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PHILOSOPHICAL PERPECTIVE O THE SELF
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
➢ It is derived from the Greek words:
— Philos: Love
— Sophos: Wisdom
➢ Meaning: Love for Wisdom.
➢ Philosophy is the study of acquiring knowledge
through rational thinking and inquiries that
involves in answering questions regarding the
nature and existence of man and the world we
live in.
THE SELF IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE
➢ It is imperative to look into the various
explanations from different philosophers about
their notion of what the “Self” is, its nature, and
how it is formed to have a better picture on how
people develop their behaviors, attitude
and personalities to be able to identify and
understand who we are and how we came to
be.
PHILOSOPHERS FROM THE ANCIENT TIMES
TO THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD:
SOCRATES
• Plato was his student.
• Considered as the first martyr of education,
knowledge and philosophy.
• His philosophy underlies in the importance
of “Knowing oneself.”
• Men’s goal in life: to obtain happiness and
such goal motivates us to act towards or
avoid things that could have negative
repercussions in our lives.
• Socrates believes that the answer to our
pursuit in knowing ourselves lies in our own
abilities and wisdom.
• That the only way for us to understand
ourselves is through internal questioning
or introspection.
• Socratic Method or Socratic
Conversation
PLATO
• He was a student of Socrates.
• Plato also believed in the division of a
person’s body and soul.
• One of the most renowned thinkers of his
time.
• The father of the academy, a place where
learning and sharing of knowledge happens.
• Plato generally followed his teacher and the
idea of knowing thyself although from his
works.
Plato’s 3 Parts of the Soul:
1. Appetitive Soul
• The part of the person that is driven
by desire and need to satisty
oneself.
• Satisfaction involves physical needs,
pleasure, and desires.
2. Spirited Soul
• The part of the soul can be attributed
to the courageous part of a person.
• One who wants to do something or
to right the wrongs that they
observe.
3. Rational Soul
• The part of the soul that is the driver
of our lives.
• The part that thinks and plan for the
future “the conscious mind.”
ST. AUGUSTINE
• A saint and a philosopher of the church.
• His work’s focal point is on how God and his
teachings affects various aspects in life.
• His idea of a man and how to understand
who we are as a person is related to our
understanding of who we are and how we
question ourselves.
• Believes that our notion of ourselves and
our idea of existence comes from a higher
form of sense in which bodily senses may
not perceive or understand.
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RENE DESCARTES
• A French Philosopher; the Father of
Modern Philosophy.
• His belief in modern dualism or the
existence of body and mind and it’s
implication to one’s existence.
• Methodical Doubt, a continuous process of
questioning what we perceive and accepting
the fact that doubting, asking questions are
a part of ones’ existence.
• A person is comprised of mind and body.
• “Cogito Ergo Sum” – “I think therefore I
am.” (I am thinking therefore I am/exist.)
JOHN LOCKE
• Locke is an English Philosopher and
Physician.
• The Father of Classical Liberalism
• His work on the self is most represented by
the concept “Tabula Rasa” – “Blank State.”
(The belief that human minds are blank at
birth)
DAVID HUME
• The Scottish Philosopher.
• He focused his work on the field of
Empiricism, Skepticism, and Naturalism
• According to him, there is no permanent
“self.”
• That impressions of things are based on our
experiences.
• From such impressions, we can create our
ideas and knowledge… that since our
impression and ideas change, it may
improve/totally replace.
GILBERT RYLE
• Ryle has a behavioristic approach to self.
• His notion of dualism is that the behavior
that we show, emotions and actions are the
reflection of our mind and as such is the
manifestation of who we are.
• Ryle does not believe that the mind and
body are two separate entities.
• “Ghost in the machine” view – the man is
a complex machine with different
functioning parts, and the intelligence, and
other.
MAURICE JEAN JACQUES MERLEAU-PONTY
• A French philosopher; known for his works
on existentialism and phenomenology.
• His idea of the self: regarded that the body
and mind are not separate entities, but
rather those two components is one and the
same.
• The idea of gestalt ideation where the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts in which
pushed his idea on the unity of the function
of the mind and body, Phenomenology of
Perception.
Phenomology of Perception
1. The Body
• Both receives the experience as well
as integrates such experiences in
the different perception.
2. The Percieved World
• Which is the accumulation of the
perception as integrated by the
experiences of the body.
3. The People and The World
• Enable one to not only be able to
integrate the other objects in the
world but also to be able to
experience the cultural aspect and
relate to others.
SIGMUND FREUD
• Freud is an Austrian Psychologist and
Physician.
• Father of Psychoanalysis.
• Known for his work in human nature and
unconscious.
• Freud believed that man has different
constructs of personality that interacts with
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SS021: Understand The Self

each other and along with his concepts of including many memories and
the different levels of conciousness. thoughts of which we are not aware.

