Understanding the Self

• It represents who we are. It is meaningful to us and human beings attached meaningful progenies because it is suppose to designate us to the world

  Name
• These men endeavored to finally locate art explanation  about the nature of change, the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity of the world amidst its diverdity


  Poet-theologians like Homer and Hesiod
• Pre-Socratics


  Greek thinkers before Socrates who were concerned with the primary substratum, arche that explains the multiplicity of things in the world
• Pre-Socratic thinkers

  • Thales
  • Pythagoras
  • Parmenides
  • Heraclitus
  • Empedocles
• The Pre-Socratics were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and what explains the changes that they observed around them
• The Pre-Socratics were tired of simply conceding to mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians like Homer and Hesiod
• Socrates was more concerned with the problem of the self, and believed the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself
• Socrates: 'The unexamined life is not worth living'
• During his trial, Socrates declared that his being indicted was brought about by his going around Athens engaging men, young and old, to question their presuppositions about themselves and about the world, particularly about who they are
• Socrates thought that the worst that can happen to anyone is to live but die inside
• Socrates's view of the human person

  • Every man is composed of body and soul
  • The body is imperfect and impermanent
  • The soul is perfect and permanent
• Plato's view of the human person

  • Man is a dual nature of body and soul
  • The soul has three components: rational, spirited, and appetitive
  • Justice in the human person can only be attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously
• Augustine's view of the human person


  Man has an aspect that dwells in the world and is imperfect, and another aspect that is capable of reaching immortality and communion with God
• Aquinas's view of the human person

  • Man is composed of matter (body) and form (soul)
  • The soul is what animates the body and makes us human
• Descartes's view of the human person

  • The human person has a body and a mind (cogito)
  • The mind is the essence of the human person, not the body
• Hume's view of the human person

  • The self is nothing but a bundle of impressions and ideas
  • There is no unified, coherent self or soul
• Kant's view of the human person

  • The mind organizes the impressions from the external world
  • The self is an actively engaged intelligence that synthesizes knowledge and experience
• Ryle's view of the human person

  The self is not an internal, non-physical entity, but simply the convenient name for the behaviors a person manifests
• Merleau-Ponty's view of the human person


  • The mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated
  • All experience is embodied, and the body is the opening to one's existence in the world
• Self


  Debated, discussed, and conceptualized by different thinkers in philosophy
• With the advent of the social sciences, new ways and paradigms emerged to reexamine the true nature of the self</b>
• Thinkers eventually got tired of focusing on the long-standing debate since sixth century BC between the relationship of body and soul/mind
• Thinkers settled on the idea that there are two components of the human person and whatever relationship these two have is less important than the fact that there is a self
• Given the new ways of knowing and the growth of the social sciences, it became possible for new approaches to the examination of the self to come to the fore
• Relationship between the self and the external world


  One of the most important axes of analysis
• Tarzan story challenges the long-standing notion of human persons being special and being a particular kind of being in the spectrum of living entities
• Our selves are not special because of the soul infused into us, but our growth and development and consequentially, our selves are truly products of our interaction with external reality
• Self


  Separate, self-contained, independent, consistent, unitary, and private
• The self being private suggests that the self is isolated from the external world, but this potential clash between the self and the external reality is the reason for the self to have a clear understanding of what it might be, what it can be, and what it will be
• Social constructionist perspective

  The self is always at the mercy of external circumstances that bump and collide with it, ever-changing and dynamic, allowing external influences to take part in its shaping
• The self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and through, but rather something that is in unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with external reality and is malleable in its dealings with society
• The self is always in participation with social life and its identity subjected to influences
• The self is truly multifaceted
• Jon, the math professor

  • Behaves differently in different social situations (university, home, church)
• Personne and moi

  Personne refers to the social concepts of what it means to be who he is, while moi refers to a person's sense of who he is, his body, and his basic identity, his biological givenness
• The self has the capacity for different personne to adapt to social situations, while retaining its moi - the stable and static part of the self
• Overseas Filipino worker (OFW) adjusting to life in another country


  • Behaves differently in the Philippines vs. in a country with strict traffic rules
• The self simply morphs according to the circumstances and contexts
• Filipinos' view of their territory as part of who they are

  Leads to crossing roads wherever and whenever in the Philippines, but following rules in a foreign country
• Language


  Reflects and shapes culture, which in turn affects how one regards oneself