CHAPTER 1
DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND
DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF AND
IDENTITY
Presented by: Daina T. Delantar BSNED 2A
Lesson 1: The Self from
Various Philosophical
Perspectives
David Hume
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, was
born on May 7, 1711, and died on August
25, 1776. He has a very unique way of
looking at man. As an empiricist who
believes that one can know only what
comes from the senses and experiences.
To David Hume, the self is nothing else
but a bundle of impressions.
David Hume
For David Hume, if one tries to examine his
experiences, he finds that they can all be
categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
Impressions are the basic objects of our
experience or sensation. They therefore form
the core of our thoughts. When one touches
an ice cube, the cold sensation is an
impression. Impressions therefore are vivid
because they are products of our direct
experience with the world.
David Hume
Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of
impressions. Because of this, they are not as
lively and vivid as our impressions.
What is the self then?
Self, according to Hume, is simply "a bundle
or collection of different perceptions, which
succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement." (Hume and Steinberg 1992).
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German
philosopher and one of the central
Enlightenment thinkers. He was born on
April 22, 1724, and died on February 12,
1804. According to him, things that men
perceive around them are not just
randomly infused into the human person
without an organizing principle that
regulates the relationship of all these
impressions.
Immanuel Kant
To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that
organizes the impressions that men get
from the external world. Time and space,
for example, are ideas that one cannot
find in the world, but is built in our
minds. Kant calls these the apparatuses
of the mind.
Immanuel Kant
Along with the different apparatuses of the
mind goes the "self." Without the self, one
cannot organize the different impressions
that one gets in relation to his own existence.
Kant therefore suggests that it is an actively
engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes
all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self
is not just what gives one his personality. In
addition, it is also the seat of knowledge
acquisition for all human persons.
Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle (19 August 1900 – 6 October
1976) was a British philosopher. He solves
the mind-body dichotomy that has been
running for a long time in the history of
thought by blatantly denying the
concept of an internal, non-physical self.
For Ryle, what truly matters is the
behavior that a person manifests in his
day-to-day life.
Gilbert Ryle
For Ryle, looking for and trying to understand a
self as it really exists is like visiting your friend's
university and looking for the "university." One
can roam around the campus, visit the library and
the football field, and meet the administrators and
faculty and still end up not finding the
"university." This is because the campus, the
people, the systems, and the territory all form the
university, Ryle suggests that the "self" is not an
entity one can locate and analyze but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer to all the
behaviors that people make.
Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques (March 14, 1908–May 3,
1961), known as Merleau-Ponty, was a French
philosopher. Merleau-Ponty is a
phenomenologist who asserts that the mindbody bifurcation that has been going on for a
long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid
problem. Unlike Ryle, who simply denies the
"self," Merleau-Ponty instead says that the
mind and body are so intertwined that they
cannot be separated from one another. One
cannot find any experience that is not an
embodied experience.
Merleau-Ponty
All experience is embodied. One's body is
his opening toward his existence to the
world. Because of these bodies, men are in
the world. Merleau-Ponty dismisses the
Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so
much devastation in the history of man.
For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing
else but plain misunderstanding. The
living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.
THAT'S ALL
THANK YOU!
PRESENTED BY: DAINA T. DELANTAR BSNED 2A