MODULE 1 LESSON 1 ABSTRACTION PART

Let’s find out how the philosophers define or describe self during the early and modern
times. They are the prime movers on the different views of the self.

I. Socrates
Greek Philosopher and one of the very few
individuals who shaped the Western thought. Most
information from him are second hand and from
the writings of his student Plato. He is known for
his Socratic method, where an idea is tested by
asking series if questions to determine underlying
beliefs and the extent of knowledge to guide the Figure 1. Socrates by Kedumuc10,
2016 (https://bit.ly/3g3spjN), CC0
person toward better understanding.
a. Some of his ideas are:
i. The soul is immortal
ii. The care of the soul is the task of philosophy
iii. Virtue is necessary to attain happiness
b. He believed that philosophy has a very important role to play in the lives of
the people. His most quoted phrase is “the unexamined life is not worth
living.” He said that: 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. One should consciously contemplate, turn your gaze
inward, and analyse the true nature and values that are guiding in life.
Self-knowledge would open your eyes to your true nature. Your real self is
not even your body. The state of your inner being determines the quality of
your life.
c. Socrates said existence is of two kinds:
i. Visible- it changes; this is the state of human being; seen by the
naked eye like the body.
ii. Invisible- constant; the mind; the soul
 d. The goal of life is to be happy. How does one become happy? A virtuous
man is a happy man. Virtue is defined as mora
morall excellence,
and an individual is considered virtuous if his/her character is made up of
the moral qualities that are accepted as virtues, i.e. courage, temperance,
prudence, and justice.
e. Death, for Socrates is a trivial matter for the truly virtuous has realized that
the most important thing in life is the state of his/her soul and the acts
taken from taking care of the soul through self
self-knowledge.

II. Plato
A student of Socrates. His philosophical approach is
what they call "collection and division." In this
method, the philosopher "collects"" all the common
ideas with common characteristics and then divides
them into various genres until a subset of ideas are
specified.
He is best known for his “Theory of Forms” which
Figure 2.. Plato by Raphael, 2019 asserted that the physical world is
s not really the
(https://bit.ly/2E7mRaD), CC0
“real” world because the ultimate exists beyond it.
a. The “soul” according to him is the most divine aspect of the human being.
His concept of divine is not a spiritual being but rather one that has an
intellectual connotation.
b. The three parts
arts of the soul:
i. The appetitive (sensual) – enjoys sexual experiences like food,
drink and sex.
ii. The rational (reasoning
(reasoning) – use of reason
iii. The spirited (feeling)
(feeling)- understands the demands of passion; loves
honor and victory.
III. St. Augustine
He is also known as St. Augustine of Hippo. One
of the Latin Fathers of the Church, one of the Doctors of
the Church, and one of the most significant Christian
thinkers. He was most influenced by Plato’s Theory of
Forms. He asserted that they were concepts existing
within the perfect and eternal God where the soul

belonged. The soul held the truth and was Figure 3. St. Agustine by Sandro Boticelli,
2002. (https://bit.ly/3iLO95u), public domain
acceptable of scientific thinking. His concept of
the “self” was an inner, immaterial “I” that had self-knowledge and self-
awareness. The human being is both a soul and body, and the body
possessed senses, such as imagination, memory, reason, and mind through
which the soul experienced the world.
a. The aspects of the soul/ soul according to St. Augustine are:
i. It is able to be aware of itself
ii. It recognizes itself as a holistic one
iii. It is aware of its unity
b. St Augustine espoused the following contentions:
i. Human beings through the senses could sense the material,
temporal objects as we interacted with the material world;
ii. The immaterial but intelligible God would only be clear or obvious to
the mind if one tune into his/her immaterial self/soul;
iii. Human beings who is both soul and body is meant to tend to
higher, divine and heavenly matters;
iv. A person is similar to God as regards to the mind and its ability

IV. Rene Descartes

He is a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist.
He is considered as the father of modern Western
Philosophy. He is often regarded as the first thinker to

Figure 4. Rene Descartes by Frans

Hals, 2020 (https://bit.ly/31Ymsj8), CC0
 emphasize the use of reason to describe, predict, and understand natural
phenomena based on observational and empirical evidence.
a. Rene Descartes made these significant contributions:
i. Doubt is a principal tool for disciplined inquiry; this method is called
hyperbolical/metaphysical doubt/ or methodological skepticism. A
systematic process of being skeptical about the truth of one’s belief
in order to determine which beliefs could be ascertained as true.
ii. Known for his famous line of “Cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore,
I am. He asserted that everything perceived by the senses could
not be used as proof of existence because human senses could be
fooled. Doubting once existence can be done so that a thinking
entity is there and doing the act of doubting.
iii. His claims about the self are- constant, not prone to change and
not affected by time; only the immaterial soul is the source of our
identity.

Table 1.
Some distinctions between the soul and the body as described by Descartes
The Soul The Body

It is a conscious, thinking substance It is a material substance that changes

that is unaffected by time over time
It is known only to self (only you know It can be doubted; the public can correct
you own mental event and others claims about the body
cannot correct your mental states
It is not made up of parts. Its views the It is made up of physical, quantifiable
entirely of itself with no hidden or divisible parts
separate compartments. It is both
conscious and aware of itself at the
same time
John Locke
He is a philosopher and physician and one
of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers. Also
known as the Age of Reason, this intellectual
movement dominated the ideas in Europe during
the 18th century. Locke expanded the definition of
the “self” to include the memories of that thinking
thing. He believed that the “self” is identified with

consciousness and this “self” consists of Figure 5.. John Locke by Godfrey
Kneller,
eller, 2020 (https://bit.ly/34bhnqj),
sameness and consciousness. CC0

b. His contentions are:

i. The self consists of memory
ii. The person existing now is the same person yesterday for he/she
remember the thoughts, experiences or actions of the earlier self
iii. A person
person’s memories
s provide a continuity of experience that allows
him/her to identify the same person over time.
iv. The person can be held accountable for past behaviors for as long
as he/she can remember
v. Punishing behaviors one had no recollection of doing is equivalent
to punishing the person for actions that was never performed.
vi. A person who cannot remember as the same as that of a person
who never committed the act which means the person is ignorant.

