Socrates – “I know that I don’t know.”
(the
- Greek philosopher
- He didn’t wrote anything (knowledge about
him was from his student – Plato)
- Known for his method of inquiry (Socratic Idea)
Socratic Method – idea id tested by asking a series of
questions to determine underlying beliefs and the
extent knowledge to guide the person toward better
understanding.
Some of Socrates’ ideas were:
- Soul is immortal
- The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
- Virtue is necessary to attain happiness
- Unexamined life is not worth living
- Only by knowing yourself you can hope to improve
your life
- Soul determines the quality of your life
2 kinds of existence
- Visible (changes) the body
- Invisible (remains constant) the part that is
sensed and understood by the mind
“When the soul and body are together, nature assigns
our body to be slave and to be ruled and the soul to be
ruler and master”
The goal of life is to be happy. How? Virtuous man is a
happy man. Virtue is necessary to attain happiness.
Wherein virtue defined as moral excellence. An
individual is virtuous if his character is made up of
moral qualities that are accepted as a virtuous, i.e.,
courage, temperance, prudence and justice. Death is a
trivial matter for those who are truly virtuous because
he/she realized that the most important thing in life is
the state of his soul and the acts taken from taking care
of the soul through self-knowledge.
Plato – “Good actions give strength to ourselves and
inspire good actions in others”
- Student of Socrates
- He wrote the Socratic Dialogue where Socrates
is the main character and speaker
- His philosophical method is the collection and
division (in this method the philosopher would
collect all the generic ideas that seemed to
have common characteristics then divided it
into diff. kinds until the subdivision of the ideas
became specific)
- He is known for the Theory of Forms (physical
world is not the real world, because the
ultimate reality exists beyond the physical
world.
Single most important influence of the western
concept of self.
- Most divine aspect of human being is soul.
concept of divine is not a spiritual being but
rather an intellectual connotation)
The self/soul/mind which the Forms (ideas) are
known.
The three parts of soul:
- The Appetitive (sensual) element that enjoys
sensual experiences such as food, drinks and
sex
- The Rational (reasoning) element that forbids
the person to enjoy the sensual experiences;
the part that loves truth, hence, should rule
over the other parts of the soul through the
use of reason.
- The Spirited (feeling) the element that is
inclined towards reason but understands the
demand of passion; the part that loves honour
and victory.
St. Augustine – “All knowledge leads to God”
- Also known as St. Augustine of the Hippo (one
of the Dr. /Latin Fr. of the Church and
significant Christian Thinkers. (Most influential
in Theological System in medieval and modern
Christian Thought)
- He was influenced by Plato’s ideas. (Adopted
Plato’s idea that the “self” is an immaterial (but
rational) soul.
- Theory of Forms with Christian Perspective
(the forms are concepts existing within the
perfect and eternal God where the soul
belonged)
- The soul held the truth and capable of scientific
thinking
St. Augustin concept of self:
- Self is an inner immaterial that has self-
knowledge and self-awareness.
- Human being was both soul and body: body
possessed senses such as imagination,
memory, reason and mind, the soul
experienced the world
- Human beings could sense the material
temporal objects as we interacted with the
material world; the immaterial but intelligible
God would only be clear or obvious to the mind
if one tune his immaterial self/soul
Aspects of the soul according to St. Augustine:
- It is able to be aware of itself
- Recognizes itself as a holistic one
- Aware of its unity
- Human being who is both body and soul meant to
tend higher, divine and heavenly matter because of his
capacity to comprehend truths through mind.
- Everything related to the physical world belongs to
the physical body (if a person concerns himself w/
physical world, he will not be any different from
animals)
- He pointed that a person is similar to God as regards
to mind and its stability; that by ignoring the use of the
mind he would lose the possibility to reach the real and
lasting happiness.
Rene Descartes – “I think therefore I am”
- French Philosopher, Mathematician and
Scientist
- Considered as father of western philosophy
- First thinker to emphasize the use of reason to
understand a natural phenomenon based on
observational and empirical evidence
- He proposed that doubt was a principal tool of
disciplined inquiry
- His method is called hyperbolical/metaphysical
doubt/methodological skepticism (process of
being skeptical about the truth in one’s belief
in order to determine which beliefs could be
true)
- His famous line “Cogito ergo sum” became the
fundamental element of western philosophy as it
secured the foundation for knowledge in the face of
radical doubt. - Everything the perceived by the senses
cannot be used as a proof of existence, because human
senses could be fooled. The only thing that is sure in
this world is everything can be doubted.
Descartes claim about self:
- constant, not affected by time
- only immaterial soul remains throughout time
- immaterial soul is the source of identity
- thinking entity could exist without the body because
it’s an immaterial substance, even though it is
intimately joined with the body, soul is still distinct.
The Soul The Body
- conscious and - changes through time
unaffected by time - can be doubted
- known only to itself (no - made up of parts
one knows your mental
event but you)
- not made up of parts
John Locke – “Human mind at birth is a tabula rasa,
which means knowledge is derived from experience”
- physician/philosopher/most influential
enlightenment thinkers (age of enlightenment
18th century)
His definition of self is:
- thinking thing
- it includes the memory of that thing
- identified with consciousness and consists of
the same consciousness (this means that the
self is consist of memory, the person now is the
same person as yesterday because he
remembers the thoughts, actions, etc. of the
earlier self
His theory of personal identity is a person’s memories
provide a continuity that allows him to be the same
person over time, this justify a defense of
accountability. Since the person is the same over and
over, he could only be held accountable for behaviours
he can remember. Punishing someone with behaviours
he has no recollection is equivalent to punishing him to
actions he never did. He said that a person who can’t
remember his behaviour is the same person who never
committed the act, which meant that the person is
ignorant.
David Hume – “all knowledge is derived from human
senses”
- Scottish philosopher, economist, historian
during the enlightenment
- Opponent of Descartes Rationalism
*Rationalism – reason over experience
*Empiricism – all knowledge is sense
experience
(Three main figureheads of Empiricism is David
Hume, John Locke, Bishop George Berkeley)
- He was known for the Bundle Theory, he defined the
self (which is assumed to be “mind”) as a bundle of
different perceptions that are moving very fast in a
successive manner, and therefore it is in a “perpetual
flux”
- Empiricist believed that intellect and experiences are
limited, therefore it is impossible to attribute into an
independent persisting entity.
- Self is just merely made up of successive impressions
Hume’s Minds Perception into two groups
1. Impressions – perceptions that are strong, they
enter the senses with most force, directly
experienced, they result from inward and
outward sentiments
2. Ideas – less forcible, less lively, these are
mechanisms that copy and reproduce sense
data bases upon the perceived impressions.