INTRODUCTION TO

UNDERSTANDING
THE SELF
CHAPTER 1 PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE
 IMPORTANCE OF PHILOSOPHY IN
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
• Philosophy is derived from two Greek
words philia meaning “love” and sophia
meaning “wisdom”.
• Literally philosophy means love of wisdom
• On the other hand, wisdom means the
good exercise of application of knowledge.
GREEK
PHILOSOPHERS
• In Athens, Greece approximately 600 B.C. marked the birth of Philosophy.
• Greek philosophers in Miletus chose to seek natural explanations to event and
phenomena around him instead of seeking for supernatural explanations gods.
• These philosophers observed changes in the world and wanted to explain these
changes by understanding the laws of nature. That led to idea of permanence.
• From trying to understand the universe questions now center to the inner world of
man.
SOCRATES

• A stonemason with sharp man, wanted to focus his philosophy with nature of
knowledge, justice, beauty and goodness.
• All his works was not written. A lot of his works were only known because of
Plato’s writing in The Dialogue.
• He was idolized by many Athenians and were despised by Sophist (skilled
teachers of the West)
• This angered Sophist brought him to trial and was sentenced to death by heresy.
SOCRATIC METHOD

• “I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”

• Socrates’ way of discovering what is essential in the world and in people.
• Socrates did not lecture, instead he would ask questions and engage the person
in discussion.
• He would begin by acting as if he did know anything and would the person clarify
their ideas and resolve logical inconsistence.
• The goal is to bring the person closer to the final understanding.
• Delphi Oracle (highest priestess of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi) named
Socrates the wisest man of all men.
• According to the oracle people were ignorant of what knowledge is most
important: how to live right and how to make our soul good. Only Socrates knew
this importance and also aware of ignorance of it.
• He was the only one who knew that he did not know
SOCRATES’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Self-knowledge
• According to Socrates one must strive for self-knowledge.
• He quoted, “the unexamined life is not worth living - once we know ourselves, we
may learn how to care for ourselves, but otherwise we never shall.”
Nature of true self
• The true self is our “soul”.
• The state of one's soul determines the quality of their life, thus we devote our
attention in making our soul good as possible.
Good & Evil
• Good - wealth, status, pleasure, social acceptance are the thing we
considered the greatest good in life;
• Evil - poverty, death, pain, social rejection
❖ “all human beings strive for happiness, for happiness is the final end in life.
Everything we do, we do because we think it will make us a happy.
Therefore ,we follow the label that what will bring us happiness is good and
what will bring us suffering and pain is evil.”
Virtue
• One supreme good, ultimate good, and moral excellence.
• Virtue-"a virtuous person is one whose character is made up of the moral
qualities accepted as virtues include courage, justice, prudence, and temperance
• Virtue is greatest good in life, for it can alone secure happiness
• It the most important of the state of soul
Happiness
• “ Human being naturally desires good as it alone secure happiness, with that
knowledge they have no choice but to be virtuous”.
knowledge=virtues=happiness
• When we arrived at the knowledge of virtue we would become virtuous and we
will make our soul good and beautiful and when we perfect our soul we will attain
true happiness.
Plato
• He was a Classical Philosopher, mathematician, writer of
philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens.
• Born into a prominent and wealthy family in the city Athens.
• Plato devoted his life to only one goal helping people reach a
state of what he called “Eudaimonia" or fulfillment
Some of the books written by Plato: (Dialogue)
• The Republic, The Symposium, The Laws, The Meno, The
Apology
THEORY OF FORMS

• It is the philosophical study on the causes and nature of things.

• Plato argues that focusing on the ideal version of something is one of the most
useful kinds of thought society can generate.
• According to Plato, ideals are the guide we need that show us how to do
something.
• A form is blueprint, a set of instructions to make the very good version of
something
 ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

• The most famous allegory in philosophy.

• The story was intended to compare “ the effect of
education and lack of it on our nature.
• The story of the cave is an allegory of the life of
enlightened people.
• For Plato we are most of our lives in shadow, many of
the things we get excited about like fame, perfect
partner, high status job are infinitely less real that we
 PLATO’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Think more and Know Yourself

• Give ourselves a time to think about our lives and how to lead them.
• Strengthen your self knowledge you don’t get yourself easily pulled
around by feelings by subjecting your ideas to examination rather
acting on impulse.
• According people we just go along with “doxa” means popular opinion.
• In honor of his mentor he called to process of examination “Socratic
discussion”
True love is admiration
• The person you need to get together with should have good qualities which you
yourself lack.

• By getting close to this person you become a little like there

are.
• For Plato, in a good relationship, a couple should not love
each other exactly as they are right now rather they should
be committed to educating each other to be the best version
of themselves.
MEDIEVAL & MODERN
PHILOSOPHERS
• Christian philosophers of the medieval era were also theologians.
• Their concern was with God and man’s relationship with God.
• These Christian philosophers did not believe that self-knowledge and happiness
were ultimate goals of man but instead man should rely on God’s command
and his judgment of what constitutes good and evil.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREEK PHILOSOPHERS
AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS
• Greek philosophers see man as basically good and becomes evil through
ignorance of what us good.
• Christian philosophers, on the other hand sees man as sinners who reject/ go
against God’s commands.
• Christian philosophers held supreme over reason and logic.