Freud’s Aspects of Personality

1. Id
• The center of primitive and
animalistic impulses.
• Its attention is on satisfaction of
one’s need.
• Pleasure principle.

2. Superego
• The conscience of one’s personality;
right or wrong.
• Has inclination to uphold justice and
do what is morally right and socially
acceptable.
• Moral principle.

3. Ego
• Operates between boundaries and
reality.
• The mediator of Id and Superego.
• Reality principle.

Levels of Conciousness

1. Concious
• These are the things we are aware
of.
• The minority of our memories are
being stored and is easier to be
tapped or accessed.

2. Pre-Conscious
• These are things we could pay
conscious attention to if we so
desired.
• Memories stored in this area can still
be accessed but with little difficulty.

3. Unconscious
• Consists of those things that are
outside of concious awareness
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SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?
➢ Sociology is the study of human society, its
development, structure, function, and social
interaction.
THE SELF IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
➢ In contemporary literature, is commonly defined
by the following characteristics: Separate, self-
contained, Independent, Consistent, Unitary,
and Private.
➢ Social contructivist argue that the self has to be
seen as something that is in constant struggle
with external reality and is flexible in its dealings
with society.
➢ The self is always in participation with social life
and its identity subjected to influences here and
there.
SOCIOLOGIST
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
• Mead is an American Sociologist; the father
of American pragmatism.
• Mead rejected the idea of biological
determination of the self.
• Mead proposes that there are two
components of the self which the person
has, the “I” and the “Me.”:
a. I is how I define myself.
o is the reaction of the individual to
the attitude of others.
b. Me is how people define me.
o Are the characteristics, behavior,
and/or actions done by a person
that follows the “generalized
others” – how the society define
me.
The Mead’s Three Role-Playing Stages of
Self Development:
1. The Preparatory Stage (Birth – 2 years
old)
• During this stage, the infant
simply imitates the actions and
behaviors of the people that the
infant interacts with.The child is
only mimicking what he or she
observes from his or her
environment.
2. The Play Stage (2 – 6 years old)
• It is the time where children
begins to interact with others
with certain rules apply, these
rules often times does not
adhere to any set or standards
but rather are rules that are set
by the children themselves.
3. The Game Stage (6 – 9 years old)
• Final Stage which characterized
by the ability of the children to
recognize the rules of the game
and be able to identify their roles
and the roles of the others that is
playing with them.
WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
• The Science of Humanity.
• Anthropology studies the human species and its
immediate ancestors and the systematic
exploration of human biology and cultural
diversity.
• The study of human societies and cultures and
their development.
THE SELF IN THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Culture influences the development of the self
through enculturation. It guides the way we
think, feel, and act.
• Through this process, we learn to develop
unique characteristics as an individual.
THE SUBDISCIPLINES OF ANTHROPOLOGY
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• The study of human society and culture
which describes, analyzes, interprets and
explains social and cultural similarities and
differences.
1. Ethnography – Requires fieldwork to
collect data often discriptive and specific
to group.
2. Ethnology – Uses data collected by a
series of researchers, usually synthetic
and comparative.
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ARCHEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• This reconstructs, describes, and interprets
human behaviour and cultural patters
through material remains.

BIOLOGICAL OR PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• It focuses on the human evolution as
revealed by the fossil, human genetics,
human growth and development, human
biological plasticity and the biology.

LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
• It studies language in its social and cultural
context across space and over time.

THE SELF EMBEDDED IN THE CULTURE

• Culture refers to customary behaviour and
beliefs that are passed on through
enculturation. (Kottak, 2008).
• Enculturation is the social process which
culture is learned and transmitted.
• Culture is a social process that is learned and
passes from generation to the next.
• Geertz (1973) described culture as “a system of
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic
forms by means of ehich men communicate,
perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about
and attitudes towards life.”

