Philosophical Self

Summary
Socrates
▪ “Know Thyself”
▪ Ancient greeting of the Greeks
▪ Knowing thyself is more than just basic facts
▪ Imperative and requirement
▪ Imperative to know the limits of the self
▪ One knows what one is capable of doing and not
▪ Requirement of self-moderation, prudence, good judgment
and excellence of the soul
▪ “An unexamined life is not worth
living”
▪ Living a good life means having the
wisdom to distinguish what is right
from wrong
Plato
▪ Psyche is composed of three elements
▪ Appetitive- desires, pleasures, physical satisfactions, comfort, etc.
▪ Spirited- excited when given challenges, fights back when agitated,
fights for justice when unjust practices are evident
– Hot-blooded

▪ Mind/Nous- controls the affairs of the self; controls the appetitive

and spirited
▪ In order to live a good life, one has to develop the nous and fill it
with the understanding of the limits of the self and the correct
ethical standards
St. Augustine
▪ Concrete example of a highly self-controlled nous is
the life of St. Augustine
▪ Succumbed to the pleasures of the world (Appetitive)
▪ Searched for the meaning of his life
▪ Conversion to Christianity- realize wasted self
(Spirited)
▪ Development of the self for St. Augustine is achieved
through self-presentation and self-realization
Rene Descartes
▪ Cogito, ergo Sum
▪ I think therefore I am or I doubt
therefore I exist
▪ The existence of the self is human
rationality
John Locke
▪ Opposed the idea that only reason is the source of knowledge
of the self.
▪ Self is comparable to an empty space
▪ Everyday experiences contribute to the pile of knowledge that
is put forth on that empty space.
▪ Experience is an important requirement in order to have sense
data
▪ Through the process of reflection and analysis becomes sense
perception
▪ An individual person is not only capable of
learning from experience but also
▪ Skillful enough to process different perceptions
from various experiences to form a complex
idea
▪ These ideas becomes keys to understand
complex realities about the self and the world.
David Hume
▪ There cannot be an persisting idea of the self.
▪ All ideas are derived from impressions
▪ Impressions are subjective, temporary
▪ This means that all we know about ourselves
are just bundles of temporary impressions
▪ There is no self.
Immanuel Kant
▪ Self is always transcendental
▪ Being or the self is not in the body.
▪ It is outside the body – transcendental
▪ Ideas are perceived by the self and connecting the
self and the world.
▪ Our rationality unifies and makes sense the
perceptions we have in our experiences and makes
sensible ideas about ourselves and the world.
Freud

▪ Id- pleasure principle

▪ Ego- realistic principle
▪ Superego- moralistic principle
Gilbert Ryle
▪ Critique of Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body
▪ Mind is never separate from the body
▪ Physical actions or behaviors are dispositions of the
self.
▪ We will only be able to understand the self based
from external manifestations – behaviors,
expressions, language, desires and the like.
▪ The mind is nothing but a disposition of the self.
Paul and Patricia Churchland
▪ Promoted the eliminative materialism
▪ Bring forth neuroscience into the fore of understanding the
self.
▪ Eliminative materialism sees the failure of folk psychology
in explaining basic concepts such as sleep, learning,
mental illness and the like.
▪ Folk psychology will be replaced by neurobiology.
▪ Go for MRI scan or CT Scan to understand the present
condition of the brain
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
▪ Phenomenology of Perception
▪ Treat perception as a causal process.
▪ This means that our perceptions are caused by
the intricate experiences of the self, processed
intellectually while distinguishing perceptions
from illusory
▪ The self is taken as a phenomenon of the whole
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