Self

●​ An individual’s typical character or behavior

●​ the union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and

sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person.

●​ material that is part of an individual organism.

Nature - It refers to the things we inherit from our parents, like our genes.
Nurture - Is about the environment we grow up in, like our family, culture, education,
and experiences.
Identity-It is how you present yourself to the outside world and how others see you.
Self- The idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness.
Human Act- An act in some way under the control or direction of the will, which is
proper to man.
Act of Human- Are involuntary and therefore, not morally responsible for them.

Factors Involving The Self

●​ SOCIAL FACTOR – Refers to how our relationships and interactions with

other
people shape who we are.
●​ ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR – refers to the environment you live in,
including where you were raised, your community, and the culture around
you.
●​ HEREDITARY FACTOR – refers to the traits you inherit from your parents
through genes, like physical appearance or certain talents.
●​ PERSON-VOLITION FACTOR – This is about personal choice and free will.
●​ PERSONALITY – relatively enduring traits and characteristics of an
individual.

Philosophy

●​ Derived from the Greek Word “Philos” and “Sophos/Sophia” which

literally means “Love for wisdom”.
●​ It is the study of acquiring knowledge through rational thinking and
inquiries that involve answering questions regarding the nature and existence of man
and the world we live in.
SOCRATES- Was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher credited as one of the
founders of Western philosophy, and as being the first moral philosopher of the
western ethical tradition of thought.
●​ Socrates’ works was never published. It was only the student of Socrates
who witnessed and illustrated all the details about his knowledge,
●​ Socrates can be considered as the first “Martyr of Education”, knowledge and
philosophy.
●​ He was charged with corruption of the mind of minors and was made to
choose between exile and death via the intake of common hemlock.
●​ The philosophy of Socrates underlies the importance of the notion “Knowing
One’s self / Know thyself”.
●​ For him, men’s goal in life is to obtain happiness and such goal motivates us
to act towards or against the things that can bring negativities in our lives.
SELF = SOUL
●​ He viewed the soul as immortal and distinct from the body, with the body
being a temporary vessel.
●​ The soul is the essence of the human person
●​ Soul is the seat of knowledge and ignorance, the seat of goodness and
badness.
●​ When we turn inwards for self-knowledge, we will discover our true self
●​ Socrates believed that possession of knowledge is a virtue and that
ignorance is a depravity.
●​ “An unexamined life is not worth living”
●​ He also believed that the answer to our pursuit in knowing ourselves lies in
our own abilities and wisdom, and that the only way for us to understand
ourselves is through internal questioning or introspection

INTROSPECTION - is the examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and

feelings.
• In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of
one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's
soul.
• Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and is contrasted with
external observation.
Socratic Method/ Conversation
• is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on
asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas
and underlying presumptions.

PLATO - Known as the “Father of the Academy”. Was a philosopher in Classical

Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the (first institution of higher
learning in the Western world.)
●​ He wrote several literature that tackles politics, human nature,
and established the idea of virtue and intelligence.
●​ Plato generally followed his teacher (Socrates) and the idea of knowing
thyself.
●​ Since Plato also studies the politics, he then wrote the “The Republic”,
believing that the world can only be led by a philosopher King – a person who
is virtuous as well as intelligent.
●​ Plato believe that the true self of the human person is the rational soul.
●​ Self = Body and Soul (dichotomy of body and soul)
●​ Body - material and destructible
●​ Soul - immaterial and indestructible,
●​ Soul and body can be separated.
●​ Plato believes that the soul is just residing in the body temporarily.

TRIPARTITE SOUL
RATIONAL/LOGICAL- seeks truth and is swayed by facts and arguments
SPIRITED / EMOTIONAL- how feelings fuel your actions
APPETITIVE/ PHYSICAL DESIRE - Drives you to eat,have sex,and protect
yourself.

TRIPARTITE THEORY OF THE SOUL

• APPETITIVE SOUL – is the part of the person that is driven by the desire
and need to satisfy oneself. Satisfaction involves both the physical need and
pleasures and desires.
• SPIRITED SOUL – this can be attributed to the courageous part of a
person, one who wants to do something right and correct the wrong doings of others.

- Spirited soul are very active and competitive. His competitiveness drives one to
expect positive results and winning.

RATIONAL SOUL – superior

among the 3 souls, this is said to be the driver of our lives. This is the part that
thinks and plans for the future. It decides what to do, when to do it and the
possible results one could have depending on their actions.

