PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE SELF
PHILOSOPHY - Mother of all disciplines
- Study of acquiring knowledge through rational thinking.
11 PHILOSOPHERS
I. SOCRATES (dualist)
THEORY/METHOD:
“Know thyself” - Greek word gnōthi seauton.
(SOCRATIC METHOD) - Asking basic questions:
- “Who am I?”
- “What is the purpose of my life?”
- “What am I doing here?”
- “What is justice?”
“Self-knowledge” - Self is achieved and not just discovered, something to work on and not a
product of a mere realization.
Man is composed of body and soul.
- Invisible – Soul
- Perfect and permanent
- Is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, and ever self-
consistent and invariable.
- Visible – Body
- Imperfect and impermanent
- Is human, mortal, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble, and inconsistent.
ARGUED:
“The ruler of the body is the soul.”
QUOTE:
“Possession of knowledge is virtue and ignorance are vice.”
II. PLATO (dualist)
Empirical Reality
Ultimate Reality
Man is a dual nature: body and soul.
Soul has 3 Components:
- Rational Soul – the thinking soul
- Spirited Soul – emotions or the goodness of a person
- Appetitive Soul - desires
“If the three components of the soul attained it’s ideal state, the human person becomes just and
virtuous.”
III. ST. AUGUSTINE
Bifurcated Nature – dwells in the world, imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine.
- Capable of reaching immortality.
IV. RENE DESCARTES
- Father of Modern Philosophy
- Conceived the human person as having a Body and a Mind.
The Meditations of First Philosophy – claiming that there is so much that we should doubt.
Cogito ergo sum – “I think, therefore I am”
Cogito – the thing that thinks or the MIND.
Extenza – extension of the mind or the BODY.
V. JOHN LOCKE
VI. DAVID HUME
Scottish Philosopher and Empiricist
If one tries to examine his experience, he finds that they can be categorized into two: impressions
and ideas.
Impressions – our thoughts
Ideas – copies of impressions
The self is a bundle of perceptions.
VII. IMMANUEL KANT
Self as a mere combination of impressions is problematic.
“Self is an actively engaged INTELLIGENCE in man that synthesizes all knowledge and
experience.”
VIII. SIGMUND FREUD
IX. GILBERT RYLE
(Logical behaviorism or analytical behaviorism – a theory of mind which states that mental
concepts can be understood through observable events.)
Self is a combination of the mind and the body.
“I act, therefore I am.” – the self is the way people behave.
- He contradicts in Rene Descartes’ “thinking thing”
Concept of Minds
X. PAUL & PATRICIA CHURCHLAND
(Both Neuroscientists)
Eliminative Materialism
Self is contained entirely within the physical brain.
To understand the self, one must study the brain, not just the mind.
XI. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
Phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation
BODY into two types:
- Subjective Body
- Objective Body
Self as embodied subjectivity.
“I am my body”
