UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (UTS 100)

UNIT I: THE DEFFINATION OF THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER 1: Who am I? A Philosophical Journey to Discovering the Self

A. SOCRATES (469-399 BC)

- Born in Athens, capital and largest city of Greece

- Also known as “Market Philosopher”

- “Unexamined Life is not Worth Living” – EXAMINE YOURSELF TO IMPROVE LIFE!

-Here, there is an urgent call to examine one’s life for it is in the examination that
we can know ourselves.

- There was soul first before man’s body

- Man’s existence was first in the realm of ideas and exists as a soul
or pure mind. This soul has knowledge by direct intuition.

-All these are stored in his mind.

- However, once he came to the material world (World of senses)

he forgot almost of what he knew. This resulted in lack of knowledge
or ignorance which causes problems to man.

- DIALECT METHOD (SOCRATIC METHOD)- Knowledge can be stored through this process, a
sort of intellectual midwifery trying to painfully coax (gently persuasion) knowledge out of man.

- It is an exchange of QUESTION & ANSWER that ultimately aims to make the person remember all
the knowledge that he has forgotten, including the former OMNISCIENT SELF (KNOWING
EVERYTHING).

B. PLATO (427-347 BCE)

- Born into an Aristocratic Athenian family which evolved in the rule of

Thirty Tyrants.

-Known as the "Thirty Tyrants" because of their cruel and oppressive

tactics.

- He also founded an academy now considered as prototype of modern

universities.

- For Plato, there is a dichotomy of Ideal world (world of forms) and the
Material world.

-World of forms- It is the permanent, unchanging reality.

-Material world- Keeps on changing, what we see around us.

-For Plato, this-where we live is just a replica of the real world found in world of forms.
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-This idea reflected on his idea of the nature of man. He believed that Man is composed of two
things, body and soul. SOUL -true self- is the permanent, unchanging self. While BODY -replica- is
the constantly changing self). Soul exists before birth while body is seen as some sort of prison.
We can only free ourselves from imprisonment of our bodily senses by contemplation (deep
reflective thought).

- Contemplation entails communion (spiritual share and exchange) of the mind with universal
and eternal ideas. We continue to exist even with the absence of our bodies because we are souls
only.

C. ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (354-430)

- Self-confessed sinner from North Africa

-Greatly inspired by Plato, he became Bishop of

Canterbury.
-In younger years, he abandoned his early Christian faith because he
found it difficult to reconcile a loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God
with the evils in the world. His encounter with Neo-Platonists and the
idea of the world of forms gave him philosophical strongpoint for the
idea of God and paved the way for his return to the folds of Christianity.

-God is permanent, unchanging being and he sees God

as the ultimate expression of Love.
-Thus, God created humanity out of LOVE. In fact, Man is
created in the image of God. He has immortal souls whose main goal is to have everlasting life with God.
In this world, man pursues happiness, and this can only be achieved in God alone.

-MORAL LAW exists and is imposed to mind. The reason was to make us
recognize what is right and wrong.

D. RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)

- The father of Modern Philosophy

- French Mathematician

-I think, therefore; I am (Also known as COGITO)

- Cogito Ergo Sum- Emphasizes the conscious of his

mind which lead him to an evidence of his
existence – despite of the fact that he is doubting the existing of
everything physical, including his own body. -This has led him to the
conclusion that his essence lay in being a purely thinking being,
because even he can doubt whether he has real body or it’s just a trick of his sense, one thing
cannot doubt is that he is thinking. This echoes the Plato’s dualism.

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- MIND and BODY are separate distinct entities. (Mind is non-physical entity)

- EMPIRICISM (senses) and RATIONALISM (mind) should work together to

make sense or meaning .

E. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

- Father of Classical Liberalism

- British empiricist philosopher

- Influenced by Descartes specifically on dualism. But unlike other philosopher who believed that
we are known imprisoned by our own mind, soul or body, he included the concept of person’s
memory in the definition of the self.

- He subscribed to the memory theory which emphasized the idea that we are all the same
person as we were in the past for as long as we can remember something from the past. The
memory renders us the self-conscious we are the that one and the same person.

F. DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

- Born in Scotland a lawyer and known as historian who wrote the

book entitled “History of England”.

- Just like John Locke, he is also empiricist and regarded senses

as our key source of
knowledge.

- Thus, he believed in the existence of mind. What inside the

mind consists of two elements: IMPRESSIONS & IDEAS

- IMPRESSIONS are those things we perceive by our senses as

we experience them (e. g., when I see the sky, my sense of sight
tells me I am looking at a blue sky.

-IDEAS are those thinks that we create in our minds even though we no longer experiencing them
(e.g., Even inside my room, I can still think of a blue sky)

G. IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

- A citizen of Kö nigsberg, East Prussia (It is the name for the historic Prussian
city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia)

- Influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment.

- he argued that it is possible to discover the universal truth about the world
using our reason. He argued that it is possible to find the essence of the self.

- Man according to him is FREE AGENT, capable of making decision for himself.

- Central to his philosophy revolved in inherent dignity of a human being. As a free agent, man is
gifted with reason and free will.

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- the necessity of his being free is tested in his decision to be moral (individual has decision to be
moral or NOT)

-In refuting HUME’s idea that there is NO SELF, he said that since man is gifted with reason and
free will, man can organize that data gathered by the senses. From this data, and the way we
organize the data, we can now have a good idea of a man.

H. SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

- Born in Frieberg, Moravia

- Jewish neurologist later moved to

Vienna Austria

- Father of Psychoanalysis

- Sex and Aggression

- Unconscious mind

- Tripartite divisions of MAN’S MIND

a. ID or “das Es"– (Pleasure principle) biological nature, impulses and bodily desires. Wants
instant gratification/ satisfaction.

b. Ego or “das Ich" - (Reality principle) - The self

c. Superego or “das Über-Ich” – (Moral principle) ethical component of personality

I. GILBERT RYLE (1900-1976)

- Professor of Oxford University. This Englishman’s philosophy

centers language

- He claims that the problem of philosophy were brought about only

because of confusion due to misinterpretation, misunderstanding of
WORDS.

- The goal of philosophy should be to clear this confusion through

linguistic analysis.

- MIND is NOT DISTINCT from the BODY (opposed to idea of

Descartes)

- Rather a certain aspect of the body. A talk about mind is a talk about behavior

- The concept of mind expresses the entire system of thoughts, emotions and actions that make up
HUMAN SELF.

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J. PAUL CHURCHLAND (1942)

- “We do have an organ for understanding and recognizing moral facts, it is called brain”.

- Known for his ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM

Claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk

psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that
most people believe in do does not exist. It is a materialist position in
the philosophy of mind.

- Professor from University of California

- He believed that the self is the BRAIN

- “Mind”, our moods, emotions, actions and consciousness are

deeply affected by the state of our brain.

- By manipulating some parts of our brain, our feelings, actions and physical state are successfully
altered.

- It is a matter of time before we can fully comprehend how the brain works for us to understand
how it creates the SELF.

K. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

- French philosopher known for his EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY

- This naturally reflects on his idea of the self.

- For him, person is defined by virtue of movement and expression.

- To be a self is to be more than one’s body. I includes all the things that I
will do with my body, how I will act on it and how I will make it act in
consonance with other human being.

- Self is grounded by experience form the past,

possibility for the future and the present
cognition.

- Self is a product of our conscious human experience.

-The definition of self is all about one’s perception on

one’s experience and the interpretation of those
experiences.

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