Philosophy

Philosophy is derived from the Greek words “Philos” and “Sophia” which literally means “Love for
Wisdom”. It is the study of acquiring knowledge through rational thinking and inquiries that involves in
answering questions regarding the nature and existence of man and the world we live in. As such, it is
imperative to look into the various explanations from different philosophers and their notions of what
the “Self”, its nature, and how it is formed in order to have a better picture on how people develop their
behaviors, attitude and actions and to be able to identify and understand who we are and how we came
to be.

Socrates

Socrates’ work was never published, we were only able to know who Socrates is and his works
because of his illustrious students spoke generously and in detail about his knowledge, wit, wisdom and
intellect. His student Plato for example included Socrates in some of his work as a pivotal character.

He could be considered as the first martyr of education, knowledge and philosophy. For lighting
up the minds of his students, he was literally charged with corruption of minors. He was made to choose
between exile and death via the intake of hemlock. Socrates chose the latter, thus dying as a martyr who
fought against ignorance and narrow-mindedness.

The philosophy of Socrates underlies in the importance of the notion “knowing oneself” for him,
men’s goal in life is to obtain happiness and such goal motivates us to act towards or avoid things that
could have negative repercussions in our lives. As such, by fully knowing oneself a person will be able to
achieve happiness.

Socrates also posited that possession of knowledge is a virtue and that ignorance is a depravity,
that a person’s acceptance of ignorance is the beginning of acquisition of knowledge. So, one must first
have the humility to acknowledge one’s ignorance so as to be able to know what he is lacking and what
he needs to know.

Socrates believes that the answer to our pursuit in knowing ourselves lies in our own abilities
and wisdom, and that the only way for us to understand ourselves is through internal questioning or
introspection. This method of questioning oneself, where the person assumes the role of both the
teacher and the student is known to the world as the Socratic Method or Socratic Conversation.

By continuously asking and evaluating who we are, we as a person will also be able to
understand our strengths and weaknesses, the things that we like and dislike, how we want people to
treat us and how we want ourselves to be treated, so by knowing these things we can actin accordance
to what we know we are and live our lives following our knowledge of ourselves.

Plato

One of the most prominent thinkers of his time, Plato included in his work the learnings and
ideas shared to him by his teacher Socrates. He wrote several pieces of literature that tackles politics,
human nature, and established the idea of virtue and intelligence. Plato is historically known to be the
father of the academy, a place where learning and sharing of knowledge happens, that later became one
of the pillars and basis of what schools and education is now in the present.

Plato generally followed his teacher and the idea of knowing thyself although from his works
such with the notable ones’ such as the Allegory of the Cave, The Apology, and his work on a perfect
government and societal system, “The Republic” where he said that the world can only be led by a
Philosopher king, a person who is virtuous as well as intelligent. According to Plato, a person who is a
follower of truth and wisdom will not be tempted by vices and will always be just.

Plato also believed in the division of a person’s body and soul which forms the person as a whole
aside from the material things and that could be observed and associated with a person, Plato presented
the idea that one’s soul is divided into three different parts that has different views leading to different
behaviors, these parts of the soul are known as the Appetitive, Spirited, and Rational Soul.

Plato’s 3 parts of the soul

Appetitive Soul – Plato’s idea of the appetitive soul is the part of the person that is driven by desire and
need to satisfy oneself. This satisfaction both involves physical needs and pleasures and desires. As long
as the person find an object or situation good or satisfying, the Appetitive soul can drive the person to
lean towards those objects and situations.

Spirited Soul – this part of the soul can be attributed to the courageous part of a person, one who wants
to do something or to right the wrongs that they observe. Spirited soul are very competitive and is very
active, his competitiveness drives one to expect positive results and winning.\

Rational Soul – The last part of the soul could be said as the driver of our lives, this is the part that thinks
and plan for the future “the conscious mind” it decides what to do, when to do it and the possible
results one could have depending on their actions.

St. Augustine

A saint and a Philosopher of the church, St. Augustine follows the idea that God encompasses us
all, that everything will be better if we are with God. His work’s focal point is on how God and his
teachings affects various aspects in life, he follows the belief that everything is better if we devote
ourselves in mending our relationship with God.

His idea of a man and how to understand who we are as a person is related to our understanding of who
we are and how we question ourselves, though St. Augustine also relates our existence to God being
modeled in his likeness though being alive means that we are still far from God and has yet to be truly
with him.

St. Augustine also rejected the doubtfulness of the Academy in which one cannot or should not
accept ideas from others. He emphasized that we may not be able to give our agreement to everything
other people tell us but we can still agree to those who we, from our own perception, think is right or
wrong based from our perception.

He believes that our notion of ourselves and our idea of existence comes from a higher form of
sense in which bodily senses may not perceive or understand, and the more one doubts and question his
life means that , that person is actually living. St. Augustine while integrating the teaching of the church
in his philosophy and establishing our sense of self with God which we cannot achieve with our bodies
since the limitation of our senses in truly understanding the essence of our existence and role in the
world is limited. So people is in need to establish their relationship with God through being virtuous, but
at the same time, to be able to stand by on what we think is true, who we think we are that are from our
own understanding and solely defined by us alone although people may say differently, by continuously
questioning and finding the truth will we be able to find the best answer to who we are and what our
role is in the world.

