HANDOUTS: GE 004

Lesson 1: The Self From Various Philosophical Perspectives

Socrates and Plato

Pre-Socratic- Greek thinkers prior to Socrates; Pre-occupied themselves with the question of the
primary substratum, arche (Multiplicity of things in the world; Beginning/Origin/Cause)

*Thales *Pythagoras *Heraclitus *Empedocles *Parmenides

Socrates- first systematic questioning about the self; served as a gadfly (dualistic view of self: Body and
Soul)

Plato- student of Socrates; 3 components of the soul (rational, spirited and appetitive); Magnum Opus:
The Republic

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Augustine- man is of bifurcated nature; 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- man is composed of two parts: Matter/ Hyle and Form/Morphe (soul is what animates
the body)

Rene Descartes- Father of Modern Philosophy; Cartesian Dualism/ Interactionalism: Body and Mind ;
“Cogito ego sum”

David Hume- Empiricist (Empiricism: knowledge is only possible if sensed or experienced) 2 types of
experiences : Impressions and Ideas (Self: bundle of impressions)

Immanuel Kant- (Self: actively engaged intelligence that synthesizes knowledge and experiences) Mind:
Organizing principle; Appratuses of the Mind (ex. Time and Space)

Gilbert Ryle-focused on the behaviour that a person manifests in his day to day life: (Self: is not an
entity that one can locate and analyse but simply the convenient name that people use to refer to all the
behaviors that people make

Merleau-Ponty- phenomenologist; denies the self; Mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot
be separated from each other.

Lesson 2: Self, Society and Culture

SELF is….

-Separate- distinct from other selves

-Self contained and independent-it can exist in itself; has its own thoughts, characteristics and volition

-Consistent-has a personality that is enduring and can exists for some time; consistency allows it to be
studied,measured and described.

-Unitary- center of all experiences and thoughts that run through a certain person
-Private- never accessible to anyone but the self ; isolated from the external world

The Self and the Culture

Moi- refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body and his basic identity, his biological givenness

Personne- what it means to live in a particular institution, particular family, a particular religion,
nationality and how to behave given expectations and influences from others.

Examples of Moi: Language and Territory

The Self and the Development of the Social World

“Language as both a publicly shared and privately utilized symbol system”

Filipino Language is Gender-Neutral (Siya, Ikaw instead of He/She)

Mead & Vygotsky – Self is created and developed through human interaction

Mead- Through role play; the child delineates the “I” from the rest

Vygotsky- A child internalizes real-life dialogs that he has had with others.

Self in Families

-Human persons learn the way of living and therefore their selfhood by being in a family. It is what a
family initiates a person to become that serves as the basis for this person’s progress

Gender and the Self

Gender loci of the self that subject to alteration,change, and development.

Oftentimes, society forces a particular identity unto us depending on our sex and/or gender.

Nancy Chodorow- Feminist; argues that because mothers take the role of taking care of children, there
is a tendency for girls to imitate the same and reproduce the same kind of mentality of women as care
providers in the family. Men on the other hand, are taught early on how to behave like a man.

Gender has to be personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by culture and the society.

Lesson 3: The Self, Society and Culture

Self-sense of personal identity and who we are as individuals

Acc. To William James:

-I is the thinking, acting and feeling self

-Me is the physical characteristics of a person as well as their psychological capabilities

Acc. To Carl Rogers

-I is the one who thinks and decides

-Me is how you feel or think about yourself as an object

- Identity- composed of personal characteristics, social roles, responsibilities and affiliation that well
define who someone is

-Self- Concept -what comes to mind when asked about who you are

-Self-Schema- organized system or collection of knowledge about who we are

-Schemas are NOT passive receiver, they actively shape and affect how you see, think and feel about
things

-Sigmund Freud saw the self, its mental processes, and one’s behavior as the result of the interaction
between the three provinces of the mind: ID, EGO and SUPEREGO

ID: Pleasure Principle

EGO: Mediates the ID and the SUPEREGO

SUPEREGO: where consciousness is;

SYMBOLIC INTERATIONISM (George Herbert Mead): “self is created and developed through human
interaction”

3 reasons why self and identity are social products:

1.) We do not create ourselves out of nothing, Society helped in creating the foundations of who
we are.