From The

P E R S P E C T I V E

of

Philosophy
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Came from the greek word

Philo means LOVE
Sophia means WISDOM
LOVE OF WISDOM
 PHILOSOPHY
study of the fundamental nature of knowledge.
reality, and existence, especially in an academic
discipline.
a particular theory that someone is about how to live
or how to deal with a particular situation.
academic discipline concerned with investigating the
nature of significance of ordinary and scientific
beliefs.
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.
 SOCRATES
• Concerned with the problem of the self.
• “The true task of the philosophers is to know
oneself”.
• Underwent a trial for ‘ Corrupting the minds
of the youth”
• Succeeded made people thinks about who
they are
• The worst thing that can happen to anyone
is to live but die inside
• Every person is dualistic.
 - Man = Body + Soul
- Imperfect & permanent
(Body)
- Perfect & permanent
(Soul)
 WHO IS SOCRATES?
Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher, one of the
three greatest figures of the ancient period of Western
philosophy.
Socrates was a scholar, teacher and philosopher born in
ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the groundwork
for Western systems of logic and philosophy.
Socrates was sentenced to death. He accepted this
judgment rather than fleeing into exile.
HE IS ALSO KNOWN AS:
"Father of Western Philosophy"
SOME OF HIS FAMOUS QUOTES.
“Know thyself”.
“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for
God knows best what is good for us.”
 PLATO
Three component to the soul
• Rational soul - Reason & intellect to
govern affairs
• Spirited soul – Emotion should be kept
at bay
• Appetitive soul – Base desires (Food,
Drink, Sleep, Sexual needs. Etc.)
• When these are attained, the human
person’s soul becomes just & virtous.
TRIPARTITE SELF
• Reason
• Physical appetite
• Spirit/Passion
 WHO IS PLATO?
Plato was an Athenian philosopher during
the Classical period in Ancient Greece,
founder of the Platonist school of thought
and the Academy, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western world.
HE IS ALSO KNOWN AS
“The father of idealism in philosophy”.
His ideas were elitist, with the philosopher king the
ideal ruler.
Plato is perhaps best known to college students for
his parable of a cave, which appears in Plato's
Republic.
 PLATO’s QUOTE
The greatest wealth is to
live content with little.
 ST. AUGUSTINE
Augustine was a highly prominent
Christian thinker, and among the Latin
Fathers of the Church and was the one
who did the most of the adaptation to
classical ideas for Christian teachings.
Follows view of Plato but adds
Christianity
Man is a bifurcated nature
Body as spouse of the soul
Body - dies
Soul- lives eternally in spiritual
bliss with God.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas was a priest who
became a widely known
philosopher and theologian.
He regarded Aristotle's
philosophical views as a basis
for Christianity's concepts of
self and reality.
Man is composed of matter and form
- matter (hyle)
"common stuff that makes up everything in
the universe"
- form (morphe)
"essence of a substance or things
The body of a human is similar to
animals/objects, but what makes a human is
his essence.
"The soul is what makes us humans"
RENE DESCARTES
Father of modern philosophy
Human person = Body +
Mind
- Mind - Body Dualism
- Non- material mind
- Material Body
 " There is so much we should
doubt"
- Everything has a possibility
to be false.
" It's not enought to have a
good mind: The main thing is to
use it well"
"The only thing one can't
doubt is the existence of the
self"
• Cogito, ergo sum (latin)
- " I think, Therefore I am"
 DAVID HUME
Disagrees with the all other
aforementioned philosopher
• "The self is not an entity
beyond the physical body"
• Denies the idea of the self
" One can only know what comes
from the sense and experiences"
• Empiricist
• Law of Association
1. Resemblance
2. Contiguity in time or place
3. Cause of effect
 You know that the other people
are humans not because you
have seen their soul but because
you have seen them, hear them,
feel them.
 IMMANUEL KANT
He is born April 22, 1724 at Königsberg,
Prussia [now Kaliningrad, Russia] and died
February 12, 1804.
He is a German Philosopher
Kant was one of the foremost thinkers of the
Enlightenment and arguably one of the
greatest philosophers of all time.
Kant lived in the remote province where he
was born for his entire life.
Both parents were devoted followers of the Pietist branch of
the Lutheran church. The influence of their pastor made it
possible for Kant—the fourth of nine children but the eldest
surviving child—to obtain an education.
At the age of eight Kant entered the Pietist school that his
pastor directed. In 1740 he enrolled in the University of
Königsberg as a theological student.
