RENE DESCARTES: I think, therefore I am.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF THROUGH
PHILOSPHY
The Self
It is understood as a unified being essentially connected to
consciousness, awareness, and agency.
 Autonomous self
 Self-interested self
 Ecological self
Autonomous self
It is an Autonomous being capable of envisaging courses of
action that transcend any ecological relationship.
Self-interested self
It is a perspective wherein our autonomy is best expressed in
our quest to fulfill our own desires. A self is focused on its own
interest, passions, and desires.
Ecological self
It is where the self-undertake actions that conform to the
society we live in. The self adhere to the ethics of our society
and the self adjust his/her identity based on the dynamics of
the society.
Philosophy of self
Is the study of the many conditions of identity that make one
subject of experience distinct from other experiences.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF: VARIOUS
PHILOSOPHERS
SOCRATES: Know yourself
“Every man is composed of body and soul.”
“AN UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING”
 He was the first philosopher who engaged in a
systematic questioning about the self.
 He considers man from the point of view of his inner
life.
 The core of Socratic ethics is the concept of virtue and
knowledge.
PLATO: The Ideal Self, the perfect self
“Love in fact is one of the links between the sensible and the
eternal world.”
 There are three components of the soul:
a.) rational soul
b.) spiritual soul
c.) appetitive soul.
 Man in this life should imitate his former self, he
should live a life of virtue in which true human
perfection exists.
ARISTOTLE: The soul is the essence of the Self
 He defined man as a rational animal for we have free
will and intellect.
 We should use our decisions wisely and this will
definitely lead us to self-actualization.
ST. AUGUSTINE: The Self has an immortal soul.
 St. Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the
entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes to
man.
 The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to
anticipate living eternally in communion with God.
 He believes that a virtuous life is the dynamism of
love. Loving God means loving one’s fellowmen, and
loving one’s fellowmen denotes never doing any
harm to another.
 He conceived of the human person as having a body
and a mind.
 He claims that there is so much that we should doubt
since much of what we think and believe is not
infallible, they may turn out to be false.
 The self then for Rene is also a combination of two
distinct entities, the COGITO, the thing that thinks,
which is the mind, and the EXTENZA of the mind,
which is the body.
JOHN LOCKE: The Self is consciousness.
 For him our human mind is a Tabula Rasa also known
as a mind self at birth is a blank slate.
 Conscious awareness and memory of previous
experiences are the keys to understanding the self.
DAVID HUME: The self is the bundle theory of mind.
 He is an empiricist who believes that one can know
only through the senses and perception.
 For Hume, they can all be categorized into two:
impressions and ideas.
 According to Hume, the self is a bundle or collection
of various perceptions, which succeed each other
with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual
flux and movement.
IMMANUEL KANT: Respect for self
 Every man is thus an end in himself and should never
be treated merely as a means – as per the order of the
Creator and the natural order of things.
 Time and Space are ideas that one cannot find in the
world but are built in our human mind. Kant calls
these the apparatuses of the mind.
 Without the self, one cannot organize the different
impressions that one gets in relation to his own
existence.
SIGMUND FREUD: Psychoanalytic of Self
 He asserts that the human psyche (personality) is
structured into 3 parts. These structures – ID (internal
desires), EGO (reality), and SUPEREGO (conscience) –
all develop at different stages in a person’s life.
 Freud also argues that the development of an
individual can be divided into distinct stages
characterized by sexual drives.
GILBERT RYLE: The mind-body dichotomy
 For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a
person manifests in his day-to-day life.
 Ryle says that the self is not an entity one can locate
and analyze but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the behaviors that people
make.
PAUL CHURCHLAND: The self is the brain.
 He advocates the eliminative materialism or
physiology of the body and brain which explains that
all of us have a brain but if it is gone, there is no self
at all.
 Our brain is not inseparable from our body.
MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY: Phenomenologist
 He insisted that body and mind are intertwined with
one another. One cannot find any experience that is
not an embodied experience.
