University of the East
Manila
__2nd__ Semester | SY __2022-2023__
NAME: ALVIA
JOHN ROMAN
Surname
SUBJECT –
SECTION:
ZGE 1108 – IS2A
PHILOSOPHERS
Given Name
ASSIGNMENT
NO:
THREE IMPORTANT
LIFE EVENTS
1
Plato met Socrates in
407 BC (407 BCE)
SOCRATES
R
In 407 BCE, Plato met
Socrates. Socrates
frequently lectured and
conversed with students
just outside the
Athenian Agora at this
time, as many of the
younger men could not
enter the Agora.
Socrates' Athenian Trial,
399 BC (399 BCE)
Socrates was tried in
Athens for political
crimes against the state
stemming from city
government infighting.
During the trial, he had
the opportunity to flee,
but he did not take it.
Socrates died in 399 BC
(399 BCE)
SUBMISSION
DATE:
Middle
Initial
1
ASSIGNMENT
TITLE:
01- 27-23
Month Day, Year
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
FROM PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE
IMPLICATIONS OF LIFE EVENTS TO
THEIR PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE
SELF
Unlike Xenophon, Plato is widely
regarded as a philosopher of
exceptional originality and depth.
According to some scholars, his
philosophical abilities made him far
better able to understand Socrates
than Xenophon and thus a more
valuable source of information about
him. The opposing view holds that
Plato's originality and vision as a
philosopher led him to use his
Socratic discourses as vehicles for the
advocacy of his own ideas (however
much they may have been inspired by
Socrates), and that he is thus far more
untrustworthy than Xenophon as a
source of information about the
historical Socrates.
His life had a greater impact because
of how it ended: at the age of 70, he
was brought to trial on a charge of
impiety and sentenced to death by
poisoning (the poison most likely
being hemlock) by a jury of his fellow
citizens. Plato's Apology of Socrates
purports to be the speech Socrates
delivered at his trial in response to the
accusations leveled against him
(apologia in Greek means "defense").
Its powerful advocacy of the examined
life, as well as its condemnation of
Athenian democracy, have elevated it
to the status of a key document in
Western thought and culture.
Several people in Socrates' circle
wrote works that depict him engaging
IMPACT OF THE
PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW
TO YOUR SELFUNDERSTANDING
After reading his
philosophical position
on the self, I realize
that it is acceptable to
be curious about
oneself. Our curiosity
can be the key to a
fulfilling life.
Following the trial,
Socrates was
sentenced to death by
poison. In 399 BCE, he
ingested the poison and
died.
2
in discussion, which was one of his
most distinctive activities, shortly after
he passed away. This preserved and
commended his memory. People he
met by chance, ardent followers,
important politicians, and leading
philosophers of the time were among
his interlocutors in these (usually
antagonistic) dialogues. There are
very scant fragments of the talks
recorded by Antisthenes, Aeschines,
Phaedo, and Eucleides, which
Aristotle refers to as "Socratic
dialogues," remaining today.
PLATO
Former Socrates
disciple who based his
early dialogues on the
writings and teachings
of his guru.
traveled with other
philosophers for 12
years (Italy, Sicily and
Egypt).
Self is an immortal soul. By discussing
his philosophy of self with his mentor
and tying it to our soul, he was able to
construct his own conception of self.
For him, being able to value one's
own nature (soul) is equivalent to
treating one's life with justice.
I was able to directly
relate my
understanding of the
three components
Plato mentions
reason, spirit, and
appetite to the human
soul.
Zenoof Alea and "The
Parmenides" had a
significant influence on
his "Theory of Forms."
3
ARISTOTLE
Despite the fact that
Socrates and Plato's
ideas completely
impacted me, I also
agree with Aristotle's
teaching that it comes
with.
Spent his 20 years as
both a teacher and a
student; he was once a
Plato student.
His works are highly
acknowledged as a
significant contribution to
the human knowledge
Returning to Athens, he
hired a room in the
Lyceum and wrote 200 of
his legendary
compositions there, but
only 31 of them have
survived.
He believes that the“soul isthe
essence of the self.”.Hebelieves that
reality is basedon what we can sense
andperceive.Aristotle asserts
thatanything with life has soul
4
AUGUSTINE
Experiencing pleasures
of the World.
Meeting Bishop Saint
Ambrose
Reading Romans in
Bible
5
RENE
DESCARTES
Studying mathematics
Relation with Princess
Elizabeth
Infatuation to a crosseyed woman
6
JOHN LOCKE
1660
Restoration of
monarchy under
Charles II.
He believes that those who live this
Regarding St.
way cannot be genuine to themselves.
