THE SELF ACCORDING TO

PHILOSOPHY
(GCAS 08 – CAS)

Ms. Zarah Camille P. Padua, RPm, CMHT

Faculty, CAS
PHILOSOPHY DEFINE….
PHILOSOPHY
• seeks to understand the general nature of many aspects of the
world, in part through introspection, examination of inner ideas
and experiences.

• study of knowledge or wisdom from its Latin roots, philo (love)

and sophia (wisdom).

• QUEEN OF ALL SCIENCES

- every scientific discipline has philosophical foundations.
THE PHILOSOPHERS
They found out the relevance of knowing the self and
understanding all of its aspects.
SOCRATES
SOCRATES
• From Athens

• “Know Thyself” – knowing or understanding oneself should be

more than the physical self or the body

• Self is Dichotomous: Physical Realm & Ideal Realm

• Focus on the problem of the self

TWO THINGS:
• The PHYSICAL REALM or the one that is changeable,
temporal, and imperfect. The best example of the physical
realm is the physical world.

• The IDEAL REALM is the one that is imperfect and

unchanging, eternal, and immortal. This includes the
intellectual essences of the universe like the concept of
beauty, truth, soul, and goodness.
•FOR HIM:
- Human being remains the same person
from childhood to adulthood given the fact that
they undergone developmental changes
throughout their lifespan.
PLATO
PLATO
• From Athens

• Establish his own school named

• “psyche” – Greek term means Soul

• Introduce the idea of a three-part soul

(reason, physical appetite and spirit or passion)
3 COMPONENTS OF THE SOUL:
• REASON enables human to think deeply, make wise choices and
achieve a true understanding of eternal truths. Plato also called
this as divine essence.

• APPETITE is the basic biological needs of human being such as

hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.

• SPIRIT is the basic emotions of human being such as love, anger,

ambition, aggressiveness and empath
• FOR HIM:

- It is always the responsibility of the

reason to organize, control, and reestablish
harmonious relationship between these three
elements.
 White Horse:
SPIRIT

Charioteers:
REASON

Black Horse:
APPETITE

PHAEDRUS [metaphor]
•CAN CONTROL
– achieve true wisdom & banquet with Gods

•CANNOT CONTROL
– personal, intellectual & spiritual failure
 ST.
AUGUSTINE
ST. AUGUSTINE
• From North Africa

• Philosophy and Religious Beliefs

• Christianity’s first theologian

• Like Plato, he believed that the physical body is different

from the immortal soul.

• Body is the cage of “soul”

• He also stated that real happiness can only be
found in God. For God is love and he created
humans for them to also love. Problems arise
because of the objects humans choose to love.

• Disordered love results when man loves the

wrong things which he believes will give him
happiness.
• FOR HIM:

- That the body is united with the soul, so that

man may be entire and complete, is a fact we
recognize on the evidence of our own nature
 RENÉ
DESCARTES
RENÉ DESCARTES
• French Philosopher & Mathematician

• Father of modern philosophy

• “cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am

• He explained that in order to gain true knowledge, one

must doubt everything even own existence.
•DOUBTING makes someone
aware that they are thinking being
thus, they exist. The essence of
self is being a thinking thing.
•The SELF then for Descartes is also a
combination of two distinct entities, the
cogito, the thing that thinks, which is the
mind, and the extenza or extension of
the mind which is the body
• FOR HIM:

- 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 man a man. If at all, that
is the mind.
 JOHN
LOCKE
JOHN LOCKE
• English Philosopher & Physician

• “tabula rasa” – blank state

• Humans are born without knowledge

• Declines the ideas of Plato, Socrates and St. Augustine that

self is exists in a single soul or substance.
• FOR HIM:

- self is not tied to any particular body or

substance. It only exists in other times and
places because of the memory of those
experiences.
DAVID
HUME
DAVID HUME
• Scottish Philosopher & an Empiricist

• His essay entitled: “On Personal Identity”

• Claimed that there is NO SELF

• if we carefully examine the contents of [our] experience,

we find that there are only two distinct entities,
"impressions" and "ideas"
2 DISTINCT:
• IMPRESSIONS are the basic sensations of our experience,
the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure, heat,
cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on.

• IDEAS are copies of impressions that include thoughts

and images that are built up from our primary
impressions through a variety of relationships, but
because they are derivative copies of impressions, they
are once removed from reality.
•Hume considered that the self does
not exist because all of the
experiences that a person may have
are JUST PERCEPTIONS and this
includes the perception of self. None of
these perceptions resemble a unified
and permanent self-identity that exists
over time.
• FOR HIM:

- the self that is being experienced by an individual is

nothing but a kind of fictional self. Human created an
imaginary creature which is not real. "Fictional self" is
created to unify the mental events and introduce order into
an individual lives, but this "self" has no real existence
GOOGLE DRIVE
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is highly recommended
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PRESENTATION REPORT
Lesson Presentation (PDF)
NEXT MEETING…
CHAPTER 2 – The Self According to Sociology &
CHAPTER 3 – The Self According to Anthropology