LESSON 1: THE PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF

People say that the secret to success is to “know yourself”. Do you agree? Have you ever
asked yourself the question, “Do I really know myself?” Some of you may have found the
activity on the previous page quite easy, but surely, many of you found it tough to look for the
finest words to describe yourself. Some of you may have encountered instances wherein you
underestimate yourself either because you are afraid to get embarrassed or you have absolutely
no idea of what you are capable of doing. Why do you think this happens?? The answer is
simple: because you do not truly know yourself.
Indeed, it is necessary to know yourself. But how do you go about it, right? This lesson
explores the philosophies of the self, which breaks into several key theories about human
existence that have been a heated debate throughout history and are still being argued about up
until now. In an effort to answer the countless inquiries about the self, the greatest thinkers,
known as the philosophers, have immersed themselves in search for knowledge about the nature
of being human. Questions like, “What does it mean to be a person?” or “Who am I?” or “Do I
really matter?” or “How do I know that I will continue to be me in the future?” have engaged key
thinkers to address these matters of existence to help us understand the different views about the
self.

Ancient Philosophers – they are philosophers who questioned the origin of the world. Most
known philosophers during their time were from Ancient Greece. Socrates and Plato are one of
the well-known philosophers in the Ancient Period.

SOCRATES
Most of what we know about Socrates come from the accounts of people’s writings long
after his death. He was born in Athens around 469 B.C. Some say he followed his father’s trade
as a stone mason and has even served in the Athenian army at some point in his life. Granting
that his ideas earned him many followers in Athens, he has also upset a lot of people with his
philosophical inquiries. He was brought to trial in 399 B.C. under charges of corrupting the
youth of the city. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock poison. What
was Socrates’ philosophy? Why did the Athenian city-state consider him dangerous?
Socrates was often in the position of an examiner — a questioner. He constantly looks for
imperfections in the ideas of others, which is actually the heart of his philosophy. Socrates
knows that he knows nothing, more importantly, he knows that he knows nothing, while
everyone else is under the flawed impression that they know something (Vlastos & Graham,
1971).
Do you realize the danger in this?
 The highest form of human excellence, according to Socrates, is to question oneself and
others (Maxwell, 2013). In truth, Socrates is simply establishing a higher standard of truth, which
must be logically consistent and not contradicting itself. This is Socrates’ dangerous idea. Instead
of being satisfied with an answer that sounds pretty good, Socrates asserts that one should
examine more closely the things we call ‘true,’ considering that there are vast concepts that are
not easily defined. To Socrates, man has to look at himself to understand his long-standing
mission, to “Know Yourself.”
For him, “an unexamined life is not worth living” (Vlastos & Graham, 1971). Basically,
the most horrible thing that can happen to anybody is to “live but die inside” (Alata, et. Al 2018).
Therefore, to preserve our souls for the afterlife, we must be fully aware of who we are and the
virtues that come with its attainment.
He also believed that an individual’s personhood is composed of the body and soul. The
soul, for him, is immortal. For this reason, he insisted that death is not the end of existence.
Rather, it is simply the separation of the soul from the body.
Socrates also raised the point that just because something seems true does not mean it is
true (Rowe, 2007). He further noted that, in reality, many people believe things that are not true.
Hence, Socrates made a distinction between knowledge and belief. The former being always and
universally true while the latter is only true in certain circumstances.
What made Socrates a menace was the fact that even matters of faith fall short of his
standard of truth since every religion in the world is full of contradictions. By undermining
religion, Socrates is essentially questioning the foundation of his society. So the Athenians made
the worst decision they could have made—they took him and turned him into a martyr
(Anagnostopoulos, 2006).