CULTURE
• Shared
• Symbolic
• Natural
• Learned
• Integrated
• Encompassing
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PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE TO THE
SELF
➢ Psychology has various ways of understanding
a person and the therapist way of helping
people understand themselves.
➢ Self by definition is a reference by an individual
to the same individual person. Having its own or
single character as a person, referring to the
person as the same individual.
➢ The psychology of studying self is about either
the cognitive and affective representation of
one's identity or the subject of experience.
➢ The earliest formulation of the self in modern
psychology forms the distinction between the
self as I, the person knower, and the self as Me,
the person that is known.
THE SELF AND IT SELVES
WILLIAM JAMES
• a psychologist, has introduced in his document
The Principles of Psychology (1890) a
numerous concepts and distinction of self.
• For James, his main concepts of self are the
“me-self” and the “I-self”.
• The “me self” is the phenomenal self, the
experienced self or the self as known. It is the
self that has experience the phenomena and
who had known the situation.
• The “I-self” is the self-thought or the self-
knower.
• James had claimed that the understanding of
Self can be separated into three categories:
1. Its constituents;
2. The feeling and emotions they arouse –
Self-feelings;
3. The actions to which they prompt –
Self-seeking and self-preservation
• Also, James wrote sub-categories of self:
1. The Material Self: constituted by our
bodies, clothes, immediate family, and
home. It is in this that we attached more
deeply into and therefore we are most
affected by because of the investment
we give to these things.
2. The Social Self: is based on our
interactions with society and the reaction
of people towards us. It is our social self
that is thought to have multiple
divergences or different versions of
ourselves. It varies as to how we
present ourselves to a particular social
group.
3. The Spiritual Self: The most intimate
self, the spiritual self. It is the most
intimate because it is more satisfying for
the person that they have the ability to
argue and discriminate one’s moral
sensibility, conscience and indomitable
will.
CONCEPTION OF SELF
CARL ROGERS
• Carl Rogers is an American Psychologists and
had come up with his conception of self through
the intervention he uses for his client, the
Person-centered therapy.
• It is a non-directive intervention because it
believes that all people have the potential to
solve their own problems.
• Rogers believes that people must be fully
honest with themselves in order to have
personal discovery on oneself.
• In this concept of self, he had come up with
three sides of a triangle:
a. The Perceived Self: Self-worth - how
the person sees self & others sees
them.
b. The Real Self: Self Image - how the
person really is.
c. The Ideal Self: How the person would
like to be.
ROGERIAN THEORY IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
• Rather than viewing people as inherently
flawed, with problematic behaviors and
thoughts that require treatment, person-
centered therapy identifies that each person
has the capacity and desire for personal growth
and change.
• Rogers termed this natural human inclination
“actualizing tendency” or self-actualization.
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CONCEPTION OF UNIFIED SELF

• According to Sigmund Freud, although there
are different aspects of the personality,
ultimately, we are still Unified Beings, (atleast
when healthy).
• “Unified Self” refers to the idea that all aspects
of a person’s identity are integrated/unified.
▪ When a person interacts with others, all
aspects of the personality work together.
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THE SELF IN WESTERN AND EASTERN THE CONCEPT OF KAPWA

THOUGHT • Recognition of shared identity;
• An inner self shared with others.
WESTERN THOUGHT OF THE SELF
Modes of Social Interaction:
• Europe; Northern America
• Ibang-tao: outsider
• Focus on oneself and personal dualities
• Hindi ibang-tao: one-of-us
• Egoistic culture
• Acquisition of material things
• Obsessed with being successful. COMPARISON OF WESTERN AND EASTERN
• Subscribe to the idea of evolution. THOUGHT
1. Self is a Social Construct WESTERN EASTERN
2. Self is intimately connected to bodily
Individualistic Collectivistic
experience
Duality Consider other person
3. Self takes form in Communication
as part of themselves.
Talks about personal Talks about their social
attributes. roles.
EASTERN THOUGHT OF THE SELF
Values competition Values cooperation
• Asia
• Focus on others and feelings of others.
INDIVIDUALISM COLLECTIVISM
• Collectivistic Culture. People are Independent within
• Less assets (less is more) autonomous and their in-groups.
• More inclined towards long life. independent from their
• Subscribe to the idea of reincarnation. in-groups.
Give priority to their Give priority to the
1. Confucianism personal goals of their goals of their in-groups.
▪ Following the moral ways that in-groups.
consists of virtues to promote Behave on their basis In-groups primarily
harmony of the society. of attitudes rather than shape their behaviour.
norms. Behave in a communal
2. Buddhism way.
▪ Having the belief that we are part of Concerned in
the same ever-changin universe and
maintaining relationship
breaking the attachments of the self with others.
with world to attain the state of
Nirvana.

3. Taoism
▪ Living in the way of Tao or the
universe; the ideal self is
selflessness living a balanced-life
with society and nature.

4. Hinduism
▪ Attaining of liberation in the
identification of the spiritual essence
of all human beings and the spiritual
essence of the universe.