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GEUTS: Understanding the Self

Chapter 1: Philosophical Perspective about Self

Learning Outcome:

1. Explain why it is essential to understand the self


2. Describe what philosophy is
3. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points of view of the various
philosophers
4. Examine one’s self against the different views of self that were discussed in class

Topic 1: What is Philosophy?

-It began in ancient Greece as the “mother of all disciplines” encompassing the entire breadth of inquiry
about human and the universe they inhabit.

- In origin, it is the composite of two Greek roots: philein, a Greek word for “love,” and sophia, the
Greek word for “wisdom.” Taken together, they mean “the love or pursuit of wisdom.”

-It begins when someone started to wonder; asking questions that begins in why.

- there have been many important thinkers since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and there were even a
number of insightful thinkers before them, the “pre-Socratics” who were known as Sophos, wise men
and women who posed sophisticated and penetrating questions regarding the essential principles of
human life and the natural world.

Topic 2: THE LIFE OF SOCRATES

-Ancient Greek philosopher often called “the father of Western philosophy.”

-Socratic Method,This method used a dynamic approach of questioning and intellectual analysis to
draw answers out of people rather than lecture them.

-His teachings are known to us primarily through the writing of his student, Plato.

-At the age of 70, he was tried and executed on the highly questionable charge of “corrupting the youth
of Athens.”

Topic 3: Ideas of Socrates relating to Self

-For Socrates, the central concern of philosophy is the psyche, the “true self” or “soul.” t is your core
identity, your unique spirit that makes you distinctively you.

-Dualistic Two-fold. Related to dualism, the view that material substance (physical body) and immaterial
substance (mind or soul) are two separate aspects of the self.

According to Socrates, your soul is “immortal and imperishable, and after death should continue to exist
in another world.” Body, imperfect and impermanent

-Every soul seeks happiness, Socrates believes, and there is a clearly defined path to achieving
happiness. The only people who are truly happy are those who are virtuous and wise, who live
reflective, “examined” lives and strive to behave rightly and justly in every area of their lives. “ An
Unexamined life is not worth living for”.

“ the worst thing that could happen to a person is to live but die inside”

-The cornerstone of Socrates’s philosophy was the Delphic Oracle’s command to “Know thyself.

-Socrates was the first thinker in Western history to focus the full power of reason on the human self:
who we are, who we should be, and who we will become.

Topic 3: The Life and Ideas of Plato

-One of Socrates student, who 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, he added that there are three components of the soul:

1. Rational Soul-forged by reason and intellect and has to govern the affairs of the human person.

2. Spirited Soul-Is in charge of emotions and should be kept at bay

3.Appetitive Soul-is in charge of like eating, basic drives like eating, drinking, sleeping and having sex.

-He emphasizes that justice in human person can only be attained if the three parts of the soul are
working harmoniously with one another.

- Bifurcated universe in which “there are two realms, an intelligible realm where truth itself dwells, and
this sensible world which we perceive by sight and touch,”

Topic 4: The life and Ideas of St. Augustine

- Augustine was a complex and fascinating figure. Born to successful parents in northern Africa, he spent
much of his youth and young adulthood carousing with friends, indulging in numerous love affairs, and
even fathering an illegitimate child.

-He integrated the philosophical concepts of Plato with the tenets of Christianity.

- He enthusiastically adopted Plato’s vision of a bifurcated universe in which “there are two realms, an
intelligible realm where truth itself dwells, and this sensible world which we perceive by sight and
touch,” but then adapted this metaphysic to Christian beliefs.

-Plato’s ultimate reality, the eternal realm of the Forms, became in Augustine’s philosophy a
transcendent God. In the same way, Plato’s vision of immortal souls striving to achieve union with this
eternal realm through intellectual enlightenment became transformed by Augustine into immortal souls
striving to achieve union with God through faith and reason.

- Augustine believed that the physical body was both radically different from and inferior to its
inhabitant, the immortal soul

- He ultimately came to view the body as the “spouse” of the soul, with both attached to one another by
a “natural appetite.”
Topic 5: The Life and Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas

-Aquinas was a Christian theologian who sought to synthesize philosophy and religion and offered
detailed and systematic works on the natures of God, humanity, and the universe.

- Thomas Aquinas tended toward Aristotle’s metaphysical views to serve as an intellectual structure for
Christianity’s ideas of the self and reality

In Aristotle’s metaphysical system, there are two basic categories of things:

• Matter (in Greek, hyle), which refers to the common “stuff” that makes up the material universe
• Form (in Greek morphe), which refers to the essence of a thing, that which makes it what it is.

- The soul and the body cannot be separated into discreet existences. They can only exist in relationship
to one another

- individual organisms consist of both matter and form, which can only exist in relation to one another.
The form or structure that distinguishes living things from nonliving ones is what Aristotle called “soul.”

- Aquinas believes that life begins with the inseparable union of form and matter, gradually giving rise to
the conscious self as we know it

- Aquinas takes the soul of someone who has died to be in an unnatural state until it animates a human
body again (at the resurrection of the body in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ).

Topic 6: The Life and Ideas of Rene Descartes

- French philosopher considered the founder of modern philosophy. A mathematician and scientist as
well, Descartes was a leader in the seventeenth-century scientific revolution

- he was more concerned with understanding the thinking process we use to answer questions

- He was convinced that to develop the most informed and well-grounded beliefs about human
existence, we need to be clear about the thinking instrument we are employing

- “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far
as possible, all things.”

-“cogito ergo sum”/ “ I think therefore I am”

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