Understanding The Self PDF

# Understanding the Self ## Introduction The inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality and respond to perennial questions...

# Understanding the Self ## Introduction The inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: the Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity, including the question of the self. ## Socrates and Plato Pre-Socratic thinkers were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and what explains the changes that they observed around them. Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self. For him, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself. Plato claimed that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates thought that this is the worst that can happen to anyone: to live but die inside. For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is dualistic. Plato took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added the 3 components of the soul: * rational soul * spirited soul * appetitive soul Rational soul = reason and intellect Spirited soul = emotions Appetitive soul = desires ## Augustine and Thomas Aquinas Augustine's point of view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it came to man. Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature. 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. 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 said that indeed, man is composed of 2 parts: matter and form. Matter refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the universe. Man's body is part of this matter. Form refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what makes it what it is. ## Rene Descartes Descartes is the Father of Modern Philosophy. He claims that there is so much that we should doubt. He says that since much of what we think and believe are not infallible, they may turn out to be false. Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self. Thus, his famous, "cogito ergo sum" or "I think therefore, I am". Descartes views the body as nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind. ## David Hume Hume argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought of it. The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body. Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing. To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. If one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized into 2: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic objects of our experience or sensation. Ideas are copies of impression. They are not as lively and vivid as our impressions. ## Immanuel Kant Kant recognizes the veracity of Hume's account that everything starts with perception and sensation of impressions. However, for Kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from the external world. Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence. The self is not just what gives one his personality. It is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons. ## Gilbert Ryle Ryle denies the concept of an internal, non-physical self. For him, what truly matters in the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life. He suggests that 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 Merleau-Ponty asserts that the mind-body bifurcation is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem. Merleau-Ponty says that mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.