Socrates

Philosopher (c. 470 BCE-c. 399 BCE)

Socrates was a Greek philosopher and the main source of Western thought. Little is known of his life
except what was recorded by his students, including Plato.

Synopsis

Socrates was born circa 470 BC, in Athens, Greece. We know of his life through the writings of his
students, including Plato and Xenophon. His "Socratic method," laid the groundwork for Western
systems of logic and philosophy. When the political climate of Greece turned, Socrates was sentenced to
death by hemlock poisoning in 399 BC. He accepted this judgment rather than fleeing into exile.

Socrates' Idea of the Self

Socrates believed that the “self” exists in two parts.

One part is the physical, tangible aspect of us. This is the part that is mortal and can be/is constantly
changing. Earth also belongs to this physical realm that our bodies belong in, because just as us in terms
of physicality, the Earth is constantly being modified.

The second part is the soul, which he believed to be immortal. The soul is the part that is unvarying
across all realms (it is unchanging while it is attached to your body and thus in the physical realm, but is
also unmodified once you die and your soul leaves the body to travel to the ideal realm).

To expand on this slightly, Socrates believed that when we are in the physical realm, we are alive and our
body and soul are attached, therefore making both parts of our “self” present in the physical realm.
When we die however, our body stays in the physical realm while our soul travels to the ideal realm,
therefore making our soul immortal.

Plato

Writer, Philosopher (c. 428 BCE–c. 348 BCE)

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato founded the Academy and is the author of philosophical works of
unparalleled influence in Western thought.

Synopsis

Born circa 428 B.C.E., ancient Greek philosopher Plato was a student of Socrates and a teacher of
Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics,
political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language. Plato founded
the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world. He died in
Athens circa 348 B.C.E.
The name Plato is familiar to everyone, even to Macaulay’s schoolboy. But many are unaware that the
word Plato is a nickname. The real name of this philosopher was Aristocles. It is said that he was of
stocky build, and that his broad shoulders earned him the nickname Plato, for platos is Greek for
breadth. Perhaps the famous name Plato was the invention of some companion who fixed it upon the
young Aristocles as a schoolboy of our day labels a comrade by reason of physical appearance and knows
him thenceforth as “Shorty” or “Stumpy” or “Slim.”

Plato's Philosophy about Self

This human self is fundamentally an intellectual entity whose "true" or essential nature exists as
separate from the physical world.

Plato’s perspective on the idea of “self” is actually best represented in his theory/explanation of the
“psyche.” Rather than use the word “self,” he had what some academics call a tripartite theory of the
soul. He constructed a taxonomy of spirit/logic-reason/appetite as categories in which people in essence
respond to or seek life. I am oversimplifying here, for the sake of brevity. But, in Plato’s Republic, you dig
much more deeply into his thinking. So, the self, according to Plato, in answer to your question, are the
three coexistent aspects of the soul, from which you can understand your own desires and behaviors.
For instance, if one were to say something like, “I can’t believe I did that. That’s just not me. I found
myself randomly hooking up with the person I just met on the bus ride home. And when I left, I felt like it
was really out of character. I wasn’t being myself.” In Plato’s view, that person may have been acting like
themselves, though not working from the logical/reasoning aspect of self, but out of the appetite, the
lust the carnal hunger the passionate part of one’s self. Others have followed Plato’s logic in the
development of psychological theory and other philosophical thinking. Freud is one the more obvious
examples , with id/ego/super ego. In Plato’s version of self, the spirit is the part of the self/soul that
regulates the the appetitive and is the source of emotions like anger and other moods. In regulating
various appetitive passions, the spirited region is expressed because of either denial or acquiescence to
the carnal/temporal/appetitive. These are examples from memory, and there are much more thorough
treatises of Plato’s work. But, this is a solid cursory breakdown.

Saint Augustine

St. Augustine, also called Saint Augustine of Hippo, original Latin name Aurelius Augustinus, (born
November 13, 354, Tagaste, Numidia [now Souk Ahras, Algeria]—died August 28, 430, Hippo Regius
[now Annaba, Algeria]; feast day August 28), bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, one of the Latin Fathers of
the Church and perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul. Augustine’s adaptation of
classical thought to Christian teaching created a theological system of great power and lasting influence.
His numerous written works, the most important of which are Confessions (c. 400) and The City of God
(c. 413–426), shaped the practice of biblical exegesis and helped lay the foundation for much of medieval
and modern Christian thought. In Roman Catholicism he is formally recognized as a doctor of the church.

Saint Augustine's View on the Self

Augustine's sense of self is his relation to God, both in his recognition of God's love and his response to it
—achieved through self-presentation, then self-realization. Augustine believed one could not achieve
inner peace without finding God's love.

These descriptions could have been written specifically about Augustine's Confessions. Beginning from
his relationship to God In Book I, chapter 1, he quickly wanders into reflections about himself and God
that lead to paradox, confusion (chapters 2–4), and even a sort of crisis of self-identity (chapter 5). He
seeks an answer to these difficulties about who God is and who he is not in abstract philosophy but in his
own life story, beginning from his own birth and concluding with the death of his mother, with whom he
shares a profound moment of contemplation that seems to take them into eternity (Book IX, chapter 10).

Saint Thomas Aquinas (Saint of the Day for January 28) (1225 – March 7, 1274)

By universal consent, Thomas Aquinas is the preeminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason
and of divine revelation. He is one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with
the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.

His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony, and continuity of
faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect
Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough,
deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a
divine gift to be highly cherished.

St. Thomas Aquinas' View on the Self

This study concerns the position of Saint Thomas Aquinas on human self knowledge (“the soul’s
knowledge of itself,” in medieval idiom). Its main goal is to present a comprehensive account of
Aquinas’s philosophy of self knowledge, by clarifying his texts on this topic and explaining why he made
the claims he did. A second objective is to situate Thomas’s position on self awareness within general
world, and specific thirteenth century, traditions concerning this theme. And a third is to apply Aquinas’s
approach and insights to selected and contemporary issues that involve self knowledge, such as the
alleged paradoxes of self reflection and of “unconscious awareness.”

The primary approach is that of “critical narrative,” which attempts to understand St. Thomas’s
texts by posing critical questions for them. While this questioning may expose certain texts as equivocal
or unsupported, usually Thomas emerges as coherent, reasonable, and better understood.

This work is serious scholarship that presumes reader interest in philosophical reflection and some
background in medieval type thinking. On the other hand, the book is not narrowly specialized in
Aquinas or a single methodology, but includes broad reference to worldwide traditions and attempts to
integrate St. Thomas’s approach into topics of contemporary interest.
René Descartes (1596—1650)

René Descartes is often credited with being the “Father of Modern Philosophy.” This title is justified due
both to his break with the traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy prevalent at his time and to his
development and promotion of the new, mechanistic sciences. His fundamental break with Scholastic
philosophy was twofold. First, Descartes thought that the Scholastics’ method was prone to doubt given
their reliance on sensation as the source for all knowledge. Second, he wanted to replace their final
causal model of scientific explanation with the more modern, mechanistic model.

Descartes attempted to address the former issue via his method of doubt. His basic strategy was to
consider false any belief that falls prey to even the slightest doubt. This “hyperbolic doubt” then serves
to clear the way for what Descartes considers to be an unprejudiced search for the truth. This clearing of
his previously held beliefs then puts him at an epistemological ground-zero. From here Descartes sets
out to find something that lies beyond all doubt. He eventually discovers that “I exist” is impossible to
doubt and is, therefore, absolutely certain. It is from this point that Descartes proceeds to demonstrate
God’s existence and that God cannot be a deceiver. This, in turn, serves to fix the certainty of everything
that is clearly and distinctly understood and provides the epistemological foundation Descartes set out
to find.

René Descartes' Idea of the Self

After establishing the reasons behind his radical skepticism, Descartes goes on to ask himself what he
can know. In other words, what new foundations can he replace the old ones with? He quickly realizes
that it is subjective knowledge about his self that is most reliable, and embarks on an intellectual journey
to establish a firmer understanding of this.

He begins with an argument known commonly as the Cogito. He comes to understand that if he is
capable of doubting – which is precisely what he is doing – then he must exist. He may doubt everything
else, may be deceived about the existence of all other things, but he must necessarily exist. Cogito ergo
sum – I think therefore I am.

David Hume (1711—1776)

The Self in Hume's Philosophy

Most discussions of Hume's views on the self are, naturally enough, attempts to evaluate the Section of
the Treatise entitled “Of Personal Identity." This is his only extended discussion of the self, and his other
explicit references to it are quite tew ill number. But the doctrines that Hume held about the nature of
the self are far more pervasive in his philosophical system than this would suggest, and it is important to
estimate their influence on his other philosophical theses before deciding how far he is guilty of tile
inconsistencies of which his critics accuse him. I would like in this essay to point out some of this
influence, and in the light of this, to estimate the degree to which their criticisms are justified. I shall
begin with a summary of what I take Hume's doctrine of the self to he. I shall then consider the role that
the doctrine plays in Ilume’s accounts of the passions and of sympathy, his View of the will, his reiectioll
of what he calls Pyrrhonian skepticism, and, more briefly, his view of the virtues. I shall be concerned
throughout to estimate the difliculties which Hume’s View, thus understood, has to face.

Hume says three times what the self is. He says that “what we call a mind is nothing but a her or
collection at different perceptions."

Immanuel Kant, (April 22, 1724 - February 12, 1804)

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is considered the most influential thinker of the
Enlightenment era and one of the greatest Western philosophers of all times. His works, especially those
on epistemology (theory of knowledge), aesthetics and ethics had a profound influence on later
philosophers, including contemporary ones.

Besides establishing himself as one of the foremost Western philosophers, Kant also made an important
contribution to science and is considered one of the most important figures in the development of
modern science despite the fact that he was most interested in philosophy of science and knowledge
that science produces. His main contribution to the rise modern science was its liberation from theology.

Immanuel Kant's View on the Self