MODULE 1

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THESELF

A. THE ESSENTIALIST VIEW – THE AVOCADO VIEW

Big Question:Is there a “real you,” fixed at birth, or do you see yourself more as a work in
progress?

Learning Outcome:

1. Discuss the differentrepresentations andconceptualizations of the self from various

philosophical views.
2. Examine the different influences, factors and forces that shape the self.
3. Compare and contrast how the self has been represented across the different
perspectives.
4. Demonstrate critical and reflective thought in analyzing the development of one’s
self and identify by developing a theory of the self.

ACTIVITY:

1. Write a reflection on the message of the Song or Lyrics, Tuldok with emphasis on:

Who am I?
What am I?
Why am I existing?
Where will I be from here?

TULDOK

Ang tuldok ay may salaysay at may kahulugan

Na dapat mapansin at maintindihan
Kahit sino ka man ay dapat malaman
Na dito sa mundo ikaw ay tuldok lang
Kahit na ang araw sa kalangitan
Siya ay tuldok lamang sa kalawakan
Lahat ng bagay ay tuldok ang pinanggalingan
At kung masdang mabuti, tuldok ang uuwian

Tingnan mong mabuti ang sangkatauhan

Maraming nag-aaway, tuldok lang ang dahilan
Sa aking nakita, ako'y natawa lang
'Pagkat ang nangyayari'y malaking kahibangan

Kaya wala kang dapat na ipagmayabang

Na ikaw ay mautak at maraming alam
Dahil kung susuriin at ating iisipin
Katulad ng lahat, ikaw ay tuldok rin

2. Identify which of the choices isAvocado/Artichoke ( as shown in ppt)

OUTLINE

A. The Essentialist View – Avocado View

1. The Judaic & Christian Traditions

2. The Greek Rationalist Tradition
- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
3. The Theocentric Tradition
- St. Augustine
4. Self in the Modern Period
- Rene Descartes
- John Locke
- Karl Marx

INTRODUCTION

Q. Do inanimate beings like stones, woods; plants, and animals have selves?
Some points of argument

Self could either be:

- non-living being (inanimate beings like stones, woods, etc.)

- non-conscious living irrational beings (like plants)

- conscious living irrational being (brutes/lower animals)

- conscious living rational being (human)

Owed to the principle of quiddity or isness/whatness, and hylomorphic principle, both

inanimate and animate beings are relegated with the idea of self.

Who or What Are We?

To aid in our inquiry, we can use the structures of the Avocado and the Artichoke as metaphors
for human nature.
AVOCADO

A pear-shaped tropical fruit with yellowish flesh and a single seed at the center. If the
avocado seed is planted, an entire new avocado plant may grow, when, if it reaches full
maturity, is capable of producing another generation of avocado fruit. The seed at the
center contains all the essential information about what makes an avocado an avocado.

For contrast,
ARTICHOKE

Sometimes cooked as a vegetable. The flower head of a thistle plant. It consists of spiny
layers that can be peeled off one after the other. When the last layer has been removed,
there is nothing left. The “heart” of the artichoke is actually the base of the flower.
Although it is tasty to eat, the heart does not contain the essence of the artichoke. The
 artichoke is nothing but its layers. Because it is a flower, no part of the artichoke –not even
the heart- can be induced to produce another generation.

So, we might want to ask, Are we more like avocados or like artichokes? If we could peel away
our layers, would we find a central core or merely emptiness as the last layer is removed?
Do we consist entirely of our layers – genetic instructions and environmental effects – or is
there something central that contains and represents the essence of who and what we are.

Is there an Essential Human Nature?

PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF THE SELF

THE ESSENTIALIST MODEL - THE AVOCADO VIEW

1. The Judaic and Christian Traditions

• Humans are made in the image and likeness of God
• Animals may have instincts and intelligence but they are not made in God’s
likeness
• We are self-conscious
• We have the capacity to love
• We have fleshy outward appearance but inside we share the divine nature
• The essence of the avocado is not in the flesh but in its seed. The proof of this
can be found by planting the seed, which so contains the essence of
“avocadoness” that it can produce another whole avocado plant. Whatever it
is that makes an avocado an avocado, is condensed into that seed. In a similar
way, the Judaic and Christian traditions affirm that what makes you a person,
rather than a chimp or a computer, is your special creation in the image of
God.