Descartes

Rene Descartes is a French philosopher known to be the father of modern philosophy because of
his radical use of systematic and early scientific method to aid his ideas and assumptions. Though his
works were often compared or said to be similar to the concept of St. Augustine which could be traced
back to the works of Plato, what his ideas sets him apart is on his belief in modern dualism or the
existence of body and mind and it’s implication to one’s existence were presented with the evidences
from experiments as well as philosophical reasoning, he is also known to be the proponent of the
“Mechanical Doubt” which simply meant of a continuous process of questioning what we perceive and
accepting the fact that doubting, asking questions are a part of ones’ existence. As such he has defined
the roles of the mind and body to the notion of one’s existence and sense of self.

Descartes is known for the statement “Cogito Ergo Sum” which means in English as “I think
therefore I am”. According to him, a person is comprised of mind and body, the body that perceives from
the different senses and the mind that thinks and questions or doubt what the body has experienced.
For him, the body and its perceptions cannot be fully trusted or can easily be deceived. For instance,
there are times that we feel that a dream is real before actually waking up or having different perception
of size based on an objects distance from the viewer.

Descartes explained that because we cannot always trust our senses and in turn what we
perceive as who we are or the essence of our existence, we as a rational being should focus on the mind
and explained that the more we think and doubt what we perceived from our senses and the answer
that came from such thinking or doubting leads to better understanding of ourselves. He also implies
that being in a constant doubt regarding one’s existence is proof that a person actually exist.

Locke

John Locke is an English Philosopher and physician. He is considered to be the father of Classical
Liberalism, some of his works on this subject matter paved the way to several revolutions to fight the
absolute powers of monarchs and rulers of his time that led to the development of governance, politics
and economic system that we now know.

His work on the self is most represented by the concept “Tabula Rasa” which means a Blank
Slate. He believed that the experiences and perceptions of a person is important in the establishment of
who that person can become. Unlike what the other philosophers view on human experiences and
senses, John Locke does not disregard the experiences of the person in the identification and
establishment of who we are as a person. He stated that a person is born with knowing nothing and that
is susceptible to stimulation and accumulation of learning from the experiences, failures, references, and
observations of the person.

Considering this, the process of the mind to absorb information and accumulate knowledge may
imply that as a person to be able to be whom we want to be, with the right stimulations, enough
experiences, as well as awareness that by primarily knowing nothing will enable one to be open to any
kind of learning and does not limit any possibilities for growth implies that the opportunity for one
person to develop to anything he wants to be is limited only to the environment, experiences, and the
choices of the person.

Hume

The Scottish Philosopher David Humer, focused his work in the field of Empiricism, Skepticism,
and Naturalism. Being an Empiricist which believes in concrete evidences and observable experiences
that meld a person, his notion on the self contradicts to the ideas of the philosophers before him which
said that at the notion of self, one’s identity and behaviour does not exceed the physical realm and that
the “Self” is only the accumulation of different impressions.

According to him, there is no permanent “Self”. That since our impressions of things based from
our experiences and from such impressions we can create our ideas and knowledge which leads to the
argument that since our impression and ideas change, it may improve or totally be replaced means that
one change occurred the same phenomenon of will happen to one’s idea of who he is and what he can
do.

That is the idea that Hume reiterated when saying that there should be no permanent concept
of the self. He said when a person is asked the question “who you are?” That person tends to answer
different impressions such as good, happy, optimistic, contented, sad, etc. Generally they apply to who
you are now but at the same time these characteristics might change from time to time. If the neighbor
you knew your entire life to be happy and have a positive outlook suddenly looked sad and discontented,
can we say that the person you are seeing is not your neighbor anymore?

Kant

Immanuel Kant, a German Philosopher that is known for his works on Empiricism and
Rationalism. Kant responded to Hume’s work by trying to establish that the collection of impressions and
different contents is what it only takes to define a person.

Kant argued that the awareness of different emotions that we have, impressions and behaviour
is only a part of our self. He said that to fully understand who we are, a certain level of consciousness or
sense that uses our intuition which synthesizes all the experiences, impressions and perceptions of
ourselves will pave the way to define and know who we really are.

Kant argued that the sense called “Transcedental Apperception” is anesscence of our
consciousness that provides basis for understanding and establishing the notion of “self” by synthesizing
one’s accumulation of experiences, intuition and imagination goes. Which means that this idea goes
beyond what we experience but still able to become aware of. For example, the idea of time and space,
we may not be able to observe the movement of time and the vastness of space but we are still capable
of understanding their concept based from what we can observe as their representation.
 With that in mind and following the idea of Kant about “self”, we can say that we are not only an
object that perceives and reacts to whatever it is that we are experiencing, we also have the capabilities
to understand beyond those experiences and be able to think and have a clear identification of who we
are an establish a sense of self that is unique and distinct from others.

