GE 101 Understanding the Self MRAguilos 1st Semester 2025-2026

LESSON 1 – THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this lesson, student should be able to:

1. explain why it is essential to understand the self;
2. describe and discuss the different nations of the self from the points of view of various
philosophers across time and place;
3. compare and contrast how self has been represented in different philosophical schools; and
4. examine one’s self against the different views of self that were discussed in class.

Total Learning Time: Week 1 to 2 (3 hours)

ABSTRACTION
The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the fundamental nature of
the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that defines the multiplicity of things in the world.,
the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy: The Greeks. It was the
Greeks who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand reality and
respond to perennial questions of curiosity, including the question of self. The different perspectives and views
on the self can be best seen and understood then by revisiting its prime movers and identify the most
conjectures made by philosophers from the ancient times to the contemporary period.

Socrates and Plato

Prior to Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called
the Pre-Socratics to denote that some of them preceded Socrates while
others existed around Socrates’ time as well, preoccupied themselves with the
question of the primary substratum, arche, that explains the multiplicity of
things in the world. These men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides,
Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to name a few, were concerned with
explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and
what explains the changes that they observed around them. Tired of
simply conceding to mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians
like Homer and Hesiod, these men endeavored to finally locate an
explanation about the nature of change, the seeming permanence despite change, and the unity of the world
amidst its diversity.
After a series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were disturbed by the same issue,
a man came out to question something else. This man is Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics Socrates was more
concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He is the first philosopher who ever engaged in a
systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has become his life-
long mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.
Socrates affirms, claimed by Plato in his dialogues that the un examined
life is not worth living. During his trial for allegedly corrupting the minds of the
youth and for impiety, Socrates declared without regret that his being indicted
was brought about by his going around Athens engaging men, young and old, to
question their presuppositions about themselves and about the world,
aprticularly about who they are (Plato 2012). Socrates took it upon himself to
serve as a “gadfly” that disturbs Athenian men from their slumber and shakes
them off in order to reach the truth and wisdom. Most men, in his reckoning,
were really not fully aware of who they were and the virtues that they were supposed to attain in order to
preserve their souls for the afterlife. Socrates thought that this is the worst that can happen to anyone. To live
but die inside.
For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is dualistic,
that is, he is composed of two important aspects of his personhood. For Socrates, this means all individuals have
GE 101 Understanding the Self MRAguilos 1st Semester 2025-2026
an imperfect, imperfect aspect, the body, while maintaining that there is also a soul that is perfect and
permanent.
Plato, Socrates’ student basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual
nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added that there are parts or three
components to the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum opus, The
Republic (Plato 2000), Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be attained of the three parts
of the soul are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul forged by reason and intellect has to
govern the affairs of the human person; the spirited part, which is in charge of emotions, should be kept at bay;
and ther appetitive soul in charge of base desires, like eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sexual intercourse,
is controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, the human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous.

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the
medieval world when it comes to man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound
doctrine of Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature. There is an aspects of man, which
dwells in the world, that is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the divine while the other is capable of
reaching immortality.
The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to anticipate living eternally in arealm of spiritual bliss
in communion with God. This is because the body can only thrive in the imperfect, physical reality that is thw
world, whereas the soul can also stay after death in an eternal realm with the all transcendent God. The goal of
every human person is to attain this communion and bliss with the Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.
Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent 13th century scholar and stalwart of the medieval
philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. Adopting some ideas from
Aristotle. Aquinas said that, indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and from.
Mater, or hyle in Greek, refers to the common stuff that makes up everything in the
universe. Man’s body is part of this matter. On the other hand, form, or morphe in
Greek, refers to the essence of a substance or thing. It is what makes it what it is. In
the case of the human person, the body of the human person is something that he
shares even with animals. The cells in a man’s body is more less akin to the cells of
any other living, organic being in the world. However, what makes a human person a
human person and not a dog or tiger is his soul, his essence. To Aquinas, just as for
Aristotle, the soul is what animates the body, it is what makes us humans.

