THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES  Gilbert Ryle: The Self is the Way

People Behave
NATURE OF THE SELF
 Paul Churchland: The Self is the Brain
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Self is
Embodied Subjectivity
Physical Self
 Changeable, transient and imperfect
Ideal Self
 Unchanging, eternal and immortal

SOCRATES
PHILOSOPHY  Explains that the essence of the self –
soul – is the immortal entity.
 Employs the inquisitive mind to
 SOUL strives for wisdom and perfection
discover the ultimate causes,
and reason is the soul’s tool to achieve
reasons, and principles of everything
this exalted state.
 “love of wisdom”
 He suggests that the man must live an
 Desire for truth
examined life a life of purpose and
SELF = SOUL value.
 Meaningful and Happy Life = virtuous
 Believed that every human possessed
and knows the value of himself that
an immortal soul that survived the
can be achieved through incessant
physical body
soul- searching
 Full power of reason on the human
 He suggests that what is to be
self:
considered a good act is not good
 who we are; who we should be; who
because gods say it is, but is good
we will become
because it is useful to us in our efforts to
Two Dichotomous Realms of Self: be better and happier people.

 Physical self PLATO

 Ideal self
 He believed that the self is synonymous
The Philosophers with the soul
 Plato’s philosophy: process of self-
knowledge and purification of the soul
 Reason – divine essence that enables
JOHN LOCKE DAVID HUME us to think deeply
 Physical appetite– hunger, thirst,
sexual desire
 Spirit or passion– love, anger,
ambition, aggressiveness, empathy

 Socrates: The Self is an Immortal Soul PLATO’s THEORY OF FORMS

 Plato: The Self is an Immortal Soul  World of forms (nonphysical idea – real
 Aristotle: The Soul is the Essence of the and permanent
Self  World of sense (reality) –
 St. Augustine: The Self has an Immortal temporary and a replica of the ideal
Soul world
 Rene Descartes: I Think therefore I am
 John Locke: The Self is Consciousness ARISTOTLE
 David Hume: There is No Self
 Immanuel Kant: We Construct the self  Suggested that anything with life has
 Sigmund Freud: The Self is Multilayered soul
 conscious, thinking entity – while we
are aware of thinking a out our self.
 Soul: essence of all living things
 Essence of the human self – a thinking
 Soul: essence of the self
entity that doubts, understands,
Three kinds of soul analyzes, questions and reasons

