socrates
Socrates was the first philosopher to engage in
a systematic questioning about the self and took it
upon to himself to serve as a “gadfly” who disturbed
Athenian men from their slumber and shook them off
in order to reach the truth and wisdom.
Socrates said that “an unexamined life is not
worth living.”
Through introspection, a person becomes virtuous or come to know his values.
Socrates was the first one to focus on the self, who we are, who we should be and
who we will become in which he believes that every human has an immortal soul aside
from the physical body. He believes that an individual’s reality is divided by two parts. The
physical realm and the ideal realm.
The physical realm consists of the world that we are living in. It is the world that
changes and temporary. The ideal realm contains concepts about the universe, truth,
goodness and beauty. These are the things that does not undergo changes and are ever-
lasting.
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, the body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Plato
Soul, according to Plato was
synonymous with the self. The only
difference was that the self is in the physical
form and the soul is in the ideal form. Self
is something temporary and the soul is
eternal. He supported Socrates’ idea that a
man is a dual nature of body and soul. He
added that there are three components to
the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul and the appetitive soul. He 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 is forged by reason and intellect. The
spirited soul is in charge of emotions. The appetitive soul consists of our desire that
we need enable to live.
St. Augustine
St. Augustine believes that there is an
aspect of man, which dwells in the worlds,
that is imperfect and continuously yearns to
be with the divine while the other is
capable of reaching immortality. There is
this body that is bound to die on earth and
the soul that is anticipated to live eternally
in a realm of spiritual bliss in communion
with God. The body can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality, which is the world,
whereas the soul can also stay after death in an eternal realm with the transcendent God.
Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes, the “Father of Modern
Philosophy.” He claims that there is so much that we
should doubt. In fact, he says that much of what we think
and believe, because they are not infallible, may turn out
to be false. One should only believe that which can pass
the test of doubt. But 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. The
self is then for Descartes is also a combination of two distinct entities, the “cogito” or the
thing that thinks and the “extenza” or the extention of the mind (the body).

David Hume
The key contribution and a concept
against the previous philosophers by David
Hume was when he said that the self
doesn’t exist. The self is just a collection or
combination of all the perceptions of a
particular person. He finds that they can all
be categorized into two: impressions and
ideas.

Impressions are the basic object of our experience or sensation. They form the
core of our thoughts. When one touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an impression.
Impressions are vivid because they are the product of our direct experience with the
world.

Ideas are copies of impressions. They are not as lively and vivid as our impression
because we do not experienced it yet in the real world. When one imagines the feeling of
being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
Immanuel Kant
Thinking of the self as mere combination of
impressions was problematic for Immanuel Kant. He
thinks that there is an organizing principle that
regulates the relationships of all the perceptions and
sensation of impressions. He said that the mind
organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world. He proposes that we are actively
synthesizing or organizing our knowledge and
experiences so that we can call it “mine”. For Kant,
we are the ones who create our reality in which we are familiar and comfortable. Another
was his concept of the “Apparatus of the Mind” which consists of ideas that cannot be
found in the world but is only built in our minds (e.g. time and space).
The “self” is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge
and experience. Thus, the self is not just what gives one his personality, it is also the seat
of knowledge acquisition for all human person.
Gilbert Ryle
For Gilbert Ryle, our behaviors or what
we do in our day-to-day lives were the ones that
makes us a person

.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
We cannot separate the mind and the body
and these two works as one for us to know
ourselves. According to Merleau-Ponty, the mind
and the body are so intertwined that they cannot be
separated from one another. One cannot find any
experience that is not embodied experience. All
experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening
toward his existence to the world.

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