THE SELF FROM VARIOUS

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Greek thinkers that are collectively called PRE-SOCRATICS.

• Others existed around Socrates' time as well. These men were;

THALES – prime element of the earth is water

HERACLITUS – prime element is fire

PYTHAGORAS – fundamental principle of the universe lies within mathematics.

GREEK MIRACLE: a rational, scientific, philosophical and naturalistic thinking that took over
during the pre-Socratic period.

SOCRATES

THE SOUL IS IMMORTAL: SOCRATES AND PLATO

• Concerned with the problem of the self.

• First philosopher who ever engaged in a systemic questioning about the self.

• The true task of a philosopher is to know oneself.

• Acted as a "gadfly".

SOCRATIC METHOD: method of rational argument and counter-argument. A dynamic approach

of questioning and intellectual analysis to draw answers out of people rather than lecture them.

SOCRATIC WISDOM: True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

FOUR MAIN IDEAS

1. Care for your Soul

2. Knowledge of virtue is necessary to become virtuous, and in turn that virtue is necessary to
attain happiness.

3. All evil acts are committed out of ignorance and hence, involuntarily.

4. Committing injustice is far worse than suffering an injustice.

1. CARE FOR YOUR SOUL

• Man: BODY: the imperfect and impermanent aspect.

SOUL: perfect and permanent aspect.

• Your soul makes you distinctively you. According to Socrates it is the state if our soul, or our
inner being, which determines the quality of our life.

HOW DO YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR SOUL?

- Self awareness/ Knowledge

WAYS TO ENHANCE SELF-KNOWLEDGE

1. INTROSPECTION. Pay attention and take note of your own experiences, actions, and
reactions.

2. OBSERVATION. Sometimes others see behaviors in us that we don’t see.

a. Situation – what is going on?

b. Specific behavior – what happened?
c. Impact – what is the result?

3. FEEDBACK. opinion is more understandable when backed up with specific examples.

4. ASSESSMENT TOOLS

2. KNOWLEDGE OF VIRTUE IS NECESSARY TO BECOME VIRTUOUS, AND IN TURN THAT VIRTUE

IS NECESSARY TO ATTAIN HAPPINESS.
• Virtue: moral excellence, and an individual is considered virtuous if their character is made up
of the moral qualities that are accepted as virtues.

3. ALL EVIL ACTS ARE COMMITTED OUT OF IGNORANCE AND HENCE, INVOLUNTARILY.

An individual who commits an evil act is one who is ignorant of the fact that virtue alone is the
one true good.

4. COMMITTING AN INJUSTICE IS FAR WORSE THAN SUFFERING AN INJUSTICE

• When we commit an injustice we are harming our soul which is our true self. Yet on the other
hand, when we suffer an injustice it is not our soul which is harm but instead what is harmed is
merely something we possess.

PLATO

• First one to argue that the systematic use of reason can show us the best way to live.
• Plato followed and supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul.

TRIPARTITE STRUCTURE OF THE SOUL

1. Rational/Reason
2. Appetitive/physical appetite

3. Spirited/Passion

• RATIONAL SOUL – our divine essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise choices, and
achieve a true understanding of eternal truths.

• SPIRITED SOUL – our basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and
empathy.

• APPETITIVE SOUL – our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
EVERY PERSON DIFFER AS TO WHICH PART OF THEIR NATURE IS DOMINANT.
• REASON: philosophical and seek knowledge
• APPETITIVE: profit loving and seek material gain
• SPIRITED: victory loving and seek reputatioin

FIVE CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIETIES

1. MERITOCRACY: talented rules. Holding in power are chosen thru their ability.

2. TIMARCHIC: values honor and fame while reason is neglected.

3. OLIGARCHY: money making is valued and political power lies with the wealthy.

4. DEMOCRACY: the poor seize power.

5. ANARCHY: Total lack of governance. May need a tyrant to restore order.

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

SAINT AUGUSTINE

SAINT AUGUSTINE’S SYNTHESIS OF PLATO AND CHRISTIANITY

• Augustine was convinced that Platonism and Christianity were natural partners.
• Agreed that man is of bifurcated nature.
THERE ARE TWO REALMS:

1. INTELLIGIBLE REALM: truth dwells

2. SENSIBLE REALM: perceived by senses

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS SYNTHESIS OF ARISTOTLE AND CHRISTIANITY

• Rejected Plato’s radical dualism between material and nonmaterial in human beings and
tended towards Aristotle’s metaphysical views to serve as an intellectual structure for
Christianity’s ideas of the self and reality.

• PERSON: is material substance whose essence emerges from unified relationship between the
body and soul. Soul animates the body, it makes us human but the soul is incomplete when the
body it animates perishes.
• SOUL: Aquinas thinks that our souls are responsible for the kind of bodies we have.

• BODY: our bodies not only play a positive role in our lives but they are also essential to our
continued existence.

RENÉ DESCARTES

DESCARTE’S MODERN PERSPECTIVE ON THE SELF

• Founder of Modern Philosophy.

• Concerned with understanding the thinking process we use to answer questions.

• Agreed with the great thinkers before him that the human ability to reason constitutes the
extraordinary instrument we have to achieve truth and knowledge.

• Descartes wanted to penetrate the nature of our reasoning process and understand its
relation to human self.

Genuine Knowledge: RATIONAL INQUIRY

REAL WORLD EXPERIMENTATION
 LOCKE

THE SELF IS CONSCIOUSNESS: LOCKE

• Denies that the individual self necessarily exist in a single soul/substance.

• Essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself as a thinking, reasoning, reflecting
identity.
• CONSCIOUS AWARENESS and MEMORY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES are keys to
understanding the self.

HUME

THERE IS NO SELF: HUME

• An empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experiences.

TWO CATEGORIES OF EXPERIENCE

1. IMPRESSION: basic sensations of our experience: pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief,
fear, exhilaration. Lively and vivid.

2. IDEAS: copies of impressions; less “lively” and “vivid”– include thoughts and images that are
built up from our primary impressions through a variety of relationships.

KANT

WE CONSTRUCT THE SELF: KANT

Where does the order and organization of our world come from?

• According to Kant, it comes in large measure from us.

• Our self is the weaver – who, using the loom of the mind, weaves together the fabric of
experience into a unified whole so that it becomes my experience, my world, my universe.

• Your self isn’t an object located in your consciousness with other objects – your self is a
subject, an organizing principle that makes a unified and intelligible experience possible.

RYLE

THE SELF IS HOW YOU BEHAVE: RYLE

• BEHAVIORISM: The self is defined in terms of the behavior that is presented to the world.

• In Ryle’s words: “A person therefore lives through collateral histories, one consisting of what
happens in and to his body, and other consisting of what happens in and to his mind. The first is
public, the second is private.”

MERLEAU-PONTY

THE SELF IS EMBODIED SUBJECTIVITY: MERLEAU-PONTY

• A phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a
long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem.