St.

Augustine of Hippo was born on November 13, 354 at Tagaste, Numidia to

Monnica, a baptized Christian, and Patricius, who took baptism on his deathbed.
Augustine's parents managed to acquire a first-class education for him who seems
to have been the only child sent off to be educated. He studied first in Tagaste,
then in the nearby university town of Madauros, and finally at Carthage, the great
city of Roman Africa. After a brief stint teaching in Tagaste, he returned to
Carthage to teach rhetoric, the premier science for the Roman gentleman, and he
was evidently very good at it.

Augustine’s educational background and cultural milieu trained him for the art of rhetoric: declaring the
power of the self through speech that differentiated the speaker from his fellows and swayed the crowd
to follow his views. His literary and intellectual abilities, however, gave him the power to articulate his
vision of Christianity in a way that set him apart from his African contemporaries.

Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In his youth he was drawn to Manichaeism and later to
neoplatonism. After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own
approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Two of his
notable works are "The City of God" and "Confessions".

He died on 28 August 430. Augustine was canonized by popular acclaim, and later recognized as a Doctor
of the Church in 1298 by Pope Boniface VIII.

References:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Mathyanyan/st-augustine-44330722

Philosophy of Self

Augustine's sense of 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. He also believed that humans were made in the image and likeness
of God and that our rational minds were the image of the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
He thought that everything in the material world has its place in the natural order of things, and acts in
accordance with its nature. He perceives self as free and always willing. Augustine shows that man can
know the truths with firmness, such as the principle of his own existence.

St. Thomas Acquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas was born on 1225 at Roccasecca, Kingdom of Sicily to Theodora
and Landulf of Aquino.

He developed his own conclusions from Aristotelian premises, notably in the

metaphysics of personality, creation, and Providence. As a theologian, he was
responsible in his two masterpieces, the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra
gentiles, for the classical systematization of Latin theology, and, as a poet, he wrote some of the most
gravely beautiful eucharistic hymns in the church’s liturgy.

At the age of five, Thomas began his early education at the studium generale. It was here that Thomas
was probably introduced to Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of whom would influence his
theological philosophy. At the age of nineteen Thomas resolved to join the recently founded Dominican
Order which did not please his family. His parents sent him to Paris so that he could pursue his studies
there.

In the year 1256, he began teaching theology. According to Aquinas, reason is able to operate within faith
and yet according to its own laws. The mystery of God is expressed and incarnate in human language; it
is thus able to become the object of an active, conscious, and organized elaboration in which the rules
and structures of rational activity are integrated in the light of faith.

Although he was an Aristotelian, Thomas Aquinas was certain that he could defend himself against a
heterodox interpretation of “the Philosopher,” as Aristotle was known. Thomas held that human liberty
could be defended as a rational thesis while admitting that determinations are found in nature.

He died because of an illness on March 7, 1274 when he was on his way to Pope Gregory X. He was
canonized on July 18, 1323 and his feast day is celebrated every January 28, formerly March 7.

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas/Last-years-at-Naples

https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-self-according-to-rene-descartes.html

Philosophy of Self
Thomas Acquinas' concept of the self was that we don't encounter ourselves as isolated minds or selves
but rather always as agentts interacting with our environment. And that our self-knowledge is dependent
on our experience of the world around us. And that the labels we apply to ourselves are always taken
from what we feel or think towards other things.

Rene Descartes

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rene-Descartes

René Descartes (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher,
mathematician, and scientist. A native of the Kingdom of France, he is also widely
regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy.

Descartes’s mother died when he was one year old. His father remarried in Rennes, leaving him in La Haye
to be raised his maternal grandmother. He attended his education at Jesuit College where students were
taught classical studies, science, mathematics and metaphysics. Descartes took a law degree at Poitiers in
1916.

In his natural philosophy, he differed from the schools on two major points: first, he rejected the splitting
of corporeal substance into matter and form; second, he rejected any appeal to final ends, divine or
natural, in explaining natural phenomena.[21] In his theology, he insists on the absolute freedom of God's
act of creation. Descartes laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism. He wrote
Meditation, Discourse kn Method, and The World.

He died on February 11, 1650 at the age of 53.

Philosophy of Self

Dualism is the presumption proposed by Rene Descartes that the human mind and body are two distinct
entities that interact with each other to make a person. He believed that 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. He reasoned that the mind and body communicate with each other through a small structure at
the base of the brain called th pineal gland.

To state it differently, dualism tells us that the mind is part of the unseen world. You can't poke it with
needle or hear it with stethoscope, but it still exists. "I think, therefore I am."