Agustine, as a bornUntil we discover our peace in him,
again Christian, I firmly
our hearts are unable to stop being
believe that we can
restless. The only way to find your
find our true selves via
actual self is to understand and
a relationship with
embrace God's love.
God.
Despite having a loving Christian
mother who nurtured him, he grew up
to be an atheist since he was a
difficult child. Ambrose was an orator
with a commitment to truth, this
integrity had a particular impression
on Augustine and was instrumental in
his conversion
Augustine had fought primarily with
sexual sin and sensuality up until this
moment, but now he was confronted
with his guilt and need for redemption.
After reading the paragraph,
Augustine remarked
The very foundation of the phrase ‘I
think therefore I am’
Descartes' theory that
As a mathematician, he was
thinking about myself
concerned that if the foundations of
achieving my goals will
knowledge were not absolutely
make them come true
secure, everything built upon them
in the future is
would surely crumble. Thus, he came
somewhat related to
to the conclusion that anything about
his "I Think therefore I
which there was even the slightest
am" maxim.
possibility of uncertainty should be
rejected as false.
He dedicated this work to
Princess Elizabeth, According to
Descartes, a human being is a union
of mind and body, two radically
dissimilar substances that interact in
the pineal gland
Descartes also suggested that people
might learn to have certain emotional
reactions through experience.
Descartes himself, for example, had
been conditioned to be attracted to
cross-eyed women because he had
loved a cross-eyed playmate as a
child.
The restoration of the English
John Locke philosophy
monarchy in 1660 was a mixed
is definitely one of the
blessing for Locke. It led many of his
impactful for me since
scientific collaborators to return to
I can really say that
London, where they soon founded the
experience is
1660–62
Writes Two Tracts on
Government, against
toleration (published
1967)
1663–64
Writes Essays on the
Law of Nature
(published 1954)
7
DAVID HUME
Hume went with his
older brother to the
University of Edinburgh
in 1723
Royal Society, which provided the
stimulus for much scientific research.
But in Oxford the new freedom from
Puritan control encouraged unruly
behavior and religious enthusiasms
among the undergraduates. These
excesses led Locke to be wary of
rapid social change, an attitude that
no doubt partly reflected his own
childhood during the Civil Wars.
In his first substantial political work,
Two Tracts on Government
(composed in 1660 but first published
three centuries later, in 1967), Locke
defended a very conservative
position: in the interest of political
stability, a government is justified in
legislating on any matter of religion
that is not directly relevant to the
essential beliefs of Christianity. This
view, a response to the perceived
threat of anarchy posed by sectarian
differences, was diametrically
opposed to the doctrine that he would
later expound in Two Treatises of
Government (1689).
The resulting Essays on the Law of
Nature (first published in 1954)
constitutes an early statement of his
philosophical views, many of which he
retained more or less unchanged for
the rest of his life. Of these probably
the two most important were, first, his
commitment to a law of nature, a
natural moral law that underpins the
rightness or wrongness of all human
conduct, and, second, his subscription
to the empiricist principle that all
knowledge, including moral
knowledge, is derived from
experience and therefore not innate.
These claims were to be central to his
mature philosophy, both with regard to
political theory and epistemology.
The Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals is a refinement of
Hume’s thinking on morality, in which
he views sympathy as the fact of
human nature lying at the basis of all
social life and personal happiness.
something tha
determines who i am
today and who i will
become in the future.
Hume defined the self
as "something to
which our various
impressions and ideas
are intended to have a
reference. If any
impression gives rise
to the idea of self, that
impression must be
consistently the same
over the entirety of our
lives, as self is
supposed to exist in
this way.
Hume was afflicted with
a ravenous appetite and
palpitations of the heart
After about four years in
France, Hume came up
with his first work, ‘A
Treatise of Human
Nature’
8
IMMANUEL
KANT
In this period, it was
written by Kant
fundamental
philosophical work,
which brought scientist
reputation as one of the
outstanding thinkers of
the XVIII century and
has had a huge impact
on the further
development of world
philosophy
Jan 9, 1781
Theory of knowledge
The main philosophical
work of Kant, is
"Critique of pure
reason". The initial
problem for Kant is the
question "How is it
possible pure
knowledge?
Jan 9, 1788
Kant assign 12
categories of reason
In this period usually called his critical
period, because in it he wrote his
great Critiques he published an
astounding series of original works on
a wide variety of topics, in which he
elaborated and expounded his
philosophy.
I can relate to Kant
whenever I’m in a new
environment where
The Inaugural Dissertation of 1770
everything seems
that he delivered on assuming his new
unfamiliar because i
position already contained many of
have never experience
the important elements of his mature
those things before but
philosophy. As indicated in its title, De
for people who have,
Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis
they see it as normal
Forma et Principiis: Dissertatio (“On
experience rather than
the Form and Principles of the
a special one.
