Man studies about himself.

The perennial question of identity “WHO

AM I?” is a difficult question to answer. So difficult that up to our last
breath, we are still trying to know who we really are.
• John Ruskin, a prominent social thinker of the Victorian era,
postulated three fundamentally perennial questions in life.

 Who am I?
 Where does man came from?
 Does man’s life have a purpose?
 PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF
 MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy comes from Greek words, “philo” which means love and
“sophia” which means wisdom – love for wisdom.
 PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR
PHILOSOPHIES ABOUT THE SELF
 THE SELF
IN THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY
SOCRATES (469-339 B.C.)

• He contemplated the self as not just a mind-body aggregate but

also a moral being.
• His philosophy chiefly centered on the moral aspect of man, on
how man should live a morally good life or happiness.

•Only in the pursuit of goodness

can the self find happiness.
How then the self can be able to live a morally good life?
• First, the self must focus on improving the quality of the moral life instead of
indulging in the chase of material things, fame and prestige.
• Second, the improvement of the soul can be achieved through the quest for
wisdom and truth.
• Third, life must be ceaselessly examined for it to be worth living.
PLATO (427-3447 B.C.)
• For him, the self is a rational substance consisting of body and soul.
Thus, the self is a rational animal capable of knowing the reality of the
universe.
• Plato, in his theory in the triapartite of the soul, stated that the soul of
the self consists of three dissimilar elements;
• The highest element of reason (head).
• The spirited element which expresses emotional drives such as
aggression, ambition, pride, anger, honor, loyalty, courage and
protectiveness (heart),
• And the bottom of the hierarchy are the bodily appetite, desire, and
needs (stomach).
• Like Socrates, Plato postulated that living a morally good life is
important to a person to achieve happiness.
• To attain happiness, the self therefore must be intellectually,
emotionally and biologically balance.
 THE SELF
IN THE MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
ST. AUGUSTINE (354-430AD)

• He blended Christianity with the philosophy of Plato.

• In his book, The City of God he classified human race into those who love God and
belonged to the City of God, and those in the city of the world who do not love God.
• The self is composed of the body, soul, and spirit.
• The body is the outer part of the self through which the self can come contact with the
world.
• The inner part of the self is called the soul, which is composed of the mind, emotions and
the will.
• The innermost part of the self is the spirit. It is through the spirit that the self can
commune with God.
• The body is subject to morality.
 THE SELF
IN THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY
RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)

• He presented an extreme dualistic separation of mind and body.

• The body is independent of the soul since the mind is not the
body’s provider of life.
• The mind is not the principle of life because it’s primary function
is to think. Thinking is an activity which is primarily spiritual and
does not require the body as the medium for the activity of
thinking.
• The self, therefore is construed as a mental and thinking
substance,
• “I think, therefore I am”
• So the self is nothing else but a thinking thing or a machine that
sinks.
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

• He believed that the source of authentic

knowledge of reality must pass the test of
sensory experience.
• Tabula Rasa, as we grow and interact with
others, we accumulate knowledge.
• The existence of the self is reliant on our
consciousness of it.
• The essence of the self is its consciousness
awareness of itself as a thinking, reasoning,
reflecting identity and is not tied up with any
particular body or substance.
DAVID HUME (1711-1776)

• Hume, a British thinker who belonged to empiricism

postulated that the concept of self, in order to be
intelligible must be based on sense impressions.
• To understand Hume’s concept of the self, we must
first cognize his concepts of impressions and ideas.
• Impressions are the experience of sense such as pain,
pleasure, heat, cold, etc., which are lively and vivid.

• Ideas refer to the recalled copies of the impressions.

• We see, feel, smell, taste things, then we remember what we have seen, felt, smelt, and tasted.
• There is no such thing as the self. It is just a bundle of constant flux of impressions out of which we
form an idea of who the self is.
• We connect all the experiences we have had and form a notion of a person or self.
IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)
• Kant reconciled the conflicting philosophies of rationalism of the
17th century and empiricism of the 18th century.
• In his theory of knowledge, he said that human knowledge is
composed of sensory component and rational component.
• Knowledge has indeed, the sensory elements, but these sensory
impressions are meaningless unless the rational element or the
mind actively interprets and gives meaning to these sensory
impressions.
• Kant conceptualized two kinds of the self; the empirical and
transcendental self.
• The empirical self pertains to particular aspects of the self that
make the self unique (physical aspects, memories, personalities,
history and culture) – known through experience.
• As a transcendental self, the self is an activity or organizing
principle that actively interprets, constructs, and gives meaning to
collections of sensory data.
• The self is not an object but a subject that gives meaning to
sensory experience.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939)

• His understanding of the nature of the self is multifaceted and rests

in his concepts of mind and personality.
• The self is composed of the unconscious self (id), the conscious self
(ego), and the ideal self (super ego).
• The id is the animalistic nature that operates on pleasure and
gratification principle.
• The ego is the rational, conscious aspect that controls all reasoning
abilities and operates according to the reality.
• The superego is the moral aspect composed of the conscience and
the ego ideal. It provides a check and balance to the insistent
demand of the id for gratification.
LEVELS OF AWARENESS
• Conscious
- Consist of what someone is aware of at any particular point in time.
• Preconscious
- Contains information that is just below the surface of awareness. It
can be retrieved with relative ease.
• Unconscious
- Contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are burned deep in
ourselves, well below our consciousness.
GILBERT RYLE (1900-1976)

• In his book, The Concept of Mind, he claimed that

Descartes’ body and mind dualism created a
category mistake.
• The category mistake takes place when the self is
thought to be a pure mental entity that exists apart
from certain observable behaviors.
• The self then must be comprehended as a pattern of
behavior or the tendency of an individual to behave
in a certain way in particular situations.
• The self, therefore is the way people behave.
PATRICIA AND PAUL CHURCHLAND
(1943-PRESENT

• The body-mind problems cannot be solved by

philosophers but by neuroscientists.
• The self is the brain. The mental state of the mind
can impact the physical conditions of the self.
MAURICE MERLAEU-PONTY (1908-1961)

• In his notion of the body-subject, he

claimed that the body plays a vital role in
perception, knowledge and meaning.
• The body is our general medium for
knowing the world and giving meaning it.
• Without our body, we would cease
human experience, life knowledge, and
meaning.