Lesson 2

Ancient
Philosophy
PRESENTED BY
Alagano, Khayle Maurey Bargayo
Bonocan, Kristine Cate Plaza
Cobias, Ilah Coreen Renegado
Maravillas, Chester Kent Ysulat
Segumban, Cassandra Celine Jacobo
M ED IE VA L PH IL OS OPHY
• 500 AD to 1350
• Theo-centric
• The confluence of Greek philosophy and Christianity gave rise to medieval philosophy.
• From the scientific investigation on nature and search for happiness to the question of life and salvation in
another realm, in a better world (afterlife).
• Influence from ancient thought: The (human) self-endures through time.
• Rather imposing than informing, because it was trying to aim at paganism and barbarism.
• There was an aim to merge philosophy and religion (Christian, Jewish, Muslim)
• There are four specific issues piqued the interest of the world's greatest philosophers from the Christian,
Muslim, and Jewish faith traditions.

Is the self-related to a Supreme Being/God?

Who am I in relation to a Supreme Being/
God?
 Also known as St. Augustine of Hippo, was originally named
Identity can be Aurelius Augustine
achieved with these
questions: Integrates Platonic ideas with the tenets of Christianity.

“How does one seek union with
God?”
“The harder you seek, the more
distance you create between Him
and you.”
“So what does one do about the
distance?”
“Understand that it isn’t there.”
“Does that mean that God and I are
one?”
Platonic Realm of Idea/Forms: the Christian philosophy of a
transcendent God: the self strives to achieve union with God
through faith and reason.
The finite, temporary world of Plato becomes a proving
ground for our eternal destinies: such that the human person
becomes whole with both body and soul (more unified).
He has two ways to fundamentally conceptualize self as divine
center: self-presentation and self-realization.
https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=418

Saint
“Not one. Not two.”

“How is that possible?”

“The sun and its light, the ocean and

the wave, the singer and his song –
not one. Not two”. Augustine
 How can I be sure that the self
exists? What are the proofs that the
self exists?

• 14th century to the early 20th century

• Anthropocentric = centered on the human person
• Thinkers began to reject the scholastics’ (medieval thinkers) excessive reliance on authority
• Period of radical social, political and intellectual developments
• Genuine knowledge has to be based on independent rational inquiry and real-world experimentation, rather
than dependent on knowledge handed down by authorities.

MODERN
PHILOSOPHY
 Father of Modern Philosophy

A rationalist who is famous for his statement, “Cogito ergo sum.” –

“I think, therefore, I am.”

Human identity: self-awareness

Hyperbolical doubt

The self is a combination of two distinct entities: (1) Cogito, which

is the thing that thinks or the mind; and (2) Extenza, which is the
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes#/media/1/158787/238240 extension or the body.

René Descartes
Dualism: thinking (spiritual) self vs. physical body.

A Rationalist
British empiricist philosopher

The human mind at birth is tabula rasa or blank slate.

Reason plays a subsequent role in helping to figure out the significance
of our sense experience and to reach intelligent conclusions.

The self is consciousness. The self is not necessarily embedded in a

single substance or soul, but exists in space and time.

Every aspect of the physical body is integrated with personal identity.

The body changes. The physical self changes. But the self endures
because of memory.

Conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys

to understanding the self. https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Locke#/media/1/345753/241685

John Locke
An Empiricist

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/david-
hume/
There is no self!
The self is a “bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other in an
inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement.”
Impressions are the basic sensations of experiences.
Ideas are copies of our impressions.
Impressions form a fleeting stream of sensations
No constant and invariable self that exists as a unified identity over the course of
life.

David Hume
Empiricist, Sceptic, & Nihilist https://www.philosophybasics.com/
Contests Hume’s idea by alluding to the primary
philosophers_kant.html
experience of the world that is not a disconnected
stream of sensations.
A priori concepts: fundamental organizing rules or
principles built into the architecture of the mind, which
categorize, organize and synthesize sense data into the
familiar fabric of our lives, bounded by space and time.
These are innate.
Unity of consciousness that makes the world
intelligible.
Immanuel Kant
 He founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.

The self is multi-tiered/multi-layered: The unconscious

contains the basic instinctual drives, including sexuality,
aggressiveness, self-destruction; traumatic memories;
unfulfilled wishes and childhood fantasies; thoughts and
feelings considered socially taboo.