Freud

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian Psychologist and Physician, he is also known as the father of
psychoanalysis and is known for his work on human nature and the unconscious. Freud believed that
man has different constructs of personality that interacts with each other and along with his concept of
the different levels of consciousness provides an idea how a person develops a sense of self.

Aspects of Personality

ID – also known as the child aspect of a person, The ID’s attention is on satisfaction of one’s needs and
self-gratification. It is driven by the pleasure principle.

SUPEREGO – is the conscience of one’s personality, Superego has the inclination to uphold justice and do
what is morally right and socially acceptable actions. The superego is involved in the notion of right or
wrong that is imparted to us by our parents or people that took care for us during childhood.

EGO – Sometimes known as the Police or the mediator between id and superego. It operates within the
boundaries of reality, primary function is to maintain the impulses of the ID to an acceptable degree.

Freud also introduced the idea that the accumulation of the experiences of a person helps build
his personality although such information are not stored in a single area where we can access them at
any time. He introduced the levels of consciousness, The Conscious where minority of our memories are
being stored and the memories that are in the conscious is easier to be tapped or accessed. The other
one is the Pre-conscious, the middle part of the entirety of our consciousness, the memories stored in
this area can still be accessed but with a little difficulty. And the last one is the Unconscious, this area is
where majority of our memories since childhood are deeply stored. It is very difficult to tap the
memories in the unconscious, it would need a trained professional and several special techniques in
order to make some memories resurface.

Freud believed that we are a by-product of our experiences in the past. And that are actions are
driven by the idea of resisting or avoiding pain, and are molded from our need for pleasure or being
happy.

Ryle

Gilbert Ryle with his Behavioristic approach to self, said that self is the behavior presented by the
person, his notion of dualism is that the behavior that we show, emotions and actions are the reflection
of our mind and as such is the manifestation of who we are.

Ryle does not believe that the mind and body, though some say can coexist, are two separate
entities which is said to be evident in the unexplainable phenomenon or abilities of the mind where the
soul is considered. To him, once we encounter others, their perceptions of what we do, how we act, and
the way we behave will then result to the understanding of other people and establishing of who we are.
 His explanation of self is further exemplified in his “ghost in the machine” view. This view said
the man is a complex machine with different functioning parts, and the intelligence, and other
characteristics or behavior of man is represented by the ghost in the said machine.

He gave further explanation using an example imagining that if you are touring a visiting friend
to the university that you are studying and you brought him to the athletic center, library, buildings and
classrooms, but then your friends ask “but where is the university?” As such is the point of Ryle, all those
places, buildings and offices are the university which supports his idea that the mind and body is not
necessarily separate entities. So considering that analogy, the idea of Ryle is saying that the things that
we do, how we behave and react and all other components like the way we talk, walk, and look is
generally who we are as a person.

Churchland

Paul Churchland, a Canadian philosopher whose focus is on the idea that people should improve
our association and use of words in identifying the self. He had this idea that the “self” is defined by the
movements of our brain.

Churchland’s work revolves around challenging of the notion and terms being used to explain
behavior or to explain how a person feels, thinks, and act with regards to physiological phenomenon that
is happening in the body as well as definitions brought about by emotions, this is one of the notion of
the concept of Folk Psychology also know as common sense psychology.

The main philosophy of Churchland built the idea of “eliminative materialism”. Basically,
eliminative materialism opposes that people’s common sense understanding of the mind is false and
that most of the mental states that people subscribe to, in turn, do not actually exist, this idea also
applies on the understanding of behavior and emotions.

This leads to his idea of Neurophilosophy, he believed that to fully understand one’s behavior,
one should understand the different neurological movement of the brain that pertains to different
emotions, feelings, actions and reactions and how such brain movements affect the body. With this in
mind, we can eliminate the ambiguity of subjective and baseless identification of the mind, behavior and
self in general because by understanding the different neural pathways, how they work, and what
implications are those movements are to people, will we not only have proof that there is a measurable
classification on one’s behavior it can also be said that the constant movement of the brain can be the
basis of who the person is, this is emphasized by Churchland and his wife in the statement “The Brain as
the Self”.

Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty is a French philosopher that is known for his works on
existentialism and phenomenology. His idea of the self regarded that the body and mind are not
separate entities, but rather those two components is one and the same. His idea that follows the gestalt
ideation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in which pushed his idea on the unity of
the function of the mind and body, this idea is called the Phenomenology of Perception.

The idea of Phenomenology of Perception according to Merleau-Ponty is divided into three

divisions, The Body, The Perceived World, and The People and the World.
The body that both receives the experience as well as integrates such experiences in the different
perception. The Perceived World, which are the accumulation of the perception as integrated by the
experiences of the body. And the People and the World that enable one to not only be able to integrate
the other objects in the world but also to be able to experience the cultural aspect and relate to others.

His idea of perception follows the idea of Gestalt psychology which gives importance on the
whole than the sum of its parts. For him, perception guides our action based from what our experiences
are, the body perceives while our consciousness provides the meaning or interprets the various
perceptions we have in the world and the self could be established by the perceptions we have in the
world, whereas one’s action, behavior and language used could be said to be the reflection of our united
perception of the world.