Understanding the Self

Western Philosophy about Self

Ancient Greek Philosophers

SOCRATES

Socrates believed that the “self” exists in two parts.

One part is the physical, tangible aspect of us. This is the part that is mortal and can be/is
constantly changing. Earth also belongs to this physical realm that our bodies belong in, because
just as us in terms of physicality, the Earth is constantly being modified.

The second part is the soul, which he believed to be immortal. The soul is the part that is
unvarying across all realms (it is unchanging while it is attached to your body and thus in the
physical realm, but is also unmodified once you die and your soul leaves the body to travel to the
ideal realm).

To expand on this slightly, Socrates believed that when we are in the physical realm, we are alive
and our body and soul are attached, therefore making both parts of our “self” present in the
physical realm. When we die however, our body stays in the physical realm while our soul travels
to the ideal realm, therefore making our soul immortal.

In addition, the idea of Socrates “know thyself” is part of the process of existing and self-
knowledge to truly understand the word “self.” It means knowing your weaknesses, of course,
but it also means knowing your strengths and what motivates you. ... The more adept you
become at motivating yourself, the more adept you'll be at sensing the factors that motivate
others (and putting them to use). Self-aware people (employees) make a self-aware world
(company).

PLATO

TAXONOMY OF SELF (PSYCHE = SOUL OR MIND in Greek)

1. Rational Soul – refers to the logical or reasoning aspect of a person’s identity.

Plato’s perspective on the idea of “self” is actually best represented in his theory/explanation of
the “psyche.” Rather than use the word “self,” he had what some academics call a tripartite theory
of the soul. He constructed a taxonomy of spirit/logic-reason/appetite as categories in which
people in essence respond to or seek life. I am oversimplifying here, for the sake of brevity. But,
in Plato’s Republic, you dig much more deeply into his thinking. So, the self, according to Plato,
in answer to your question, are the three coexistent aspects of the soul, from which you can
understand your own desires and behaviors. For instance, if one were to say something like, “I
can’t believe I did that. That’s just not me. I found myself randomly hooking up with the person
I just met on the bus ride home. And when I left, I felt like it was really out of character. I wasn’t
being myself.” In Plato’s view, that person may have been acting like themselves, though not
working from the logical/reasoning aspect of self, but out of the appetite, the lust the carnal
hunger the passionate part of one’s self. Others have followed Plato’s logic in the development
of psychological theory and other philosophical thinking. Freud is one the more obvious examples,
with id/ego/super ego. In Plato’s version of self, the spirit is the part of the self/soul that regulates
the appetitive and is the source of emotions like anger and other moods. In regulating various
appetitive passions, the spirited region is expressed because of either denial or acquiescence to
the carnal/temporal/appetitive.
By Craig Greatman, B.S. Religion & Philosophy, Liberty University (2010)

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle insisted that the human being is a composite of body and soul and that the soul cannot
be separated from the body. The body (matter) and the soul (form) complement each other as
combined become the so called “Human.” The soul actualizes the potentials of the body for it
to truly exist as a being that thinks, acts, and to be in motion or able to move. So, simply,
humans are composed of body and soul otherwise with the absence of each or one of them the
claim must be rejected.

TYPES OF SOUL ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE

The soul is the one thing that enables a body to engage in the necessary activities of life and they
build upon one another. the more parts of the soul a being possesses, the more evolved and
developed he is. the three types of soul are the nutritive soul, the sensible soul, and the
rational soul.

Nutritive Soul - The nutritive soul is the first and most widely shared among all living things.
For it can be said that anything that takes in nutrition, grows from this nutrition, and eventually
decays over time has a soul. Plants, for example, possess the nutritive soul solely while it is one
of two or three parts of the soul possessed by animals and humans. the nutritive soul is what
urges any creature to protect itself whenever possible, but also to produce offspring in any form
because its own life is finite.

Sensible Soul - The sensible soul, or the soul of perception, is the part of the soul that allows
us to perceive the world around us. It encompasses the senses but also allows us to remember
things that happened to us, experience pain and pleasure, and have appetites and desires. Most
animals and all humans possess the sensible soul while plants to not. Of course, not all animals
have the same abilities of perception. those who solely possess sense organs for a single sense
can potentially not be actualized by the sensible soul and are more like plants, possessing only
the nutritive soul. A cricket, for example, or mollusks.