V. David Hume
He is a Scottish philosopher, economist and
historian in the Age of Enlightenment; a fierce
opponent of Descartes Rationalism; Rationalism
is a theory that reason, rather than experience,
is the foundation of all knowledge. He is also
one of the three figureheads (Locke and George
Figure 6.. David Hume by Allan
Berkeley) who influenced the B
British Ramsay, 2012 (https://bit.ly/3iRuIYO),
public domain
 Empiricism movement. Empiricism is the idea that the origin of all
knowledge is a sense experience. It emphasized the role of experience
and evidence in forming concepts.
a. To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. He
categorizes it into two – impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic
objects of our experience or sensation. They form the core of our
thoughts. Impressions are vivid because they are products of our direct
experience with the world. Ideas are copies of impressions.
b. Self, per Hume is simply “a bundle of collection of different perceptions,
which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a
perpetual flux and movement.”

VI. Immanuel Kant

He believes that the things that men
perceive around them are not just randomly infused
into the human person without an organizing
principle that regulates the relationship of all these
impressions. There is necessarily a mind that
organizes the impressions that men get from the
external world. Without the self, one cannot
organize the different impressions that one gets in Figure 7. Immanuel Kant by Johann
Gottlieb Becker, 2020
relation to his own existence. He therefore suggests (https://bit.ly/2Y9lbEV), public domain

that it is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes all

knowledge and experience.
a. Two kinds of consciousness of self (rationality):
i. Consciousness of oneself and one’s psychological states in inner
sense, and;
ii. Consciousness of oneself and one’s states by performing acts of
apperception. (Apperception is the mental process by which a
person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of
ideas one already possesses).
 a. Two components of the “self”:

i. Inner self- The “self” by which you are aware of alternations in

your own state,
ii. Outer self- It includes your senses and the physical world.
c. He also proposed that the “self” organizes information in three ways:
i. Raw perceptual input,
ii. Recognizing the concept, and
iii. Reproducing in the imagination.

VII. Sigmund Freud

He is a philosopher, physiologist, psychologist, one
of the most influential thinker in the 20th century. His
most important contribution is psychoanalysis, a
practice devised to treat those who are mentally ill
through dialogue. He did not accept the existence of
any single entity that could be put forward as the
notion of the “self.” His ground-breaking work in the

Figure 8. Sigmund Freud by Max field of psychoanalysis answered about the human
Halberstadt, 1921
(https://bit.ly/3l1JsXl), CC0 psyche. In psychology, the psyche is the totality of
the human mind, both conscious and unconscious.
a. Three levels of consciousness:
i. Conscious which deals with awareness of present perceptions,
feelings, thoughts, memories, and fantasies at any particular
moment;
ii. Pre-conscious/subconscious which is related to data that can
readily be brought to consciousness, and;
iii. Unconscious which refers to data retained but not easily available
to the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny.
b. He also proposed existence of unconsciousness:
 i. A repository for traumatic repressed memories; and The source of
anxiety-provoking drives that is socially or ethically unacceptable to
the individual.
c. He also structured the mind/ psyche intro 3 parts:
i. Id- operating on pleasure principle; if unpleasurable, there is
tension
ii. Ego- operating on reality principle; if it fails, anxiety is experienced
iii. Superego- it incorporates the values and morals of society; controls
the Id impulses; persuades the ego to choose moralistic goals and
strive for perfection rather than simply realistic ones.
d. Two systems of the Superego:
i. Conscience- if the ego gives in to the Id’s demands, the superego
may make the person feel bad through guilt.
ii. Ideal Self- an imaginary picture of how you ought to be. It
represents career aspirations; how to treat other people; and how
to behave as a member of society.
e. These are all products of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Freud. Where a
personality theory is based on the notion that an individual gets motivated
by unseen forces, controlled by the conscious and rational thought.

VIII. Gilbert Ryle

According to him what truly matters is the
behavior that a person manifests in his day to day
life. He suggests that the “self” is not an entity one
can locate and analyse but simply the convenient
name that people use to refer to all the behaviors
that people make. Your actions define your own
concept of “self.”
Figure 9. Gilbert Ryle by
Reginald John Whistler, 2015 (
https://bit.ly/348tCUx), public
domain
IX. Paul Churchland
He is known for his studies in neurophilosophy
and the philosophy of the mind. His philosophy stands
on a materialistic view or the belief that nothing but
matter exists. If something can be seen, felt, heard,
touched, or tasted, then it exists.
His idea is called eliminative materialism or the
claim that people’s common sense understanding of
Figure 10. Paul Churchland by the mind is false, and that certain classes of mental
https://bit.ly/31ZfJWd
states which most people believe in do not exist.

X. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
He emphasizes that the body is the primary site of
knowing the world. His idea of the “self” is an
embodied subjectivity- a verb that means to give a
body. Subjectivity, is the state of being a subject- an
entity that possesses conscious experiences such as
perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires. A subject
acts upon or affects some other entity, called the
Figure 11. Merleau-Ponty, 2012
object. A subject therefore, is something that exists, (https://bit.ly/2EhDOPy),
Wikimedia Commons
can take action, and can cause real effects (object).
a. The body and mind are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from
one another.
b. He dismissed the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much devastation
in the history of man. To him, the Cartesian problem is nothing else but
plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.