Understanding the Self UTS Notes PDF

Understanding the Self Name and The Self The name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is with the bearer. Hindi ka nadedefine ng pangalan mo kung sino ka talaga. The self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. We approach our being holistically....

Understanding the Self Name and The Self The name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is with the bearer. Hindi ka nadedefine ng pangalan mo kung sino ka talaga. The self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. We approach our being holistically. In order to be capable of understanding others, one should initiate in understanding themselves. Philosophers Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Know thyself - Concerned with the problem of the “Self” - Socrates was the first philosopher who engaged with the understanding or questioning of the self in an era where everyone was concerned about scientific phenomena - His life-long mission: the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself - He believes that one must know thyself before everything else - According to him, the worst that can happen to anyone is to live but die inside. - Stated that every man is composed of soul and body; making the human dualistic - Body - imperfect, impermanent - Soul - perfect, permanent - Socratic Method: a dialogue between teacher and students, instigated by the continual probing questions of the teacher, in a concerted effort to explore the underlying beliefs that shape the students views and opinions. Plato - Student of Socrates - Claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth living - Supports the idea of Socrates of dualism - 3 Components of Soul - according to his “magnum opus” (“The Republic”) a. Rational Soul - reasons and intellect b. Spirited Soul - emotion c. Appetitive Soul - desires (physiological needs; eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex) Agustine - “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.” - Agustine reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes to man - Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine of Christianity - Agreed that man is a “bifurcated” nature. An aspect of men dwells in the world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the other is capable of reaching immortality. - 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 - The man is composed of two parts: matter and form a. Matter (hyle in Greek): common stuff that makes up everything in the universe. Man’s body is a part of the matter. b. Form (morphe in Greek): essence of a substance or thing. It’s what shapes the matter we know to be intelligible - The soul is what animates the body: it is what makes us humans Rene Descartes - Father of Modern Philosophy - In his famous treatise, “The Meditations of First Philosophy”, he claims that there is so much that we should doubt - Descartes thought that the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self, a thing that think and therefore that cannot be doubted - Cogito ergo sum “I think therefore I am” - Self is a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito, the thing that man thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or the extension of the mind, which is the body. - In Descartes' view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind. - "The human person has it but it is not what makes a man a man. If at all, that is all the mind. - Descartes says " But what then am I? A thinking thing. It has been said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands (conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuse; that imagines also, and perceives" (Descartes 2008) David Hume - Scottish philosopher/Empiricist  - Empiricism - is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed and experienced - Believes that one can know only what comes from the senses and experiences, argues that the self is nothing like what his predecessors thought of it - To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions - Experience can be categorized into two: a. Impressions - are the basic objects of our experience or sensation; form the core of our thoughts. They are the product of direct experience with the world Ex: When one touches an ice cubes, the cold sensation is an impression b. Ideas - copies of impression; “faint image” of impressions Ex: feeling of being in love - Self according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (Hume and Steinberg 1992) - Self - is simply a combination of all experiences with a particular person. Immanuel Kant - Kant thinks that the things men perceive around them are not just randomly infused into the human person without an organizing principle that regulates the relationship of all these relationship of all these impressions - For him there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impression that men get from the external world Ex: Time and Space, are ideas that once cannot be found in the world, but built in our minds. - Without the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to his own existence. Kant therefore suggests that it is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all the knowledge and experience. - Self is not just what gives personality, it is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human people. Gilbert Ryle - Solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long time in the history of thought by blatantly denying the concept of an internal, non-physical self. - For Ryle, what truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day life.  - Ryle suggests that the "self" is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply that convenient name that people use to refer to all the behavior that people make. Mearleau-Ponty - A phenomenologist - Asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem. - Mearleau - Ponty insisted that the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from one another. - Dismissed the Cartesian Dualism (Rene Descartes division of mind and body) - For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experience are all one. SUMMARY Socrates Plato Agustine Thomas Rene Aquinas Descartes Every man is Added 3 Body is bound Man is Cogito ergo composed of components to to die on earth composed of sum “I think body and soul the soul: and the soul is two parts: therefore I am” rational, to anticipate Matter (hyle) Two distinct spirited, living eternally and Form entities: Cogito appetitive in a spiritual (morphe) (mind) and realm in Extenza (body) communion with God David Hume Immanuel Gilbert Ryle Merleau - Kant Ponty Experience There is a Denied the self Dismissed the can be mind that Cartesian categorized organizes all Dualism into two: the Impressions impressions and Ideas the men get in the external world