UNDERSTANDING THE SELF ST.

AGUSTINE

 Infused the ancient view of Plato with the

doctrine of Christianity.
LESSON 1:
 He agreed that man is of bifurcated nature.
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS  An aspect of man that dwells in the world is
imperfect. While the other aspect (soul) is
capable of reaching immortality.
 The body can only thrive in the imperfect,
The inquiry of the self has preoccupied the earliest
physical reality that is the world and is bound to
thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks. They
die on earth
were the ones who seriously questioned the myths and
 While the soul is to anticipate living eternally in
attempt to understand reality and respond to perennial
a realm of spiritual bliss in communion with God.
questions of curiosity including the question of the self.
It can stay after death and in an eternal realm
Pre-Socratic thinkers such as Thales, Pythagoras, with the all-transcendent God.
Parmenides, Heraclitus and Empedocles focus on what
THOMAS AQUINAS:
the world is really made up of and explains the changes
observed around them  He also agreed that man is of two parts: Matter
and form.
 Matter or hyle - refers to “the common stuff
SOCRATES: that makes up everything in the universe.”
Man’s body is part of this matter,
 To Socrates, every man is composed of body
 Form or morphe – refers to the “essence of
and soul. Every human person is dualistic
substance or thing.” It is what makes it what it
 All individuals have an imperfect aspect to him is.
and the body, while maintaining that there is
 What makes a human person a human person is
also a soul that is perfect and permanent.
his soul, his essence.
PLATO  The soul is what animates the body it is what
makes us humans.
 Supported Socrates’ idea that the man is of dual
nature of body and soul. RENE DESCARTES
 He added that there are 3 components of the
 Father of Modern Philosophy
soul:
 In his famous treatise, The Meditations of First
 Rational Soul: forged by reason and intellect
Philosophy he claims that there is so much we
has to govern the affairs of the human person.
should doubt.
 Cogito ego sum – I think therefore, I am
Thinking element in every human being,
 There is a combination of two distinct entities
which decided what is factual and merely
 Cogito – the thing that thinks (mind).
obvious, judges what is factual and what is
 Extenza – extension of the mind (body).
untrue, and intelligently makes sensible
 In Descartes’ view, the body is nothing else but
decisions.
a machine that is attached to the mind.
 Spirited Soul: The part which is in charge of the
emotions should be kept at bay.
 Appetitive Soul: in charge of basic desires such
as our physiological needs.
DAVID HUME  All experience is embodied. One’s body is his
opening toward the existence to the world.
 An empiricist Because of these bodies men are in the world.
 Believes that one can only know what comes  The living body, his thoughts, emotions and
from the senses and experiences.
experiences are all one.
 Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing
 For Hume, The self is simply “a bundle or
collection of different perceptions, which
LESSON 2: THE SELF, SOCIETY AND CULTURE
succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and What is the self?
movement.”
 The experiences can be categorized into two:  In contemporary literature is defined as
 Impressions – are the basic objects of our “separate, self-contained, independent,
experience or sensation. consistent, unitary and private”
 Ideas – copies of impressions. They are not as  The self is distinct from other selves. It is always
lively as impressions. unique and has its own identity.
 Self is self contained and independent because
IMMANUEL KANT in itself can exist. Its distinctness allows it to be
self contained with its own thoughts,
 Recognizes the accuracy of Hume’s account that
characteristics and volition
everything starts with perception and sensation
 It is consistent because it allows it to be studied,
of impressions.
described and measured.
 For Kant, there is necessarily a mind that
 Consistency also means that a particular self’s
organizes the impressions that men get from
traits, characteristics, tendencies and
the external world.
potentialities are more or less same.
 For example, are ideas that one cannot find in
 Finally the Self is private. Each person sorts out
the world, but built in our minds. These are
information, feelings and emotions, and
called the apparatuses of the mind
thought processes within the self.
 He suggests that the self is an actively engaged
 This process in never accessible to anyone but
intelligence in man that synthesizes all
the self. The self lives within its own world.
knowledge and experience.
 The self is not just what gives one his The Self and Culture
personality.
 According to French Anthropologist Marcel
GILBERT RYLE Mauss the self as two faces
 Moi -refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his
 He suggests that the self is not an entity one
body, and his basic identity, his biological
can locate an analyze but simply the convenient
givenness. In short moi is a person’s basic
name that people use to refer to all behaviours
identity.
that people mistake.
 Personne – is composed of social concepts of
MERLEAU-PONTY what it means to be who he is. It has much to
do with what it means to live with a particular
 Asserts that the mind-body bifurcation is a family, religion, etc, and how to behave given
futile endeavour and a valid problem expectations and influences from others.
 He suggests that the mind and body are so
intertwined that they cannot be separated from
one another
The Self and the Development of Social World
 Recent studies indicate that men and women in
their growth and development engage actively
in the shaping of the self.
 The unending terrain of metamorphosis of the
self is meditated by language.
 According to Schwartz “Language as both a
publicly shared and privately utilized symbol
system is the site where the individual and the
social make and remake each other”
Mead and Vygotsky
 The way that human persons develop is with
the use of language acquisition and interaction
