The Self from Various Perspective: Philosophy

Socrates
Socrates was a Greek Philosopher and one of the very few individuals who
shaped Western thoughts. However, unlike the other philosophers during his
time, Socrates never wrote anything. Knowledge about Socrates is through-second
hand information from the writings of his student Plato and historian Xenophon.

Socrates was known for his method of inquiry in testing an idea. This is
called the Socratic Method whereby an idea was tested by asking a series of
questions o determine underlying beliefs and the extent of knowledge to guide
the person toward better understanding (Maxwell, 2015). Socrates was described
to have gone about in Athens questioning everyday views and popular Athenian
beliefs. This apparently offended the leaders in his time. He was then accused of
impiety or lack of reverence for the Gods and for corrupting the minds of
the youth. At 70 years old, Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking a cup of
poison hemlock (Brickhouse & Smith, 2002).

Some of Socrates’ idea were:

• The soul of immortal
• The care of the soul is the task of Philosophy
• Virtue is necessary to attain happiness
Socrates believed that philosophy had a very important role to play in the
lives of the
people. One of his most-quoted phrases is, “The unexamined is not worth living.”
According to
him, self-knowledge or the examination of one’s self, as well as the question about
how one ought
to live one’s life are very important concerns because only by knowing yourself
can you hope to
improve your life (Rappe, 1995). Socrates believed that you as a person
should consciously
contemplate, turn your gazed inward and analyze the true nature and values that
are guiding your
life.
He added that self-knowledge would open your eyes to your true nature; which
contrary to
pop culture, is not about what you own, how many likes you get in your social
media posts, or ho
successful you are in your career. In fact, your real self is not your own
body. According to
Socrates, the state of your inner being (soul/self) determines the quality of your
life.
Socrates said existence is of two kinds:
1. The visible
2. The invisible
The visible existence changes while the invisible existence remains constant
(Connolly,
2017). According to Socrates, this is the sate o the human being. The body
which is visible,
changes; the other part, the kind that is invisible to humans yet sensed and
understood by the mind
remains constant. In the Socratic dialogue, Plato wrote what Socrates have said
about the body and
soul; “When the soul and the body are together nature assigns our body to be a
slave and to be
ruled and the soul to be the ruler and master” (Hamilton et al., 1961; Organ,
1986). However,
Socrates said that the body was a reluctant slave, and the soul get dragged towards
what is always
changing. This would leave the soul confused (Organ, 1986)
Socrates also believed that the goal of life is to be happy. How does one become
happy?
According to him, the virtuous man is a happy man, and that virtue alone is the one
an only supreme
good that will secure his/her happiness. Virtue is defined as moral excellence, and
an individual is
considered virtuous if his/her character is made up of the moral qualities
that are accepted as
virtues, 1.e., courage, temperance, prudence and justice. According to Socrates,
even death is a
trivial matter for the truly virtuous because he/she has realized that the most
important in life is
that state of his/her soul and the acts taken from taking care of the soul through
self-knowledge
people. One of his most-quoted phrases is, “The unexamined is not worth living.”
According to
him, self-knowledge or the examination of one’s self, as well as the question about
how one ought
to live one’s life are very important concerns because only by knowing yourself
can you hope to
improve your life (Rappe, 1995). Socrates believed that you as a person
should consciously
contemplate, turn your gazed inward and analyze the true nature and values that
are guiding your
life.
He added that self-knowledge would open your eyes to your true nature; which
