Socrates and Plato
Sorcates was the first philosopher
whoever engaged in systematic questioning
about the self. For Socreates, every man in
composed of body and soul. This means every
human person is dualistic, that is, his composed
of two important aspect 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 is Socrate’s student and supported
his master’s idea that man is dual in nature of
body and soul. Plato added that there are three
components of the soul: The rational soul,
spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. The
rational soul forged by reason and intellect has
to govern the affairs of the human person. The
spirited soul, and the is in charged of emotions
should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul is
in charge of base desires like eating drinking,
sleeping and having sex are controlled as well.
When all this ideal state is attained, the human
person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
Augustine follows the ancient view of
Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine
of Christianity; he agreed that man is a
bifurcated nature. An aspect of man dwells in
the world and is imperfect and continuously
yearns 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 be 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.
Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent
thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of the
medieval philosophy. Adapting some ideas from
Aristotle, Aquinas said the indeed, mas is
composed of two parts: matter and form. Matter,
or hyle in Greek, referes to the common stuff
that makes up everything in the universe. Form
on the other hand, or morphe in Greek refers toe
the “essence of a substance or thing.” It is what
makes it what it is. The body is just a vessel and
the soul the one that animates the body. The
soul is what makes us human.
Descartes
Rene Descartes, Father of Modern
Philosophy, conceived of the human person as
having a body and a mind. In Descarte’s view,
the body is nothing else but a machine that is
attached to the mind. The human person has it
but it is not what makes man a man. It 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 doubts,
understand (conceives) affirms, denies, wills,
refuses; that imagines also, and perceives.”
Hume
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher. 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.
To David Hume, the self is nothing else
but a bundle of impressions. Experiences are
categorized into two parts: impressions and
ideas. Impressions are the basic objects of our
experience and sensation. Ideas, on the other
hand, are copies of impressions.
Kant
Immanuel Kant recognizes the veracity
of Hume’s account that everything starts with
perception and sensation of impressions.
However, Kant thinks that there is necessarily a
mind that organizes the impressions that men
get from the external world. Kant call these the
apparatuses of the mind. The self is the one that
organize the different impressions that one gets
in relation to his own existence.
Ryle
For Gilbert Ryle, the self is not an entity
one can locate and analyze but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer to all
the behaviours that that people make.
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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
endeavour and an invalid problem. He says that
the mind and body are so entertwined that they
cannot be separated from one another. The
living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experience are all one.