I. What is a human person?

-a person is a being characterized by consciousness, rationality, and a moral sense, and

traditionally thought of as consisting of both a body and a mind or soul.
-The kind of being that has the moral right to make its own life-choices and to live its life
without being provoked/interfered by others.
- a complete and individual personality, especially one that somebody recognizes as his or
her own and with which there is a sense of facility or ease.

What is the self?

Your “Self” is your basic personality or nature, especially considered in terms of what you
are really like as a person. Your “Self” is the essential part of your very nature which makes
you different from everyone else and everything else.
The Philosophical Views of the Self
"Know thyself"
Socrates
Understanding the philosophical underpinnings of the Self allows us to develop a wider and
deeper understanding and enjoyment of the self
The different views of prominent philosophers regarding the nature of the self will be
discussed, and although there are disagreements in how philosophers view the self, most of
them would agree that self-knowledge is a prerequisite to a happy and meaningful life.
Socrates
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
“There is only one good knowledge, and one evil – ignorance.”
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
 He was one of the founders of Western Philosophy.
 His most important contribution to the Western intellectual process was his Socratic
method
 Socratic method is a method of reasoning a means of arriving at the truth by
continually questioning, obtaining answers, and criticizing the answers
 Socrates believed:
 Knowledge is the personification of good, while ignorance is that of evil.
 Self-knowledge is the ultimate virtue, it will lead to ultimate happiness
The SELF emerges, according to Socrates, when humans possess certain virtues and leads a
virtuous life. And, such life is spent in the search of goodness to be better and happier
Virtues (the qualities of being morally good or righteous) are the most valuable possessions
of human beings and life the pursuit of should be spent in the search of goodness. The best
way to live a happier life is to focus on self-development than material wealth.

Plato
"If the world is not perfect, it is not because of God or the ideals, but because the raw
materials were not perfect."
Plato founded the Academy on a plot land containing a sacred grove just outside the city
walls of ancient Athens which had once belonged to the Athenian hero Akademos. The
Academy was one of the earliest and most famous and organized schools in Western
Civilizations and was the prototype for later universities.
Plato denied the existence of the outside world and reduced it to representations of
subjectivity. For him, ideas were available to us through thought, while phenomena are
available to us through our senses So, naturally, thought is a vastly superior means to get to
the truth.
"There's the body, which is material, mortal and moved Then, there's the soul, which is
ideal, immortal and unmoved.
For Plato, The Self emerges as one that utilizes ideas which had been well thought of and
utilizes one's senses to recognize the truth.

The views of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD)

Philosopher, Theologian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
St Augustine affirmed that the world was created by God from nothing: only through a free
act of His will. Time is a being of reason founded in the things that offer the mind the
concept of time such as past, present and future. Augustine affirmed the absolute unity and
spirituality of the human soul.
"The way to God was to look into oneself."
The soul is superior to the body.
Augustine affirmed that the soul is simple and immortal. He further believed that the
sensitive soul, besides having the five senses, was also endowed with a sensitive cognition
which was common among animals.
Three Functions of the Intellective Soul:
a. Being
b. Understanding
c. Loving
These three functions corresponded with:
a. intellective memory
b. intelligence
c. will
Among the three functions, primacy was given to the will, which signifies love in man. The
only true evil, according to St. Augustine, is moral evil, sin, an action contrary to the will of
God.
“The cause of moral evil is not God, who is infinite Holiness, nor is it matter, for matter is a
creature of God; and hence good. Neither is the will as a faculty of the soul evil for it too has
been created by God.”