contrary to
pop culture, is not about what you own, how many likes you get in your social
media posts, or ho
successful you are in your career. In fact, your real self is not your own
body. According to
Socrates, the state of your inner being (soul/self) determines the quality of your
life.
Socrates said existence is of two kinds:
1. The visible
2. The invisible
The visible existence changes while the invisible existence remains constant
(Connolly,
2017). According to Socrates, this is the sate o the human being. The body
which is visible,
changes; the other part, the kind that is invisible to humans yet sensed and
understood by the mind
remains constant. In the Socratic dialogue, Plato wrote what Socrates have said
about the body and
soul; “When the soul and the body are together nature assigns our body to be a
slave and to be
ruled and the soul to be the ruler and master” (Hamilton et al., 1961; Organ,
1986). However,
Socrates said that the body was a reluctant slave, and the soul get dragged towards
what is always
changing. This would leave the soul confused (Organ, 1986)
Socrates also believed that the goal of life is to be happy. How does one become
happy?
According to him, the virtuous man is a happy man, and that virtue alone is the one
an only supreme
good that will secure his/her happiness. Virtue is defined as moral excellence, and
an individual is
considered virtuous if his/her character is made up of the moral qualities
that are accepted as
virtues, 1.e., courage, temperance, prudence and justice. According to Socrates,
even death is a
trivial matter for the truly virtuous because he/she has realized that the most
important in life is
that state of his/her soul and the acts taken from taking care of the soul through
self-knowledge
people. One of his most-quoted phrases is, “The unexamined is not worth living.”
According to him, self-knowledge or the examination of one’s self, as well as the
question about how one ought to live one’s life are very important concerns
because only by knowing yourself can you hope to improve your life (Rappe,
1995). Socrates believed that you as a person should consciously
contemplate, turn your gazed inward and analyze the true nature and values that
are guiding your life.
He added that self-knowledge would open your eyes to your true nature;
which contrary to pop culture, is not about what you own, how many likes you get
in your social media posts, or ho successful you are in your career. In fact, your
real self is not your own body. According to Socrates, the state of your inner
being (soul/self) determines the quality of your life.
Socrates said existence is of two kinds:
1. The visible
2. The invisible
 The visible existence changes while the invisible existence remains constant
(Connolly, 2017). According to Socrates, this is the sate o the human being.
The body which is visible, changes; the other part, the kind that is invisible to
humans yet sensed and understood by the mind remains constant. In the Socratic
dialogue, Plato wrote what Socrates have said about the body and soul; “When
the soul and the body are together nature assigns our body to be a slave and to be
ruled and the soul to be the ruler and master” (Hamilton et al., 1961; Organ,
1986). However, Socrates said that the body was a reluctant slave, and the soul
get dragged towards what is always changing. This would leave the soul confused
(Organ, 1986)
Socrates also believed that the goal of life is to be happy. How does one
become happy? According to him, the virtuous man is a happy man, and that
virtue alone is the one an only supreme good that will secure his/her happiness.
Virtue is defined as moral excellence, and an individual is considered virtuous if
his/her character is made up of the moral qualities that are accepted as
virtues, 1.e., courage, temperance, prudence and justice. According to Socrates,
even death is a
trivial matter for the truly virtuous because he/she has realized that the most
important in life is that state of his/her soul and the acts taken from taking care of
the soul through self-knowledge

