Andres Soriano Colleges of Bislig

Mangagoy, Bislig City

ITE/TVET DEPARTMENT
GENERAL EDUCATION

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

CHAPTER 1:
DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL
PERSPECTIVE ON SELF IDENTITY
 CHAPTER I LESSON 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Lesson Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. Explain why is it essential to understand self;
2. Describe and discuss the notions of the self from points-of-view of various philosophers across
time and place;
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different philosophical schools;
and
4. Examine one’s self against the different views of the self that were discussed in class.
INTRODUCTION:
Please answer the following questions:

 Who gave you your name?

 Who, what and where your name was derived?
 What connotes or signifies your name?

Before we even had to be in any

formal institution of learning, among the many
things that we were first taught as kids is to
articulate ad write our names. Growing up we
were told to refer back to our names when we
talk about ourselves. Our names inscribed to
us because it represents us. Humans being
attached or our parents that are meaningful to
them or to us it may be the place where you
from your ancestors or even to people/person
who significant to you or I the society like
actors politicians saints and many others, why
is this so? Because names are supposed to
designate us in the society. When we are you we are told to respond when we are called since this set of
combined and letters represents us. Our name signifies us that eve death cannot stop the bonds of our
name to us even to our graves our names are inscribed to our gravestones.
Our name does not directly tell other people who we are it is only a signifier for us to be recognized.
For an instance a baby was named after a saint most probably he will not become an actual saint he may
even turn out to be saintly. THE SELF IS THOUGHT TO BE SOMETHING MORE THAN OUR NAMES.
The self is not a static that one is simply born with like a mole or one’s face or just assigned by one’s
parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to discover one’s self. Have you truly discovered yours?

ACTIVITY 1: DO YOU REALLY KNOW YOUR

SELF?
1. How would you characterize yourself?

2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes yourself special?

How has your self-transformed itself?

3. How is you connected to your body?

4. How your
selves
related to
other
selves?

5. What will
happen to
you self if
you die?
ANALYSIS:
Were you able to answer the questions above with ease why? Which questions did you find
easiest to answer? Which ones are difficult why?
Questions Easy or difficult to answer? Why?

Can you truly know the self? Do you know about the self
LET’S GO DEEPER

The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired the fundamental nature of
the self. The inquiry the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy primarily the
Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths ad moved away from them in
attempting to understand reality ad respond to perennial questions of curiosity including the question of
the self. For us to understand the self I philosophical manner let us revisit the prime movers ad identify the
most important conjectures made by philosophers from the ancient times to the contemporary period.

SOCRATES AD PLATO

PRE SOCRATIC PERIOD, the Greek thinkers pre occupied

themselves with the questions of primary substratum, Arche’ that
explains the multiplicity of the things in the world. Thales,
Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, were
concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of,
why the world is so? And the changes that they observed around
them. They were tired of simply conceding the happenings in the
world by mere mythological accounts propounded by some poet-
theologians like homer and Hesiod these philosophers have
instilled already the seeming permanence of things despite the
inevitable change and the unity of the world amidst diversity.

SOCRATES /SOCRATIC PERIOD Amidst all of the

happenings were men are disturbed by the same issues. A
man came out to question something else. And he was
SOCRATES unlike Pre Socratics Socrates was more
concerned with another subject; THE PROBLEM ABOUT
THE SELF, he was the first philosopher who engaged in
systematic questioning about the self for him it has to be
his lifelong mission and according to him the true task of a
philosopher is to know oneself.

According to Socrates, every man is dualistic he is

composed of 2 aspects the body and the soul, these are
the two important aspect of personhood he have an imperfect and impermanent aspect to him while
maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent which is the soul.
A person is made up of 2 aspects the body and the soul

THE TRIPARTITE SOUL

PLATO was Socrates student he was greatly

influenced with the work of his teacher and supported the
idea that a human is made up of body and soul. And added
that human soul is subdivided into 3 components
(TRIPARTITE SOUL) In his work entitled Magnum Opus
(The republic, Plato 2000) he emphasized that soul has 3
components:

 The Rational Soul - is forged by reason ad intellect

has to govern the affairs of the human person.
 The Spirited Soul – is I in charge of emotions should be kept at bay;
 The Appetitive Soul- is responsible to base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping and even the
desire to have sex.