Sensible and Intelligible Worlds”), the
implicit dualism of the Träume is
made explicit, and it is made so on the
basis of a wholly un-Leibnizian
interpretation of the distinction
between sense and understanding.
Kant has rejected the dogmatic way of
understanding and thought that
instead need to be based on a critical
method of philosophizing, the essence
of which lies in the study of the mind,
boundaries that can reach the mind of
man, and the study of individual
human cognition.
These concepts “categories,” he
called them are not so much read out
of experience as read into it and,
hence, are a priori, or pure, as
opposed to empirical. But they differ
from empirical concepts in something
more than their origin: their whole role
in knowledge is different. For,
whereas empirical concepts serve to
correlate particular experiences and
so to bring out in a detailed way how
experience is ordered, the categories
have the function of prescribing the
general form that this detailed order
must take. They belong, as it were, to
the very framework of knowledge. But
although they are indispensable for
objective knowledge, the sole
knowledge that the categories can
yield is of objects of possible
experience; they yield valid and real
knowledge only when they are
ordering what is given through sense
in space and time.
9
SIGMUND
FREUD
Friendship with Wilhelm
Fliess
Freud studies of
neuropathology at
the Salpêtrière clinic in
Paris.
The interpretation of
dreams
10 GILBERT RYLE
Ryle’s first book, The
Concept of Mind (1949),
is considered a modern
Their friendship may have served as
inspiration for Freud's theories on
human bisexuality, erotogenic zones
on the body, and even the imputing of
sexuality to children.
His 19 weeks in Paris proved to be a
turning point in his career since
Charcot's work with patients labeled
as "hysterics" opened Freud's eyes to
the idea that psychological diseases
might have a mental rather than a
biological cause.
Freud argued that dreams were
essential to the psychological
economy. Freud's term for the energy
of the mind, libido, which he primarily
but not entirely associated with the
sexual desire, was a pliable force that
was capable of having excessive and
unsettling strength.
It has to do with how many
fundamentally different kinds of things
one assumes to be in the world. There
He claims that
everyone has an id,
ego, and super ego
that are constantly at
odds with one another.
This makes sense to
me because there
have been instances
in my life when I know
something is wrong,
but a voice is pushing
me to do it.
According to ryle the
self is the way people
behave and it shows
classic. In it he
challenges the
traditional distinction
between body and mind
as delineated by René
Descartes.
In his Tanner Lectures,
published as Dilemmas
(1954), he showed how
certain philosophical
impasses could be
dissolved by a clearer
understanding of the
concepts employed by
the apparently
contradictory views.
In Plato's Progress
(1966) Ryle exhibited an
unexpected talent for
ingenious speculation in
an attempt to
reconstruct the historical
genesis of Plato's
dialogues.
11 PAUL
CHURCHLAND
He introduced the
concept of "eliminative
materialism" in his 1979
book, Scientific Realism
are chairs, cars and apples, of course.
But, in the end, these are all of the
same kind: material things. They have
a length, a height and a weight. One
can drop them and break them.
But not all things are material. We
have thoughts, for instance. Thoughts
don’t seem to have a length or a
weight. People don’t get any heavier if
they are thoughtful, nor is not-thinking
an effective way to lose weight. Rene
Descartes (who is the man behind
‘Cartesian’ philosophy and also the
starting point of all modern thought,
1596-1650) accordingly thought that
there are two fundamentally different
substances in the world: on the one
hand, material things, like chairs and
apples. And on the other, thoughts.
Mental processes, he said, must be
different from matter, because
obviously thoughts don’t have a
length, or a weight.
In Dilemmas (1954) Ryle analyzes
propositions that appear
irreconcilable, as when free will is set
in opposition to the fatalistic view that
future specific events are inevitable.
He believed that the dilemmas posed
by these seemingly contradictory
propositions could be resolved only by
viewing them as the result of
conceptual confusion between the
language of logic and the language of
events.
This work has been of little
subsequent importance because it
takes a quite idiosyncratic, unusual,
and unsympathetic view of Plato, a
view that hardly any Plato scholar
ever recognized as accurate or
perceptive. Ryle also wrote the article
on Plato for the Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, an article that continues
that unusual and idiosyncratic
approach to Plato and Plato's work.
Paul Churchland is a leading is a
leading proponent of so-called
eliminative materialism in the
philosophy of mind. In contrast to a
that what you do in life
will have an effect on
how you will become
as a person.