Plato

Plato was the student of Socrates. He wrote the Socratic dialogue where
Socrates was the main character and speaker. Plato’s philosophical method was
what he identified as “collection and division.” In this method, the philosopher
would collect all the generic ideas that seemed to have a common characteristic
and then divided then into different kinds until the subdivisions of ideas became
specific. He is best known for his ‘Theory of Forms’ that asserted the physical
world
is not really the real world because the ultimate reality exists beyond the physical
world.
 Plato is perhaps the single most important influence of the western
concept of self. According to Plato, the soul is indeed the most divine aspect of
the human being. However, his concept of the divine is not a spiritual being but
rather one that ha intellectual connotation. The

self/soul/mind according to Plato is the aspect of the human beings by which the
Forms (ideas) are known.
The three parts of the soul according to Plato are:
• The appetitive (sensual) The Element that enjoys sensual experiences, such as
food, drink, and sex.
• The rational (reasoning) The 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 toward reason but
understands the demands of passion; the part that loves honor and victory.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine, also called St. Augustine of Hippo, is one of the Latin fathers of the
church, one of the Doctors of the church, and one of the most significant
Christian thinkers. His philosophical approach to Christian thinking is the most
influential theological system. His written works are among the foundations of
medieval and modern Christian thought.

He was deeply influenced by Plato’s ideas. Not surprisingly, he adopted Plato’s

view that the self is an immaterial (but rational) soul. Giving the Theory of Forms a
Christian perspective, Augustine asserted that these Forms were concepts
exiting within the perfect and eternal God where the soul belonged. Saint
Augustine said that the soul held the truth and was capable of scientific
thinking. Saint Augustine’s concept of Self was an inner, immaterial ‘I’ that had
self-knowledge and self-awareness. He believed that the human being was both a
soul and a body, and the body possessed senses, such as imagination, memory,
reason and mind through which the soul experience the world.
He also reasoned that human beings through the senses could sense the
material, temporal objects as we interacted with the material world; the
immaterial but intelligible (def. able to understood only by the intellect, not by
the senses) God would only be clear or obvious to the mind if one tune into
his/her immaterial self/soul.
The aspect of the self/soul according to St. Augustine are;
• It is able to be aware of itself
• It recognizes itself a holistic one.
• It is aware of its unity
Saint Augustine believed that the human being who is both soul and body is
meant to tend to higher, divine, and heavenly matters because of his/her
capacity to ascend and comprehend truths through the mind. He connected the
ascension of the soul with his assertion that everything
related to the physical world belongs to the physical body, and if a person
concerns himself/herself with this physical world then he/she will not be any
different from animals. Saint Augustine pointed out that a person is similar to
God as regards to the mind and its ability; that by ignoring to use his/her mind (or
the incorrect use of the mind) he/she would lose his/her possibility to reach real
and lasting happiness.

Rene Descartes
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. He is
considered the Father of Modern Western Philosophy. Descartes is often
regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to describe,
predict and understand natural phenomena based on
observational and empirical evidence.
Descartes proposed that doubt as a principal tool of disciplined inquiry. His
method was called hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt, also sometimes referred a
methodological skepticism. It is a systematic process of being skeptical about the
truth of one’s beliefs in order to determine which beliefs could be ascertained as
true. Rene Descartes’ famous line “Cogito Ergo Sum” translated as “I think,
therefore I am” became a fundamental element of western philosophy as it
secured the foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. He asserted
that everything perceived by the senses could not be used as proof of existence
because human senses could be fooled. He added that there was only one thing
we could be sure of this world, and that was everything could be doubted. In turn,
by doubting his own existence, Descartes proved that there is thinking entity that
is doing the act of doubting.
Descartes’ claims about the self are:
• It is constant; it is not prone to change; and it is not affected by time
• Only the immaterial soul remains the same throughout time
• The immaterial soul is the source of our identity.
he further asserted that this thinking entity could exist without the body because
it is an immaterial substance. Nevertheless, this immaterial substance (self)
possesses a body and is so intimately
bound/joined by it that the ‘self’ forms a union with its body. Despite this
body soul union, Descartes reasoned that the soul is still distinct from the body.
Some distinctions between the soul and the body as pointed out by Descartes
are:
 John Locke

John Locke was a philosopher and physician and was one of the
most influential Enlightenment thinkers. The Age of Enlightenment or the Age of
Reason was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the ideas
in Europe during the 18th century.
If Descartes describe the self as a thinking thing, Locke expanded this
definition of self to include the memories of that thinking thing. Locke
believed that the self is identified with consciousness and this self consists of
sameness of consciousness. This usually interpreted to mean that the self consists
of memory; that the person existing now is the same person yesterday because
he/she remembers the thoughts, experiences, or actions of the earlier self.
For Locke, a person’s memories provide a continuity of experience that
allows him/her to identify him/herself as the same person over time. This theory
of personal identity allows Locke to justify a defense accountability. According to
Locke, since the person is the same self in the passing time, he/she can be held
accountable for past behaviors. However, Locke insisted that a person could only
be held accountable for behaviors he/she can remember. Locke believe that
punishing someone for behaviors he/she has no recollection of doing is equivalent
to punishing him/her for actions that was never performed. He asserted that the
state of the person who cannot remember his/her behavior is the same as the
state of the person who never committed the act, which meant the person was
ignorant.
 David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish philosopher, economist and

