Lesson 1

SOCRATES (469-399 BC)

Know Thyself
Born in Athens and married with several children
also known "Market Philosopher" "An unexamined life is not worth living"
Soul first before man's body
PLATO (427-347 BCE)
Born into an aristocratic Athenian family
Dichotomy of the Ideal world or the world of Forms and the Material world.
Dichotomy is reflected that humans composed of body and a soul

Augustine (354-430)
But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and His other
creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.
God created man, created in the image of God.
Man pursue happiness and can only achieved in God alone.
Moral law exists and is imposed on the mind
Reason makes us recognize these laws

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

I think, therefore; I am (cogito, ergo sum)
Emphasizes the consciousness of his mind which leads to an evidence of his existence- despite the fact that
he is doubting the existence of everything physical, including his own body
John Locke (1632-1704)
What worries you, masters you
Personal identity is explained in terms of psychological connections between life stages
as long as somebody remembers or as long as my memories around. I am around
We want to know if the person is the same one we knew ten years ago, we only have to ask and test his
memory to verify the identity
David Hume (1711-1776
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to
serve and obey them.
Born in Scotland, he was a lawyer but is known more for the history book that he wrote - History of
England
He was an empiricist and regarded the senses as our key sour of knowledge.
He does believe in the existence of the mind and what's inside the mind is divided into two; Impressions and
Ideas
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.
There is nothing higher than reason
A citizen of koginsberg, East Prussia. He is also consered as one of the giants in philosophy though he
barely stands five feet tall
He was spurred into philosophical activism when he encountered Hume's skepticism and took it
upon himself to refute it
He argues that it is possible to discover universal truth about the world using our reason. He also
argued that it is possible to find the essence of self
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
For his idea of the self believes that man is a free agent, capable of making decision for himself. His
philosophy centers and revolves around the inherent dignity of human being, man is gifted with reason
and free will
The necessity of his being free is tested in his decision to be moral. An individual has the free will to be
moral or not
A moral person is one who is driven by duty and acts towards the fulfillment of that duty
Simgund Freud (1856-1939)

"The ego is not master in its own house"

Born in Frieberg, Moravia
Father of Psychoanalysis Tripartite division of man's mind - he id, ego, and the superego

Lesson 2 THE SELF AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT

The Sociological and Anthropological View of the Self

Knowing the self requires understanding our society and its culture, and how it provokes us to make decisions
which are culturally influenced and socially constructed The self, as a social being, is influenced by his culture.
The Self as Embedded in Culture
"that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by [a human] as a member of society"
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