Philosophical Perspective of the Self Flashcards
Employs the inquisitive mind to discover the ultimate causes, reasons, and principles of everything.
Philosophy
The self is synonymous with the soul. He believes that every human possesses an immortal soul that survives the physical body.
Socrates
He explains that the essence of the self-the soul-is the immortal entity.
Socrates
He suggests that man must live an examined life and a life of purpose and value.
Socrates
An unexamined life is not worth living.
He is a Greek Philosopher.
Socrates
The Self is an immoral soul
He is a Greek philosopher
Plato
He believes that the self is synonymous with the soul. His philosophy can be explained as a process of self-knowledge and purification of the soul.
Plato
The three-part soul introduced by Plato
Reason
-The essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise choices and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths.
Physical appetite
- Includes our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
Spirit or Passion
- Basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, and empathy.
He believes that the soul is merely a set of defining features and does not consider the body and soul as separate entities.
Aristotle
The three kinds of soul
Vegetative soul
- The physical body that can grow.
Sentient soul
- Sensual desires, feelings, and emotions.
Rational
- What makes man human. It includes the intellect that allows man to know and understand things.
The self has an immortal soul.
He is an African philosopher.
St. Agustine
He integrates the ideas of Plato and the teachings of Christianity.
St. Agustine
The Physical body is radically different from and inferior to its inhabitant, the immortal soul.
St. Agustine
I think therefore I am.
French Philosopher
René Descartes
He is the father of modern philosophy.
René Descartes
He wants to penetrate the nature of reasoning process and understand its relationship to the human self.
The Latin phrase “Cogito ergo sum” I think therefore I am.
René Descartes
He contends further that if man reflects thoughtfully, he will realize that there are two dimensions of the human self.
The self as a thinking entity
The self as a physical body
René Descartes
The self is consciousness
He is an English Philosopher
John Locke
The human mind at birth is tabula rasa or a blank state.
John Locke
The self, or personal identity, is constructed primarily from sense experiences- or more specifically, what people see, hear, smell, taste, and feel.
John Locke
Conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys to understanding the self.
The essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself as a thinking, reasoning, and reflecting identity.
John Locke
There is no self
He is a Scottish philosopher
David Hume
He suggests that if people carefully examine their sense experience through the process of introspection, they will discover that there is no self.
What people experience is just a bundle or collection of different perceptions.
David Hume
Impressions are basic sensations of people’s experience such as hate, love, joy, grief, pain, cold, and heat.
Ideas however are thoughts and images from impressions so they are less lively and vivid.
David Hume
We construct the self
He is the German philosopher.
Immanuel Kant
He suggests that the self that makes experiencing an intelligible world possible because it is the self that is actively organizing and synthesizing all of our thoughts and perceptions.
Immanuel Kant
The self is the product of reason, a regulative principle because the self regulates experience by making unified experience possible.
Immanuel Kant
The Self is Multilayered
He is an Austrian psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud
He is not a philosopher, but his views on the nature of the self have a far-reaching impact on philosophical thinking, as well as other disciplines such as psychology and sociology.
Sigmund Freud
The three layers of self according to Freud
Conscious
- Governed by the “reality principle.” The Conscious part of the self is organized in ways that are rational, practical, and appropriate to the environment.
Unconscious
- The part of the self that contains the basic instinctual drives including sexuality, aggressiveness, and self-destruction; traumatic memories; unfulfilled wishes and childhood fantasies; and thoughts and feelings that would be considered socially taboo.
Preconscious
- Contains material that is not threatening and is easily brought to mind.
The self is the way people behave
British philosopher
Gilbert Ryle
He believes that the self is best understood as a pattern of behavior, the tendency or disposition of a person to behave in a certain way in certain circumstances.
Gilbert Ryle
His concept provides the philosophical principle, “I act therefore I am”
He considers the mind and body to be intrinsically linked in complex and intimate ways.
Gilbert Ryle
The self is the brain
He is a Canadian Philosopher
Paul Churchland
He advocates the idea of eliminative materialism or the idea that the self is inseparable from the brain and physiology of the body.
Paul Churchland
The self is embodied subjectivity
He is a French Philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
He argues that all knowledge about the self (e.g., understanding the nature of the self) is based on the “phenomena” of experience.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The “I” is a single integrated core identity, a combination of the mental, physical, and emotional structures around a core identity of the self.
People will discover that the mind and body are unified, not separate.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Everything that people are aware of is contained within the consciousness.