with others.
 The way that we process information is
normally a form of an internal dialogue in our
head.
 Both Vygotsky and Mead treat the human mind
as something that is made, constituted through
language as experienced in the external world
as encountered in dialogue with others.
Self in Families
 Humans are one of those of those beings whose
importance of family cannot be denied.
 Humans are born virtually helpless and the
dependency period of a human baby to its
parents for nurturing is longer than most
animals.
 Learning therefore is critical in our capacity to
actualize our potential of becoming humans.
 To achieve that goal, we enter a system of
relationships, most important is family.
 Human persons learn the ways of living and
therefore their selfhood by being in a family.
 Without a family, biologically and sociologically,
a person may not even survive or become a
human person.
Gender and the Self
 Gender is one of the nost important acpects of
the self.
 It is one of those loci (place) of the self that is
subject to alteration, change and development.
 It is important to give one the leeway to find,
express and live his identity.
 The gendered self is then shaped within a
particular context of time and space.
 The sense of self that is being taught makes
sure that an individual fits in a particular
environment. This is dangerous and detrimental.
 Gender has to be personally discovered and
asserted and not dictated by culture and the
society.
LESSON 3: THE SELF AS A COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT
There are various definitions of the self and other
interchangeable concepts in psychology.
 The self is the “sense of personal identity and of
who we are as individuals
 William James conceptiualized the self having
two aspects: I and me
 The “I” is the thinking, acting and feeling self
 “Me” is the physical characteristics as well as
psychological capabilities that makes who you
are.
 Carl Rogers’ theory of personality also used the
same terms in which:
 “I” as the one who acts and decides while “Me”
is what you think or feel about yourself as an
object.
 Other concepts similar to self are identity and
self-concept.
 Identity – composed of personal characteristics,
social roles and responsibilities, as well as as
affiliations that define who one is.
 Self –Concept – is what basically comes to your
mind when you are asked about who you are.
 Rogers captured this idea in his concept of self-
schema or our organized system or collection of
knowledge of who we are.
 Theories generally see the self and identity as
mental constructs, created and recreated in
memory.
 Sigmund Freud saw the self, its mental
processes and ones behaviour as the results of
the interaction b/w the Id, Ego and Superego.
 G.H Mead argued that the self is created and
developed through human interaction.
 There are 3 reasons why self and identity are
social products.
1. We do not create ourselves out of nothing
2. We actually need others to affirm and
reinforce who we think we are.
3. What we think is important to us may also
have been influenced by what is important
in our social and historical context.
 Social interaction and group affiliation are vital
factors in creating our self concept.
 Self-awareness – there are times when we are
aware of our self concepts
 Caver and Scheier identified two types of self
that we can be aware of
1. The private self or your internal thoughts
and private feelings
2. Public self or your public image commonly
geared toward having a good presentation
of yourself to others
 Self awareness also presents us with at least 3
other self-schema
1. Actual self – who you are at the moment
2. Ideal self –who you like to be
3. Ought self – who you think you should be
 Identity and self-awareness has a great impact
on our self-esteem
 Social Comparison Theory – We learn about
ourselves, the appropriateness of our
behaviours as well as our status by comparing
aspects of ourselves with other people
 Downward Social Comparison – we create a
positive self concept by comparing ourselves
with those who are worse off than us
 Upward Social Comparison – Comparing
ourselves with those who are better off than us.
 Self-evaluation maintenance theory – we can
feel threatened when someone out performs us
especially when that person is close to us
 Narcissism – trait characterized by overly high
self-esteem, self-admiration and self-
centeredness
LESSON 4: THE SELF IN THE WESTERN AND EASTERN
THOUGHTS
Eastern Perspective
Confucianism
 Focused on having a harmonious social life
 Identity and self concept of an individual are
interwoven with the identity and status of
his/her community or culture
 Self- cultivation – the ultimate purpose in life
but the characteristics a chun-tzu(man of noble
character)
 Cultivated Self (Subdued self) – personal need
are repressed for the good of many
Taoism
 Living the way of the Tao or universe
 They adopt a free flowing, relative, unitary and
paradoxical view of almost everything.
 Rejects the hierarchy strictness of Confucianism.
 The self is the part of the universe, one of the
forms and manifestations of the Tao.
 The ideal self is selflessness that is living a
balanced life with society and nature.
Buddhism
 The self is seen as an illusion, born out of
ignorance, of trying to hold and control things
or human centered needs.
 The self is the source of all these sufferings.
 It is our to quest to forget about the self and
break the attachments in this world and
renounce the self to attain the state of Nirvana.
 Asians in general talk about their social role or
social situations that invoked traits that they
deem positive. Has a collectivistic culture.
 Look after the welfare of their groups and
values cooperation
 Puts more emphasis on hierarchy.
Western Perception:

 Western thought looks at the world in dualities

wherein you are distinct from other person, the
creator s separated from the object he created.
 Studies show that Americans talk more about
their personal attributes and highlight their
achievements.
 Western Culture has an individualistic culture
 Have loose associations and loyalty to their
groups
 Emphasizes on the value of equality.