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Understanding-the-Self

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7 views

Understanding-the-Self

Uploaded by

kylehernandez36
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Understanding the Self

Philosophical Perspectives of the ff:

Socrates - “An unexamined life is worth living”


Socrates was a moral philosopher. He was uninterested with science and mathematics but
was more concerned about the quality of his soul. Socrates’ goal was one of correcting
false beliefs. He taught that people should care less about their physical bodies and
possessions and more about their souls. “Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness
brings wealth.”Socrates was a man of principle meaning he did not indulge himself with
luxurious possessions and physical beauty.

Plato - “The self IS an immortal soul”


Plato perceives the self as a knowere. Therefore, for him, the concepts of self and
knowledge are somehow linked. Plato believed that the human person was composed of a
dichotomy of the body and soul. The body being the tangible and destructible part of the
self and the soul being the intangible and indestructible part of the self. Plato argues that
there is a certain distinction between the entity of the soul and the body. For Plato, the
soul IS the self.

St. Augustine -”The self HAS and immortal soul”


For St. Augustine, a soul cannot live in the world without a body. He considers the soul
and body as united entities that need each other in order to exist. He says the soul is an
important element of man for this is what governs and defines himself. His perspective is
more on our connection with God stating that we are created in His image and likeness
and therefore we are geared towards the good. He believes that the body is a vessel of the
soul and therefore should be taken care of both physically and mentally.

Rene Descartes - “I think therefore I am”


“Man is a thinking man that has an entity to doubt, understand, analyze, question, and the
most important thing is to reason out that can exist independently in the physical body.”
This is a translated Latin phrase, Corgito ergo sum, is Rene Descartes’ concept of the
self. This basically states that we, as human beings, are capable of thinking and reasoning
out. This trait is what separates us from other living beings

John Locke - “The self is consciousness”


He believed that the human mind is a Tabula Rasa meaning that our mind at birth is a
blank state. Conscious awareness and memory of past experiences are the keys in
understanding the self. He believed that the experiences and consciousness is the main
source of our knowledge and the key to helping us truly understand ourselves
Gilbert Ryle - “The self is the way people behave”
Ryle’s perspective about the self is understood as a collection of behaviors that lead to a
person to behave a certain way in accordance with different circumstances. Basically He
believes that we are defined through how we behave.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty - “The self is embodied subjectivity”


According to him, the source of human knowledge is from the inner world of subjective
phenomena of experience that people are aware in everything within its consciousness.
He perceives the self as the primary site of knowing the world.

Paul Churchland - “The self is the brain”


He advocates the eliminative materialism of the human body and the human brain. This
basically explains that all of us have a brain but if that brain is gone, there is no self at all.
Our brain is not inseparable from our body and therefore can be eliminated.

Immanuel Kant - “We construct the self”


He believed that the self is what constructs and organizes principles of experiences that
creates a familiar and predictable world that is owned by its creator. Basically saying that
the self is constructed by its owner. The self is the driver of its own life and nobody else

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