Descartes
Rene Descartes, Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived that the
human person as having a body and a mind. In his famous treatise, The
Meditations of First Philosophy, Descartes claims that there is so much that
we should doubt. In fact, he says that much of what we think and believe
because they are not infallible, may turn out to be false. one should only
believe that which can pass the test of doubt (Descartes 2008). If something is
so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is the only time when
one should actually buy a proposition. In the end, Descartes thought that the
only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self. For even if one
d0ubts oneself, that only proves that there is a doubting self, a thing that
thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus, his famous cogito ergo sum or I think therefore, I am. The
fact that one thinks should lead one to conclude without a trace of doubt that he exists. The self for Descartes is
also a combination of two distinct entities: the cogito or the thing that thinks, which is the mind and the extenza
or extension of the mind, which is the body. In Descartes’ view, the body is nothing else but a machine that is
attached to the mind. The human person has it but it is not what makes man a man. If at all, that is the mind.
Descartes says, “But what then, am I? A thinking thing. It has been said. But what is thinking thing? It is a thing
that doubts, understands(conceives), affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives”
(Descartes 2008).
GE 101 Understanding the Self MRAguilos 1st Semester 2025-2026

Hume
David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, has a very unique way of
looking at man. As an empiricist who believes that one can know only
what comes from the senses and experience, Hume argues that the self is
nothing like what his predecessors thought of it. The self is not an entity
over and beyond the physical body. One can rightly see here the
empiricism that runs through his veins. Empiricism is the school of
thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can only be possible if it is
sensed and experiences. Men can only attain knowledge by experiencing.
For example, Jack knows that Jill is another human person not because
he has seen her soul. He knows she is just like him because he sees her,
hears her, and touches her.
To David Hume, the self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. What are impressions? For David
Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized into two: impressions
and ideas. Impressions are the basic object of our experience or sensation. They therefore form the core of our
thoughts. When someone touches an ice cube, the cold sensation is an impression. Impressions therefore are
vivid because they are products of our direct experience with the world. Ideas on the other hand, are copies of
impressions. Because of this, they are not as lively and vivid as our impressions. When one imagines the feeling
of being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
What is the self then? Self, according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and
movement” (Hume and Steinberg, 1992). Men simply want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, a
soul or mind just like what the previous philosopher thought. In reality, what one thinks as unified self is simply
a combination of all experiences with a particular person.

Kant
Thinking of the self as mere combination of impressions was
problematic for Immanuel Kant. Kant recognizes the veracity in Hume’s
account that everything starts with perception and sensation of
impressions. However, Kant thinks that 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. For
Kant, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the impressions that men
get from the external world. Time and space, for example, are ideas that one
cannot find in the world but is built in our minds. Kant calls these apparatus
of the mind.
Along with the different apparatus of the mind goes the self. Without
the self, one cannot organize the different impressions that one gets in relation to
his own existence. Kant therefore suggests that the “self” is an actively engaged intelligence in man that
synthesizes all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self is not just what gives one his personality. It is also the
seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

Ryle
Gilbert Ryle solves the
denying blatantly the concept of an internal, non-physical self. For Ryle,
what truly matter is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day
life.
For Ryle, looking
university and looking for the “university”. One can roam around the
campus, visit the library and the football field, meet the administrators
and the faculty, and still end up not for finding the “university”. This is
GE 101 Understanding the Self MRAguilos 1st Semester 2025-2026
because the campus, the people, the systems, and the territory all form the university. Ryle suggests that the self
is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient name that people use to refer to all the
behaviors that people make.

Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty is phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body
bifurcation that has been going on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an
invalid problem. Unlike Ryle who simple denies the self, Merleau-Ponty
instead says that the mind and body are so intertwined that they cannot be
separated from one another. One cannot find any experience that is not
embodied experience. All experience is embodied. One’s body is his opening
toward his existence to the world. Because of these bodies, men are in the
world. Merleau-Ponty dismisses the Cartesian Dualism that has spelled so much
devastation in the history of man. For him, the Cartesian problem is nothing
else but plain misunderstanding. The living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.

REFERENCES
GE 101 Understanding the Self MRAguilos 1st Semester 2025-2026
Beilharz, Peter and Trevor Hogan. 2002. Social Self, Global Culture: An Introduction to Sociological Ideas.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chafee, John. 2015. The Philosopher’s Way: Thinking Critically About Profound Ideas. 5th edition. Boston:
Pearson.

David, Randolph. 2002. Nation, Self, and Citizenship: An Invitation to Philippine Sociology. Dept. of
Sociology, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines.

Descartes, Reñe. 2008. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ganeri, Jonardon. 2012. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Hume, David, and Eric Steinberg. 1992. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a
Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature. Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing.

Marsella, Anthony J., George A. De Vos, and Francis L. K. Hsu. 1985. Culture and Self: Asian and Western
Perspectives. London: Tavistock Publications.

Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of Social Behaviorist. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Plato. 2000. Plato: The Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

____. 2012. Six Great Dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium, The Republic. Bloomberg:
Courier Corporation.

Rappe, Sara L. 1995. “Socrates and Self-Knowledge.” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science
28(1):1-24.

Schlenker, Barry R. 1985. The Self and Social Life. Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill.

Stevens, Richard. 1996. Understanding the Self. New York: SAGE.