Name: Clementine Louise C.

Laporga

Section: BS PSY – 101P

My concept of self originated when I was laying down on my bed, staring at the
ceiling, wondering about the multifaceted world that I live in. I am a young girl whose life
has mostly been defined by the roles that I play. I recognize them well and try my best
to keep up with the expectations of those who are around me. I suddenly realized..
“What if I am stripped away of my roles? What does that make me? Am I still me without
them? How will I be able to recognize my authentic self without the roles that I am
accustomed to portray?” those were the questions that ran through my head as I
continued to think. It was confusing. I was not happy with the result, if there ever was,
because all I am left with are unanswered questions.

However, I do believe that there are three parts of the self. The mind that makes
rational decisions, the body that is capable of identifying our physical necessities in
order to survive (our desires), and the soul that is responsible for our emotional state.

This takes us to our first philosopher, Socrates and Plato. Socrates states that
the body is imperfect and impermanent and is still able to maintain the perfect and
permanent soul. Plato on the other hand, mentioned that there three components to the
soul as written in his magnum opus, The Republic (Plato 2000.) He further explains this
by saying that these components are the following: the rational, spiritual, and appetitive
soul. The rational soul is formed through reason and intellectual affairs, the spiritual soul
which is in control of the emotions ‘kept at bay’, and the appetitive soul which reminds
us of our desires and sexual intercourse that is well-balanced.

While there are similarities within our concepts of the self, differences were
deemed unavoidable. Socrates believes that every person is dualistic, whereas I
recognize the three facets of the human concept of the self. Plato named the three
aspects of the soul. I did mention the soul in my concept, but the determining factor is
that I personally think the soul is directly related to the emotional state of a person and
the body is responsible for our desires if it is not influenced by the mind and the soul. It
is because our body identifies hunger cues, sexual attraction, among others.

Moving forward, St. Thomas Aquinas said that the man is composed of two parts;
the matter and form. It is a concept of which he adapted from another philosopher
Aristotle. Matter or hyle (Greek) refers to the parts of what makes up everything in the
universe. Form (morphe in Greek) is defined as the essence of a substance, what
makes an existing thing as is. To put it simply, what makes us human is our soul, the
very essence of our being. As I have divided the way of being into three, (the mind,
body, and soul), he was able to explain that what we are is dependent on the basis of
our soul. I believe that the self can be likened to a code which can be translated into
text. Although it is unfamiliar to the human eye when initially seen, unless a person is
driven and willing to invest time on studying the full text, then one can only be alive but
not truly live. The components that I have surmised were, in my humblest opinion, is my
adaptation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “what makes us, us.”

The final philosopher which I will mention is Rene Descartes. He also believes
that a human person is of body and mind. In one of his famous works, “cogito ergo
sum”, which is translated as “I think, therefore I am,” the cogito is identified as the mind
since it is what creates the idea of ‘thinking.’ It is believed that the body is nothing but an
extension of the mind. The mind and the body here is interconnected and one cannot be
without the other. We further expand this by saying that what he may have theorized
such as the self, may be interpreted into a way that the self only comes into
actualization when inference takes place. It is mentioned in his works Discourse (1637)
(je pense, donc je suis), and one that we already mentioned (cogito ergo sum) or the
Principles. It is why he encourages doubting, because doubting is a way of thinking.
And when we think, only then can we be ourselves.

The mind, body, and soul are all interrelated as well, since it is the driving force
that helps us realize our ‘true being.’ The mind creates thoughts, generates ‘thinking’,
on the bases of intellect and logical reasoning. The soul then considers the emotional
factors that may or may not influence our method of reasoning, while the body is what I
would consider the ‘mediator.’ It recognizes the desires of the body (as what the soul is
concerned with) while it pays attention to its basic necessities per instructions of the
mind.

In conclusion, this leaves us into thinking that the way of being may not be
directly identified like what we may expect. But the way that we can interconnect these
concepts with ours, as well as the other philosophers who continued their pursuit of
knowledge to the end, leads us to come to a conclusion that the self can only be
partially understood through an extensive study of a person’s being all throughout his
life. There is no true meaning to the self, as there are many truths to how we may be
able to realize our being.