Lesson 1 Philosophical Perspective

• For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul.
• Plato, Socrates' student, basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual nature of body and soul.
• Plato added that there are three components of the soul:

  • rational soul
  • spirited soul
  • appetitive soul
• rational soul - forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person
• spirited soul - which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay
• appetitive soul - in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex
• When the three components of the soul are appropriately controlled, human persons' soul becomes just and virtuous.
• body - the mortal, imperfect and impermanent
• soul - immortal, perfect and permanent
• soul - the driving force of the Body that gives us our identity
• aristotle - defines self as an embodied soul, composed of both soul and body, not either soul or body alone
• Aristotle - the soul is the true self of an individual. It is universal or at least similar in a species.
• Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine of Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature.
• Rene Descartes - father of modern philosophy
• rene descartes - conceived of the human person as having a body and a mind
• "cogito ergo sum" - Descartes - "I think, therefore I am"
• cogito - the thing that thinks, the mind
• extenza - extension of the mind, the body
• john locke - what make you "you" is your consciousness. Thus the You persist over time
• john locke - retention of memories of the self
• To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
• David Hume - Self does not persist over time, it changes.
• Empiricism - espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed or experienced.
• David Hume - men can only attain knowledge by experiencing.
• experience can be categorized into two:

  • impressions
  • ideas
• impression - the basic objects of our experience or sensation, the things we perceive directly and immediately
• ideas - copies of our impression
• Derek Parfit - there is no self over time because of change
• Derek Parfit - we have what is called psychological connectedness over time that allows the self to survive the passage of time
• Immanuel Kant - there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men get from the external world.
• Immanuel Kant - the "self" is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all knowledge and experience.
• John Stuart Mill - views the Self as other- regarding, not egoistic
• principle of utility - we should act always so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest number
• Sigmund Freud - Father of Psychoanalysis, believed that the mind is made up of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego
• Sigmund Freud - the self is developed during childhood
• Augustine - said 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.