 One’s body is his opening toward his existence to the
world.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF: SELF, SOCIETY, AND
CULTURE
Social constructionist perspective
It is concerned about understanding the vibrant relationship
between the self and external reality – merged view of “the
person” and “their social context” where the boundaries of
one cannot easily be separated from the boundaries of the
other.
 The self should not be seen as a static entity that stays
constant through and through.
 The self has to be seen as something that is in
unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with external
reality, and is malleable in its dealings with society.
 The self is always in participation with social life, and
its identity is subjected to influences here and there.
Self and culture
 Remaining the same person and turning a chameleon
by adapting to one’s context seems paradoxical.
However, the French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss
has an explanation for this phenomenon.
 Every self has two faces: Moi and Personne
 Moi – a person’s sense of who he is, his body and his
basic identity, his biological givenness – a person’s
basic identity.
 Personne – composed of the social concepts of what
it means to be who he is.
The self and the development of the social word.
 More than his givenness (personalities, tendencies &
propensities), one is believed to be in active
participation in THE SHAPING OF THE SELF.
 Men and women in their growth and development
engage actively in the shaping of THE SELF.
 The unending terrain of the metamorphosis of THE
SELF is mediated by LANGUAGE.
 “Language as both a publicly shared and privately
utilized symbol system is the site where the individual
and the social make and remake each other”.
*GEORGE HERBERT MEAD AND LEV VYGOTSKY*
For Mead & Vygotsky the way that human persons develop is
with the use of language acquisition and interactions with
others - without a family biologically and sociologically a
person may not even survive or became a human person.
GENDER AND THE SELF
 GENDER is one of those loci of the self that is subject
to alteration, change, and development.
 From the point of view of the social sciences and the
self, it is important to give one the leeway to find,
express, and live his identity.
THE SELF IN SOCIOLOGICAL AND
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
SELF-CONCEPT
refers to all understanding and knowledge of self.
 Psychological
 Physical
 Social attitudes
 Ideas
 Beliefs
THE SELF IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
SOCIOLOGY
is the study of social life, social change, and the social causes
and consequences of human behavior.
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM
is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication
theory that examines the development of a jointly constructed
understanding of the world that forms the basis for shared
assumptions in reality.
 The theory centers on the notion that meanings are
developed in coordination with others rather than
separately within each individual.
* The Looking Glass Self Theory By Charles Horton Cooley
According to Cooley, individuals develop their concept of self
by observing how they are perceived by others, a concept of
Cooley coined as the “looking-glass self.”
> The Self as a Product of Modern Society
 Your personal and social identity is never static.
 Real changes in personal identity emerge out of the
creative interplay between social circumstances and
events and the way you as an individual respond to
them.
 Everyone is influenced by society, and it makes its
inedible mark on us.
> Self in Society and Society in Self
 We are self-directing beings capable of independent
thought and behavior.
 We are all unique individuals because we have unique
experiences.
> The Emotional Self
 Emotions and the motivations to which they give rise
have frequently been denied an important role in our
day-today conduct by even the most sophisticated of
social theorists.
 The emotional or feeling side of our nature goes hand
in hand with our reflective intelligent and calculating
side.
CORE AND SATELLITE NEEDS OF SELF
> Approval of Self and Others
If love in all its varieties is a key focus for other feelings and
emotions, then the need for approval closely mirrors.
 The constant searching for approval is based on the
fear that the other’s love will be withdrawn and that
you will be left helpless and unloved.
THE SELF IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
ANTHROPOLOGY
The study of the origin and development of human societies
and cultures.
CULTURE
is the set of unwritten norms of conduct that guide the
behavior of a group.
 Edward Taylor defined the culture that it is a
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man.
MATERIAL AND NON-MATERIAL CULTURE
Material culture
refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that
people use to define their culture.
