PSYCHOLOGICAL-PERSPECTIVE Flashcards
the self is closely tied to the soul, which is the true essence of a person_____believed that the self is best understood through self-examination, famously captured by his dictum, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The self is thus tied to the pursuit of virtue and knowledge.
Socrates
positing that the self is the soul, which is eternal and immaterial. He saw the self as divided into three parts: the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive. The rational part should govern, with the soul’s ultimate goal being to attain knowledge of the Forms, particularly the Form of the Good.
Plato
the self is the composite of body and soul, where the soul is the form of the body and the source of a person’s identity and purpose. The self is defined by its capacities for rational thought and moral virtue, and its ultimate goal is eudaimonia, or flourishing.
Aristotle
saw the self as deeply connected to the soul and to God. The self is understood through introspection and the recognition of one’s dependence on God. For Augustine, the true self is the inner, spiritual self that seeks God’s grace and truth.
Augustine
concluded, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), emphasizing the self as a thinking, doubting entity. For Descartes, the self is the mind, distinct from the body. The essence of the self is in its capacity for thought.
Descartes
enied the existence of a permanent self. For him, the self is just a bundle of perceptions, constantly changing. There is no underlying “self” that persists over time; instead, the self is a collection of momentary experiences.
Hume
saw the self as both empirical (our experiences) and transcendental (the rational structure that organizes those experiences). The self is the subject that experiences, but also the active agent that imposes order on experience.
Kant
critiqued the Cartesian view of the self, proposing that the self is not a separate “ghost in the machine” but rather is defined by behaviors and dispositions. There is no “inner” self distinct from outward actions.
Ryle
argues that the self is entirely brain-based. Consciousness and identity are products of neural processes, with no immaterial soul or mind.
Churchland
emphasized the embodied self. For him, the self is not a mind isolated from the body but is fundamentally intertwined with physical existence and perception. The self is always embodied and situated in the world.
Merleau-
