UTS:MODULE 1 • had been present since the ancient times to various part

Hanna Mae A. Caparas, RPm, CHRA of the world such as China, India, Japan and Persia but it
is well-known to be so prominent in Ancient Greece.
A. Philosophy
B. Sociology SOCRATES
C. Anthropology The Soul is Immortal

A. PHILOSOPHY • First thinker about the “self”

❖ What is Philosophy? • Self = physical body + soul
❖ Socrates: The Soul is Immortal • Soul = perfect, immortal, but limited inside a body
❖ Plato: The Soul is Immortal
❖ Augustine: Christianity View of the Self
❖ Rene Descartes: A Modern Perspective on the • Socrates believed fervently in the immortality of
Self the soul.
❖ John Locke: The Self Is Consciousness • Instead of being so concerned with their families,
❖ David Hume: There Is No “Self” careers, and political responsibilities, they ought to be
❖ Immanuel Kant: We Construct the Self worried about the "welfare of their souls“
❖ Sigmund Freud: There Are Two Selves, • Ideal life should be spent in search of the Good
Conscious and Unconscious • Bad things done is due to Ignorance
❖ Gilbert Ryle: The Self Is How You Behave • Man are endowed with virtues
❖ Paul Churchland: The Self Is the Brain
❖ Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Self is Embodied “The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates
Subjectivity
Socratic Method:
PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS ON THE SELF 1. Admit ignorance.
The Philosophy of the SELF 2. Never rely on tradition.
3. Continuously question.
PHILOSOPHY 4. Formulate your own opinions.
Philos- love or beloved 5. Test your opinions with others.
Sophia- wisdom
He believed that ANYONE could be a philosopher
What is PHILOSOPHY?
• Philosophy is a thinking mode or a method which asks PLATO
questions about the nature and essence of various The Soul is Immortal
realities appearing on our earth (Laehy, 2008).
• It is a manner of thinking about the most basic • Dualism: the idea that the self is composed of two
questions and problems faced by human beings. elements, body and soul
• Three Components of the Soul
Is there a God? • Rational Soul- Reason & Intellect
Why do we exist? Is there an afterlife? • Spirited Soul- Spirit & Emotions
Why is there suffering? • Appetitive Soul- Physical Desires
Who am I?
View of the Self
Philosophers • Emphasized that JUSTICE in the human person can
• “lovers of wisdom” only be attained if the 3 parts of the souls are working
• a person who offers views or theories on profound harmoniously with one another.
questions outside of science and theology • When this ideal state is attained, then the human
person’s souls becomes JUST & VIRTUOUS.
• Plato as an Essentialists - he believed that all things Descartes says...
have essences or attributes that make an object or “But what then, am I? A thinking thing. It has been
substance what it fundamentally is. said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that
doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that
Plato's Allegory of the Cave imagines also, and perceives”
He represented man's condition as being chained in
the darkness of a cave, with only the false light of a fire JOHN LOCKE
behind him. He can perceive the outside world solely by The Self Is Consciousness
watching the shadows on the wall in front of him, not
realizing that this view of existence is limited. Tabula rasa: the mind is empty when it is born, and is
only filled with knowledge through experiences.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Christianity View of the Self
• Asserted that everything that is in the mind comes to it
• Believed that man, the self, is created in the image and through the senses - no ideas are innate.
likeliness of God. • It is our consciousness that gives us an idea about our
• The soul seeks God. It is found through faith and self. Our memories and perceptions of who we are
reason. makes up our consciousness.
• The self, since it is created by God, is inherently good. • Comatose: loss of consciousness

View of the Self DAVID HUME

• The goal of every human person is to attain this There Is No “Self”
communion and bliss with the Divine by living his life
on earth in virtue. The “self” is just bundles of different perceptions.
• His philosophy is a profound meditation on the Experience (Impressions & Ideas)
relation between God and the human being • Impressions: basic objects of our experience or
• Evil in man is not a lack of goodness, but the result of sensation; vivid because they are products of our direct
excessive self-love on the part of the sinner and the lack experience
of sufficient love for God. • Ideas: copies of impressions; not as vivid as
impressions because they are created inside the mind
RENE DESCARTES
A Modern Perspective on the Self View of the Self
• Men can only attain knowledge through experiencing.
• The Father of Modern Philosophy • “The self is just a bundle of different perceptions,
• Self is composed of 2 separate entities: which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity,
• Cogito – mind (the thing that thinks) and are in perpetual flux, and movement.”
• Extenza- body (extension of the mind) • What one thinks is a unified self is simply a
• The very reason we exist is because we think. We are combination of all experiences with a particular person.
capable of thinking because of our soul.
IMMANUEL KANT
View of the Self We Construct the Self
Descartes thought the only thing that one cannot
doubt is the existence of the self, for even if one doubts • There is a mind that organizes the impressions that
oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self, a men get from the external world.
thing that thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. • Along with apparatuses of the mind is the “Self”

Cogito ergo sum - “I think therefore, I am”

View of the Self Three-Part Model of Personality
• Without the self, one cannot organize the different (3 provinces of the mind)
impressions that one gets in relation to his own Id
existence. Pleasure principle
• He believed that the mind is active and brings Instinctual
something to the process of knowing. These Intuitions Ego
and concepts interpret experience. Reality principle
Mediator between id and superego
SIGMUND FREUD Superego
There Are Two Selves, Conscious and Unconscious Morality principle
Conscience
• Levels of Consciousness ( Conscious, Preconscious, Ego ideal: Moral ideal for a behavior to which a person
Unconscious) should strive
• Id, Ego, Superego

Levels of Consciousness

• Conscious: Ordinary everyday meaning

• Preconscious: Between 2 layers
• Memories of which we are not consciously aware, but
can be easily called into consciousness
• Unconscious: Instincts, wishes and desires that direct
all behaviors

GILBERT RYLE
The Self is How You Behave

• The self is reflected only in one’s behavior (kilos,

galaw)
• Our consistent ways of behaving forms our uniqueness.
• What you do = who you are

View on the Self

• What truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.
• “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.

For Ryle, to say that a person loves someone is only to

say that he/she is likely to behave in certain ways to
the other person.
PAUL AND PATRICIA CHURCHLAND View of the Self
The Self Is the Brain • All experience is embodied. One cannot find
experience that is not an embodied experience. One’s
• Mind-Brain identity -Brain and Mind are one body is his opening toward his existence to the world.
• Canadian-American philosophers whose work has • The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
focused on integrating the disciplines of philosophy of experiences are all one.
mind and neuroscience in a new approach that has been • What you feel, think, and experience is who you are.
called neurophilosophy.

View of the Self

Mind-Brain identity-Brain and Mind are one

The point is simply that when the brain undergoes some

kind of damage, it is always the case that the mental
substance and/or properties of the person are
significantly compromised.

If the mind were a completely separate substance from

the brain, how could it be possible that every single time
the brain is injured, the mind is also injured?

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
The Self is Embodied Subjectivity

• Mind and body are intertwined that they cannot be

separated.
• The self functions as a whole unit and cannot be
divided into different bits or parts.