UNIT 1_PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF

• Who am I? - The perennial question of identity
• Homo Viator - Life is a journey, and every person is a traveler
• The journey begins at birth and ends at death
• three fundamentally perennial questions in life

  • identity
  • origin
  • destiny
• Man is affected not only by the present situation but also by the uncertain future.
• three approaches:

  • Judeao-Christian/theological approach
  • philosophical approach
  • scientific approach
• philosophy comes from the greek word

  • philo - love
  • sophia - wisdom

  philosophy mean love for wisdom
• The Greek philosophers are considered as the forerunners in the study of man.
• Protagoras' maxim - man is the measure of all things" (homo mensura) signaled a significant shift in philosophical probing from cosmological to anthropocentric. Their approach is man-centered for its special concern with the nature of man, virtue and human personality.
• The general thread of the concept of the self is that the self is seen as a body-soul compound with the rational soul as immaterial, immortal, immutable, distinct, and far superior to the body.
• Socrates (469-399 B.C.) Socrates's main philosophical interest is in epistemology and ethics and the correlation between knowledge and virtue known as rationalistic moral philosophy.
• The key to self discovery is mediation, "Know thy self." The self is the one that thinks, reflects, and acts on what is right. Only in the pursuit of goodness can the self find happiness.
• The self for him, is a rational substance consisting of body and soul
• soul is derived from the world of ideas, while the body, from the world of matter.
• soul is derived from the world of ideas, while the body, from the world of matter.
• the self possesses a soul
• the soul the self consists of three dissimilar elements:

  • head - reason
  • heart - spirit
  • stomach - appetitive
• primary goal is attaining a sense of well-being or happiness.
• To attain appiness the self therefore, must be intellectually, emotionally, and biologically balanced.
• Main component of understanding object:

  1. structure
  2. purpose
• God and faith according to saint augustine is primary, and the self is secondary because the self owed its origin to God.
• the city of god - book of st. augustine
• St. Augustine, along with St. Thomas Aquinas, contemplated that the self is a tripartite being.
• St. Augustine asserted that God created man, body, and soul of which the soul is spiritual, perpetual, and superior to the body. The soul is created by God to administer the body. The body is subject to mortality. Though there is an asymmetry between the two, the body is united with the soul so that the self may be complete.
• The self is a great mystery. St. Augustine construed the human condition by claiming that the self is gifted with freedom by God, and the abuse of this freedom leads to misery in the life of the self.
•  All human souls are proliferated from Adam's soul.
• Faith illumines the mind of the self and enables reason to understand the essential truths about reality
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650). The celebrated French rationalist, presented an extreme dualistic separation of mind and body. His idea on the self is centered on the concept of substance..
• substance - it refers to anything that exists in itself.
• There are two kinds of substances:

  Infinite substance - refers to the innate idea of God while

  finite substance - refers to man.
• Man is a finite substance composed of two independent substances known as Cartesian dualism: body and mind.
•  Thinking is an activity, which is primarily spiritual and does not require the body as the medium for the activity of thinking.
• The self is construed as a mental and thinking substance, therefore, I am cogito ergo sum. So the self is nothing else but a thinking thing or a machine that thinks.
• John Locke (1632-1704). a British philosopher, believed that the source of authentic knowledge of reality must pass the test of sensory experience.
•  Knowledge cannot be innate because mind is like a blank sheet of paper - Tabula Rasa
• The essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself as a thinking, reasoning, reflecting identity and is not tied up with any particular body or substance.
• David Hume (1711-1776). A British thinker who belonged to empiricism postulated that the concept of self, in order to be intelligible and meaningful, must be based on sense of impressions.
• To understand Hume's concept of the self, we must first cognize his concepts of:

  Impressions - are the experience of sense such as pain, pleasure, heat, cold, etc., which are "lively" and "vivid."

  Ideas - refer to the recalled copies of the impressions. We see, feel, smell, taste things, then we remember what we have seen, felt, smelt, and tasted.
• Hume explained that we have two faculties:

  memory - Our impressions with exactness can be retained.

  Imagination - makes it possible for us to formulate, order, and arrange ideas.
• Three general principles of association by David hume

  1. resemblance 
  2. Time and space 
  3. Cause and effect in relationship