GNED O8: Understanding the Self

(Reviewer Quiz 1)

• Philosophy
- from two Greek words “Philo” which means “Love”, and
“Sophia” which means “Wisdom”
Big Three Greek Philosophers
1. Socrates - He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in
a systematic questioning about the self.
o Claims
- “Unexamined life is not worth living”
- The self is the synonymous with the soul
- Believed that the true task of the philosophy is to
know oneself
o Two Aspect of Personhood
- Body and soul
- Imperfect and impermanent
- Perfect and permanent
2. Plato – Further expound the idea of his master, he believed
that there are three components of the soul
o Three Aspect of the Soul
1. Rational Soul – reason and intellect
2. Spirited Soul – managing emotions
3. Appetitive Soul – controlling basic desires
3. Aristotle – the student of Plato, he suggested that anything
with life has soul and claims that soul and body is unified said
that “man is a rational animal”
 o Three Different Type of Soul
1. Vegetative Soul – capability to grow, reproduce
and feed itself.
2. Sentient Soul – capable of sensation
3. Rational Soul – capable of thinking

Philosophers

1. St. Augustine – following the ancient view of Plato and

infusing with the newfound doctrine of Christianity, he
agreed that man is a bifurcated nature, the body is bound
to die on earth and the soul is anticipate living eternally in a
realm of spiritual a bliss.
2. Rene Descartes – is the father of modern Philosophy
o Views about the self
- Cogito ergo sum or “I think therefore I am”
- “Everything is just an illusion “
- He also implies that being in a constant doubt
regarding one’s existence is proof that a person
actually exists
- He concluded that the only thing that one
cannot doubt is the existence of “self”
o Two Distinct Entities
1. Cogito – means thing that thinks, which is the
mind.
2. Extenza – infers extension of the mind, which is
the body.
3. John Locke – self is constructed primarily from sense
experiences as this shape and mold the self throughout a
person’s life.
o Tabula Rasa
- Means “blank state at birth”
o Quote
- “The self cannot be found in the soul nor the
body but in one’s consciousness”
4. David Hume – a Scottish philosopher and an empiricist who
believes that one can know only what comes from the
senses and experiences.
o Claims
- Self is nothing but simply a bundle of impressions
- There is no self
o Two categories of self
1. Impressions – basic objects of our experience ??
sensation
2. Ideas - impression ??
5. Immanuel Kant - he disagreed that the thinking of the “self”
as a mere combination of impressions which he found
problematic
o Claims
- Apparatuses of the mind is the self
- Without the self, one cannot recognize the
different impressions that one gets in relation to
his/her own existence.
 - Kant therefore suggests that self is actively
engaged intelligence ???? synthesizes all know
???? experiences
6. Gilbert Ryle – rejects the concept of internal, non -physical
self, the way we do things, define the self, and “I act
therefore I am”
7. Merleau-Ponty – the self is the embodied subjectivity, all
knowledge of ourselves and our world is based on subjective
experience