The views of René Descartes (1596-1650)

French mathematician and philosopher, Father of Modern Philosophy
"The human mind has principles or a priori knowledge, independent of experience."
(Rationalism)
Descartes was educated in a scholastic tradition which combined scholastic tradition with
the Philosophy of Aristotle.
He built his own interconnected system of knowledge, which comprised knowledge of
metaphysics, physics and other sciences.
Three Principles of Science:
a. Medicine
b. Mechanics
c. Morals
Physics grounded the applied sciences of medicine (the science of the human body),
mechanics (the science of the machine) and morals (the science of the embodied mind).
The central claim of what is often called Cartesian dualism in honor of Descartes, is that the
immaterial mind and the material body, while being ontologically distinct substances,
causally interact.
Descartes held that the immaterial mind and the material body are two completely different
types of substances and that they interact with each other. He reasoned that the body could
be divided up removing a leg or arm, but the mind or soul were indivisible.
According to Descartes, the Self emerges as the human person who, not only possessed a
good mind, but used it well too.
To enhance one’s self one can read good books to be able to carry conversations with the
finest minds of past centuries. Thus.. The Self is a real seeker of truth.
René Descartes also postulated that we should doubt. Cartesian doubt, to put all beliefs,
ideas thoughts, and matter doubt. He showed that his grounds, or reasoning for any
knowledge could just as well be false. Sensory experience, The primary made of knowledge
is often erroneous and therefore must be doubted.
The only thing that he believed he could be certain of was that he was doubting, leading to
his famous phrase "Cogito ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am)

The views of John Locke (1632-1704)

British philosopher, Oxford. Academic and medical researcher
“All knowledge comes from experience.”
Locke was an empiricist who believes that all knowledge is derived from the experience of
the senses (Empiricism). He emphasized on the philosophical examination of the human
mind or consciousness as a preliminary to the philosophical investigation of the world and
its contents. Our mind is capable of examining, comparing and combining the cleat in
numerous ways. Knowledge consists of a special kind of relationship between different
ideas.
The Self is consciousness. Locke believed that the Self emerges through experiences The
self is crystallized, when an individual exercises the principles of freedom which protects
individual property

The views of David Hume (1711-1776)

Scottish philosopher and historian
David Hume professed the same philosophy with John Locke. He is also an empiricist who
claimed that all that can be known emanates from what we have seen, and not through
something that can only be appreciated intellectually
There is no self, only a bundle of perceptions/impressions.
He believes that the self emerges as one accumulates recurring experiences as such that
these experiences had been internalized and became part of one’s personhood
The views of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
German philosopher
"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
As a philosophical idealist, Kant believed that everything depended on how individuals
interprets and responds to his environment based on their personal opinions and feelings.
The Self transcends experience.
The Self emerges as a crystallized knowledge of oneself and others based on one’s recurring
observations
 There is an inner self and outer self
 The inner self includes rational reasoning and psychological state
 The outer self includes the body and physical mind, where representation occurs.

The views of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis
“One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
Freud believed that the human behavior was propelled by the drive to find pleasurable
experiences. He described this as a sexual nature. He believed that this was the foundation
of every human development. He postulated that each human behavior was motivated by
seeking pleasure. Irregularities in one's behavior could be interpreted as a lack in the
gratifications of said motives which probably was not within the individual's realm of
awareness.
The Self emerges as one that strives to address unmet needs and finds pleasurable
experiences to gratify one’s needs as determined by his aspirations, instincts-as he goes
through the different stages of growth and development. Freud holds that the self consists
of three layers: conscious, unconscious and preconscious. Thus...
The Self is multi-layered.

The views of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)

French philosopher and public intellectual
The Self is embodied subjectivity.
Merleau-Ponty posited the body as the primary site of knowing the world (a corrective to
the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge) and
maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each
other.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the self emerges as one that perceives the world and his
existence in the world, as he looks at the world through one’s body which is involved in
one’s existence.
GILBERT RYLE
“A person can see things only when his eyes are open, and when his surroundings are
illuminated, but he can have pictures in his mind’s eye, when his eyes are shut and the
world is dark.”
Ryle posited that anything perceived by the human senses can be explained though the
behavior that was used to observe them. Mental concepts can explain the behaviors one
manifests.
Therefore the self emerges as human behaviors unfold as it reflects one’s innate Self
conception; it emerges as one manifests behaviors descriptive of inner dreams, hopes.
Aspirations and wishes.
The Self is the way people behaved.