PLATO
What happened to Socrates dismayed his friends and followers. Plato, Socrates’ student,
got mad at the plight of his master, enough to write tons of books about him, making sure that his
dangerous ideas lived on.
Plato sustained the idea that man is composed of a dual nature of body and soul.
According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Plato believed that the soul is immortal
and separated from the body. However, he took it to a higher level, claiming that the soul was
eternal. According to Plato, the soul does not exist with the body. Instead, it exists prior to being
joined to the body. Resembling the idea of reincarnation, Plato ascertained that the soul lives
within a body and upon death, the soul moves onto another body afterwards. Building on this
belief, Plato called the body the prison of the soul.
In his dialogue, “The Republic” (Santas, 2010), Plato argued that the human soul or the
psyche is divided into three parts labelled as appetitive, spirited, and rational. For justice in the
human person to be attained, these parts of the soul should be in tune with one another.
 Imagine this, there are three things in front of you: a moist, warm piece of chocolate
cake, a slice of your self-baked but half-burnt pie, and your favorite fruit. Which one would you
end up selecting to eat?
Plato’s theory tells us that if we are left with our own instincts to decide what is good for
us, then we are most likely to choose based on our desires (appetitive soul) to satisfy our needs in
ways that are easier and more likeable for all of us. We are also likely to choose based on our
mood or emotions (spirited soul) that have to be kept in control at all times to prevent causing us
problems. Lastly, we also choose based on logic and intellect (rational soul), choosing the
healthy one for us. When these three work in with each other, then the tendency to be enslaved
by our own false opinions is lesser and the human soul becomes just and virtuous through our
capability of making rational decisions, capable of breaking free of opinions, scrutinizing
misleading sensory perceptions and discovering true knowledge (Shoefield, 2006).

Medieval Philosophers – they are philosophers who existed in the Medieval Period. Others
would call them Scholastics. Mostly, the questions of the existence and essence of God are
present. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are one of the well-known philosophers in their period.

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Like Plato, he also asserted that the soul is immortal. However, he believed that the soul
and the body make up a human. He does not believe that the soul jumps from one body to
another. Instead, one person is made up of one body and one soul.
Augustine’s view of the human person states that the body is that imperfect aspect of man
that is bound to perish on earth, which incessantly longs to be in communion with the spiritual
realm of the Divine God. The soul, on the other hand, is “capable of reaching immortality by
staying after death in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent God (Mennel, 1994). The
purpose, therefore, of every human person is to attain this spiritual union with God by living his
life according to virtues.

THOMAS AQUINAS
Aquinas, the most eminent thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of the medieval
philosophy, appeared something to this Christian view. Adapting some ideas from Aristotle,
Aquinas said that indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and form (hylemorphism).
Matter, or hyle in Greek, refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the universe.
Man’s body parts/physical body is part of this matter. Form, on the other hand, or morphe in
Greek refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what makes it what 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 man’s body are more or less akin to the cells of 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 him, just as Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body; it is what makes
us human.

Modern Philosophers – they are the philosophers who are existing in the Modern Period.
Questions of the source of knowledge are one of the main topics in their time. Where does
knowledge came from – sense experience or reason? Descartes, Hume, and Kant are some of the
known philosophers during their time.

RENE DESCARTES
Rene Descartes is known to be the “Father of Modern Philosophy” and one of the most
famous dualistic thinkers of all time (Rozemond, 1998). Dualism is the concept that reality or ex-
istence is divided into two parts: the mind and the physical body. According to dualism, the mind
is somehow separate from the physical attributes of the body. The body is nothing but a part
attached to the mind, while the mind is part of the unseen creation. Literally speaking, if a human
skull is opened-up, one can use his senses to find out something about the human brain, but can
never find anything about the mind. Descartes asserted that one cannot rely on his senses because
they are sometimes misleading.
He further believed that the mind is the seat of our consciousness. Because it houses our
drives, intellect, passion and understanding, it gives us our identity and our sense of self. In
short, all that we really are comes from the mind. As Descartes puts it, “I think, therefore I am”
(“Cogito, ergo, sum” in Latin). He argued that the only thing that cannot be doubted is the
existence of the self, as man himself was the one doing the doubting in the first place. One thing
should be clear by now, we exist, because we think; we think therefore we exist. In the Second
Meditation, he explored on the idea that he is “nothing but a thinking thing that doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory
perceptions” (Skirry, 2005; Flage & Bonnen, 2014)

DAVID HUME
David Hume is known for his lack of self theory. He held to empiricism, the theory that
all knowledge is derived from human senses. Basically, he believes that it is only through our
physical experiences using our sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell that we know what
we know.
To understand his lack of self beliefs, Hume made a clear distinction between
impressions (everything that originate from our senses) and ideas (which are just faint images of
thinking and reasoning based on impressions) in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). For instance, our sense of touch tells us that a sea
urchin is spiny and therefore, sharp. This is an impression and is wild because it is a product of
our direct experience with the world. From this impression, we form the idea that it is dangerous
to the touch. The concept of ‘dangerous’ is difficult to define completely since it cannot be seen,
touched or tasted — it is just an idea. Hume also argued that these impressions are the changing,
shifting elements of our existence and because of this, our personal identity cannot persist
through time. In short, we perceive a sense of self depending on how our mind put impressions
together and makes sense of them as ’me.’
To Hume, the idea of the self that we make is a bunch of physical impressions. He argued
in his bundle theory, the assertion that the properties we can sense are the only real parts of an
object (Larsen & Buss, 2013). If an orange fruit is round and orange in color, the theory holds
that if we remove all the properties of an orange, the idea of the orange vanishes and we are left
with nothing. In the same manner, Hume emphasized that if a human is stripped off of all his/her
physical properties, the idea of the human also disappears. Therefore, our sense of self is simply
a combination of all the impressions that we have, that, once removed, leave us with a complete
lack of self.

