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Module 1: The Self From Various Perspectives

This instructional module discusses perspectives on understanding the self from various philosophers across history. It outlines philosophical views of the self from thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Ryle, and Merleau-Ponty; and how they viewed the relationship between body, mind, and soul. The objectives are for students to explain, describe, compare and examine different notions of the self from these philosophical schools.

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Lord Grim
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
147 views

Module 1: The Self From Various Perspectives

This instructional module discusses perspectives on understanding the self from various philosophers across history. It outlines philosophical views of the self from thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Ryle, and Merleau-Ponty; and how they viewed the relationship between body, mind, and soul. The objectives are for students to explain, describe, compare and examine different notions of the self from these philosophical schools.

Uploaded by

Lord Grim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Central Luzon State University

Science City of Muñoz 3120


Nueva Ecija, Philippines

Instructional Module for the Course


PSYCH 1100 (Understanding the Self)

Module 1: The Self from Various


Perspectives

Topic 1 – Philosophical Perspective of


Understanding the Self
Overview

In this chapter, discussions of different perspectives and


understandings of the “self” according to its prime movers, from philosophers
of the ancient time to the contemporary period. In addition, through self-
reflection and essay questions as learning activity and assessment in this
chapter, students learn how to explain, describe, compare and examine one’s
self against the different views of the self.

I. Objectives
At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
1. Explain why it is essential to understand the self;
2. Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points-of-view of
the various philosophers across time and place;
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different
philosophical schools; and
4. Examine one’s self against the different views of self that were discussed in
class.

The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives


Self is defined to as “a unified being, essentially connected to consciousness,
awareness, and agency (or, at least, with the faculty of rational choice).” Across
generations, self has been the topic of understanding which covers the different factors
that contribute one’s being and identity.
Chafee (2013) enumerated the different perspectives and understandings of the
“self” according to its prime movers, from philosophers of the ancient time to the
contemporary period. Below are the different standpoints according to Chafee (2013)
that shape our views on “self” today.
Socrates and Plato
• Socrates was the first philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic
questioning about the self; the true task of the philosopher is to know
oneself.
• For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul; all individuals have
an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body, while maintaining
that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.
• Plato supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul.
• Plato added that there are three components of the soul: the rational soul,
the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul.
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
• 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 body can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is the world,
whereas the soul can also stay after death in an eternal realm with the all-
transcendent God.
• Aquinas said that indeed, 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 this matter. Form, on the
other hand, or morphe in Greek refers to the “essence of a substance or
thing.”
• To Aquinas the soul is what animates the body; it is what makes us humans.
Rene Descartes
• Conceived of the human person as having a body and a mind
• 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 man a man. If at all, that is the
mind.
David Hume
• The self is not an entity over and beyond the physical body.
• Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing.
• 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.”
Immanuel Kant
• Things that men perceive around them are not just randomly infused into the
human person without an organizing principle that regulates the relationship
of all these impressions.
• There is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from
the external world.
• Time and space are ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our
minds; he calls these the apparatuses of the mind.
• The self is not just what gives one his personality; it is also the seat of
knowledge acquisition for all human persons.
Gilbert Ryle
• Blatantly denying the concept of an internal, non-physical 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.
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; one’s body is his opening toward his existence to the
world.
• The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

1. Enrichment Task
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybCAXqkzPhw

References

Alata, E.J., et al. (2018) Understanding the Self. Rex Books Store. ISBN.
13:9789712386701

Chafee, J. (2013) Who are You? Consciousness, Identity and the Self. In the
Philosopher’s Way: Thinking Critically about profound Ideas. Pearson. 106 – 109.

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