MODULE 1

THE SELF FROM VARIOUS

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
Psy4-Understanding the Self
College of Accountancy
Psy 4- Understanding the Self
Module 1: THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

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Development Team of the Module

Writer: MELANIE A. ABIENDO, MBA

Instructor

Management Team

Chairpersons: REINALDA I. MAS, CPA, MBA

Dean, College of Accountancy

FRANKLIN L. SORIANO, Ph.D.

Vice President for Academic Affairs

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 This module provides you additional knowledge and information needed to help you
deepen your understanding and appreciation for who you are as a person. This includes the
various philosophical perspectives about the self. Such views came from the ideas of
Socrates, passed through his student named Plato; Augustine’s reflection following Plato’s
thoughts with the doctrine of Christianity; Thomas Aquinas; also from the Father of Modern
Philosophy named Rene Descartes; David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and empiricist; from
Immanuel Kant; from Gilbert Ryle; as well as Merleau-Ponty’s beliefs.

I know that you are already excited to get started; however, there are some tips that you
have to remember so that you will get the most from this module all you need to do are the
following:

1. Begin by reading and understanding the learning objectives.

2. Take the pre-test/assessment before proceeding to the discussion proper. The
test can give you an idea of how much time you will allot in each lesson.
3. Follow the directions and/or instructions in the activities diligently.
4. Answer all the given reading check and short activities.
5. Read carefully the discussion section. It contains important notes or basic
information that you need to know.
6. You must be able to apply in real- life situation what you learned in the
experiential activity.
7. Answer the post-test so that you will know how much you have learned from
the lessons.
8. Each lesson also provides you with references for your guide. They can be of
great help. Use them fully.

This module should be completed within a week.

If you set an average of 1 hour per day, you should be able to complete the module
comfortably by the end of the assigned week.

Try to do all the learning activity. If you do not get a particular question right in the first
attempt, you should not get discouraged but instead, go back and do it again. If you still do not
get it right after several attempts then you should seek help from your subject
teacher/instructor.

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 PRELIMINARY PERIOD
Module 1
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

After studying this module, you should be able to:

✓ Explain why it is essential to understand the self

✓ Describe and discuss the different notions of the self from the points-of-view of
the various philosophers across time and place
✓ Compare and contrast how the self has been represented in different
philosophical schools and
✓ Examine one’s self against the different views of self that were discussed in class

PRE-ASSESSMENT. Do these activities before you read about this module.

“Be an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love,

in faith and in purity” 1 Timothy 4:12.

ACTIVITY #1 DESCRIBING ONESELF

1. Write inside the box the words that describe you. Write as many as you can.

WORDS THAT DESCRIBE ME

Your Photo

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 2. How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
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PRE-TEST: Let’s TEST YOUR MASTERY!

Activity #2: TRUE OR FALSE?

Write T if the statement is correct and X if it is wrong about The SELF. If you are
not sure of your answer, DON’T WORRY! You may guess. What is important is
that you give an answer. Write your answer on the blank space provided before
the number.
___1. Every human person is dualistic.
___2. Man is of a bifurcated nature.
___3. The self is a thing that thinks.
___4. The self is a thing that does not doubt, refuses and perceives.
___5. The self is an entity.
___6. The self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
___7. The self is collection of different perception.
___8. The self is always unique and has its own identity.
___9. The self is the essence of personal identity.
___10. The self is composed of two parts: matter and form.

Now, CHECK your own answers. For the ANSWER KEY, please refer to the last page
of this module.

What is your score? Do you think you need to learn more?

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Lesson Opening: Knowing oneself is critical to being an effective student as well as

being successful in life, roles, and relationships. Your personal identity influences
everything you do, and it changes and evolves over time. In this module, you will learn
the various philosophical perspectives about the self from some well-known
philosophers in the history.

Guiding Questions:
1. What is the significance of understanding oneself?
2. Who are the philosophers who contributed ideas about the “self” concept?
3. How the points-of-view of the various philosophers differ from each other?
4. How do you view yourself when simply looking at the mirror?

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 Discussion:
THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

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. The Greeks were the ones 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 the self. The different perspectives and views on the self can be best seen
and understood by revisiting its prime movers and identify the most important conjectures made by
philosophers from the ancient times to the contemporary period.

SOCRATES AND PLATO

Prior the Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called the Pre-Socratics to
denote that some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around Socrates’s time as well,
preoccupied themselves with the question of the primary substratum, archě that explains the
multiplicity of things in the world.

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 was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-
Socratics, Socrates was more concerned with another subject,
the problem of the self. He was 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.

Plato claimed in his dialogs that Socrates affirmed that the

unexamined 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, particularly about who they are (Plato
2012).

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 an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body, while maintaining
that there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.

Plato, Socrates’s 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 three components of 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 if 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 soul which is in charge of emotions should be kept at bay, and

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 • The appetitive soul in charge of base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex
are controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, then 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. An aspect of man dwells in the world and is imperfect
and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the other is
capable of reaching immortality.

The body is bound to die on earth and the soul is to

anticipate living eternally in a realm of spiritual bliss in
communion with God. This is because the body can only thrive
in the imperfect, physical reality that is the 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. Adapting some ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas
said that indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and form.