Non‐material culture refers to the nonphysical ideas that
people have about their culture, including beliefs, values,
rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions.
How Culture Affects the Self?
According to developmental psychologist Catherine Raeff
(2010), culture can influence how you, your friends, your
colleagues, and the families you serve view:
1. Relationships
2. Personality Traits
3. Achievements
4. Expressing Emotions
TWO ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF SELF
EGOCENTRIC - a concept of the self where the self is seen as
an autonomous and distinct individual.
SOCIO-CENTRIC - According to this view, there is no intrinsic
self that can possess enduring qualities.
THE IN PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
PSYCHOLOGY is derived from the Greek "psyche" which
means mind, soul, or spirit (Greek Symbol: Ψ), and logos
which means knowledge, discourse, or study. Psychology is
the study of the mind.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF is the study of either the cognitive
and affective representation of one’s identity or the subject
of experience.
I. THE SELF AS A COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTION
William James (1842-1910)
He was one of the first to postulate a theory of the Self in The
Principles of Psychology
• The Self has two aspects: “I Self” and “Me Self.”
1. The “I Self” reflects what people see or
perceive themselves doing in the physical
world.
2. The “Me Self” is a more subjective and
psychological phenomenon, referring to
individual’s reflections about themselves.
• Components of the “Me Self”
1. The Material Self
2. The Social Self
3. The Spiritual Self
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
He is the father of psychoanalysis and was a physiologist,
medical doctor, psychologist, and influential thinker of the
early twentieth century.
• Three elements of Personality
1. Id - driven by pleasure.
2. Ego - based on the reality principle.
3. Superego - the aspect of morality that
holds all of our internalized moral
standards and ideals.
• Three levels of Awareness
1. The Conscious - consists of what someone
is aware of at any particular point.
2. The Preconscious - contains information
that is just below the surface of awareness.
3. The Unconscious - contains thoughts,
memories, and desires that are buried deep
in ourselves, well below our conscious
awareness.
II. TRUE SELF AND FALSE SELF
Dr. Donald W. Winnicott (1896 - 1971)
He was a pediatrician who was amongst the first cohort to
train as a psychoanalyst in the late 1920s.
• Self is categorized as “True Self’ and “False Self”
1. True Self - it has a sense of integrity, of
connected wholeness that harks to the
early stage.
2. False Self - When the person has to comply
with external rules, such as being polite or
otherwise following social codes.
• Two Kinds of Falsev Self
1. Healthy False Self - When the false self is
functional both for the person and for
society then it is considered healthy.
Unhealthy
2. False Self - A self that fits in but through a
feeling of forced compliance rather than
loving adaptation is unhealthy.
III. IDEAL SELF AND REAL SELF
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
He was a radical and inspirational psychologist and thinker
who developed a characteristic and unique way of
understanding the human psyche and its functioning.
• Personality is composed of Ideal SelfConcept and
Real Self-Concept
1. Ideal Self-Concept - This is the person who
we would like to be.
2. Real Self-Concept - The knowledge
attitudes, and perceptions people have
about themselves as they are.
IV. UNIFIED SELF AND MULTIPLE SELF
David Lester (1966 - present)
He is known for researching suicide and has been called "the
world's pre-eminent suicide researcher. "
• Self is categorized as Unified Self and Multiple Self
1. Unified Self - it is the integration of the subselves
into one, however, integration is a task for the
later part of life.
2. Multiple Self - it contains different modes of the
self, “appear, one after another and sideby-side
in the consciousness.”
V. AGENTIC SELF AND PROACTIVE SELF
Albert Bandura (1951 - present)
The proponent of the personality theory known as THE
SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY SOCIAL COGNITIVETHEORY
• Self is identified as Agentic Self and Proactive Self
1. Agentic Self - it is defined as the aspect of
human personality that is determined by future
assessments of one's goals, objectives, and
actions.
2. Proactive Self - Make things happen, instead of
waiting for them to happen to you.