❖Christian philosophy became so powerful that church ordered Plato’s Academy in

Athens closed.
ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

• One of the famous Christian philosophers, that initially rejected Christianity for it
seemed to him then that Christianity could not provide him answers to questions
that interested him.
• He wanted to know about moral evil and why it existed in people.
• His personal desire for sensual pleasures and questions about all the sufferings
in the world.
ST. AUGUSTINE’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

God as the source of all reality and truth

• According to him without God as the source of all truth, man could never understand
eternal truths.
• The more we know God, the closest to understanding the true nature of the world.
The sinfulness of man
• According ti St. Augustine, the cause of sin or evil is an act of man’s freewill.
• Evil, therefore does not live in God’s creatures but rather than in man.
• Moral goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.
THE ROLE OF LOVE

St. Augustine is in agreement with the Greeks that happiness is the ultimate goal of
human. However, he stated that real happiness can only be found in God.
• Love of physical objects leads to the sin greed.
• Love for other people is not lasting and excessive love for them is the sin of
jealousy.
• Love for the self leads to the sin of pride.
• Love for God is the supreme virtue and only through loving God can man find real
happiness
Rene Descartes
• Known as the Father of Modern Philosophy.
• He was a French 17th century philosopher famous above all in the saying “ Cogito
ergo sum or I think Therefore I am”.
• He was considered as the Rationalist Philosophers of Europe.
• They considered truth as a universal concept and reason is superior to and
independent of sensory experience.
• Descartes proposed that we always have to divide large problems into small
understandable section by way of incisive questions called the Cartesian of
methods or method of doubt.
DESCARTES’ SYSTEM

• Through math, he discovered that the human mind has two powers”
1. Induction or the ability to apprehend direction of certain truths
2. Deduction or the power to discover what is not known by progressing in an orderly way
from what is already known. Truth arrives using a step by step process.
❖Truths that can be discovered are priori. Ideas discovered this way do not rely on some
experience because they are innate.
❖Philosophy should progress from simple ideas to complex ideas.
DESCARTES’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

• He observed that our senses is deeply unreliable but could trust that he was
actually thinking.
• He argued that we do not need scientist and using expensive equipment to prove
on something we just need ‘a quiet room and a rational mind.’
• One of his clear thoughts he called a ‘clear and distinct idea’ is that God exists.
• Skepticism refers to an attitude of doubt or disbelief, either in general or toward a
particular object, or to any doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind.
 MIND-BODY PROBLEM

• Descartes considered the soul/mind (also self) as a substance that is

separate from the body.
• He believed that all bodily processes are mechanical, the body like machine is
controlled by the will and aided by the mind.
John Locke
• He was born on August 29, 1632, in Wrington,
Somerset, England and son of a Puritan lawyer.
• Locke was interested in politics and like his father was
a defender of parliamentary system.
• At the age of 57, he published a book on the scope
and limits o human mind known as the
“Enlightenment”.
• Contrary to Descartes, Locke believed that knowledge results
from ideas produced by posteriori or by objects that were
experienced.
• The process involves two forms:
• Sensation wherein object were experienced through senses
• Reflection by which the mind ‘looks’ at the object that were experienced.
• He contended that ideas are not innate but rather believed that we
are all born as tabula rasa (blank slate)
• According to Locke, ”nothing exists in the mind that was
not first in the senses.
• What senses experience are simple ideas which are the
raw materials from which knowledge begins
• Ideas can also be the result of reflection which
demonstrate the power of thinking and volition or will.
• These mental powers, simple ideas are repeated and
compared to become complex ideas
LOCKE’S VIEW OF HUMAN

• According to Locke, morals religion and political view must come from sense
experience.
• Morality has to do with choosing or willing the good (Price,2000).
• Three laws according to Locke:
1. Law of Opinion –where action that are praiseworthy are called virtues and those that
are not are called vices.
2. Civil Law- where right actions are enforced by people in authority (courts or police)
3. Divine Law – set by God on the actions of man. This is the true law for human
behavior. This law is eternally true and the one law that man should follow.
SIGMUND FREUD

• An Austrian neurologist, considered to be the pioneering figures in the field of

psychology.
• According to him, repressed thoughts and memories have enough psychic
energy to impose its control on the person’s consciousness.
• Kept hidden and unexpressed, repressed memories resurface and are
manifested as some form of psychopathology.
• During his time it’s called hysteria.
STRUCTURES OF THE
MIND

UNCONSCIOUS
• Contains all drives, urges, or instincts that
are beyond our awareness but motivate
most of our words, feelings, and actions.
• is the explanation for the meaning behind
DREAMS, SLIP OF THE TONGUE, AND
REPRESSION
PRECONSCIOUS/SUBCONSCIOUS
• Contains elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite
readily or with some difficulty
• Contains stock knowledge

• CONSCIOUS
• Striving for success originates theory
• It is the mental elements in awareness at any given point in time.
• Freud believed that the human mind was composed of three
elements: the id, the ego, and the superego.
• The id is the aspect of personality that is entirely unconscious and
includes the instinctive and primitive behaviors. It is driven by pleasure
principle which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants,
and needs.
• The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy
the id's desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways.
• The superego holds all internalized moral standards and ideals. It is
our sense of right and wrong.