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The Philosophical Perspective of the Self - Coggle Diagram
The Philosophical Perspective of the Self
SOCRATES
Socrates insisted that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” According to him, in order to protect human being from the shallowness of their lives, one must examine his/her life for this is the duty of life bound to develop self-knowledge and a self that is dignified with values and integrity. He then explained that living a good life means having the wisdom to distinguish what is right from wrong.
PLATO
Plato was Socrates’s student who was influenced by his (Socrates’s) articulation and wise pronouncements. Plato’s proposed philosophy about the self was designed by starting on the examination of the self as a unique experience. In his philosophy, the experience then will eventually better understand the core of the self which he called the “Psyche”.
ST. AUGUSTINE
In the philosophy of St. Augustine, the development of the self is achieved through the self-presentation and self-realization. In relation to his life, he was not afraid to accept himself despite of his unpleasant past. He wasn’t ashamed to tell the people of his sinful life in the past. However, with those experiences, his wasted self was then realized in his conversion to the faith. St. Augustine’s journey towards understanding of the self was centered on his religious convictions and beliefs. St. Augustine proposes that man’s end goal is happiness. He also agreed the ancient view of Plato that man is bifurcated nature. The imperfect aspects of man that dwells in the world is continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the other is capable of reaching immortality. According to St. Augustine, man can only attain true happiness by recognizing the love of the Supreme Being or the Divine.
RENE DESCARTES
Rene Descartes deviated the theocentric philosophies on the years before him. He readdress the question concerning the self in a very different rational method. His quest for discovering the self was started by his methodic doubt. In “The Meditation of First Philosophy”, his famous treatise, there he claimed that there is so much that we should doubt. In fact, he says that since much of what we think and believe are not infallible, the may be turn out to be false. If something is so clear and lucid as not to be even doubted, then that is the only time when one should actually buy a proposition. Descartes then added that the only thing that one cannot be doubted 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. His famous “cogito ergo sum” which is translated into “I think therefore, I am” or “I doubt therefore I exist”
JOHN LOCKE
John Locke opposed to the idea that only reason is the source of knowledge of the self. According to him, the self is comparable to an empty space. Our everyday experiences contributes the pile of knowledge that is put on that empty space. The important requirement in order to have a sense of data is the experience. This experience then through the process of reflection and analysis becomes a sense perception. Locke reminds that it has to be noted that the validity of perception is very subjective. It is changing from one person to another.
DAVID HUME
According to David Hume, there cannot be a persisting idea of the Self. While he agreed the thought that all ideas are derived from impressions, problematically, it follows that the idea of the self is also derived from impressions. However, Hume believes that impressions are also subjective, temporary, provisional, prejudicial, and even skewed – and therefore cannot be persisting. Hume asserted that as long as we only derive our knowledge from sense of impressions, there will be no “self”. For Hume, all we know about our self are just bundles of temporary impressions, and this supports the difficulty in answering the question “Who am I?” because everything we can readily answer is temporary (like color of the hair, height, weight, affiliations, etc.) and these are all non-persisting. In fact, Hume harshly claimed that there is no self.
KANT
Kant has his different view about the self. He thinks that the things that men perceive around them are 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. To cite an example are the time and space, these are the ideas that cannot find in the world, but is built in our minds. According to Kant, these are the apparatuses of the mind.
SIGMUND FREUD
Sigmund Freud insisted the complexity of the self. He regarded the self as the “I” that ordinarily constitute both mental and physical actions. The question “Who am I?” doesn’t provide a unified answer but instead it produces complicated diverse features of moral judgments, inner sensations, bodily movements, and perceptions (like when we say “I run”, “I eat”, “I decide”, “I feel the tingling sensation”, or “I feel to cheat because it is wrong.” According to him, the “I” will continue to change overtime therefore it will never be the same. He sees the “I” as a product of multiple interacting process, systems, and schemes.
GILBERT RYLE
Gilbert Ryle proposed his Positive View in his “Concept of the Mind” which was started as the stern critique of Descartes’ dualism of the mind and body. According to Ryle, the thinking “I” will never be found because it is just a “ghost in the machine”. This means that Ryle finds the philosophy of Descartes totally absurd. Ryle insisted that the mind is never separate from the body. In his propositions, the physical actions and behaviors are dispositions of the self and these derives from one’s inner private experiences. According to Ryle, we will be only able to understand the self based from the external manifestations. Therefore, the mind is nothing but a disposition of the self. All the manifestations of the physical activities or behavior ate the dispositions off the self, which is the basis of the statement: “I act therefore I am” or “You are what you do”.
MAURICE MERLEAU- PONTY
Phenomenology of Perception of Maurice Merleau-Ponty draws heavily from the contemporary research Gestalt psychology and neurology. His work in developing a kind of phenomenological rhythm explains the perception of the self. This rhythm involves three dimensions. These are the empiricist take on perception, followed by the idealist-intellectual alternatives, and lastly the synthesis of both positions. He then asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been going for a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem. According to Merleau-Ponty, the mind and body are so intertwined and they cannot be separated from one another. One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied experience. He further stated that the living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.