IMMANUEL KANT
Several philosophers during Immanuel Kant's time take into account empiricism as the
only path to true knowledge, which asserts that knowledge is only attained through the senses. In
other words, ’To see is to believe!’ Hence, if something cannot be seen, tasted, touched, heard, or
physically experienced, it might as well be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
Then again, many of Kant's supporters advocated rationalism, a theory which states that
reason is the foundation of all knowledge, rather than experience. Say for example, while
watching a 3D movie, your eyes tell you that a dinosaur is about to jump out of a screen.
However, your rational mind lets you know that it is not! Therefore, seeing is not believing —
reasoning is!
In the middle of this heated debate on self-knowledge and perception between empiricism
vs. rationalism was Kant, who believed that we all have an inner and an outer self which
together, form our consciousness. The inner self is comprised of our psychological state and our
rational intellect. The outer self includes our sense and the physical world (Carver & Scheier,
2014). To Kant, both of these theories are incomplete when it comes to the self. When speaking
of the inner self, there is apperception, which is how we mentally assimilate a new idea into old
ones. Basically, it is how we make sense of new things. Consider Person A to be the owner of a
180-lb. dog. For him, his dog is huge so whenever he meets an 80-lb. dog (or any other weight
less than his dog’s, for that matter), he does not consider it to be big. On the other hand, to a
person who spends all day with a small breed dog like a Chihuahua, the same 80-lb dog would
seem immense. With this, Person A’s rational thoughts on ‘big’ are based on the already formed
apperception of his big dog, while the other person’s is based on undersized canines. According
to Kant, neither is right nor wrong — the idea of ‘big’ is just based on internal reasoning that
cannot be experienced through senses.
 As a fragment of the outer self, Kant argued about a mental imagery based on past
sensations and experiences called representation, which occurs through our senses. Let us say
that you are a person who is not into cold places. You have never been to Alaska but based on
the photos you found online and your personal experiences with snow even in other places in the
past, you already have imagined what Alaska would feel like. This representation of cold for you
is enough to keep you from going to Alaska. As per Kant, empiricists who only rely on the
sensory world and representation miss the mark on self by negating the effects of apperception.
Conversely, rationalists who cancel out representation miss by just as much. It is through
these that Kant believed that the inner and outer self combine to give us our consciousness
instead of self being one or the other.

Contemporary Philosophers – They are the philosophers who became known in the
Contemporary Period. There are several questions in this period; i.e, existentialism,
phenomenology, and others. Gilbert Ryle is one of the philosophers in this period.

GILBERT RYLE
While many philosophers support, “I think, therefore I am,” Gilbert Ryle in a way said, “I
act, therefore I am!” Ryle unravels the separation between the mind and the body by claiming
that it is our behaviors and actions that give us our sense of self. In other words, we are all just a
bundle of behaviors that if someone thinks she is beautiful, it is because she acts beautifully. If
someone thinks he is intelligent, it is because he acts intelligently.
Ryle tells us that those who think that the mind exists separately from the body are
committing a category mistake, an error in logic in which one category of something is presented
as belonging to another category (Hofstadter, 1951). This concept is best explained below: “One
day a girl visited a college campus. After seeing the buildings, teachers, students, and dorms, she
looked at the tour guide and sweetly asked, ‘This is all nice, but when do I get to see the
university?’
With this question, the girl committed a category mistake. Rather than realizing
everything she saw made up the university, she thought it existed as a separate category.”
To Ryle, the idea that “there is something called ‘mind’ over and above a person’s
behavioral dispositions” is questionable. He argued that the mind does not exist and therefore
cannot be the seat of self. In other words, we neither get our sense of self from the mind nor from
the body, but from our behaviors in our day-to-day activities.