Managing and Caring

for the Self

The Self from Various

Unpacking the Self
Perspectives
The Self From Various Perspective
 The Self From Various
Perspective

Philosophy

Sociology

Anthropology

Psychology

Western and Eastern

Thought
Philosophical view of Self
 Learning Objectives

1.Explain why it is essential to

understand the self.
2.Compare and contrast various
philosophical perspective about self.
3.Examine one’s self regarding
different perspectives.
How do you
know Who
you are?
Define Self
 Know
Thyself
Socrates
 The only true
wisdom is in
knowing you
know nothing.

Socrates
 An
unexamined
life not worth
living

Socrates
 The essence
of knowledge
is self-
knowledge

Plato
Humans are
Dualist: Soul
and Body

Plato
 if a knife had a
soul, the act of
cutting would be
that soul, because
'cutting' is the
essence of what it
is to be a knife

Plato
Cogito, ergo sum

Rene Descartes
I think, therefore
I am

Rene Descartes
 a thinking intelligent
being, that has reason
and reflection, and
can consider itself as
itself, the same
thinking thing, in
different times and
places
Personal Identity
John Locke
“For my part, when I enter most intimately into
what I call myself, I always stumble on some
particular perception or other, of heat or cold,
light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I never can catch myself at any time without a
perception, and never can observe anything
but the perception” (Treatise, 1.4.6.3)
If any impression gives
rise to the idea of self,
that impression must
continue invariably the
same through the whole
course of our lives, since
self is supposed to exist
after that manner. But
there is no impression
constant and invariable”

David Hume
Transcendental Apperception

Bodies are objects of outer

sense, souls are objects of
inner sense.

Immanuel Kant
The mind is like an
iceberg, it floats
with one-seventh
of its bulk above
water.

Sigmund Freud
CONSCIOUS

EGO subconscious
SUPEREGO

ID

unconscious
He that has eyes to see
and ears to hear may
convince himself that
no mortal can keep a
secret. If his lips are
silent, he chatters with
his fingertips; betrayal
oozes out of him at
every pore.

Sigmund Freud
The ego represents
what may be called
reason and
common sense, in
contrast to the id,
which contains the
passions.

Sigmund Freud
 The superego is,
however, not simply a
residue of the earliest
object-choices of the
id; it also represents an
energetic reaction-
formation against
those choices.

Sigmund Freud
In searching for the
self, one cannot be
simultaneously be a
hunter and a hunted

Gilbert Ryle
 “A person therefore lives
through two collateral
histories, one consisting
of what happens in and to
his body, and other
consisting of what
happens in and to his
mind. The first is public,
the second private.”

Gilbert Ryle
 Neurophilosophy
Although many philosophers used
to dismiss the relevance of
neuroscience on grounds that
what mattered was the software,
not the hardware, increasingly
philosophers have come to
recognize that understanding how
the brain works is essential to
understanding the mind.

Patricia Churchland
 Neurophilosophy

Theorizing is of course
essential to make progress
in understanding, but
theorizing in the absence
of knowing available
relevant facts is not very
productive.

Patricia Churchland
 Theorizing is of course
essential to make progress
in understanding, but
theorizing in the absence
of knowing available
relevant facts is not very
productive.

Maurice Merleau-
Ponty
 External perception and the
perception of one's own body vary
in conjunction because they are
the two facets of one and the
same act. Every external
perception is immediately
synonymous with a certain
perception of my body, just as
every perception of my body is
made explicit in the language of
external perception

Maurice Merleau-
Ponty