Jezeil B.

Dimas

SOCRATES

According to Socrates it is the state of our soul, or our inner being, which determines the
quality of our life. Thus it is paramount that we devote considerable amounts of our attention,
energy, and resources to making our soul as good and beautiful as possible. Or as he
pronounces in Plato’s dialogue the Apology: “I shall never give up philosophy or stop exhorting
you and pointing out the truth to any one of you whom I meet, saying in my most accustomed
way: “Most excellent man, are you…not ashamed to care for the acquisition of wealth and for
reputation and honor, when you neither care nor take thought for wisdom and truth and the
perfection of your soul?” (Apology 29d)

Socrates believed that the “self” exists in two parts.

One part is the physical, tangible aspect of us. This is the part that is mortal and can be/is
constantly changing. Earth also belongs to this physical realm that our bodies belong in,
because just as us in terms of physicality, the Earth is constantly being modified.

The second part is the soul, which he believed to be immortal. The soul is the part that is
unvarying across all realms (it is unchanging while it is attached to your body and thus in the
physical realm, but is also unmodified once you die and your soul leaves the body to travel to
the ideal realm).

PLATO

According to plat, this human self is fundamentally an intellectual entity whose "true" or
essential nature exists as separate from the physical world.

ST. AUGUSTINE

According to St. Augustine, self is his relation to God, both in his recognition of God's love and
his response to it—achieved through self-presentation, then self-realization. Augustine believed
one could not achieve inner peace without finding God's love.

RENE DESCARTES
When speaking of humanity, dualism asserts that the mind is separate from the body. With his
ties to dualism, Descartes believed the mind is the seat of our consciousness. Because it houses
our drives, intellect, and passions, it gives us our identity and our sense of self.

JOHN LOCKE

John Locke holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. He considered
personal identity (or the self) to be founded on consciousness (viz. memory), and not on the
substance of either the soul or the body.

DAVID HUME

According to David hume, to look for a unifying self beyond those perceptions is like looking for
a chain apart from the links that constitute it. Hume argues that our concept of the self is a
result of our natural habit of attributing unified existence to any collection of associated parts.

MARTIN BUBER

To the man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude.

The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words
which he speaks.

The primary words are not isolated words, but combined words.

The one primary word is the combination I–Thou.

The other primary word is the combination I–It; wherein, without a change in the primary word,
one of the words He and She can replace It.

Hence the I of man is also twofold. For the I of the primary word I–Thou is a different I from
that of the primary word I–It. Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations.

Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being
spoken they bring about existence.

Primary words are spoken from the being.

If Thou is said, the I of the combination I–Thou is said along with it.

If It is said, the I of the combination I–It is said along with it.

The primary word I–Thou can only be spoken with the whole being.
The primary word I–It can never be spoken with the whole being.If I face a human being as my
Thou, and say the primary word I–Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not
consist of things.

Thus human being is not He or She, bounded from every other He and She, a specific point in
space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a nature able to be experienced and
described, a loose bundle of named qualities. But with no neighbour, and whole in himself, he is
Thou and fills the heavens. This does not mean that nothing exists excepJust as the melody is
not made up of notes nor the verse of words nor the statue of lines, but they must be tugged
and dragged till their unity has been scattered into these many pieces, so with the man to
whom I say Thou. I can take out from him the colour of his hair, or of his speech, or of his
goodness. I must continually do this. But each time I do it he ceases