LESSON

CHAPTER 1
DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND
DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE ON
SELF AND IDENTITY
 SEATWORK
• 1 How would you characterize yourself?
• 2 What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your
self special ?
• 3 How has your self transformed itself
• 4 How is your self connected to your body?
• 5 How is your self related to other selves?
• 6 What will happen to your self after you die?
What’s the meaning of
your name?
 NAME AND THE SELF

• THE NAME IS NOT THE PERSON ITSELF NO MATTER HOW

INTIMATELY BOUND IT IS WITH THE BEARER

• THE SELF IS SOMETHING THAT A PERSON PERENNIALLY

MOLDS, SHAPES, AND DEVELOPS.
SOCRATES AND PLATO
 SOCRATES AND PLATO
• Socrates
• Concerned with the problem of the “Self”
• The first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self.
• Become his life-long mission, the true task of the
philosopher is to know oneself.
• Thought that this is the worst that can happen to anyone:
to live but die inside
• Stated that every man is composed if body and soul.
Which mean that every human is dualistic, that is, he is
composed of two aspects of his personhood.
 SOCRATES AND PLATO

• For Socrates, this means all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent

aspects to him, and the body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that
is perfect and permanent.
 SOCRATES AND PLATO
• Plato
• Claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed
that the unexamined life is not worth living.
• Supported the idea of Socrates that man is a
dual nature of body and soul.
• 3 Components of the Soul – According in his
“magnum opus” (“The Republic”)
• Rational Soul – reasons and intellect
• Spirited Soul- emotion
• Appetitive Soul- desires (Eating, drinking, sleeping,
and having sex)
 AGUSTINE
AND
THOMAS AQUINAS
 AGUSTINE & THOMAS AQUINAS
• AGUSTINE
• View the 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
• Agreed that man is of a “bifurcated” nature. An aspect of men dwells in
the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the
Divine and the other is capable of reaching immortality.
• 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.
• The goal of every human person is to attain this communion and bliss
with the Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.
 AGUSTINE & THOMAS AQUINAS

• THOMAS AQUINAS
• Said that, 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 the matter.
• Form, morphe in Greek refers to the “essence of a substance or
thing”
• The soul is what animates the body; it is what makes us
humans
RENE DESCARTES
 RENE DESCARTES
• Father of Modern Philosophy
• In his famous treatise, “The Mediations 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, a thing that think and therefore, that
cannot be doubted.
• Cogito ergo sum “I think therefore I am”
• Self is a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito, the
thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or the
extension of the mind, which is the body.
 RENE DESCARTES
• In Descartes view, 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 a man a
man. If at all, that is all 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 (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuse; that
imagines also, and perceives” (Descartes 2008)
DAVID HUME
 DAVID HUME
• Scottish philosopher/ Empiricist
• Empiricism – is the school of thought that espouses the idea of
knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed and experienced
• Believes that one can know only what comes from the senses
and experiences, argues that the self is nothing like what is
predecessors through of it.
• To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of
impressions.
 DAVID HUME
• Experience can be categorized into two:
• Impressions – are the basic objects of our experience or sensation; form the
core of our thoughts
• They are product of our direct experience with the world
• Ex. When on touches an ice cubes, the cold sensation is an impression
• Ideas – copies of impression
• Ex Feeling of being in love

• Self according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of different

perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (Hume and
Steinberg 1992)
SELF
Is simply a combination of all experience with a particular person
IMMANUEL KANT
 IMMANUEL KANT
• Kant thinks that the things that men perceive around them are
not just randomly infused into the human person without an
organizing principle that regulates the relationship of all these
relationship of all these impressions.
• For him there is necessarily a mind that organizes the
impression that men get from the external world

• Ex. Time and Space, are ideas that once cannot find in the
world, but built in our minds.
 IMMANUEL KANT
• Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions
that one gets in relation to his own existence. Kant therefore
suggest that it is an actively engage intelligence in man that
synthesizes all the knowledge and experience.
• Self is not just what gives the personality, it is also seat of
knowledge acquisition for all human person.
GILBERT RYLE
 GILBERT RYLE
• Solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a
long time in the history of thought by blatantly denying the
concept of an internal, non-physical self.
• For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifest in his day-to-day life.
• Ryle suggest that the “self” is not an entity one can locate and
analyse but simply that convenient name that people use to
refer to all the behavior that people make.
MEARLEAU- PONTY
 MEARLEAU- PONTY
• A phenomenologist
• Asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on
for a long time is a futile endeavour and an invalid problem.
• Mearleau - Ponty insisted says that the mind and body are so
intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another.
• Dismissed the Cartersian Dualism
• For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain
misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experience are all one.
 SUMMARY
Thomas Rene David Immanuel Gilbert Merleau -
Socrates Plato Agustine
Aquinas Descartes Hume Kant Ryle Ponty

Every man Added 3 Body is Man is “I think Experienc There is a Denied the Dismiss
is componen bound to composed therefore I e can be mind that self the
composed ts to the die on of two am” categorize organizes Cartesian
of body & soul earth and parts: Two d into two: impression dualism
soul -rational the soul is Matter or distinct Impressio s that men
soul to hyle entities n and get from
- Spirited anticipate Form or Cogito – Ideas the
soul living morphe mind external
- Appetiti eternally in Extenza - world.
ve soul a realm body
with God