GRACE MISSION COLLEGE

Catiningan, Socorro, Oriental Mindoro, 5207

CHAPTER 1
DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF AND IDENTITY

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives

Lesson Objectives
At the end of this 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

INTRODUCTION
Before we even had to be in any formal institution of learning, among the many things that we
were first taught as kids is to articulate and write our names. Growing up, we were told to refer back to
this name when talking about ourselves. Our parents painstakingly thought about our names. Should we
be named after a famous celebrity, a respected politician or historical personality, or even a saint? Were
you named after one? Our names represent who we are. It has not been a custom to just randomly pick a
combination of letters and number (or even punctuation marks) like zhjk7561 to denote our being. 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."
Likewise, when our parents call our names,we were taught to respond to them because our names
represent who we are. 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. 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 the name. The self is something
that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. The self is not a static thing that one is simply born
with like a mole on one's face or is just assigned by one's parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to
discover one's self. Have you truly discovered yours?

ACTIVITY
Do You Truly Know Yourself?
Answer the following questions about your self as fully and precisely as you can.
1. How would you characterize your self?

[Link] makes you stand out from the rest? What makes your self
special?

[Link] has your self transformed itself?

[Link] 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 Why?

Can one truly know the self? Do you want to know about self?

ABSTRACTION
The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the fundamental
nature of the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that defines the multiplicity of things
in the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: the
Greeks. 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.

Socrates and Plato

Prior the 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, arché 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. Tired of simply conceding to mythological accounts
propounded by poet-theologians like Homer and Hesiod, these men endeavored to finally locate an
explanation about the nature of change, diversity the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity
of the world amidst its diversity.
After a series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were disturbed by the same
issue, a man came out to question something else. This man was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics,
Socrates 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, and this has become his life-long
mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.
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Plato claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth living.
During his trial for allegedly corrupting the minds of the youth and for impiety, Socrates declared without
regret that his being indicted was brought about by his going around Athens engaging men, young and old,
to question their presuppositions about themselves and about the world, particularly about who they are
(Plato 2012). Socrates took it upon himself to serve as a "gadfly that disturbed Athenian men from their
slumber and shook them off in order to reach the truth and wisdom. Most men, in his reckoning, were
really not fully aware of who they were 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.
For Socrates, every man 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. For 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, Socrates's student, basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a
dual nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added that there are
three components of the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum
opus, "The Republic" (Plato 2000), Plato emphasizes 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 and Thomas Aquinas

Augustine's view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it
comes to man. 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 years 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 This is because the body can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is the
world whereas the soul can also stay after death in an eternal realm with the all-transcendent 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 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 on the other hand,
or morphe in Greek refers to the 'essence of a substance or thing." It is what makes it what it is. In the case
of the human person, the body of the human person is something that he shares even with animals. The
cells in man's body are more or less akin to the cells of any other living, organic being in the world.
However, what makes a human person a human person and not a dog, or a tiger is his soul, his essence. To
Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body, it is what makes us humans.

Descartes
Rene Descartes, Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived of the human person as having a body
and a mind. In his famous treatise, The Meditations of First Philosophy, 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
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may turn out to be false. One should only believe that since which can pass the test of doubt (Descartes
2008). If something is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is the only time when one
should actually buy a proposition. In the end, 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." The fact that one thinks should lead one to conclude without a trace of doubt that he
exists. The self then for Descartes 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 thatis attached to the mind. The human person has it but it is not
what makes man a man. If at all, that is the mind. 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 [Link] (conceives), affirms,
denies, wills, refuses, that imagines also, and perceives" (Descartes 2008).

Hume
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, has a very unique way of looking at man. As an empiricist who
believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and experiences, Hume argues that the self is
nothing like what his predecessors thought of it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical
body. One can rightly see here the empiricism that runs through his veins. Empiricism is the school of
thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed and experienced. 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 David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. What are impressions? For
David Hume, 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. They therefore
form the core of our thoughts. When one touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an impression.
Impressions therefore are vivid because they are products of our direct experience with the world. Ideas,
on the other hand, are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and vivid as our
impressions. When one imagines the feeling of being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
What is the self then? 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" (Hume and Steinberg 1992). Men simply want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self,
a soul or mind just like what the previous philosophers thought. In reality, what one thinks is a unified
self is simply a combination of all experiences with a particular person.

Kant
Thinking of the "self as a mere combination of impressions was problematic for Immanuel Kant
Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume's account that everything starts with perception and sensation of
impressions. However, 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. To Kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world. 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.

Ryle
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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. For Ryle, what truly matters is
the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life. For Ryle, 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 the 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.

Merleau-Ponty
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. 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. 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. Merleau-Ponty dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much
devastation in the history of man. For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain
misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

APPLICATION AND ASSESSMENT

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
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Catiningan, Socorro, Oriental Mindoro, 5207
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Prepared by :
Ms. Gizelle P. Penero
Instructor