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Week 1: The Self from Various Perspectives
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WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
o Studies the fundamental nature, knowledge, reality, and
existence in an academic discipline
o Investigates the nature of ordinary and scientific beliefs.
o Determines the legitimacy of concepts by rational argument
• "The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and
moved away from them to understand reality and respond to perennial
questions of curiosity, including the question of the self."
SEVERAL PERSPECTIVES
CONCEPT OF SELF
OF
PHILOSOPHERS
ON
THE
1. Pre-Socratics Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus,
Empedocles, etc.
➢ They were concerned with questions such as:
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What is the world really made up of?
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Why is the world the way it is?
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What explains the changes that happen around us?
They introduced the term "arché"
• Arché refers to the origin or source/"soul" as the primal
matter
• the soul's movement is the ultimate arché of all other
movement
• Arché has no origin outside itself and cannot be destroyed
• Explains the multiplicity of things in the world.
2. SOCRATES
➢ Concerns the problem of the self.
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"the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself" o"the
unexamined life is not worth living"
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underwent a trial for 'corrupting the minds of the youth' D a
succeeded made people think about who they are.
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a 'the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to live but die.
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inside
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a "every person is dualistic."
MAN = Body + Soul
Individual = Imperfect & Permanent Body + Perfect & Permanent Soul
3. PLATO
➢ Emphasizes the three components to the soul.
• Rational soul- reason & intellect to govern affairs.
• a Spirited soul- emotions should be kept at bay.
• Appetitive soul- basic desires (food, sleep, sexual needs,
and others)
When the three components are attained, the human person's
soul becomes just & virtuous.
4. ST. AUGUSTINE
• a 'spirit of man' in medieval philosophy
• a following view of Plato but adds Christianity.
• a man is of a bifurcated nature.
❖ part of man dwells in the world (imperfect) and yearns to be
with the Divine.
❖ other part is capable of reaching immortality.
❖ body - dies on earth; soul - lives eternally in spiritual bliss
with "God."
5. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
➢ a man = matter + form
• matter (hyle) - "common stuff that makes up everything in the
universe"
• form (morphe) - "essence of a substance or thing"; (what
makes it what it is)
❖ the body of the human is similar to animals/objects, but what
makes a human is his essence.
❖ "The soul is what makes us humans."
6. RENE DESCARTES
➢ Father of Modern Philosophy
• human person = body + mind
• "there is so much that we should doubt."
❖ "If something is so clear and lucid as not to be doubted, that's
the only time one should believe.
❖ the only thing one can't doubt is existence of the self.
➢ "I think, therefore l am."
• the self = cogito (the thing that thinks) + extenza (extension
of mind/body)
• the body is a machine attached to the mind.
• It's the mind that makes the man.
• "I am a thinking thing. .. A thing that doubts, understands,
affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines, perceives."
7. DAVID HUME
➢ disagrees with the all the other aforementioned philosophers
➢ "one can only know what comes from the senses &
experiences" (he is an empiricist)
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"the self is not an entity beyond the physical body."
you know that other people are humans not because you
have seen their soul, but because you see them, hear them,
feel them, and other sensory experiences.
"the self is nothing but a bundle of impressions and ideas"
impression means basic objects of our experience/sensation
and it forms the core of our thoughts
idea means copies of impressions and not as "real" as
impressions
Self refers to a collection of different perceptions which
rapidly succeed each other
Self is in a perpetual flux and movement.
We want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, soul,
mind, etc., but it is all just a combination of experiences.
8. IMMANUEL KANT
➢ grees with Hume that everything starts with
perception/sensation of impressions.
➢ there is a MIND that regulates these impressions "time,
space, etc. are ideas that one cannot find in the world but is
built in our minds.
❖ "Apparatus of the mind"
❖ the self organizes different impressions that one gets in
relation to his own existence
❖ we need active intelligence to synthesize all knowledge and
experience
❖ the self is not only personality but also the seat of knowledge
9. GILBERT RYLE
➢ denies the internal, non-physical self "what truly matters is
the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life.
➢ the self is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply
the convenient name that we use to refer to the behaviors
that we make.
➢ phenomenologist who says the mind-body bifurcation is an
invalid problem mind and body are inseparable
➢ "one's body is his opening toward his existence to the world"
➢ the living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are
all one.
10. MERLEAU-PONTY
➢ His theory known as Embodied Subjectivity
➢ Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical body to be an
important part of what makes up the subjective self.
➢ This work asserts that self and perception are encompassed
in a physical body. The physical body is part of self. The
perceptions of the mind and the actions of the body are
interconnected.