GEC 1 – UNDERSTANDING Module 1: Content

THE SELF

MODULE 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Intended Outcomes/Learning Objectives:

At the end of this lesson, you are expected to be able to:
1. explain the importance of understanding 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 the representations of the self in different philosophical schools; and
4. manifest enthusiasm in knowing oneself by completing the tasks assigned.

III. IncUlcAting Concepts

Since the ancient until the postmodern times, philosophers and scholars grappled to understand the
meaning of life. They have attempted to answer the question “Who am I?” Let’s find out these ideas that may
have influenced the ways we look at our lives today.

1. SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.E.)

He is the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self. Socrates was more concerned with the
problem of the self. According to him, the true task of the philosopher is to
“know oneself”.
Socrates affirmed, as claimed by Plato in his dialogues, that the
unexamined life is not worth living. Living a life without knowing your
“self”, your purpose, your nature of being, is “sleepwalking”. These
“sleepwalking” individuals exist, but there is no life or meaning in their
existence. They are only going through the motions of life but they lack happiness, significance and virtue. To
live and die inside is the worst thing that could happen to a man.
So, check on yourself. Are you “sleepwalking”?
In terms of the components or divisions of self, Socrates believed that every man is composed of a “body”
and a “soul”. Every human person is dualistic—composed of two important aspects of his personhood: an
imperfect, impermanent aspect called the “body” and a perfect and permanent aspect called the “soul”
(Dualism).

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THE SELF
2. PLATO (428-347 B.C.E.)
Plato is Socrates’ student who supported Dualism, an idea that man is
of dualistic nature composed of body and soul. For Plato, however, the soul
(psyche in Greek) has three elements: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and
the appetitive soul.
Rational Self—composed of reason and intellect that
governs the affairs of humans; enables humans to think, make wise
choices and understand eternal truths.
Spirited Self –also called Passion, is in charge of our emotions (love,
aggressiveness, empathy, etc.).
Appetitive Soul—in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping and even sexual
activities.

The focus of Plato is on the harmony of these three components of the soul. When the ideal state is
attained (meaning when the three components are working in harmony with each other), the person’s soul
becomes just and virtuous. Imagine that you plan to travel by using a chariot being pulled by two horses. How
can you arrive at your intended destination? Of course, your chariot must have wheels and the two horses
must gallop harmoniously with each other. Take these three elements (the chariot and the two horses) as the
three components of the soul, working in harmony to achieve the ideal state. Plato called this giving JUSTICE
to your human person.

3. ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Northern Africa (354-430)

Following Plato’s ideas and infusing these with Christian doctrines,
Augustine agreed that man has a bifurcated nature or the self is divided into two:
Body:
 Can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality (the world)
 Bound to die on Earth

Soul:
 Anticipated to live eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in
communion with God.

He believed that happiness exists only in God’s love. Therefore, according to him, the goal of every human
person is to attain communion and bliss with God by living his life on earth in virtue. He created, in his book
“The Confessions”, a theology of self—a total, complete view of the self in relation to God.
Do you also consider your relationship with your God a basis in examining yourself?

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THE SELF
4. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Aquinas is another Christian priest who introduced Christian doctrines with
philosophical ideas in understanding the self. He supported Aristotle’s
ideas of rejecting the dualistic belief that self is a dualistic entity composed of
body and soul. He maintained instead the idea of Aristotle that there are two
basic categories of things:
Matter (hyle) which represents all matter; and
Form (morphe) which represents the essence of a
thing, what makes the thing what it is.

This view is called Hylomorphism. It asserts that individual organisms are

composed of matter (body) and form (soul) which only exist in relation to one another. Humans are composed
of a united, inseparable union of components of self rather than divided, dualistic self. It also asserts that the
soul (anima) is what separates living thing (e.g. humans) from non-living ones.
The soul is what enlivens the body. For living things, to live is to exist. So the soul is that by
which the human body actually exists. Now a form is this sort of thing. So the human soul is
the form of the body. (Aquinas, De anima, 1, 369)

5. RENÉ DESCARTES (1596-1650)

Descartes is the “father of modern philosophy”. His philosophical ideas
were encapsulated in his major philosophical work, Meditations on First
Philosophy. His philosophy is focused on understanding the nature of
reasoning process and its relation to the human self. He questioned the
integrity of beliefs accepted on “faith”.
He emphasized that the only thing that we should not doubt or question is
the existence of self. For even if we doubt our self, it only proves the
existence of a thinking self, and a thinking self should not be doubted. His
famous line is cogito, ergo sum which literally means “I think, therefore I am”. This simply means that because
you are thinking, there is no doubt that you exist. No rational person will doubt his/her own existence as a
conscious, thinking entity (even if we are dreaming, hallucinating or being manipulated by some external
entity). However, the physical body is just secondary to your personal identity.
According to Descartes, here are some of the manifestations that you are “thinking”:
You understand situations in which you find yourself.
You doubt the accuracy of ideas presented to you.

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THE SELF
You affirm the truth of a statement made about you.
You deny an accusation that someone has made.
You will yourself to complete a task you have begun.
You refuse to follow a command that you consider to be unethical.
You imagine a fulfilling career for yourself.
You feel passionate emotions toward another person.

The essence of existing as a human identity is the possibility of being aware of our selves: Being self-
conscious in this way is integral to having a personal identity. Having a self-identity and being self-conscious
are mutually dependent on one another.
Do you believe that your self is more than or even beyond your physical sense of yourself?

6. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)

John Locke, a British philosopher and physician, is famous in his tabula rasa
theory of the mind. Tabula rasa (literally means blank slate) concept of the
mind suggests that humans are born with an empty or clean mind. The mind is
only filled in through experiences as one grows and interacts with the
environment.
In the study of self, John Locke holds the idea that personal identity (the self) is
a matter of psychological continuity. For him, personal identity is founded on
consciousness, and not on the substance of either the soul or the body.
Consciousness is being aware that one is thinking. It always accompanies
thinking and is an important part of the thinking process. Consciousness makes possible our belief that we are
the same identity in different times and different places.
Do you agree that you are the same you last night before you go to bed and in the morning when you
wake up? How about last year when you were still in high school? How about during the summer vacation? If
you believe so, then it is because of your consciousness of being the same person in all those different
contexts. Consciousness is very important in creating a coherent self-identity.
Additionally, personal identity, according to him, is the concept about oneself that evolves over the course of
an individual’s life. It may include aspects of life that man has no control over, such as where he grew up or the
color of his skin, as well as the choices he makes, like how he spend his time and what he believes.

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THE SELF
7. DAVID HUME (1711-1776)
David Hume is a Scottish philosopher, an empiricist, who believes that
one can know only what comes from the sense and experiences. (Empiricism is
the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be
possible if it is sensed and experienced.) Hume argues that the self is not an
entity over and beyond the physical body. Men can only attain knowledge by
experiencing. For example, Jack knows that Jill is another human person not
because he has seen her soul. He knows she is just like him because he sees
her, hears her and touches her.
To Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions or a collection of different perceptions,
which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement (Hume
and Steinberg, 1992). For him, man has no “clear and intelligible” idea of the self. He posits that no single
impression of the self exists; rather, the self is just the thing to which all perceptions of man are ascribed.
Moreover, even if there was such an impression of the self, it would have to remain constant over time to
constitute identity.
He said further that experiences are categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
Impressions are basic objects of your experience or sensation. They, therefore, form the core of your
thoughts; and are vivid because they are products of your direct experience with the world (e.g. pain,
pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, etc.).
Ideas, on the other hand, are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and vivid as
your impressions. When one imagines the feeling of being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
Simply, impressions are your direct experiences while ideas are acquired through indirect means. For
example, your impression of your trip to Paris, France is more vivid than your ideas about it based on what
you see in YouTube videos, magazines, or your friend’s stories of their vacation trips.
It is believed that there is a unified, coherent self, a soul or mind just like
what some of the previous philosophers thought. But to Hume, what one thinks
as a unified self is simply a combination of all experiences with a particular
person because to him, there is no self.
8. IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)
To Kant, the self is a regulating and organizing factor of the apparatuses
of the mind.
The idea of Hume that the self was a combination of impressions was
problematic for Kant. Although he recognizes the truth to Hume’s account that

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THE SELF
everything starts with perception and sensation of impressions, Kant believes that there is a mind that
organizes these impressions that men get from the external world.
For example, time and space are ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds. He
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 believes that the self is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge
and experiences. The self is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

9. GILBERT RYLE (1900-1976)

Gilbert Ryle is a British philosopher who solved 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. For Ryle, what truly
matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life. He said
that looking for and trying to understand a self as it really exists is like visiting
your friend’s university and looking for the “university”. One can roam around the
campus, visit the library and he football field, and meet the administrators and
faculty and still end up not finding the “university”. This is because the campus,
the people, the systems, and the territory all form the university.
Ryle 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. To him, the self is how you behave.

10. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY (1908-1961)

Merleau-Ponty is a French phenomenological philosopher who asserts

that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long time is a futile
endeavor and an invalid problem.
Unlike Ryle who simply denies the “self”, Merleau-Ponty instead says that
the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
another. One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience.
This means that all experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening toward
his existence to the world. Because of these bodies, men are in the world. The
living body (or lived body), his thoughts, emotions and experiences are all one.

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So, how do you know that you are really in love? According to Merleau-Ponty, you need to have a precise
description of your immediate responses: physically, emotionally, and cognitively.
I am currently in love, and
 I feel ________________________________________________________.
 I think _______________________________________________________.
 My physical responses are ______________________________________.
 I spontaneously _______________________________________________.

By doing so, you can have a clearer understanding of what “being in love” is all about, by using the
concepts based on the reality of your lived experiences.
Try doing that in other phenomenon of your experiences such as:
 Being the eldest/youngest/only child
 Poverty
 Living with a broken family
 Being a teenager
 Being a member of LGBTQIA+ community, etc.

11. PATRICIA CHURCHLAND

Through time, more ideas and views about self emerged. There
are those who believe that all aspects of the universe are composed of
matter and energy that can be fully explained by physical laws
(Materialism, or Physicalism as its more contemporary counterpart).
These philosophers (and even psychologists) believe that mental
states are identical to physical brain states. They believe that there is no
immaterial self that exists independently from the brain or the body.
Patricia Churchland’s ideas of self are grounded on the
perspectives of materialism or physicalism. She argued that to fully
understand the mind, one must understand the brain, using concepts of neuroscience to explain mental
concepts such as freewill. She asserted that there is no mind or soul beyond the physical brain. Therefore, she
proposed that the brain is the self; the brain is each of us.

References:

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THE SELF
Alata, E., Caslib, B., Serafica, J. & Pawilen, R,A. (2018). Understanding the self (1st edition). Rex Book Store, Inc.
Brawner, D., & Arcega, A. (2018). Understanding the self. Quezon City: C & E Publishing.
Chaffee, J. (2016). The philosopher's way: Thinking critically about profound ideas , 5th ed. USA: Pearson
Education.
Villafuerte, S., Quillope, A., Tunac, R., & Borja, E. (2018). Understanding the self. Quezon City: Nieme Publishing
House Co.

—End of Module 1—

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