Soc Sci 121-Pag Unawa Sa Sarli Understanding The Self: Arlyn R. Dimaano, LPT Instructor I Mindoro State University

SOC SCI 121- PAG UNAWA SA SARLI
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

ARLYN R. DIMAANO, LPT
INSTRUCTOR I
MINDORO STATE UNIVERSITY
MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING- FOODS TECHNOLOGY

MARIKINA POLYTHECNIC COLLEGE 2020- PRESENT
UNDERSTANDING THE
SELF
CHAPTER 1
G T H E S E LF : P E RS O N A L
DEFININ
AND DEVEL O P M E N T AL
P E C T I V E S O N S E L F A N D
PESR
IDENTITY
LESSON 1:
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
LESSON OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. Explain why it is essential to understand the self:
2. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points-of-view of the
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 self that were discussed in class.
• Our names represent who we are. INTRODUCTION
• Human beings attach names that are
meaningful to birthed progenies because
names are supposed to designate us in the
world. Thus, some people get baptized with
names such as “precious”, “beauty”, or
“lovely”.
• As a student, we are told to always write our names on our papers, projects, or any
output for that matter.
• Our names signify us.
INTRODUCTION
• Death cannot even stop this bond between the person and her name.
• Names are inscribed even into one’s gravestone.
• A name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is with
the bearer. It is only a signifier.
• A person who was named after a saint most probably will not become an
actual saint. He may not even turn out to be saintly!
• The self is thought to be something else than a name.
INTRODUCTION
• Theself is something that a person
perennially molds, shapes, and
develops.
• Everyone is tasked to discover one’s self.
• Have you truly discover yours?
THE
GREEKS
THE GREEKS
• The earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy.
• The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away
from them in attempting to understand reality and respond to perennial
questions of curiosity, including the question of THE SELF.
• The different perspectives and views on the self can be best seen and
understood by revisiting its prime movers and identify the most important
conjectures made by philosophers from the ancient times to the
contemporary period.
1. SOCRATES AND PLATO
• The Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively
called the Pre-Socratics, 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 really made up of,
why the world is so, and what explains the changes that they observed around
them.
• Socrates was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self.
• To Socrates, and this has become his life-long mission, the true task
of the philosopher is to know oneself.
• Plato
claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the
unexamined life is not worth living.
• Most men, in his reckoning, were really not fully aware of who they
where and the virtues that they were supposed to attain in order to
preserve their souls for the afterlife. Socrates thought that this is the
worst that can happen to anyone; to live but die inside.
• According to Socrates, every person is dualistic, a person is
composed of two important aspects of his personhood which is THE
BODY and THE SOUL.
• Socrates, this means 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.
• Plato added that there are three components of the soul: the rational soul, the spirited
soul, and the appetitive soul.
• Rational soul – forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human
person.
• Spirited soul – which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay.

• Appetitive soul – in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex
are controlled as well.
2. AUGUSTINE AND THOMAS AQUINAS
• Following the ancient view of Plato and
infusing it with the newfound doctrine of
Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is
of a bifurcated nature.
• An aspect of man dwells in the world and is
imperfect and continuously yearns to be
with the Divine and the other is capable of
reaching immortality.
• 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.
• Adapting some ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas said that indeed, man is
composed of two parts: MATTER and FORM.
• MATTER – or hyle in Greek, refers to the “common stuff that makes up
everything in the universe.” Man’s body is part of this matter.
• FORM – or morphe in Greek, refers to the “essence of a substance or
thing.” It is what makes it what it is.
• To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body; it is
what makes us humans.
3. DESCARTES
• RENE DESCARTES – Father of Modern
Philosophy
• He conceived of the human person as
having a body and a mind.
3. DESCARTES
• He claims that there is so much that we should doubt. However,
Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the
existence of the self, for even if one doubts oneself, that the only
proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks and therefore,
that cannot doubted.
• According to Descartes, the self is the combination of two distinct
entities: the COGITO and EXTENZA.
3. DESCARTES
• COGITO – the thing that thinks (THE MIND)
• EXTENZA - extension of the mind (THE BODY)
• Descartes says, “But what then, am I? A thinking thing. It has been
said. But what is a thinking thing ? It is a thing that doubts,
understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that
imagines also, and perceives”.
4. HUME
• DAVID HUME – A Scottish philosopher
• He was an empiricist who believes that
one can know only what comes from the
senses and experiences.
• Empiricism- the school of thought that
espouses the idea that knowledge can
only be possible If it is sensed and
experienced.
4. HUME
• Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing .
• The self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions .
• IMPRESSIONS - the basic objects of our experience or sensation.
- they form the core of our thoughts.
- Impressions are vivid because they are products of our direct
experience with the world.
4. HUME
• IDEAS - copies of impression
- Not as lively and vivid as our impressions
• SELF - According to Hume, self 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”.
• In reality, what one thinks is a unified self is simply a combination of
ALL EXPERIENCES with a particular person.
5. KANT
• According to Immanuel Kant, thinking of
the “self” as a mere combination of
impressions was problematic .
• Herecognizes the veracity of Hume's
account that everything starts with
perception and sensation of
impressions.
5. KANT
• There is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men
get from the external world.
• 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.
6. RYLE
• GILBERT RYLE solves the mind-body
dichotomy that has been running for a
long time in the history of thought by
blatantly denying the concept of an
internal, non-physical self.
6. RYLE
• For Ryle, looking for and trying to
understand a self as it really exists is like
visiting your friend’s university and looking
for “university.”
• He suggest that “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.
7. MERLEAU-PONTY
• A phenomenologist who asserts that mind
–body bifurcation that has been going on
for a long time is a futile endeavor and an
invalid problem.
• Merleau-Ponty says that the body and mind
are so intertwined that they cannot be
separated from one another .
7. MERLEAU-PONTY
• One’s body is his opening toward his
existence to the world. Because of these
bodies, men are in the world.
• The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.
End

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SOC SCI 121- PAG UNAWA SA SARLI

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

MASTER OF ARTS IN TEACHING- FOODS TECHNOLOGY

• Spirited soul – which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay.

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