MODULE

In

UNDERSTANDING THE

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 Module 1.1 The Philosophical Self

Lesson Objective:

At the end of the course, the students will be able to:

1. Discuss the different representations and conceptualizations of the self from various
Philosophical perspectives
2. Examine and relate with the different influences, factors and forces that shape the
Philosophical Self
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been conceptualized by the different
philosophers from different fields and era.

The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the
fundamental nature of the self. The inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest
thinkers in the history of philosophy: THE GREEKS
They understand reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity,
including the question of the self. We know from everyday experience that a person
is partly forged in the crucible of community. Relationships inform self-
understanding. Who I am depends on many "others:" family, friends, culture, and
work colleagues.
Since the ancient times until the postmodern discourses, many Philosophers
grappled to understand the meaning of human life. They have attempted to answer
the question “Who am I?” and most of their views have influenced the way we look at
our lives today.

Let’s Do It!

Do You Truly Know Yourself?

Answer the following questions about yourself as fully and precisely as you can.

1. How would you characterize your self?

2. What makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your self special?
3. How has your self transformed itself?
4. How is your self connected to your body?
 5. How is your self related to other selves?
6. What will happen to your self after 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?

DISCUSSION

Prior to Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called the Pre-socratics
to denote that some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around Socrates’s time
as well, preoccupied themselves with the question of the primary substratum, arche that
explains the multiplicity of things in the world.

These men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to

name a few, were concerned with explaining what the world is so, what explains the
changes that they observed around them.

Tired of simply conceding to mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians

like Homer and Hesoid, these men endeavored to finally locate an explanation about the
nature of change, the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity of the world
amidst its diversity.

SOCRATES is known to be the father of Philosophy” and was famous of his “Know
Thyself” claims. “Knowing thyself is to be wise…an unexamined life is not worth living,”
he was more concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He was the first
philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates,
this has become his life-long mission, that is, the true task of a philosopher is to know
oneself. Knowing oneself is the beginning of wisdom.

For Socrates, everyman is composed of body and soul. This means that every human
person is dualistic, that is he is composed of two important aspects of his personhood.
This means that all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the
body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Ideas of Socrates

1. Care for your soul

2. Knowledge is necessary to become virtuous and virtue is necessary to attain
happiness.

PLATO supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul. In addition to
Socrates, he added that there are three components of the soul: the rational soul, the
spirited soul, and the appetitive soul emphasizing that justice in the human person can
only be attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another.
 The rational soul forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the
human person, the spirited part which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay,
and the appetitive soul in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and
having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, then the human
person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.

AUGUSTINE’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world
when it comes to man. According to him, man is bifurcated nature. An aspect man dwells
in the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and other is
capable of reaching immortality.

For him, the body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally in
a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God. The goal of every human person is to
attain this communion and bliss with the Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.

THOMAS AQUINAS, the most eminent thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of the
medieval philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. For him, man is
composed of two parts: matter and form. The soul is what animates the body; it is what
makes us humans.

 Matter (hyle in Greek) refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the
universe. Man’s body is part of this matter.
 Form (morphe in Greek) refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what
makes it what it is.

RENE DESCARTES is known as the “Father of Modern Philosophy,” conceived of the

human person as having a body and a mind. He claims that there is so much that we
should doubt. In fact, he says that since much of what we think and believe are not
infallible, they may turn out to be false.

Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self,
for even if one doubts oneself that only proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that
thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus, his famous, “cogito ergo sum,” “I
think therefore, I am,” is about the fact that one thinks should lead one to conclude
without a trace of doubt that he exists.

The self is also a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito (the thing that thinks
which is the mind) and the extenza (or extension of the mind which is the body. In
Descartes’s view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind.
The human person has it but it is not what makes man a man.

DAVID HUME, a Scotish philosopher, has a very unique way of looking at man. He was
an empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experiences; he argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought of it.
For him, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized
into two: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic objects of our experience or
sensation. Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of impressions. They are not as lively
and vivid as our impressions.

Self, according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which

succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement.” Men simply want to believe that there is unified, a coherent self, a soul or
mind just like what the previous philosophers though. In reality, what one thinks is a
unified self is simply a combination of all experiences with a particular person.
 Empericism is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be
possible if sensed and experienced.

IMMANUEL KANT thinks that the things that men perceive around them are not just
randomly infused into the human person without an organizing principle that regulates
the relationship of all these impressions. Time and space, for example, are ideas that
one cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds. Kant calls these the apparatuses of
the mind.

Along with the different apparatuses of the mind goes the “self.” Without the self, one
cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence.
Kant therefore suggests that it is an actively engaged intelligence in man that
synthesizes all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self is not just what gives one his
personality. In addition, it is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

GILBERT RYLE solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long time
in the history of thought by obviously denying the concept of an internal, non-physical
self. For him, what truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day
life. He suggests that the “self” is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer to all the behaviors that people make.

MERLEAU- PONTY is a phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation

that has been going on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem. He
says that the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
another. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

Try it for yourself!

A. In your own words, state what “self” is for each of the following philosophers. After doing
so, explain how your concept of “self” is compatible with how they conceived of the self.

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

References

Generi, Jonardon. 2012. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First Person
Stance. New York: Oxford University
Alata, E.P., Caslib,Jr.B. N, Serafica, J J. and Pawilen, R.A. 2018. Understanding the
Self. Rex Bookstore, Manila, Philippines.
Stevens, Richard. 1996. Understanding the Self. California: SAGE Publications.