The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives

Our names represent who we are, however, a name no matter how intimately bound it is with its bearer

is not the person. The self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. The self is

not a static a thing that one is simply born like a mole on one’s face or is just assigned by one’s parents

just like a name.

Socrates – The first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self.

- Man is dualistic, composed of body and soul. Imperfect and Impermanent, the body, while
maintaining that there is also a soul that is Perfect and Permanent.
- Most men, according to Socrates, were really not fully aware of who they were and the
virtues that they were supposed to attain in order to preserve their souls for the afterlife.
- “To live but die inside” is the worst that can happen to anyone.

Plato – supported that idea that man is a dual nature o body and soul.

- The soul has three components: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul.
- Rational soul – forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person.
- Spirited soul – in charge of emotions, must be kept at bay.
- Appetitive soul – in charge of base desires, like eating, drinking, sleeping, and sex, must be
kept at bay.
- Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be attained if three parts of
the soul are working harmoniously with one another.

Augustine – Follows the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrines of Christianity,
Augustine agreed that is a bifurcated nature.

- There is an aspect of man, which dwells in the world, which is imperfect and impermanent
and continuously yearns to be with the divine while the other is capable of reaching
immortality.
- The body is bound to die on earth and soul is to anticipate living eternally in a realm of
spiritual bliss in communion with God.
- The 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 – adopting some ideas of Aristotle, Aquinas said that man is composed of two parts:
matter and form.

- Matter or hyle in Greek, refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the
universe. Man’s body is part of the universe.
 - Form or morphe in Greek, refers to the essence of a substance or a thing. It is what makes it
what it is.
- What makes a human person a human person, not a dog or a tiger is his soul or his essence.
- To Aquinas, just as Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body, it is what makes us
humans.

Rene Descartes – Father of Modern Philosophy moved from the Aristotlinism ideas that self is composed
of body and soul and instead having body and mind.

- He says that much of what we thing and believe, because they are not infallible or a sure
thing, may turn out to be false. One should believe that which can pass the test of doubt.
- Descartes believe that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self. For
even if one doubts oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that thinks
and therefore, that cannot be doubted.
- “cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am”.
- Cogito or the thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or extension of the mind,
which is the body.
- Descartes’ view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind.

David Hume – Scottish Philosopher, empiricist who believes that one can know only what comes from
the senses and experience.

- According to him, the self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body.
- The self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions and experience which can be categorized
into two: impressions and ideas.
- Impressions are the basic object of our experience or sensation, the sensation of coldness
when touching ice.
- Ideas are copies of impressions.
- The self is a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with
an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux movement.

Immanuel Kant – follows the idea of Hume that everything starts with perceptions and sensation of
impressions.

- The “self” is an actively engaged intelligence of man that synthesizes all knowledge and
experience. Thus, the self is not just what gives his personality, it is also the seat of
knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

Gilbert Ryle – denies the idea of an internal, non-physical self, or the idea of dualism.

- For Ryle, what truly matters is the behaviors that a person manifest in his day-to-day life.
- The self is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient name that
people use to refer to all the behaviors that people make.

Merleau-Ponty – the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another.

- One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience. All experience is
embodied.
- The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.