PhilCST

PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Understanding the Self

Chapter 1 – Defining the Self
The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective
 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Socrates
 Socrates was a scholar, teacher and philosopher born in ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the
groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy.
 He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self. For Socrates,
the true task of a philosopher “is to know oneself”.
 Every man is composed of body and soul.
 Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock poisoning in 399 B.C.
 Two Reasons: Corrupting the minds of the youth and impiety.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Socrates
 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Plato
 Born circa 428 B.C.E., ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle.
 Plato founded the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world.
 Plato supported the idea of his master that man is a dual nature of body and soul and added that the soul
has three components: Rational soul, Spirited soul, and Appetitive soul.
 Famous work of Plato is a book entitled The Republic.
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PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Plato/ Components of the Soul

 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Augustine
 also called Saint Augustine of Hippo, original Latin name Aurelius Augustinus.
 He followed the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the new found doctrine of Christianity.
 According to Augustine, 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.
 His most important work is the books entitiled: The City of God and The Confessions
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Saint Augustine
 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Saint Thomas Aquinas
 He was born circa 1225 in Roccasecca, Italy.
 For him, a man is composed of two parts: Matter and Form
 Matter/ Hyle- common stuff that makes up everything in the universe
 Form/ Morphe- refers to the essence of a substance or a thing.
 The body of a human person is something that he shares even with animals. The cells in a man`s body are
more or less akin to the cells of any other livings things.
 According to him, the soul is what animates the body; it is what makes us humans.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Saint Thomas Aquinas

 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Rene Descartes
 René Descartes is generally considered the father of modern philosophy. He was the first major figure in
the philosophical movement known as Rationalism, a method of understanding the world based on the
use of reason as the means to attain knowledge.
 For him, the human person is composed of a body and a mind.
 His famous quotation is: cogito ergo sum (I think therefore, I am).
 The Self for Descartes is also a combination of two distinct entities, the thing that thinks which is the Mind
and the Extenza or extension of the mind, which is the Body.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Rene Descartes
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PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• David Hume
 A Scottish philosopher who has a very unique way of looking at a man.
 A well known empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and
experiences.
 For David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
 If one tries to examines his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized into two: Impressions
and Ideas.
 Impressions- basic objects of our experiences or sensation.
 Ideas- are copies of impressions.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

David Hume
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PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Immanuel Kant
 Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination of impressions was problematic for Immanuel Kant.
 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.
 The “mind” organizes the impressions that men get from the external world. The “self” organize the
different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Immanuel Kant
 PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Gilbert Ryle
 was a philosopher who taught at Oxford, and who made important contributions to the philosophy of
mind and "ordinary language philosophy." His most important writings included Philosophical Arguments
(1945), The Concept of Mind (1949), Dilemmas (1954), Plato's Progress (1966), and On Thinking (1979).
 He 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.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Gilbert Ryle
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PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspective

• Merleau Ponty
 Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), French philosopher and public intellectual, he was the
leading academic proponent of existentialism and phenomenology in post-war France.
 According to Ponty, the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one
another.
PhilCST
PHILIPPINE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OLD NALSIAN ROAD, BRGY. NALSIAN, CALASIAO, PANGASINAN

Merleau Ponty