In the study of philosophy the term “self” is referring to our identity, the identity we wear to

maintain our illusion of individuality including our subconscious mind that produce beliefs that we
are separated and apart from everything in the universe. In the course of history, philosophers have
given an impressive variety of answering the question, “What is self?”

Philosophy
Art of reasoning or “reasoning upon reasoning”
Combination of Greek word Philia and Sophia (love of wisdom)
Involves questions and answer but more question than answer

Philosophers – known as the Greeks/Pre- Socratics (wandering scholar seeking for truth)

Reasons why philosophy is important:

 Human beings orient their lives around ideas about what reality is like, that they believe
explain their experience and ideas about what reality and human beings should be like, that
they use to guide their behavior.
 It helps you to improve your thinking about everyday life. By improving the quality of your
thinking about it, you can in turn improve the quality of your life.
 What Philosophy does is to make you more aware of what you think
 Break your boundaries. Your own principles and beliefs may work to impose limitations on
you

Why asking question important

 Give us incentive learn

 Explore the world they land find answer
 Make new discovery and innovative things
 Drive us to keep obtaining knowledge about certain topic

Human is top of hierarchy as we are rational being, we tend to reflect and ask question

What makes a man a rational being?

 Rational means to think in a reasonable way. 

 Reasonable means either having fair, sensible or sound judgment, or as much as appropriate
or fair
 Rational people who make statements or decisions by reasoned thinking based on facts.
 When he favors and follows the truth and the common good even
 When he invests significant effort in finding the truth and common good to begin with

Socrates philosophy, he was concerned with the problem of the self. “The true task of philosopher
is to know oneself” he believed that true self is our soul, the one that inside you that knows.

 Pursuit of wisdom through dialogues

 First philosopher engage in systematic questioning about the Self, hence the method of
inquiry is called Socratic Method
Socratic Method

method of questioning as a way to arrive at truth, by showing that commonly-held notions

are often difficult, maybe even impossible, to define in any clear sense. The idea is that by
questioning and reasoning through the definitions, arguments, and do on we can eventually unmask
the truth behind the confusions and mystifications of ordinary life.

Dualism is the philosophical position that says that we consist in two parts, a body and a mind.
The mind is a non-material feature of our being that interacts with the physical. 

One part is the physical, tangible aspect of us. This is the part that is mortal and can be/is constantly
changing. Earth also belongs to this physical realm that our bodies belong in, because just as us in
terms of physicality, the Earth is constantly being modified.

The second part is the soul, which he believed to be immortal. The soul is the part that is unvarying
across all realms (it is unchanging while it is attached to your body and thus in the physical realm,
but is also unmodified once you die and your soul leaves the body to travel to the ideal realm).

Socrates believed that when we are in the physical realm, we are alive and our body and soul are
attached, therefore making both parts of our “self” present in the physical realm.

When we die however, our body stays in the physical realm while our soul travels to the ideal realm,
therefore making our soul immortal.

“It takes a man to admit that he doesn’t know the answer rather that pretend. Admitting
that you are ignorant about certain matters means you suspend your judgment on something . Sign
of wise man”

“Question everything, admit that you don’t know, and never stop seeking
wisdom/knowledge.”

Plato, the human soul has three parts, rational, spirited, appetitive.

(Rather than use the word “self,” he had what some academics call a tripartite theory of the soul.)

Tripartite theory of the soul

 Rational is the thinking part of soul it define as the highest as our minds are always seeking
for truth.
 Spirited; focuses on our emotions/feelings, the moral right and wrong.
 Appetitive; drives us to do things as it is motivated by the urges of our body.

Each part needs to do their respective jobs. The ideal self or individual would be one in so far that
the mind rules over spirit and appetite.

St. Augustine the “Spirit of Man” We have a body and our body has spirit, but body dies on earth
while our soul remains and lives eternally in spiritual bliss with God in ideal realm.

Augustine believed that humans were made in the image and likeness of God and that our rational
minds were the image of the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
He thought that everything in the material world has its place in the natural order of things, and acts
in accordance with its nature:

Conceptualize man’s search need of happiness

 we have demonic characteristics
 our satisfaction in life can be derive from happiness
How to be Happy?
To be happy is to live a life that is a movement toward love. How? We should live virtuously-
living rightly, doing no harm to other

Two rules to be happy

 Love and Justice

He believed that we have a higher sense that, because it is beyond the bodily senses, can pass
judgment on them in a way impossible to animals because we have an immaterial mind, and he
believed that that mind is aware of itself, and it recognizes that its own existence and knowledge is
good. 

St. Thomas Aquinas stated that, Man is composed of two factors, the matter and form, but what
makes us human is its essence, our consciousness is our essence, our soul it connects us to the
world.

Rene Descartes Father of Modern Philosophy

 Human are composed of two fundamental components, the body and mind.
 He believed that the human body and mind were two separate things.
 Our existence is conditioned upon the mind.
Rene Descartes doubted everything except the fact that he is thinking, as long as we are capable of
thinking, we exist. If we conceive anything, we indeed have mind. I think, therefore I am.

As for David Hume he meant that there is no reasoning capable of demonstrating that there is a
“you” at all. All we have seen is a bundle of perceptions, sensations and feelings. In other words, we
can never be directly aware of ourselves, only of what we are experiencing at any given moment.

 Impression component of experiences (direct experiences)

 Comes about to sensation
 Ideas come about our imagination(merely on our head)

Immanuel Kant agreed with David Hume that we can say nothing about the actual self of reality,
only our experiencing at any given moment. We just need intelligence in order to perceive what
knowledge and experience are.

 We are our product of our experiences, however were not just a mere product, but selected
and organize experiences.
 There is mind that organizes, human reason that gives us the capacity to make judgment
For Gilbert Ryle, he denied the internal and non-physical self instead he believed that self comes
from behavior. Self was best understood as a pattern of behaviors by a person manifest day by day.

How you behave. if you want to understand who you are, you just have to look at your own
behavior.

Lastly, as for Merleau-Ponty, what living body perceives can entangle his thoughts, emotions and
experiences as one’s body is the opening toward its existence to the world.

The self is the spirit soul, the life, the consciousness that animates the physical body. It is a distinct
energy from matter. It is the one harnesses the mind, the intelligence, the senses and the body.

The self is the one watching the workings of the mind when the body is asleep ( dreams,
nightmares). The self is the one aware and conscious of intuitions and imaginations, memories,
feelings and emotions.