The Philosophy of Self

Philosophy
• Philo – love
• Sophia – wisdom

• Love for wisdom

Key Western Philosophical
Perspectives on the Self
Socrates
• Self as having two separate elements – physical body and mental
(mind) or soul
• Body – a material, finite, temporal substance that exists in the
material field and has earthly existence; mortal, transitory, and is of a
lesser state than the mind or spirit

• Mind or soul – nonmaterial, absolute, eternal substance, resides in

the ideal infinite world, which is in constant search for knowledge and
wisdom as a way of achieving perfection
• This implies an antagonistic relationship since the body is deemed as
some kind of a mortifying force that can impede the soul’s attainment
of perfection.
Plato
• Self has three components:
• Reason – gives us the ability to think deeply, reflectively, and critically
• Physical appetite – referring to our basic survival mechanisms called biological
or physical needs
• Spirit or passion – gives us the capacity for emotional experiences
• Reason enables us to appreciate the finer virtues in life and to rise
above the limiting influence of the body’s basic drives or emotional,
lustful impulses of our ephemeral selves.
St. Augustine
• The dualistic relationship between the physical body and the mind or
soul remained.
• The imperfect, corruptible, and finite, inferior physical body was even
regarded as the prison which needs to be overcome in due time by
the more superior soul.
• He came up with a more integrated and harmonized perspective on
the dynamics between the body and soul that comprise the self. He
then described the self’s physical body as “spouse of the soul”, united
with the soul by a natural appetite, without which, human beings will
never reach a sense of integration or wholeness
Rene Descartes
• Self is capable of thinking and reasoning.

• Physical self exists in the natural world, thus, subject of the physical
laws of nature. The soul, or conscious self, is an immortal, conscious
substance that is part of the spiritual realm, independent of the
physical laws of the universe but is, subject instead, to the laws of
reason and God’s will.
• Self is able to do mental operations like understanding, reasoning,
doubting, and the like.

• “I think, therefore, I am.”

• The self gets clear ideas of itself as a thinking entity and as a physical
body. Descartes ushered in the notion of self-concept or self-identity.
John Locke (Father of Empiricism)
• The self is a conscious, thinking person who is aware of itself and the
things it is experiencing at any given moment. It is a thinking,
intelligent being who can reason and reflect.
• Being conscious means being aware that one is thinking. It is the basic
quality of the self which makes possible the idea that it remains the
same person despite changes in its physical substance through time
and space.
• A conscious self remembers and considers itself to be what it really is
in different times and place. As human beings, therefore, it means
that we are who we think of, or are aware of, across time and context.
• Self is formed as a result of accumulated ideas from our memory of
our experiences.
David Hume (Skeptic)
• The idea of a rational soul or mind or self that has the ability to fully
understand the world is suspicious. The idea of an essential self that
has the potential to exist endlessly in the realm of the divine in
unthinkable. There can never be an omnipresent self that is
unchanging across time and space, and beyond every knowable
experience
• Self is nothing but a collection or bundle of ever-changing perceptions
that are merely passing thru the so-called “theater of mind”, thus,
came out his “Bundle Theory” of self.
• Accordingly, when we encounter a phenomenon at any given
moment, we experience basic sensations called impressions. Out of
series of impressions, we can eventually have a built up ideas from
our direct experiences. This formulation positions the mind as just a
vessel for passing sensations and imprints of, and ideas from our
experiences. The self is thus rendered fictional, an imaginary
creature.

• self + impressions = idea of self

Immanuel Kant
• He reasserted the idea of a conscious self that is a knowing object
with specific mental faculties.

• He believes in an active, thinking self that exists independently of

experience. It is not merely the object of consciousness, but it
constructs and unifies the contents or elements of consciousness. It is
a conscious and active self which is a product of pure reason – a
regulating principle that has the capacity to understand human
condition.
• The self has a cognitive mechanism which we may call mind that is
able to construct meanings and with organizing rules that are inborn
or hardwired in each individual.
• This makes possible the emergence of a self that transcends
experience, or that is above experience, not just a perceiver but in
fact, an active processor of impressions from the outside. As such, we
see a self that actively synthesizes and reflects on its experiences and
not merely a passive repository of sensations or impressions.
Sigmund Freud
• Self is described as multi-layered self because it consists of a strata of
such structures as the conscious, pre-conscious and the unconscious.
• The conscious structure is believed to operate in the reality principle
as it facilitates the self’s navigation of its external environment in a
reasonable, mindful, and functional manner. It contains all the ideas
and mental elements that resulting from one’s perceptions or
impressions from the world, as well as those materials from the
unconscious that are available at the pre-conscious level or those
from the unconscious but are already deemed nonthreatening to the
ego.
• The pre-conscious component contains all those psychic materials
that are out of awareness but are accessible to conscious awareness
as need arises.

• The unconscious is the centerpiece of Freud’s theory and is the

storehouse of an individual’s rugged instincts, painful memories,
unfulfilled wishes and childhood fantasies or unacceptable impulses.
• A well-integrated self is achieved with the careful balancing and
harmonizing capacity of the ego or conscious mind between the
warring id and superego.

• The ego, being the rational and executive part of the mind is the one
that helps the self navigate the real world. The id is the innate
component where man’s basic instincts or biological drives are
located. It is described as the primitive and irrational part of the self.
Superego operates like a compliance officer within the self and is
described as morally rigid whose task temper the wishes of the id.
Gilbert Ryle (Behaviorism)
• He rejected the oppositional framing between the intangible mind
and the physical body and proposed that they could most likely be a
unified substance with first component called mind, existing in the
private domain, and the second one, the body, existing in the public
dimension. The self is then better understood as an empirical entity
characterized by a pattern of behavior or the person’s behavioral
dispositions in specific contexts or circumstances.
Paul Churchland
• He came up with his theory Eliminative Materialism, which asserts
that common sense psychology that talks about people’s inner mental
states and experiences will eventually be eliminated by
neurophysiology.
• The mind is nothing but the brain itself (neuroscience). The
individual’s thoughts, emotions, behaviors are not caused by a
conscious, thinking self that exists apart from the physical body
whose function is to translate inner states or processes into
something observable. All of these phenomena or events may just be
thought of as results of neural activation in certain brain areas.