Rational Soul - The rational soul belongs to man alone. The rational soul is that by virtue of
which we possess the capacity for rational thought. Aristotle divides rational thought into two
groups. The first is the passive intellect. It is the part of our mind that collects information and
stores it for later use. This is almost an extension of the sensible soul in that it allows us to act
upon the information gathered by that part of the soul.
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

St. Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-knowledge is
dependent on our experience of the world around us. He rejects a view that was popular at the
time, i.e., that the mind is “always on,” never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the
background. Instead, Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is triggered and shaped by
our experiences of objects in our environment. He pictures the mind as a sort of undetermined
mental “putty” that takes shape when it is activated in knowing something. By itself, the mind is
dark and formless; but in the moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees
itself engaged in that act. In other words, when I long for a cup of mid-afternoon coffee, I’m not
just aware of the coffee, but of myself as the one wanting it. So, for Aquinas, we don’t encounter
ourselves as isolated minds or selves, but rather always as agents interacting with our
environment. That’s why the labels we apply to ourselves—“a gardener,” “a patient person,” or
“a coffee-lover”—are always taken from what we do or feel or think toward other things.

We experience something doesn’t mean we instantly understand everything about it—or to use
his terminology: experiencing that something exists doesn’t tell us what it is. (By comparison: If
someday I encounter a wallaby, that won’t make me an expert about wallabies.) Learning about
a thing’s nature requires a long process of gathering evidence and drawing conclusions, and even
then, we may never fully understand it. The same applies to the mind. I am absolutely certain,
with an insider’s perspective that no one else can have, of the reality of my experience of wanting
another cup of coffee. But the significance of those experiences—what they are, what they tell
me about myself and the nature of the mind—requires further experience and reasoning. Am I
hooked on caffeine? What is a “desire” and why do we have desires? These questions can only
be answered by reasoning about the evidence taken from many experiences.

Aquinas, then, would surely approve that we’re not drawn to search online for answers to the
question, “Who am I?” That question can only be answered “from the inside” by me, the one
asking the question. At the same time, answering this question isn’t a matter of withdrawing
from the world and turning in on ourselves. It’s a matter of becoming more aware of ourselves
at the moment of engaging with reality, and drawing conclusions about what our activities
towards other things “say” about us. There’s Aquinas’s “prescription” for a deeper sense of self.

Written by: Therese Scarpelli Cory

ST. AUGUSTINE BONAVENTURE

For St. Augustine, the search for the self is the quest to understand the mystery of the soul.
Human beings are souls that long for an eternal answer and inner peace. Where can the souls
find such state of self? No problems, pain, confusions, questions or illness? This requires
transcendental encounter that will let one’s soul experience the existing without wanting or
wishing, a state where everything is clear.

Thus, for Augustine, one can truly know the mystery of the soul when he/she understands the
Ultimate Truth of the cosmos or synonymous to what we called “GOD.” Philosophically speaking,
the Truth that he mentioned was referring to the ultimate existence that can uncover the mystery.
Without understanding the existence of the self in search for the Truth, it is impossible to the
ultimate purpose of life and experience the hidden truth of the mystery.
The self is not wholly known to the actual self, our mind and memory are vast secret caverns that
full of hidden truths about the soul. Furthermore, the existence of the self changes as time passed
by. We forget and remember things that happened in the past that make us uncertain and
sometimes reintroduce such phenomenon or happening. Thus, to delve into a deeper
understanding of the soul is a eternal search. As conclusion, if there is an eternal search to unfold
the mystery of the soul there would be an eternal Entity to answer to the question, “Who I am?”
The One who created such ideas and mystery of existence.

MODERN PHILOSOPHERS

RENE DESCARTES

At the beginning of Descartes philosophy, he doubted everything because all physical senses and
existence are possible to be deceptions of what is really the truth. What he sees, hears, touches,
smells and tastes are all doubtful. So, he began his journey towards the truth of the existence of
Man by doubting.

While he was conducting the act of doubting, he realized that there is one thing that he cannot
doubted that he is doubting. Such act was invulnerable as a deception since he was already
doubting. So, how can you doubt that you are doubting? Doubting is a mental process that allows
a person to question such truth or idea.

Therefore, he concluded that when you are doubting you are thinking when you are thinking then
you are existing. The ultimate truth that he discovered as proof of existence is when you think,
“Cogito, ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am or I exist.

JOHN LOCKE

The self for Locke is gaining knowledge from experiences as he/she encounters the environment
that nourishes and nurture the identity. This concept is called “tabu la rasa” – a person as an
empty container that can be fully grasped ideas and learnings as he/she grows. Self is born as a
little Man who knows nothing about his/her environment. But as he/she grows older such skills
and ideas are made known slowly to the self.

