Lesson 1

The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives

As a student, we are told to write our names on our papers, project, or any output for that matter.
Names are incredible even in ones gravestone. A name is not the person itself no matter how intimately
bound it is with the bearer. The self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and
developments.

Philosopher from the ancient times to the contemporary.

Socrates and Plato

Socrates the Greek thinkers and called the pre Socratics. Socrates was more concerned with another
subject, the problem of the self. Socrates took it upon himself to serve as a “gadfly” that disturb
Athenian men from their slumber and took them off in order to reach the truth and wisdom. Socrates
though that this is the worst that can happen to anyone to live but to die.

Socrates every man composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is dualistic. This
means that all individual have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body, while
maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Plato, Socrates student, basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is dual
nature of body and soul. Plato added that that there are three components of the soul:

The rational soul – the rational soul forge the reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of human
being.

Spirited soul - which in charge of emotion should be kept at bay

Repetitive soul – charge of base desire like eating, drinking, and having sex are controlled as well.

Augustine

Augustine views of the human person reflect the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes to
man. Fallowing the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the new found doctrine of Christianity.
Augustine agreed that man is a bifurcated nature, an aspect of man’s dwell in the world and is imperfect.

Thomas Aquinas

Said that, man is composed of two parts: matter and form. Matter or hyle refers to the “common stuff
that makes up everything in the universe” man’s body is part of this matter. The body of the human
person is something that she shares even with animals. The soul is what animates the body: it is what’s
make us human.

Descartes

Rene Descartes, father of modern philosophy conceive of human person as having a body and a mind.
Descartes though that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self, a thing that
thinks and therefore. Thus, his famous, cogito ergo “ I think therefore I am “the fact that one thinks
should lead to conclude without a trace of doubt that he exist Hume

David Hume is Scottish philosopher believe that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experience. According to humes “a bundle of collection of different perceptions, which succeeds each
other with an inconceivable rapidity.

Kant

Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume’s account that everything starts with perceptions and sensation of
impression. Along with the different apparatus of the mind goes “self’’ without the self, one cannot
recognize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence.

Gilbert Ryle

For Ryle what truly matters is the behavior that a person manifest in his day to day life. Looking for and
trying to understand a self as it really exist .Ryle suggest that 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

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. He says that the mind and body are so intertwined that they
cannot be separate from one another. One cannot find any experience that is not embodied experience.

I learned

I learned that all individual have an imperfect, impermanent aspect that there is a soul that is perfect
and impermanent that the body can only thrive in the imperfect, whereas the soul the soul can also stay
after death with all transcendent of god.

Lesson 2

The Self, Society, and Culture

Eventually with the advent of the social science, it possible for new ways and paradigms and to examine
the true nature of self. Thinker just settled on the idea that there are two components of the human
person and whatever relationship these two have is less important than the fact that there is a self-given
the new ways of knowing and the growth of the social science. It became possible for new approaches in
the examination of self to come to the fore.

Abstraction

What is self?

The self, in contemporary literature and even common sense, is commonly defined by the
fallowing characteristics:

Separate –it is meant that the self is distinct from other selves. The self is always unique and has its
own identity.one cannot be another person.

Self-contained and independent - itself can exist; this distinctness allows it to be self-contained with its
own though. It does not require any other self for it to exist.

Consistent-has a personality that is enduring and therefore can be expected to persist for quit sometime.

Unitary- the center of all experience and thoughts that that run to a certain person.

Private- sort out information, feelings and emotion and the thought process within the self.

This last characteristic of self being private suggests that the self is isolated from the external world it
lives with in its own world. It is ever changing and dynamic, allowing external influences to take part of
its shaping. This perspective is known as the social constructionists’ perspective.

Social constructivist argued that the self should not be seen as the static entity that stays constant
through and through the self is always in participation with social life and its identity subjected to
influences here and there.

The self and the culture

According to Mauss, every face have two faces personne and moi. Moi refers to a person sense of who
he is, his body and his basic identity.personne, composed of the social concept of what it means to be
who he is.

The same malleability can be seen on how some men easily transform into sweet docile guy when trying
to woe and court on a particular woman and suddenly change rapidly after hearing a sweet yes,
In the Philippines Filipino tend to consider their territory as a part of who they are includes considering
their immediate surrounding as a part of them. If one fined himself born and reared in a particular
culture, one definitely tries to fit in a particular mold. If self is born in a particular society or in culture,
the self will have to adjust according to its exposure.

The Self and the Development of the Social World

We think that human person is just perspective actors in the whole process of the shaping of selves. That
man and women are born with particularities that they can no longer change.

Mead and Vygotsky

For mead and vygotsky, the way that human person develop is with the use of language and acquisition
and interact with others. Those who deliberate about moral dilemmas undergo this internal dialog
“should I do this or that?” and the conative and emotional development of a child is always mimicry of
how it is done in the social world in the external reality where he is in.

A young child internalize values, norms, practices and social beliefs and more through exposure to those
dialog that will eventually become part of its individual world, for, mead this take place as a child
assumes the “other “ through language and role play.

Self in Families

Apart from the anthropologist and physiological basis for the relationship between the self and the social
world, among this the most prominent is the family.

The kind of family that we were born in, the resources available to us{human, spiritual, economic}, and
the kind of development that we will have certainly affect us as we go through life. Human person are
one of those being whose importance of family cannot be denied.

Human person learn the ways of living and therefore their selfhood by being in the family. Without a
family, biological and sociological, a person may not even survive or became a human person.

Gender and the Self

Nancy chodorow argues that because mother takes the role of taking care of children, there is a
tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality of women as care
provider in the family. Men on the other hand, in the phiripery of their own family, are tough early on
how to behave like a man. This is normally include in holding ones emotion

The gendered self is then shape within a particular context of time and space. The sense of the self that
is being tough makes sure that an individual fits in a particular environment.

Lesson 3

The Self as Cognitive Contruct

Introduction

-Psychology may focus on the individual and the cognitive function , but it does not discount
the context and other possible factors that affect the individual. For students who take up psychology,
discussions on theories, and development, among others actually take at least one semester and there
are still more to be learned about the concept pf "self". This lesson provides an overview of the themes
of psychology regarding the said concept.