Churchland
emphasize that only
matter exists and in
life no matter how we
and the Plasticity of
Mind. He further refined
the idea in is 1981
paper Eliminative
Materialism and the
Propositional Attitudes,
at the University of
Manitoba.
In his 1996 book, The
Engine of Reason,
Churchland
hypothesizes that
consciousness might be
explained in terms of a
recurrent neural network
with its hub in the
intralaminar nucleus of
the thalamus, and
feedback connections to
all parts of the cortex.
In February 2017,
Churchland became a
Professor Emeritus at
UCSD and also a
member of the Board of
Trustees of the Center
for Consciousness
Studies of the
Philosophy Department,
Moscow State
University.
12 MAURICE
MERLEAUPONTY
Merleau-Ponty studied
at the École Normale
Supérieure in Paris and
took his agrégation in
philosophy in 1931.
reductive materialism which claims
that mental processes are in some
way identical with physical processes,
eliminative materialism claims that
mental processes as traditionally
conceived do not exist.
think about life, the
tangible things are
sometimes are more
essential to us.
He acknowledges that this proposal
will likely be found in error with regard
to the neurological details, but states
his belief that it is on the right track in
its use of recurrent neural networks to
account for consciousness. This has
been described, notably, as a
reductionist rather than eliminative
account of consciousness.
Churchland cites as his influence the
works of American philosophers, W.
V. O. Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Russell
Hanson, Wilfred Sellars, and AustrianAmerican philosopher, Paul
Feyerabend. His areas of interest are:
epistemology, perception, philosophy
of cognitive science, philosophy of
mind, philosophy of neuroscience,
and philosophy of science. He has
authored numerous books on
philosophy, including, Matter and
Consciousness, Scientific Realism
and the Plasticity of Mind, and
Neurophilosophy at Work.
He completed his philosophy
education at the Ecole Normale
Superieure in 1930, and rather rapidly
became one of the foremost French
philosophers of the period during, and
immediately following World War II,
where he also served in the infantry.
As well as being Chair of child
psychology at Sorbonne in 1949, he
was the youngest ever Chair of
philosophy at the College de France
when he was awarded this position in
1952. He continued to fulfill this role
until his untimely death in 1961, and
was also a major contributor for the
influential political, literary, and
According to Ponty the
self is embodied
Subjectivity, and it
shows that every
person will have
different personality,
since all of us will have
different experience
and the way we
subjectively see life
will also differ from
each other.
philosophical magazine that was Les
Temps Modernes. While he
repeatedly refused to be explicitly
named as an editor alongside his
friend and compatriot Jean-Paul
Sartre, he was at least as important
behind the scenes.
Merleau-Ponty’s most
important works of
technical philosophy
were La Structure du
comportement (1942;
The Structure of
Behavior, 1965) and
Phénoménologie de la
perception (1945;
Phenomenology of
Perception, 1962).
Though greatly
influenced by the work
of Edmund Husserl,
Merleau-Ponty rejected
his theory of the
knowledge of other
persons, grounding his
own theory in bodily
behaviour and in
perception.
Turning his attention to
social and political
questions, in 1947
Merleau-Ponty
published a group of
Marxist essays,
Humanisme et terreur
(“Humanism and
Terror”), the most
sophisticated defense of
Soviet communism in
the late 1940s. He
argued for suspended
judgment of Soviet
terrorism and attacked
what he regarded as
Western hypocrisy. The
Korean War
disillusioned MerleauPonty and he broke with
Sartre, who defended
the North Koreans.
In the Phenomenology of Perception,
which is arguably his major work,
Merleau-Ponty sets about exposing
the problematic nature of traditional
philosophical dichotomies and, in
particular, that apparently age-old
dualism involving the mind and the
body. It is no accident that
consideration of this dualism plays
such an important role in all of his
work, since the constitution of the
body as an ‘object’ is also a pivotal
moment in the construction of the idea
of an objective world which exists ‘out
there’ (PP 72). Once this conception
of the body is problematized, so too,
according to Merleau-Ponty, is the
whole idea of an outside world that is
entirely distinguishable from the
thinking subject.
He also came to disagree with
Sartre’s rather hard-line Marxism, and
this was undoubtedly a major factor in
what was eventually a rather
acrimonious ending to their friendship.
For Merleau-Ponty’s assessment of
their differences see Adventures of
the Dialectic, but for Sartre’s version
of events, see Situations. While he
died before completing his final opus
that sought to completely reorient
philosophy and ontology (The Visible
and the Invisible), his work retains an
importance to contemporary
European philosophy. Having been
one of the first to bring structuralism
and the linguistic emphasis of thinkers
like Saussure into a relationship with
phenomenology, his influence is still
considerable, and an increasing
amount of scholarship is being
devoted to his works.