The Philosophical Self

Philosophy is commonly defined

as the love of wisdom, but is
essentially a special form of activity,
to philosophize.
Articulo (2004) proposed that it is
meant to be experienced, living and
doing philosophy. As an activity,
Philosophy requires the cultivation of
certain quality in man, to wonder.
 The Philosophical Self

Philosophy was said to have been

born the very moment the first
humans began to experience such
childlike wonderments, allowing
one to wander and wonder about
one’s human existence.
The Self from Various Philosophical
Perspectives
1. Socrates – Greek thinker, the
true task of philosopher is to know oneself.
He affirms that “the unexplained life is
not worth living.” We are supposed to
know who we are and the virtues we are
supposed to attain in order to preserve souls
afterlife. Socrates thought that this is the
worst thing that can happen to anyone.
To live but die inside.
 2. Plato
Socrates student, supported the idea that man is a
dual nature of body and soul. He added that
there are three components of the soul: The
rational soul, forged by reason and intellect has
to govern the affairs of the human person the
spirited soul, part which is in charge of
emotions should be kept a t bay and the
appetitive soul. In charge of the base desires like
eating drinking sleeping and having sexual
intercourse is controlled as well.
In his work, The Republic, he emphasized that
justice in the human person can only be attained
if the three parts are working harmoniously .
When the ideal state is attained, human person”
s soul is just and virtuous.
 3. St. Augustine
with the newfound doctrine of Christianity
agreed that man is of bifurcated nature, that
there is an aspect of man that dwell in the
world, that is the imperfect and continuously
yearns to be divine while the other is capable
of reaching immortality.
The body is bound to die on earth
and the soul is to anticipate living
eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss
in communion with God. The goal of every
human person is to attain this communion
and bliss with the Divine by living his life on
earth in virtue.
•
4. . Thomas Aquinas
13th century scholar and stalwart of Medieval
Philosophy, said that indeed man is composed
of two parts: matter and form. Matter or
“hyle” in Greek, refers to the common stuff
that makes up everything in the universe.
Man’s body is part of that matter. Form or
“morphe” in Greek, refers to the essence of
the substance or thing. It is what makes it
what it is.
What makes a human person a human
person is his soul, his essence.
To Aquinas, The soul is what animates the
body , it is what makes us humans.
5. Rene Descartes
Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived that
the human person is having a body and a mind.
The only thing one cannot doubt is the
existence of the self. Thus, his famous cogito
ergo sum or I think therefore I am, the fact
that one thinks should lead one to conclude
without a trace of doubt is that he exist. In
Descartes view, 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 all that is the mind.

“But what then am I, A thinking thing. It is a

thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies,
wills, refuses, that imagines and perceives.
 6. David Hume
A Scottish Philosopher, who believes that one can
know only what comes from the senses and
experience. Empiricism is a school of thought that
espouses that knowledge can only be possible if it
is sensed and experienced.
According to Hume , experience can be categorized
into two: impressions and ideas. Impressions are
the basic object of our experience or sensation.
They therefore form the core of our thoughts and are
vivid because they are the products of our direct
experience in the world. Ideas are copies of
impression not as vivid and lively.

Self, then is simply a bundle or collection of

different perceptions, which succeed each other.
Self is just a bundle of impressions.
7. Immanuel Kant
Believed that what men perceive around them
are not just randomly infused into the human
person without an organizing principle that
regulates the relationship of all these
impressions. Kant stressed that there is
necessarily a mind that organizes the
impressions that men get from the external
world. The apparatus of the mind goes the
self. Kant suggest that the self is an actively
engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes
all knowledge and experience.

Thus , the self is not just what gives one his

personality.  It is also the seat of  knowledge ,
acquisition for all human persons.  
 8. Gilbert Ryle
Solves the mind-body dichotomy by denying
blatantly the concept of internal –non-physical
self. He said that what truly matter is the
behavior that a person manifest in his day
to day life.

Ryle said that the self is not an entity

one can locate and analyze but
simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the
behaviors that people make.
 9. Marleau Ponty
A phenomenologist asserts that mind-body are so
intertwined that they cannot be separated from
one another. One cannot find any experience that
is not an embodied experience. All experience is
embodied. One’s body is his opening towards his
existence to the world. The living body, his
thoughts, emotions and experiences are all one.

For him philosophy must be a completely

unrestricted reflection on the whole
experience including certainly, science
and language but also man himself and
all his activities, among them art, politics,
society and religion.