Chapter 1

The Self from Various

Perspective
• Socrates
• Plato
• St. Augustine
• Rene Descartes
• Locke
• Hume
• Kant
• Freud
• Ryle
• Churchland
• Merleau-Ponty
Socrates
Socrates, 469-399 B.C., Greek philosopher of Athens, is
generally regarded as one of the wisest people of all time.

Socrates himself left no writings, and most of our

knowledge of him and his teachings comes from the
dialogues of his most famous pupil, Plato (427-347 B.C.)
Self Moderation
• An examined life is a life that is duty bound to develop self-
knowledge and self dignified with values and integrity.

• Not only that: living a good life means having the wisdom to
distinguish what is right from wrong
Plato
born 428/427 bce, Athens, Greece
died 348/347, Athens
ancient Greek philosopher
student of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce)
 teacher of Aristotle (384–322 bce)
 founder of the Academy
Plato’s Academy, founded in the 380s
 PSYCHE

• Composed of three elements

APPETITIVE / BODY
SPIRITED /SOUL
MIND
 APPETITIVE
• Includes ones desires,
pleasures, physical
satisfactions, comforts
• the physical part of the
body that is only concerned
with the material world
• It is mortal, and when it
dies, it is truly dead.
 SPIRITED /SOUL

• Excited when given challenges

• Fight back when agitated
• Fight for justice when unjust
practices are evident
• The driving force of the body, that
it is what gives us our identity .
St. Augustine
 St. Augustine, also called Saint Augustine of Hippo
 Original Latin name Aurelius Augustinus,
 Born November 13, 354, Tagaste, Numidia [now Souk Ahras,
Algeria]
 Died August 28, 430, Hippo Regius [now Annaba, Algeria];
feast day August 28)
 Bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, one of the Latin Fathers of
the Church and perhaps the most significant Christian
thinker after St. Paul.
Self Presentation and Self Realization
Rene Descartes
 Philosopher and mathematician
 Regarded as the father of modern
philosophy for defining a starting point
for existence, “I think; therefore I am.”
 Born on March 31, 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, France.
 He was extensively educated, first at a Jesuit college at
age 8, then earning a law degree at 22
 His Philosophy
• We cannot really rely on our
sense perceptions can often
deceive us
• Everything must be subjected
to doubt
• “Cogito, ergo, Sum”
John Locke
 His Biography
 born on August 29, 1632, in Wrington, Somerset, England,
went to Westminster school and then Christ Church,
University of Oxford.
 At Oxford he studied medicine, which would play a central
role in his life.
 His Perspective
• Self is comparable to an empty space where everyday
experience contribute to the pile of knowledge that is put
forth on that empty space.
• Experience , is an important requirement in order to have
sense data
David Hume
 His Biography
• Born May 7 [April 26, Old Style], 1711, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Died August 25, 1776, Edinburgh), Scottish philosopher,
historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his
philosophical empiricism and skepticism.
 His Perspective
• All ideas are derived from impression
• All we know about our self is a bundle of
temporary impression
• “ There is no Self”
Immanuel Kant
 His Biography
 Born on April 22, 1724, in Konigsberg, Prussia, or what is now
Kaliningrad, Russia.
 He published science papers, including "General Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens" in 1755.
 He spent the next 15 years as a metaphysics lecturer.
 In 1781, he published the first part of Critique of Pure Reason.
 He published more critiques in the years preceding his death
on February 12, 1804, in the city of his birth.
 His Perspective
• The Self is always Transcendental
 Self is not in the body
 Ideas are perceived by the body
 We have sensory apparatus by which we derived our ideas
Sigmund Freud
• Self as “I” that ordinarily constitute both the mental and
physical actions
• “I” as a product of multiple interacting processes, systems
and schemes.
• Two models of Sigmund Freud
1. Topographical Model
2. Structural Model
 Topographical Model

• The individual person

may both know and do
not know certain things
at the same time
 Structural Model

• Self in three different agencies

Id
Ego
 superego
Gilbert Ryle
• Concept of the Mind
• The mind is never separated from the body
• Physical actions or behaviors are dispositions
of the “Self”
• The mind is disposition of the Self