2. The Greek Rationalist Tradition

• Reason is at the core of our being
• Our reasoning ability sets us apart from other terrestrial beings
• Reason controls emotions & appetites
• We may act like animals at times, but only because we are not using reason to
control the other parts of our being
• Humans alone are capable of living according to reason

The Soul’s Origin and Home:

Socrates
 “. . . the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and
intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable” (Phaedo)
 The unexamined life is not worth living.
 Men were really not fully aware of who they were and the virtues that they
were supposed to attain in order to preserve their souls for the afterlife.
 The worst that can happen to anyone, to live but die inside.
  Man is composed of two important aspects of his personhood. All individuals
have an imperfect, impermanent aspect, the body, while maintaining that
there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Plato

The other world of Forms

The soul is drawn to the good, the ideal, and so is drawn to God. We
gradually move closer and closer to God through reincarnation as well as in
our individual lives. Our ethical goal in life is resemblance to God, to come
closer to the pure world of ideas and ideal, to liberate ourselves from matter,
time, and space, and to become more real in this deeper sense. Our goal is,
in other words, self-realization.

There are parts or components to the soul which are working harmoniously
with one another:

1. Rational – forged by reason and intellect, govern the affairs of the

human person.

2. Spirited – in charge of emotions, should be kept at bay

3. Appetitive soul – incharge of base desires, like eating, drinking,

sleeping, and having sexual intercourse (is controlled as well)
When this ideal state is attained, the human person’s sould becomes
just and virtuous.

Plato’s quotations:
• The measure of a man is what he does with power.
• Plato includes women as men’s equals in this system.
• "Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in
wonder."
• "...(I)f you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is
easy; that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly.“
• "Our object in the construction of the State is the greatest happiness of
the whole, and not that of any one class."

Aristotle
• Denied the world of Forms
• Said the form exists within the object
• The soul exists only in the body
• When the body dies, the soul dies with it

Greek – Western Tradition

• A life dominated by reason is the ideal
• Reason is like a charioteer (Plato)
• It’s been this way since Plato in the Western world
• It may seem like a good idea, but when culture identifies rationality with
men and emotionality with women problems arise
3. The Theocentric Tradition

St. Augustine of Hippo

• There is an aspect of man, which dwells in the world, that is imperfect

and continuously yearns to be with the divine while the other is capable
of reaching immortality.
• 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.
• This is the physical reality that is the world, whereas the soul can also
stay after death in an eternal realm with the all transcendent 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.

3. The Self in the Modern Period

View Video/Selection: Sophia

• Our culture is still basically a male dominated society.
• Mitchell indicated that in the 70’s women tried to be more manlike in
business – didn’t work too well (some still try –
because of expectations, . . .)
• Women (or anyone) who accept the value of emotions run the risk of
being viewed as second class citizens
• We are learning, however, that suppressing emotions can be unhealthy
• Rationalism may be important, but emotions are an important aspect of
life as well
• Feminism – “the theory that women should have political, economic, and
social rights equal to those of men and should define their own roles”
• Mitchell suggests:
“If we define our humanity in terms of our rationality, the superior
computational skills of a computer program may threaten us.”
She also asks – Are androids candidates for human status,
according to the Greek rationalist tradition stressing that life
dominated by reason is the ideal?

Rene Descartes
• He conceived that the human person as having a body and a mind. In
his famous treatise, The Meditations of First Philosophy, he claims that
there is so much that we should doubt. That much of what we think and
behave, because they are not infallible, may turn out to be false.
• One should only believe that which can pass the test of doubt.
• If something is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, that that is
the only time when one should actually buy a proposition.
• The only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self. For
even if one doubts oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self,
a thing that thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus, his
famous cogito ergo sum or I think therefore, I am. The fact that one
 thinks should lead one to conclude without a trace of doubt that the
cogito or the thing that thinks, which is the mind and the extenza or
extension of the mind, which is the body.
• The body is nothing else but a machine that is attached to the mind. If
at all, that is the mind.
• “But what then, am I? A thinking thing.
• But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands
(conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and
perceives.
• The radical separation of mind and body--and of the mental and the
physical in general--is known as "Cartesian Dualism." And by attributing
to the mind something like sovereignty over the external physical world,
it has prepared the way for a distinctly modern conception and
experience of reality, a conception which replaced older ways of seeing
the world in drastic ways.

John Locke
• “La Tabularasa”

• Thinking Matter, Immateriality of the Soul and Immortality

Locke chooses the word "man" to refer to that aspect of the human
being that denotes him as a type of animal. With this definition of man,
Locke is able to claim that the identity of man, because it is just a
particular instance of animal, is tied to body and shape. That other
aspect of the human being, the human as a thinking, rational thing,
Locke calls "person." The identity of person rests entirely in
consciousness. A person is defined as a thinking thing, and thought, as
we have seen, is inseparable from consciousness (remember
Transparency of the Mental). It is, therefore, in consciousness alone that
identity must exist.

Karl Marx
• Theory of alienation describes the estrangement (Ger. Entfremdung) of
people from aspects of their Gattungswesen("species-essence") as a
consequence of living in a society of stratified social classes. The
alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of
a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their
humanity.

ASSESSMENT: (After Part 2)

END OF PART 1