BACOLOD CITY COLLEGE

FORTUNE TOWNE CAMPUS

Bgy. Estefania, Bacolod City

SUBJECT: UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

LESSON 2: THE “SELF” FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

OBJECTIVES:
At the end of this Module, you should be able to:
1. describe and discuss the different ideas of the self from the point of view of various
philosophers;
2. compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different philosophical
schools;
3. examine one’s self against the different views of self.

ABSTRACTION: (The act of obtaining or removing something from a source)

The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the
fundamental nature of the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that
defines the multiplicity of things in the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the
earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks.
The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from
them in attempting to understand reality and respond to the perennial questions of
curiosity, including the self.
The different perspectives and views on the self can be seen and understood by
revisiting the prime movers and identify the most important conjectures (opinions or
conclusions based on incomplete information) made by philosophers from the ancient
times to the contemporary period.
Prior to Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called Pre=Socratics
to denote that some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around Socrates’s
time as well, preoccupied themselves with the question of the primary substratum, arche
that explains the multiplicity of things in the world.
These men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to
name a few, were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the
world is so, and what explains the changes that they observed around them.

Tired of simply conceding to mythological accounts propounded by poet-

theologians like Homer and Hesiod; these men endeavoured to locate an explanation
about the nature of change, the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity of the
world amidst its diversity.

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SOCRATES and PLATO:

After a series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were
disturbed by the same issue, a man came out to question something else.

The man was Socrates.

Unlike the Pre-Socratics, Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the
problem of the self. He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has become his life-long mission, the true
task of the philosopher is to know oneself.

Plato claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is not
worth living.

During his trial for allegedly corrupting the minds of the youth and for impiety,
Socrates declared without regret that his being indicted was brought about by his going
around Athens, engaging men, young and old, to question their presuppositions about
themselves and about the world, particularly who they are.

Socrates took it upon himself to serve as a “gadfly” that disturbed the Athenian men
from their slumber and shook them off in order to reach the truth and wisdom. In his
reckoning, most men were not really fully aware who they were and the virtues they were
supposed to attain in order to preserve their souls for the afterlife. Socrates thought that
this is the worst than can happen to anyone: to live but die inside.

For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every
human person is dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important aspects of his
personhood. For Socrates, this means that all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent
aspect to him, and the body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent.

Plato was a student of Socrates. He basically took off from his master and
supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates
earlier espoused, Plato added that there are three components of the soul; the rational
soul, the spiritual soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum opus, “The Republic”, Plato
emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be attained if the three parts of the
soul are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul forged by reason and
intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person, the spirited part which is in charge
of emotions should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul in charge of base desires like
eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal state is
attained, the human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.

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AUGUSTINE and THOMAS AQUINAS:

Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval
world when it comes of man.

Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine of
Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is bifurcated in nature (divided in to two parts). An
aspect of man dwells in the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the
Divine and the other is capable of reaching immortality.

The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally in a
realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God. This is because the body can only thrive in
the imperfect, physical reality that is the world, whereas the soul can also stay after death
in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent God. The goal of every human person is to
attain this communion and bliss with the Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.

Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of
medieval philosophy appended something to the Christian view. Adapting some ideas
from Aristotle, Aquinas said that indeed man is composed of two parts: matter and form.

Matter or hyle in Greek, refers to the “common stuff that makes up everything in the
universe.” Form on the other hand, or morphe in Greek refers to the “essence or
substance or thing.” It is what makes it as it is. In the case of the human person, the body
of the human person is something that he shares even with animals. The cells in the
human body are more or less similar to any other living, organic being in the world.

However, what makes a human person a human person and not a dog, or a tiger, is
his soul, his essence.

To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body (gives
spirit/vigor); it is what makes us humans.

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RENE DESCARTES:

Rene Descartes, Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived of the human person as

having a body and a mind. In his famous treatise, The Meditations of Fist Philosophy, he
claims that there is so much that we should doubt. In fact, he says that since much of what
we think and believed are not infallible, they may turn out to be false. One should only
believe that which can pass the test of doubt.

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DESCARTES:

If something is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is the only
time when one should actually buy (believe) the proposition. In the end, Descartes thought
that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self, for even one doubts
oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and therefore, that
cannot be doubted.

Thus, his famous, cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am.” The fact that one
thinks should lead one to conclude without a trace of doubt that he exists.

The self then for Descartes is also a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito,
a thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or extension of the mind, which is
the body. In Descartes view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the
mind. The human person has it but it is not what makes man a man. If at all, that is the
mind.

Descartes says, “But what then, am I? A thinking thing. It has been said. But what is a
thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills,
refuses, that imagines also, and perceives.”

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DAVID HUME:
David Hume, was a Scottish philosopher, has a very unique way of looking at
man. He was an empiricist who believes that one can only know what comes from the
senses and experiences. Hume argues that the self is nothing like what his
predecessors thought of it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body.
One can rightly see here the empiricism that runs through his veins.

Empiricism is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only
be possible if it is sensed and experienced. Men can only attain knowledge by
experiencing.

For example, Jack knows that Jill is another human not because he has seen her
soul. He knows she is just like him because he sees her, hears her, and touch her.

To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. What are
impressions? For David Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that
they can all be categorized into two: impressions and ideas.

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DAVID HUME:

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. Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of our impressions.
When one imagines the feeling of being in love for the first time, that is still an idea.

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 perpetual flux and movement.” Men simply want to believe that there is a unified,
coherent self, a soul or mind just like what the previous philosophers thought. In reality,
what one thinks is a unified self is simple a combination of all experiences with a
particular person.

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IMMANUEL KANT:

Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination of impressions was problematic foe

Immanuel Kant. Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume’s account that everything starts
with perception and sensation of impressions. However, Kant thinks that men perceive
around them are not just randomly infused into the human person without an organizing
principle that regulates the relationships of those impressions.

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.

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.

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GILBERT RYLE:

Gilbert Ryle solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long
time in 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.

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 territory all form the
university. Ryle suggests that the “self” is not an entity that one can locate and analyze
but simply the convenient name that people use to refer to all the behaviors that people
make.

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MERLEAU-PONTY:

Merleau-Ponty is 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.
Unlike Ryle who simply denies the “self”, Merleau-Ponty instead says that the mind and
body are so entertwined that they cannot be separated from one another.

One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience. 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 nut plain misunderstanding. The
living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

Provided By:

PURA C. BONACHE
Instructor