GNED 08 - Understanding the Self Part 1: The Self From Various Perspectives  

“Philos” - Which means love “Sophia” - means wisdom

Big Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

  1. Socrates    “The unexamined life is not worth living”    The touching of the soul, may mean helping the person to get in touch with his trueself    The true self is not the body but the soul.    The Socratic Method - Also called The Dialectic Method This method involves asking a series of questions seeking to find consistency and point out contradictions.
  2. Plato    Pluto’s real name is Aristocles (428-348 BCE)    He established a school known as “The Academy”    Pluto’s metaphysics is known as the “Theory of Forms”    Theory of Forms

   1. The forms are ageless and therefore are eternal

   2. The forms are unchanging and therefore permanent

   3. The forms are unmoving and indivisible.

   Plato’s Dualism

   The Realm of Forms - Composed of eternal things which are permanent and perfect. It is the source of all reality and true knowledge.

   The Realm of the Shadows - Composed of changing, sensible things which are lesser entities and therefore imperfect and flawed.

   Plato’s View of Human Nature

   a. The Reason - Rational and is the motivation for goodness and truth

   b. The Spirited - non-rational and is the will or the thrive toward action

   c. The Appetites - Irrational and lean towards the desire for the pleasure of the body

   Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - Symbolic representation of how human beings live in the world, contrasting reality versus our interpretation of it.

   Plato’s Theory of Love and Becoming

   “Love is the force that paves the way for all beings to ascend to higher stages of self-realization and perfection.”

   “Love is the way of knowing and realizing the truth. Love is a process of seeking higher stages of being. The greater the love, the more intellectual component it will contain.”

  1. St. Augustine of Hippo    A Christian Philosopher    Concerns mainly focus on God and man’s relationship with God.    Difference between Christian Philosophy and Greek Philosophy    Christian Philosophy relies on God’s commands and his judgment, and determines what is good and what is evil.    Greek Philosophy believes that man is innately good and becomes evil through ignorance of what is good.    St. Augustine’s View of Human NatureGod as the source of all reality and truth - According to St. Augustine without God as the source of all truth, man could never understand eternal truths.    The sinful of man - According to St. Augustine, the cause of sin or evil is an act of man’s free will. Moral goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.

   The Role of Love St. Augustine is in agreement with the Greeks that man searches for happiness. However, he stated that real happiness could only be found in God.

   - Love for Physical Objects is a sin of Greed

   - Love for Other People is a sin of Jealousy

   - Love for the Self is a sin of Pride

   - Love for God is the Real Happiness

  1. Rene Descartes - “Father of Modern Philosophy”    Introduced the Cartesian Method    Invented Analytic Geometry    Descartes’ SystemIntuition - The ability to apprehend direction of certain truths    Deduction - The power to discover what is not know by progressing to an orderly way from what is already known. Truth arrived at using a step by step process.

   Descartes’ view of human nature    “I think, therefore I am”    The cognitive aspect of human nature is the basis for the existence of the self.    The Mind-Body Problem    Soul/Mind (also the self) - a substance that is separate from the body.

   Body - according to him is like a machine that is controlled by the will and aided by the mind.

  1. John Locke

   Posteriori - knowledge results from ideas produced by experience

   ‘Tabula rasa’ - Blank State Nothing exists in the mind that wa not first in the senses Humans have no innate ideas, morals, religious and political values and they come from sense of experiences .

   3 Laws that Locked used to described soul

   Law of Opinion - Where actions are praiseworthy are virtues and those are not called vice.    Civil Law - where right actions are enforced by people in authority.    Divine Law - Set by God on the actions of man. This is deemed to be true law for human behavior.

  1. David Hume    SELF in the mind where it receives materials from the senses and calls it perceptions.    There is no permanent/ unchanging self.    Two types of perceptionsImpressions - immediate sensations of external reality.    Ideas - recollections of impressions    These two together make up the content of the human mind.    Hume’s View of Human Nature    The self is a product of imagination    He also stated that there is no such thing as ‘personal identity’ behind perceptions and feelings that comes and go    There is no permanent/ unchanging self    Three Principles On How Ideas Relate to One AnotherThe Principle of Resemblance - sensing the likeness of current experience to previous experiences.    The Principle of Contiguity - Associating an event to another level.    The Principle of Cause and Effect - The principle that all events have sufficient causes.

  2. Immanuel Kant    Mind actively participates un knowing the objects it experiences    Instead of mind conforming it to the world, the external world conforms to the mind.    He defined knowledge as a result of human understanding applied to sense experience.

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  4. Sigmund Freud    Freid revolutionizes ideas to determine human behavior.    Repressed thoughts aand memories are enough psychic energy to impose its control on the person’s consciousness.    Three levels of Mind    I. Id - Pleasure principle    II**. Ego** - Reality principle    III. Superego - Moral princple    Structure of mind

  • Libido - The energy of eros
  • Thanatos or death instinct - Behaviour towards destruction in a form of aggression and violence
  1. Gilbert Ryle

    Self is the BODY

    It is a mistake how a non-material substance known as the mind can influence a physical and a material body.

    Mind as “the ghost in the machine”

    Two types of knowledge Knowing that “empty intellectualism” as it refers to only knowing facts * Knowing how - using facts and performing it using skill or technical abilities

      “Knowing involves an ability and not just intellect.”

  1. Patricia and Paul Churchland     Man’s brain is responsible for the identity known as the ‘self’     Biochemical properties     Individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions come from abnormalities in the brain’s anatomy and physiology.

  2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty     His philosophy emphasizes the human body as the primary site of knowing the world.     Focuses on the relationship between self-experience and the experience of other people.     The meaning assigned to a particular object can change depending on the perspective from which it is seen.     It is possible that one subject may be perceived from various perspectives.