Descartes taught us that the self is a thinking being but for Locke Man is not just a thinking being
but,

“Persons are therefore not just thinking intelligent beings that can reason and reflect, and
consider themselves as the same thinking things in different times and places, but also entities
that can be held accountable for their actions. It is because persons can think of themselves as
persisting over time that they can, and do, plan ahead, with an eye toward the punishment or
reward that may follow.”

What makes us aware of our identity? It is the consciousness of the self that we are what we are
even time passes or in a different place. This attribute makes us aware of our identity and
condition that we are accountable for our actions and thoughts. Therefore, we are a thinking
being and a conscious being responsible of our actions.
DAVID HUME

Hume has a very simple idea about self, he called it bundle of impressions or the bundle theory.
The self recognizes objects and other selves by having impressions that directly describe the
physical and behavioral aspect of another being. So, for Hume there is no self or soul (perhaps,
he didn’t focuses on the concept of soul rather on the actual experience of the self which are
impressions).

To verify the existence of an object or another self must have impressions that can be perceived
by the self such as height, skin color, hair color, habits, behaviors, scent, taste, etc.. For Hume,
these constitute the self. The growth of a person is a collection of perceptions or experiences that
make the self.

Two categories of Experience

For example, you went to Palawan for summer getaway and you had descriptions about Palawan
or a certain resort or place in Palawan. That is what we call impressions. We can dissect the
various perceptions of what we experience such as the temperature of water, the clarity of the
beach, the color of the sand, the customer service, quality of the products etc… while ideas are
just the imaginations that came across to your mind, like an idea of building your dream house,
riding a horse or flying to the moon. These are ideas that do not have an actual engagement to
the self. So, you have an impression about Palawan and you can have an idea about Maldives.

Souls are not important for Hume since the apparent concerns and priority to understand the
existence of the self are these impressions which describe the objects and other selves.

IMMANUEL KANT

According to Kant, we all have an inner and an outer self which together form our consciousness.
The inner self is comprised of our psychological state and our rational intellect. The
outer self includes our sense and the physical world.

He approved that knowledge comes from experiences and sensations as Hume suggested but he
disagreed to the concept of the bundle theory. For him, characteristics or the impressions
perceived are not randomly there, a processing mind(soul) must exist to explain on how the self
organizes such thoughts and perceptions. The constitution of a being has descriptions and must
be analyzed and studied. So, without the mind the self can’t process the impressions as if they
were just splattered paint in a canvass without purpose of logical depth.

Furthermore, he added that the self is conscious to its existence. It knows that such identity or
being exist and alive. The consciousness makes it conscious that the self has awareness of his/her
identity or existence. When the self thinks or sneeze, he/she is conscious that he/she is aware of
the act. Therefore, for Kant there is a self that organizes thoughts, memories, impressions etc…
more importantly the self is aware that he/she is conscious.
GILBERT RYLE

The self for Ryle does not exist. It is the term used to refer about the behaviors of a person. For
him, what matter most are the behaviors that manifest by the self. A person has behavioral
dimension showing what kind of a person you are.

“A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges,
libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks
“But where is the university? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the
Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the
University in which reside and work the members of your University.” It has then to be explained
to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the
colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all
that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their coordination is
understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was
correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the
University, to speak, that is, as if “the University” stood for an extra member of the class of which
these others units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category
as that to which the other institutions belong....”

“In the same way that the university is a concept expressing the entire system of buildings,
curricula, faculty, administrators, and so on, Ryle believes that the mind is a concept that
expresses the entire system of thoughts, emotions, actions, and so on that make up the human
self. The category mistake happens when we speak about the self as something independent of
the physical body: a purely mental entity existing in time but not space. According to Ryle, this
“self” does not really exist, anymore than the “university” or “team-spirit” exist in some special,
nonphysical universe “

https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/0/013048069X.pdf

MERLEAU-PONTY

Mind and Body are just one or what he called embodied spirit. They cannot be separated from
each other to verify the true existence of self.

To simplify the concept of Merleau-Ponty, if you got hurt from a physical wound or scratch in
your arm, you cannot say that you didn’t feel any pain or just your physical body got hurt but not
you. The body is not something that we possess but something that we are. It is not like a dog
that you can leave to other people or personnel of the supermarket because pets are not allowed.
Can you imagine your body is not allowed only your mind or soul? How can you do that?

Both are one and cannot be separated. If your body got injured both your body and mind(soul)
are hurt, in other words, yourself.