1. Vegetative – physical body Two Dimensions of Self:

2. Sentient – sensual desires, feelings,
1. Thinking entity
emotions
3. Rational – what makes man human  thinking self (soul) as nonmaterial,
immortal conscious, being, and
 Rational nature of the self is to lead a independent of the physical laws of
good, flourishing, and fulfilling life (self- the universe
actualization)
2. Physical body
 Pursuit of happiness – search for a
good life that includes doing virtuous  material, mortal, non-thinking entity,
actions. fully governed by the physical laws of
nature
ST. AUGUSTINE
The soul and body are independent of one
 He integrated the ideas of Plato and another, and each can exist and function
Christianity. without the other.
 He believed that the physical body
was radically different from and JOHN LOCKE
inferior to its inhabitant (immortal soul)
 English Philosopher
 He views the BODY as SPOUSE OF SOUL,
 The human mind at birth is tabula rasa
both
or blank slate
 attached to one another by a “natural
 He felt that the self, or personal
appetite”
identity, is constructed primarily from
 He believed that the body is united
sense experience.
with the soul, so that MAN may be
 These experiences shape and mold
ENTIRE and COMPLETE.
the self throughout a person’s life.
 He believed that the SOUL is what
 Conscious awareness and memory of
governs and defines the human
previous experiences are the keys to
person.
understanding the self.
 Everything created by God who is all
 He believed that the essence of self is
good is good.
its conscious awareness of itself as a
RENE DESCARTES thinking, reasoning, and reflecting
identity.
 He is widely considered the “Father of  At this point, Locke is proposing that
Modern Philosophy” people could use the power of reason
 He agreed with the great thinkers to achieve knowledge and then
before him that the human ability to use this knowledge to
reason constitutes the extraordinary understand experience.
instrument we have to achieve truth
and knowledge. DAVID HUME
 Descartes wanted to penetrate the
 Scottish Philosopher
nature of our reasoning process and
 He suggests that if people carefully
understand its relation to the human
examine their sense experience
self.
through the process of introspection,
 For him, the act of thinking about self –
they will discover that there is no self.
of being self-conscious – is in itself a
 Experience = just a bundle or
proof that there is self.
collection of different perceptions
 He is confident that no rational person
will doubt his or her own existence as a
  He maintained that if people
carefully examine the content of their
experience, they find that there are
only distinct entities: impressions and
ideas.
 Impressions are the basic
sensations of people’s experience
 Ideas are thoughts and images
from impression
 He further suggests that different
sensations are in constant continuum
that is invariable and not constant.
 He argues that it cannot be from any
of these impressions the idea of self is
derived and consequently, there is no
self.
 Subsequently, the idea of personal
identity is a result of imagination.
IMMANUEL KANT
 German Philosopher
 It is the self that makes experiencing
an intelligible world possible because it
is the self that is actively organizing
and synthesizing all of our thoughts
and perceptions.
 The self utilizes conceptual categories
which Kant calls transcendental
deduction of categories to construct
an orderly and objective world that is
stable and can be investigated
scientifically.
 He believed that the self is an
organizing principle that makes
a unified and
 intelligible experience possible
 The self-constructs its own reality,
actively
 Creating a world that is familiar,
predictable, and most significantly,
mine
 is part of the self that is organized
in ways that are rational,
practical, and appropriate to the
environment
 The Unconscious Self
 Contains the basic instinctual
drives including sexuality,
aggressiveness, and self-destruction;
traumatic memories; unfulfilled
wishes and childhood
fantasies; thoughts and feelings
 Is characterized by the most primitive
level of human motivation and human
functioning which is governed by the
“pleasure principle”
 The Preconscious
 Contains materials that is not
threatening and is easily brought to
mind.
 Is located between the conscious and
unconscious part of the self.
GILBERT RYLE
 I act therefore I am
 British Philosopher
 He believes that the self is best
understood as a pattern of behavior,
the tendency or disposition for a
person to behave in a certain way in
certain circumstances
 He considers the mind and body
intrinsically linked in complex and
intimate ways.
 The self is the same as bodily behavior.
 He concludes that the mind is the
totality of human dispositions that is
known through the way people
behave.

SIGMUND FREUD PAUL CHURCHLAND

 Austrian Physician  The Self is the Brain
 The self consists of three layers:  American Philosopher
 conscious  He advocated the idea of eliminative
 unconscious materialism or the idea that the self is
 preconscious inseparable from the brain and the
physiology of the body
 The Conscious Self  The physical brain and not the
 Is governed by the “reality imaginary mind gives people the
principle”. sense of self
MAURICE MERLEAU- PONTY
 The Self is Embodied Subjectivity
 French Philosopher

Articulated the phenomenologist position in a simple declaration: “I live in my body.” By the

“lived body,” Merleau-Ponty means an entity that can never be objectified or known in a
completely objective sort of way, as opposed to the “body as object” of the dualists.

For example, when you first wake up in the morning and experience your gradually expanding
awareness of where you are and how you feel, what are your first thoughts of the day? Perhaps
something along the lines of “Oh no, it’s time to get up, but I’m still sleepy, but I have an important
appointment that I can’t be late for” and so on. Note that at no point do you doubt that the “I”
you refer to is a single integrated entity, a blending of mental, physical, and emotional structured
around a core identity: yourself. It’s only later, when you’re reading Descartes or discussing the
possibility of reincarnation with a friend that you begin creating ideas such as independent
“minds,” “bodies,” “souls,” or, in the case of Freud, an “unconscious.”