UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Course Content
UNIT 1
Self in Various Perspective
• Philosophical
• Sociological
• Anthropological
• Psychological
• Self in Western and Eastern Perspective
UNIT 2
Unpacking the Self
• Physical Self
• Sexual Self
• Material and Economical Self
• Spiritual Self
• Political Self
• Digital Self: Self and others in Cyberspace
UNIT 3
Managing and Caring for the Self
 Learning to be a Better Student

 Setting goals for Success

 Taking charge of one’s health

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
Unit 1:
Self in Various Perspective
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Chapter 1
Philosophy
PHILOSOPHY

From the Greek word “Philo” and “sophia”

meaning
“the love of wisdom”
It is the study of KNOWLEDGE,
or

“thinking about thinking”

PHILOSOPHY

is the study of acquiring

knowledge through rational
thinking and inquiries that
involves in answering questions
regarding the nature and
existence of man and the world
we live in.
 Philosophy is done
primarily through
reflection and does not
tend to rely on experiment
Self
 Its nature
 How it was formed

 How person develop their behaviors, attitude and

actions
 To be able to identify and understand who we are
and how we become to be.
PHILOSOPHERS
 Socrates (Greek)
 Plato (Greek)
 St. Augustine (Numidia)
 Rene Descartes (French)
 John Locke (English)
 David Hume (Scott)
 Immanuel Kant (German)
 Sigmund Freud (Prussian)
 Gilbert Ryle (Brittish)
 Paul Churchland (Canadian)
 Maurice Merle-Ponty (French)
SOCRATES
SOCRATES
 Considered as the first martyr of education,
knowledge and philosophy
 Charged for “corruption of minor”

 Made to choose between to be exile or death via

hemlock
His philosophy:
 “knowing oneself” - by fully knowing oneself a
person will be able to achieve happiness.
 “possession of knowledge is a virtue and
that ignorance is a depravity” - that a
person’s acceptance of ignorance is the beginning
of acquisition of knowledge.
 Socratic Method

 He is a dualist.
PLATO
PLATO
 Student of Socrates
 Father of the Academy

 Followed the idea of KNOWING THY SELF

 The Republic
 He said that “the world only be led by a philosopher
king, a person who is virtuous as well as intelligent.
 The person who is a follower of truth and wisdom
will not be tempted and will always be just.
 Dualist ; body and soul
 3 parts of SOUL
 Appetitive soul – driven by desire and need to satisfy
oneself. Physical Self, pleasures and desires towards
objects and situations.
 Spiritual Soul – very competitive, courageous part of
a person, wants to do something or to right the wrong
they observe. Competitive and expect a positive
results and winning.
 Rational Soul – Thinks and plan for the future.
Decides what to do, when to do it and the possible
results for their actions.
ST. AUGUSTINE
ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
 A Saint and Philosopher.
 Follows the idea that God encompasses us all,
everything will be better if we are with god.
 He believes that our notion of ourselves and our
idea of existence comes from a higher form of
sense in which bodily senses may not perceive or
understand, and the more one doubts and
question his life means that, that person is
actually living.
DESCARTES
DESCARTES
 French philosopher
 Father of modern philosophy

 Methodical Doubt
 The continuous process of questioning what we
perceive and accepting the fact that doubting, asking
questions are a part of ones’ existence.
 Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am
 Cogito Ergo Sum – I think therefore I am
 According to him a person is comprised of mind
and body, the body that perceives from the
different senses and the mind that thinks and
question or doubt what the body has experienced.
JOHN LOCKE
JOHN LOCKE
 English Philosopher and Physician.
 Father of Classical Liberalism

 “Tabula Rasa”- Blank Slate

 He believed that the experiences and perceptions of a
person is important in the establishment of who that
person can become.
 He stated that a person is born with knowing nothing
and that is susceptible to stimulation and
accumulation of learning from the experiences,
failures, references, and observations of the person.
DAVID HUME
DAVID HUME
 Scottish Philosopher
 Focused his work in the field of Empiricism,
Skepticism, and naturalism.
 “Self” is only the accumulation of different
impressions.
 There should be no permanent concept of the self
 loving

happy Cold

Impressions

warm approachable

sad
IMMANUEL KANT
IMMANUEL KANT
 German Philosopher

 known for his works on Empiricism and

Rationalism.