He also added that these 3 components should work harmoniously with one another because when
these ideal states are attained he believes that a person’s soul will become just and virtuous.

AUGUSTINE

Augustinian view of the human as a person reflects entirely

spiritual during the medieval world. In line with the views of Plato
and infusing the new found doctrines of Christianity he agreed that
man is bifurcated in nature. Part of a man is imperfect and
continuously yearns to be with the divine and the other is capable of
being immortal. That the body on earth will die and the other self is
anticipated to be living eternally communion with God. That’s why
the goal of every human is to attain this communion and bliss with
the divine by living his life on earth in virtue.

THOMAS OF AQUINAS

Is an eminent 13th century scholar of the medieval period. Adapting

the ideas of Aristotle, he said that indeed that man is composed of 2
parts;
 Matter (Hyle) - refers to the common stuff that makes up
everything in the universes such our physical body.
 Essence (Morphe) - is our substance of what we are made up
in short this is our soul

he also added we share the same attributes to some animals as to

cellular make up but what makes a human a person is his soul to
which Thomas of Aquinas believe to be absent in animals.

RENE’ DESCARTES (Cartesian Dualism)

FATHER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

 He believes that human person is consist of BODY and MIND. He also attest that there are so much
to should doubt if something is so clear and lucid as cannot be doubted that’s the only time one should
believe and the only thing one can’t be doubted is the existence of one’s self.
 “I think therefore I am”
 The self = COGITO (the thing that thinks) + EXTENZA (extension of mind / body)
 The body is a machine attached to the mind.
 It is the mind that makes the man.
 I am a thinking thing … a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines,
perceives.

DAVID HUMES

He totally disagree with the notion of Descartes according to him the self is
an empty idea why? Because there is no experiential continuity of selfhood. In
fact we cannot truly experience the self at all;

 Every time we try to experience the self we are faced with innumerable
sensory experiences; temperature, hunger, pain, joy, light etc.

 Concludes that we seem to merely be a bundle of experiences …. Our

concept of self is an ILLUSION

 The self is nothing but a bundle of impressions and ideas.

 Impression-
Basic objects of our experience/sensations that forms the core
of our thoughts.
 Idea –
Copies of impressions but not real as the impressions
“Feeling mo lang yun “

IMMANNUEL KANT

Kant agrees with Hume that everything starts with

perception/sensation of impressions but he also believes that there is a mid
that regulates this sensations/impressions. However things like time, space ,
etc. are ideas that one cannot find in the world but is built in our mind these
are what he call as the “APPARATUS OF THE MIND”.
 The self organizes different impressions that one gets in
relation to his own existence.
 We need active intelligence to synthesize all knowledge and
experience.
 The self is not only personality but also a set of knowledge.

GILBERT RYLE (The Concept of the Mind)

He argued that the idea of the soul- which he described as the”

ghost I the machine “- a category mistake. He argued that it was a
mistake I the use of language. The mistake was that it resulted in people
speaking of the mind and the body as different phenomena – as if the
soul was something identifiably extra within a person. The self is not an
entity one can locate and analyse but simply the convenient name that
we use to refer to the behaviours that we make.
 MAURICE MERLEAU PONTY

-says that the mind and the body are so

intertwined that they cannot be separated with each other.
One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied
experience, all experiences are embodied. One’s body is
his opening towards his existence to the world because of
these bodies men are in the world. He dismisses the
CARTESIAN DUALISM because for him it’s nothing else
but a plain misconception about the self. The living body,
his thoughts emotions, and experiences are all one.

APPLICATION AND ASSESSMENT

Direction: Discuss how each of the following

philosophers view about “the self” and explain how your concept of “self” compatible to each of
the philosophers

1. Socrates
2. Plato
3. Augustine
4. Descartes
5. Hume
6. Kant
7. Ryle
8. Merleau - Ponty

REFERENCES
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Descartes, René. 2008. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from Objections and Replies. New
York: Oxford University Press.

Ganeri, Jonardon. 2012. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the Person Stance, New York: Oxford
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Hume, David, and Eric Steinberg. 1992. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: [with] A Letter from
a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh (and) An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing

Marsella, Anthony J., George A. De Vos, and Francis L. K. Hsu. 1985. Culture and Self: Asian and Western
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