Conscious is governed by the reality principle; at this level,

behavior and experience are organized in ways that are
rational, practical, and appropriate to the social environment.
https://www.biography.com/scholar/sigmund-freud

Sigmund Freud
Behaviorism: No more dichotomy by denying the inner
selves, immortal souls, states of consciousness, or
unconscious entities.

The self is defined in terms of behavior that is presented to

the world.

The self is a pattern of behavior, the tendency or disposition

for a person to behave in a certain way in certain
circumstances. https://www.google.com/search?q=gilbert+ryle&client=ms-android-huawei-
rev1&prmd=ibvxn&sxsrf=APqWBvBA3qqYddiRFXJywJ89Ry6dbKsYA:1644155134544&source=lnms&tbm=
isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5i_-
Vmv1AhVlklYBHWHRA6kQ_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=424&bih=834&dpr=2.55#mgrc=795gSRoCthsijM

Gilbert Ryle
A Physicalist
 A Canadian philosopher who specializes in mind and
neurophilosophy.

Eliminative Materialism: grounded in neuroscience

The mind/self is the brain

Paul Churchland https://www.google.com/search?

q=paul+churchland&client=ms-android-huawei
rev1&prmd=invx&sxsrf=APq-
WBvLKCpFZ9eoLoTlCIUdsgN4gWiQOw:16441551948
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Kym-

A Physicalist
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24&bih=834&dpr=2.55#imgrc=5L4RbzrKA-PN-M

The father of Phenomenology

We experience our self as a unity in which the

mental and physical are seamlessly woven
together.
https://www.google.com/search?
q=edmund+husserl&client=ms-android-huawei-
rev1&prmd=ibvxn&sxsrf=APq-
WBtqnsy6K8c0AMoLs_shvsD0k__dJg:1644155
270506&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2
ahUKEwj8lurWm-
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E dm un d H u s s e r l
TdSGX7-RM
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The nature of perception and the
structure of behavior

He believed in the “lived body”.

An entity that can never be objectified or known in a
completely objective sort of way, as opposed to the “body
as object” of the dualists. “There is no duality of
substance but a dialectic of living being in its biological
milieu.”

https://images.app.goo.gl/gv7xGND3kLxaTpUT8
 Merleau-Ponty's
Embodied Subjectivity
Both Husserl and Merleau Ponty agree that our living body is a natural
synthesis of mind and biology.

Phenomenological approach: describe the phenomena of the lived experience

(reducing biases) by describing what your immediate responses are—
physically, emotionally, cognitively
Medieval Philosophy
Takeaway
• The confluence of Greek philosophy and
Christianity gave rise to medieval philosophy.
• Theo-centric
St. Augustine
• Augustine sees the self as being open to a
relationship with God
• He has two ways to fundamentally conceptualize
self as divine center: Self-presentation and Self-
realization
Modern Philosophy
• Modern thinkers believed that genuine knowledge
has to be based on independent rational inquiry and
real-world experimentation, rather than dependent
on knowledge handed down by authorities.
David Hume
• Scottish empiricist, sceptic, and nihilist, found no such
impression and idea of the self; thus, the self does not
exist.
Immanuel Kant
• A German philosopher who argued with Hume's idea of
the self. He believed that the a priori concept precedes the
sensations of experience and exists independently.
Sigmund Freud
• The founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology
who philosophized the self as multi-layered with two
levels of human functioning - the conscious and
unconscious.

René Descartes
• The act of thinking about self-of being self-
conscious is in itself proof that there is self.
John Locke
• Conscious awareness and memory of previous
experience are the keys to understanding the self
 Takeaway
Gilbert Ryle
• A Physicalist who focused on his study of humans'
behavior concluding- the offset of denying the
inner selves, immortal souls, states of
consciousness, or unconscious entities.
Paul Montgomery Churchland
• A Canadian philosopher who specializes in mind
and neurophilosophy claims that no material
possession psychological framework is a wildly
inaccurate and erroneous view of human behavior's
causes and the nature of cognition but also a full
distortion of our interior states and actions.
Edmund Husserl
• One of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth
century, and one of the main founders of phenomenology
and is known to be the father of Phenomenology
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• The body is an entity that can never be objectified or
known in a completely objective sort of way, as opposed
to the “body as object” of the dualists.
Embodied Subjectivity
• The idea that self is not a concept but a combination of
body and mind that cannot be separated to live in stimuli
and existence.
Biography.com Editors. (2014). René Descartes Biography.
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