 Argued that the awareness of different emotions

that we have, impressions and behavior is only a
part of our self.
 “Transcendental Apperception” is an essence of
our consciousness that provides basis for
understanding and establishing the notion of
“self” by synthesizing one’s accumulation of
experiences, intuition and imagination goes.

 The idea of Kant about Self, we can say that we

are not only an object that perceives and reacts to
whatever it is that we are experiencing, we also
have the capabilities to understand beyond those
experiences and be able to think and have a clear
identification who we are and establish a sense of
self that is unique and distinct from others.
SIGMUND FREUD
SIGMUND FREUD
 An Austrian Psychologist & Physician
 Father of Psychoanalysis

 Believed that man has different constructs of

personality that interacts with each other and
along with his concept of the different levels of
consciousness provides an idea how a person
develops a sense of self.
 Aspects of Personality; Id, Ego & Superego

 Levels of Consciousness; Conscious, Preconscious

& Unconscious
ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY
 ID - also known as the child aspect of a person,
The ID’s attention is on satisfaction of one’s
needs and self-gratification. It is driven by the
pleasure principle.

 SUPEREGO - is the conscience of the one’s

personality, Superego has the inclination to
uphold justice and do what is morally right and
socially acceptable actions.
 EGO - Sometimes known as the Police or the
mediator between id and superego. It operates
within the boundaries of reality, primary
function is to maintain the impulses of the ID to
an acceptable degree.
 Introduced the idea that the accumulation of the
experiences of a person helps build his
personality although such information are not
stored in a single area where we can access them
at any time.
LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
 Conscious - where minority of our memories are
being stored and the memories that are in the
conscious is easier to be tapped or accessed.

 the middle part of the entirety of our

consciousness, the memories stored in this area
can still be accessed but with a little difficulty.

 Unconscious, this area is where majority of our

memories since childhood are deeply stored.
 Freud believed that we are a by-product of our
experiences in the past. And that are actions are
driven by the idea of resisting or avoiding pain,
and are molded from our need for pleasure or
being happy.
GILBERT RYLE
GILBERT RYLE
 Said that self is the behavior presented by the
person, his notion of dualism is that the behavior
that we show, emotions and actions are the
reflection of our mind and as such is the
manifestation of who we are.
GHOST IN THE MACHINE

 This view said the man is a complex machine

with different functioning parts, and the
intelligence, and other characteristics or behavior
of man is represented by the ghost in the said
machine.
PAUL CHURCHLAND
PAUL CHURCHLAND
 Canadian Philosopher

 He has this idea that the “self” is defined by the

movements of our brain.

 Churchland’s work revolves around challenging

of the notion and terms being used to explain
behavior or to explain how a person feels, thinks,
and act with regards to physiological
phenomenon that is happening in the body as
well as definitions brought about by emotions
 Eliminative Materialism
 A radical claim that ordinary, common sense
understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that
some or all of mental states posited by common sense
do not actually exist.

 Neurophilosophy
 he believed that to fully understand one’s behaviour,
one should understand the different neurological
movement of the brain that pertains to different
emotions, feelings, actions and reactions and how
such brain movements affect the body.
MAURICE JEAN JACQUES MERLEAU-
PONTY
MAURICE JEAN JACQUES MERLEAU-
PONTY
 French Philosopher

 Existentialism & Phenomenology

 Body & Mind are not separate entities, but

rather those two components is one and the
same.
 Phenomenology of Perception
 The Body
 Receives the experience as well as integrates such
experiences in the different perception
 Perceived World
 The accumulation of the perception as integrated by the
experiences of the body.
 The People and the world
 To experience the cultural aspect and relate to other.
 perception guides our action based from what our
experiences are, the body perceives while our
consciousness provides the meaning or interprets
the various perception we have in the world and
the self could be established by the perceptions
we have in the world, whereas one’s action,
behaviour and language used could be said to be
the reflection of our united perception of the
world.