The views of PAUL CHURCHLAND (1942-present)

Canadian philosopher, Neuro-philosophy and the philosophy of the mind
“The brain is the engine of reason and the seat for the soul.”
Paul Churchland believed that folklores and mythical beliefs are fallacious for they are not
anchored on scientific and neurological explanations.
He believed that folklores such as everyday beliefs, practices, and rituals which were passed
to subsequent generations, are invalid because they cannot be reduced to neuroscientific
phenomenon.
Paul Churchland posited that the Self emerges not as something that is theoretically
founded, but as data innervated, since the Self cannot be a product of imagination and
opinions but of empirical observations.
The Self is the brain.
II. THE SOCIAL SELF
Chapter 1. THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES
Topic 2-The Social Self
• Through interaction with their social and cultural environments, people are transformed
into participating members of their society. Others help develop you.
“There are two populations in this world: You and others.”
DEFINITION
CONSTRUCT- Something (such as an idea or a theory) that is formed in the people’s mind
SOCIAL SELF- Who we are in a given social situation (we change how we act depending on the social
situation we are in)
SOCIOLOGY- Is the study of society and how this affects a person in a variety of context
The self emerges in our interaction with others.

Social behaviours are shaped based on how we interact with others in a given situation.

The groups that individuals belong to largely influence human behavior and the social interactions
that take place within them.

Sociological Perspectives in the Construction of The Self

Goffman and the Social Self (self as a performer)

Goffman (1959) in his book entitled “The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life” claimed that one’s
culture plays a role in developing social behaviors and one’s self identity in society.
Goffman argues that the self is simply nothing more than “self presentations” and “role
performances.

Social life as a theatre, with social scripts, performances and actors & roles that perform in the Front
and Back Regions of self.

The concept of depicting social life as a Theatre, Goffman developed the term Dramaturgy.

Dramaturgy is impression management. Social interactions is like a stage, the self promotes scenery
divided into two regions, the Front Regions (front stage) and Back Regions. (back stage).

•We stage manage our interactions to achieve the desired response in others.

It can either be "managed" (dress, ways of sitting, facial expressions) or "given off" (unconscious
twitches, blushes, bodily language)

•At one extreme, we are fully taken by our performance; our roles.
•At others, we are very cynical of our role and so, develop role distance and detach oneself from the
expectations of others.

• People learn intersubjective scripts about different appropriateness of ways of acting in situations
and how they develop "back regions" or "back stage."

Ex: In a restaurant, the kitchen is the back stage area in which waiters can joke, mock customers and
toy with the food. When they come through the door into the restaurant's front stage, they are
supposed to slip effortlessly into the controlled performance of the attentive waiter.

Selfhood is inevitably intersubjective. This means that there are inclinations we experience
commonalities in doing similar actions in similar circumstances which then become a common
ground of certain action references.

Regardless of the commonalities, it doesn’t mean that we have lost that uniqueness and peculiarity
that makes us different from others. Sociology vis-a-vis with understanding The Self contributes to
the understanding of the social construct of the self

Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your faces
-Goffman

Sociological Perspectives in the Construction of The Self

JOHN LOCKE

• English philosophe from the 1600’s.

• Insisted each newly born human being is a tabula rasa
• “blank slate”
• No personality
• Newborns could be molded into anything with training.

Sociological Perspectives in the Construction of The Self

George Herbert Mead (Symbolic Interactionism)

Mead believed that social interaction plays an important role in the development of the self.
Through ‘play’ and ‘game,’ we not only develop this sense of self, but also an understanding of the
social roles that surround us.

Stages of self
1. Preparatory
2. Play
3. Game

The generalized other is a concept of Mead in which children are able to not only take on the roles of
others, but also take into account the attitudes and perspectives of others in their social group. The
emergence of the generalized other requires the presence of some type of organized community or
social system, whether it be a baseball team or an organized family system.
As the self gradually develops, children internalize the expectations of a large number of people.
Now they develop the ability to take the role “the group as a whole” to this our perception of how in
general think of us, Mead gives the term generalized other”

Becoming self conscious through speech as the meaning of an act is found in the response it elicited
Taking the role of others in play and games as such that play takes on social role of others,
particularizes one’s perspective and develops a sense of otherness
Connecting the “I” and the “Me” in dialogue in the child’s growing years continually takes on the
attitudes of thase around him, especially the roles of those who control him and whom he depends

The “I” and “Me”

“‫”ן‬
• The unsocialized, spontaneous, self- interested component of personality.
• Very large role in children
• “Me”
• The part of our self that is aware of the expectations and attitudes of society.
• Very large role in adults.