ARISTOTLE
• Brilliant student of Plato but diverged from Plato’s fundamental
philosophies
• “The human person is a rational animal”
• Soul is the principle of life – all human beings have soul (humans,
plants, and animals)
• VEGETETIVE SOUL – plants
• SENSITIVE SOUL - animals
• RATIONAL SOUL - humans

-Aristotle believed that the human person is not a soul distinct from the body.
• The human person is a composite of body and soul and that the two are
inseparable.
• His concept of the soul is constructed from Hylomorphism:
• SOUL = FORM (allows humans to perform activities of life e.g. Thinking,
imagining, desiring, perceiving)
• Aristotle interprets the “true self” of humans as the soul that animates the body
• The body is as important as the soul as it serves as “matter” to the soul.
ST. AUGUSTINE
• was a Roman African, early Christian theologian and a philosopher from
Numidia whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and
Western philosophy.
• St. Augustine follows the idea that God encompasses us all, that everything will
be better if we are with God.
• Our sense of self is related to God Our existence is modelled in the likeliness of
God; Augustine described that humankind is created in the image and likeness of
God.
• His idea of man and how to understand who we are as a person is related to our
understanding of who we are and how we question ourselves.
• St. Augustine believes that our notion of ourselves and our idea of existence comes
from a higher form of sense in which bodily senses may not perceive or understand.
• In Augustine's mission to discover the truth on the existence of God, he developed
the fundamental concept of the human person and thus, provided the
philosophical principle, “I am doubting, therefore I am.”

DESCARTES
• Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist.
Known to be “The Father Of Modern Western Philosophy”.
• Cartesian Dualism – he believed that the “Mind” and the “Body” are two
separate entities. The mind could exist without the body, but the body could not
exist without the mind.
• The proponent of “Methodical Doubt” – which simply meant - a continuous
process of questioning what we perceive and accepting the fact that doubting,
asking questions are a part of one’s existence.
• “Cogito Ergo Sum” which means in English as “I think therefore I am”..
• For him, the act of thinking about the self – of being self-conscious – is in itself
proof that there is self.
• For Descartes, the essence of the self – a thinking entity that doubts,
understands, analyzes, questions, and reasons
• There are two dimensions of the self: the self as a thinking entity and the
self as a physical body.
• The thinking self (or soul) is the nonmaterial, immortal, conscious being, and
independent of the physical laws of the universe.
• The physical body is the material, mortal, non-thinking entity, fully
governed by the physical laws of nature

LOCKE - John Locke is an English Philosopher and Physician.

• Considered to be the father of Classical Liberalism.
• He conceptualized the term “Tabula Rasa” – which means a blank slate or an
empty vessel.
• Locke believed that the experiences and perceptions of a person is important
in the establishment of who that person can become.

HUME
• David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, who focused his work in the field of
Empiricism, Skepticism, and naturalism.
• Empiricism is the belief in concrete evidences and observable experiences
that mold a person.
• He believed that there is no permanent “Self”, that since our impressions of
things based from our experiences and from such impressions, we can create
our ideas and knowledge.
• "What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at
another time?" or "What kinds of things are we persons?“
• The Bundle Theory of Self – man is a bundle or collection of different
perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in
perpetual flux and movement.

KANT
• Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher widely known as the “Father of
Modern Ethics”.
• His concept of the self serves as the foundation of the development of his Moral
Theory
1. NOUMENON - “thing-in-itself”, derived from Kant’s epistemology, which means
the essence of things and cannot be known since as the essence of things = it is
beyond experience. - it has two aspects: Free choice and Will
2. PHAENOMENON - refers to the things as it appears to the observer
• HOMO NOUMENON – is the godlike self of the human person which contains the
psychological state and intellect.
• HOMO PHAENOMENON – the human self or physical self/ animal or
instinctual aspect of the human person.
• One cannot be complete self without the inner self and outer self.

RYLE
• Gilbert Ryle with his behavioristic approach to self, said that self is the
behaviour presented by the person, he believe that “the behaviour that
we show, emotions and actions are reflection of our mind and as such is
the manifestation of who we are.”
• “GHOST IN THE MACHINE” View – this view said the man is a complex
machine with different function parts, and the intelligence and other
characteristics or behaviour of man is represented by the ghost in the
said machine.

CHURCHLAND
• Paul Churchland is a Canadian philosopher whose focus is on the idea
that people should improve our association and use of words in identifying
the self. He has this idea that the “self” is defined by the movements of our
brain.
• ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM – this opposes that people’s common sense of
understanding the mind is false and that most of the mental states that
people subscribe to, in turn, do not actually exist, and this idea also applies
on the understanding of behaviour and emotions.
• NEUROPHILOSOPHY – he believed that to fully understand one’s behaviour,
one should understand the different neurological movement of the brain that pertains
to different emotions, feelings, actions and reactions and how such brain
movements affects the body.And they call it “The Brain as the Self”.
MERLEAU-PONTY
• Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty is a French philosopher who
is known for his works on existentialism and phenomenology. His idea of the self,
regarded that the body and mind are not separate entities but rather these two
components are one and the same.
• He follows the idea of the Gestalt psychology where he believed that “the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts” where he pushed the idea on the unity of the
function of the mind and the body, and this idea is called “the Phenomenology
of Perception”.

His idea was divided into three division:

• The body – that both receives the experience as well as integrates such
experiences in the different perception
• The Perceived World – which are the accumulation of the perception as
integrated by the experiences of the body.
• The People and the World – that enables one to not only be able to integrate
the other objects in the world but also to be able to experience the cultural aspect
and relate to others.
• He argues that our experience is always situated within a shared social world,
and that our understanding of ourselves is intertwined with our understanding
of others.

Padayon future Guro!!!

-Nics M.<333