Kant began reading the work of the English physicist and, in
1744-46 he started his first book and published in 1749.
His first book entitled Gedanken
von der wahren Schätzung der
lebendigen Kräfte (1746;
Thoughts on the True Estimation
of Living Forces)
This book reflected Kant's
position as a metaphysical
dualist at the time.
He found employment as a family tutor and, during the nine
years that he gave to it, worked for three different families.
During the 15 years that he spent as a Privatdozent, Kant’s
renown as a teacher and writer steadily increased.
In one, ‘A Brief Outline of Some Meditations on Fire’
(Meditationum Quarundam de Igne Succincta Delineation) , he
argued that bodies operate on one another through the
medium of a uniformly diffused elastic and subtle matter that is
the underlying substance of both heat and light.
This book is the most famous
among his works.
Critique of Pure Reason is a book
by the German philosopher
Immanuel Kant, in which the
author seeks to determine the
limits and scope of metaphysics.
Published in 1781
IMMANUEL KANT ALSO SAID:
Agrees 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 it is buit in
our minds.
“Apparatus of the mind”
HIS PERSPECTIVE TO SELF
We construct the self
The self transcends experience
The self makes experiencing an intelligible
word possible.
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.
 GILBERT RYLE
denies the internal, non-physical self
"what truly matters is the behavior that a
person manifests in his day-to-day life" -
looking for the self is like entering LU
and looking for the university.
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.
He attacks Cartesian Dualism.
The Concept of the Mind
University Visitor
Category Mistake
MAURICE MERLEAU-
PONTY
a 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.
if you hate this subject, Merleau-Ponty
understands you.
SUBJECT
• Something that has being
• A real thing that can take real action and cause
real effects.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty believed the physical
body to be an important part of what makes up
the subjective self.
RATIONALISM
• The mind is the seat of our consciousness.
• The subject behind what it means to be human.
• The body is just a shell.
EMPIRICISM
• The perception that our bodily senses are the best supply of our
knowledge if the source of our knowledge cannot be seen,
touched, heard, and tasted it really cannot be trusted.
• If it cannot be empirically studied it is a no go.
• The concept of a few mystical mind independently perceiving
and giving us our feel of self comes under serious scrutiny.
• An empiricist may argue that our bodily body, and no longer
some mystical thoughts, makes up our existence of self.
• “I sense, therefore I am.”
Merleau’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and
Phenomenology of Perception
• Any encounter with an ‘Other’ preceded by a pre-cognitive,
pre-linguistic encounter with otherness in the form of
anonymous others whom we encounter as a part of an
objectively shared word. No longer there simply for me, the
world and the things found therein immediately point us to
others. When these others appear, our objectively
apprehended world gets sucked into their sphere of
influence, and we lose our position at the center of the world.
Merleau’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and
Phenomenology of Perception
The Other is first perceived as a body, but this body is no
mere object. The lived body of subjects is characterized by
the reversibility of being both object and subject
simultaneously, just like poking your other hand, you are
doing the action as well as being the subject. A special kind
of object, the lived body of the other exhibits behaviors much
like our own.
REFERENCES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGCoFFuHuWs&t=686s
https://revelpreview.pearson.com/epubs/pearson_chaffee/OPS/xhtml/ch03_sec_03.xhtml
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_the_True_Estimation_of_Living_Forces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-2Gc3PztIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=LT7Uhw5LsMAhttps://study.com/academy/lesson/merleau-ponty-the-self-as-embodied-
subjectivity.html
-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0vVVy4dFuA -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDhidRr_PWs
-Philosophybreak.com/article/i-think-therefore-i-am-decartes-cogito-ergo-sum-explained/ -
Plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/
https://www.worldhistory.org/socrates/#:~:text=Socrates%20of%20Athens%20(l.%20c.%20470,Wester
n%20Philosophy%22%20for%20this%20reason. https://www.keepinspiring.me/socrates-
quotes/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Socrateshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platohttps://www.bri
tannica.com/biography/Platohttps://www.goalcast.com/2018/02/21/20-plato-quotes/