Matter, or hyle in Greek, refers to the “common stuff that makes

up everything in the universe.” Man’s body is part of this matter.
Form on the other hand, 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 man’s
body are more or 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 a tiger is his soul, his essence.
To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the
body; it is what makes us humans.

DESCARTES

Rene Descartes, Father of Modern Philosophy, conceived of the

human person as having a body and a mind. Descartes thought that
the only thing that one cannot doubt is the existence of the self, for
even if one doubts oneself, which only proves that there is a doubting
self, a thing that thinks and therefore, that cannot be doubted. Thus,
his famous, cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore, I am.” The self for
Descartes is also a combination of two distinct entities, the cogito, the
thing that thinks, which is the mind, and the extenza or extension of
the mind, which is the body. In Descartes’s 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 a thinking thing?
It is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and
perceives.”

Psy4-Understanding the Self

DAVID HUME

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 objects of our experience or sensation. They therefore
from the core of our thoughts. When one 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 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 philosophers thought. In reality, what one thinks is a unified self is
simply a combination of all experiences with a particular person.

KANT
Thinking of the “self” as a mere combination of impressions was problematic for Immanuel Kant. Kant
thinks 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. Time and space, for example, are
ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds.
Kant calls these the apparatuses of the mind.

Along with the different apparatuses 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 it is an actively engaged intelligence in man that synthesizes
all knowledge and experience. Thus, the self is not just what gives one his personality. In addition, it
is also the seat of knowledge acquisition for all human persons.

RYLE

Gilbert Ryle solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been running for a long time in the history of
thought by blatantly denying the concept of an internal; non-
physical self. What truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.

Looking for and trying to understand a self as it really exists is like

visiting your friend’s university and looking for the “university.” One
can roam around the campus, visit the library and the football field,
and meet the administrators and faculty and still end up not finding
the “university.” This is 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.
Psy4-Understanding the Self
MERLEAU-PONTY

Merleau-Ponty 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 an 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. He 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.

Activity #3: Comparing

In your own words, state what “self” is for each of the following philosophers. After doing so,
explain how your concept of “self” is compatible with how they conceived of the “self.”

Use another sheet of paper for this activity.

ACTIVITY #4: Two-Minute Speeches

Prepare a two-minute speech about yourself describing the essence of your personal
identity, “Who are you?” You can share something very interesting & unique about
yourself. You can also talk about your family, your goals and dreams, and what’s really
in your heart right now as a young student.

Generalization:

I learned that _________________________________________________________

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Psy4-Understanding the Self

 UNIT EXERCISES
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the
crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” James 1:12

DO NOT LEAVE ANY PART & QUESTIONS UNANSWERED.

Name:_______________________________________ Section:_________
Class Schedule:______________ Score:__________

Begin here!

I. . MATCHING TYPE. Directions: Match column B with column A. (NO

ERASURES).

COLUMN A COLUMN B

____1. Unexamined life is not worth living a. Rene Descartes

____2. Magnum opus, “The Republic” b. Merleau-ponty
____3. Newfound doctrine of Christianity c. Plato
____4. Man is composed of two parts: Hyle & d. Pre-Socratics
Morphe
____5. Father of Modern Philosophy e. Gilbert Ryle
____6. The self is nothing else but a bundle of f. Augustine
impression
____7. Apparatuses of the Mind g. Socrates
____8. What matters is the behavior that a h. Immanuel Kant
person manifests in his day-to-day life.
____9. Mind and Body are so intertwined i. Hume
____10. Question of the primary substratum, j. Thomas Aquinas
Arche

II. Critical Thinking

Here are some quotations. Read and explain each of them. Do you agree or
disagree? Why or why not? Explain in not more than 50 words,

1. “All individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him.”

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Psy4-Understanding the Self

 2. ” The goal of every human person is to attain communion and bliss with the
Divine by living his life on earth in virtue.”
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3. “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.”
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****************** End of Post-test *********************

”END is not the end. In fact, End means Effort Never Dies”

Feedback (Send via SMS/PM)

What difficulty that I encounter in using this module

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ANSWER KEY TOTHE TRUE OR FALSE PRE-TEST/ASSESSTMENT

1. T 4. X 7.T 10. T
2. T 5. X 8.T
3. T 6. T 9.T

Psy4-Understanding the Self

 REFERRENCES:

Books & Internet/Website:

Beilharz, Peter, and Trevor Hogan. 2002. Social Self, Global Culture: An Introduction to
Sociological Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chaffee, John. 2015. The Philosopher’s Way: Thinking Critically about Profound Ideas. 5th Ed.
Boston: Pearson.

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

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

Ganeri, Jonardon. 2012. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance.
New York: 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 Treastise
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 a 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.
Courier Corporation.

Plato. 2017. The Republic. Germany: BookRix.

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. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Stevens, Richard. 1996. Understanding the Self. California: SAGE Publications.

For your inquiries or clarification, please text or call:

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0927 743 2053

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Thank You & God bless!

Psy4-Understanding the Self