“‫”יו‬
• is the acting body- subject
• is the spontaneous response
Gives the self the capacity to innovate
• becomes part of the “me”
“Me”
• is the “I” objectification
• is the organized set of attitudes of others
• is the vehicle of self-regulation and

Mead’s theory of the social self is based on the perspective that the self emerges from social
interactions, such as:
 observing and Interacting with others
 Responding to others’ opinions about oneself
 And Internalizing external opinions and Internal feelings about oneself

The social aspect of self is an important distinction because other sociologists and psychologists felt
that the self was based on biological factors and Inherited traits.
According to Mead, the self is not there from birth, but it is developed over time from social
experiences and activities.

According to Mead, three activities develop the self: language, play, and games.

Language develops self by allowing individuals to respond to each other through symbols, gestures.
words, and sounds

Play develops self by allowing individuals to take on different roles, pretend, and express expectation
of others Play develops one's self-consciousnes through role-playing

Games develop self try allowing individuals to undemand and adhere to the rules of the activity Self
is developed by understanding that there are rules in which one must abide by in activity
The Role of Socialization in the Formation of The Self

There are only two populations in this world; you and others The self is a product of an individual’s
interaction with society among other constructions. Since we are social beings, we like to interact
with others, and we somehow imprint our thoughts and ideas upon others from these interactions.
Socialization – the interactive process through which people learn

• Basic skills
• Values
• Beliefs
• Behavior patterns of a society
• Within socialization, a person develops a sense of self
• Conscious awareness of possessing a distinct identity that separates you from other members of
society.

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

Agents of Socialization-the specific individuals, groups, and Institutions that enable socialization to
take place In our country, the primary agents of socialization include family, the peer group, the
school, and the mass media.

The Interaction of Culture, Society and The Self (self-construal, cultural orientation)

Markus and Kitayama (1991) claimed that those who have independent self-construals define
themselves in terms of internal attributes such as traits, abilities, values, and preferences. In
contrast, those with interdependent self-construals define themselves
In terms of their relationships with others. Construal is the act of construing, interpreting, or
interpretation. People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others,
and of the interdependence of these two. These construals can Influence and determine the very
nature of individual experiences including cognition, emotion,and motivation
The Interaction of Culture, Society and The Self (self-construal, cultural orientation)
The independent self construals describe themselves in psychological terms such as
“I am sincere
Separation of self and society
Autonomous and agentic
As such, the European-American identity is geared towards attaining personal goals and
individualization of The Self.

The Interaction of Culture, Society and The Self (self-construal, cultural orientation)

Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness
of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious
interdependence. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by
attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes.

Triandis (2003) view that collectivist cultures are more likely to define themselves as aspects of
groups, give priority to in-group goals, focus on context more than content attributions and in
communications, pay less attention to internal processes as determinants of social behavior, define
most relationships within group members as communal, make more situational attributions, and
tend to be self-effacing.
Individualist cultures, on the other hand, see The Self as fully autonomous, but recognizes that
inequality exists among individuals, and that accepting this is inequality. On the other hand, they see
The Self as fully autonomous, and believing that equality between individuals is the ideal.

Modernity and the Social Self

The transmutations introduced by modern institutions interlace in a direct way with individual life
and therefore with The Self” (Giddens, 1991). Modernity breaks down the protective framework of
community and of tradition, which threatens the unity of Self

In modern societies, referring to ‘societies where modernity is well-developed’ and not ‘societies
today’, self-identity became an inescapable issue; everyday questions about clothing, appearances,
leisure to high- impact decisions about relationships, beliefs, and occupations.