historian during the age of Enlightenment. He was a fierce opponent of
Descartes’s Rationalism. Rationalism is the theory that reason, rather that
experience, is the foundation of all knowledge. Hume alongside with John Locke
ad bishop George Berkeley, was one of the three main figureheads of the
influential British Empiricism movement. Empiricism is the idea that the origin of
all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasized the role of experience and
evidence (especially sensory perceptions) in forming concept, while discounting
the notion of innate ideas.
Hume is identified with the bundle theory wherein he described the self or
person (which Hume assumed to be the mind) as a bundle or a collection of a
different perceptions that are moving in a very fast and successive manner;
therefore, it is in a perpetual flux. Hume’s theory began by denying Descartes’
view of immaterial soul and of its experiences. Empiricists like Hume believed that
human intellect and experiences are limited; therefore, it is impossible to
attribute it to an independent persisting entity (i.e., soul). David Hume concluded
that the self is merely made up of successive impressions.
Hume divided the mind’s perceptions into two groups stating that the
difference between the two “consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with
which they strike upon the mind.”
1. Impressions. These are the perceptions that are the most string. They
enter the senses with most force. Theses are directly experienced; they result
from inward and outward sentiments.
2. Ideas. These are the less forcible and less lively counterparts of
impressions. These are mechanisms that copy and reproduce sense data
formulated based upon the previously perceived impressions.
Hume asserted that the notion of the self could not be verified through
observation. He argued that if can directly know, then what you know are mere
objects of what your senses are experiencing. With this idea, he believed that
there are no logical justifications for the existence of anything other that on what
your senses experienced. For Hume, the self was nothing but a series of
incoherent impressions received by the senses. This description of senses
revealed, according to Hume, no permanently subsisting self.
Hume compared the self to a notion; whereby a nation retains its “being a
nation” not by some single core or identity but by being composed or different,
constantly changing elements, such as people, systems, culture and beliefs. In the
same manner, the ‘self’ according to Hume is not just one impression but mix
and a loose cohesion of various personal experiences. Hume insisted that
there is no one constant impression that endures throughout your life.
Hume did not believe on the existence of the self. He stressed that your
perceptions are only active for a long as you are conscious. According to
Hume, should your perception be removed for any time (such as when you are
sleeping), and you can no longer sense yourself then you also cease to exist. In
this line, Hume seemed to reduce the self as a light bulb that may be switched on
or off. Hume’s self is a passive observer similar to watching one’s life pass before
the eyes like a play or on a screen; whereby the total annihilation of the self
comes at death.

Immanuel Kant

Philosopher Immanuel Kant is a central figure in modern philosophy. His

contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a
profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him.
Among other ideas that Kant proposed was that, the human mind creates the
structure of human experience.
Kant’s view of the self is transcendental, which means the self is related to
a spiritual and nonphysical realm. For Kant, the self is not in the body. The self is
outside the body, and it does not have the qualities of the body. Despite being
transcendental, Kant stressed that the body and its qualities are rooted to the self.
He proposed that it is knowledge that bridges the self and the material things
together.
 Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality):
1. Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in inner sense,
and
2. Consciousness of oneself and one’s states y performing acts of
apperception.
Apperception is the material process by which a person makes sense
of an idea by assimilating it to the body or ideas he or she already possesses.
Kant’s point is that what truly exist are your ideas and your knowledge of your
ideas; that you perceived the outside world through the self with your ideas. Kant
pointed out that the material world is not just an extension, and that you are
merely seeing objects. He insisted that you perceived the outside world
because there is already an idea residing within you. These ideas are what
connect you to the external world. He defended the diverse quality or state of the
body and soul (self) presenting that “bodies are objects of outer sense; souls are
objects of inner sense.”
Two components of the self:
1. Inner self. The self by which you are aware of alteration in your own state. This
includes your rational intellect and your psychological state, such a moods,
feelings, and sensation, pleasure, and pain.
2. Outer self. It includes your senses and the physical world it is the
common boundary between the external world and the inner self. It gathers
information from the external world through the senses, which the inner self
interprets and coherently expresses.
Kant proposed that the self organizes information in three ways:
• Raw perceptual input
• Recognizing the concept
• Reproducing in the imagination
Kant’s self has a unified point of self-reference you are conscious of yourself as the
subject, and you are conscious of yourself a common subject of different
representations. Here Kant confirms that the impressions you perceive point to
one single common fact- the self is the subject of these experiences.