UNDERSTANDING SELF Flashcards
Our bodies belong to the physical realm, they change, their imperfect and they die. Our souls however belong to the ideal realm, they are unchanging and immortal, surviving the death of the body.
Socrates
greek word of soul
psyche
To live an examined life, a life of purpose and value, we must begin at the source of all knowledge and significance – our self
socrates
introduced the idea of three part soul
plato
three part soul of plato
reason, physical appetite, spirit/passion
our divine essence that enables us to think deeply, make wise choices, and achieve a true understanding of eternal truths.
Reason
our basic biological needs such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
Physical Appetite
our basic emotions such as love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, empathy.
spirit/passion
founder of modern philosophy
rene descartes
Brought an entirely new—and thoroughly modern—perspective to philosophy in general and the self in particular.
rene descartes
is convinced that committing yourself to a wholesale and systematic doubting of all things you have been taught to simply accept without question is the only way to achieve clear and well-reasoned conclusions.
rene descartes
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
rene descartes
what is the essence of existing according to rene descartes
being aware of ourselves/ self- conscious is important to have personal identity
essence of self according to rene descartes
we are thinking being
i think therefore i am
rene descartes
To discover the nature of personal identity, we’re going to have to find out what it means to be a person.
john locke
person is a thinking, intelligent being who has the abilities to reason and to reflect.
john locke
essence of self according to john locke
conscious awareness of self as thinking, reasoning, reflecting identity
how to understand self according to john locke
conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences
According to Hume, if we carefully examine the contents of our experience, we find that there are only two distinct entities
impression and ideas
the basic sensations of our experience, the elemental data of our minds: pain, pleasure, heat, cold, happiness, grief, fear, exhilaration, and so on. These impressions are “lively” and “vivid.”
impression
The sensations of experience are necessary for knowledge, but they are in reality the “grist” for our mental “mills.” Our minds actively synthesize and relate these sensations in the process of creating an intelligible world. As a result, the sensations of immediate experience conform to our minds, rather than the reverse. We construct our world through these conceptual operations, and as a result, this is a world in which we can gain insight and knowledge.
immanuel kant
it’s our self that makes experiencing an intelligible world possible, because it’s the self that is responsible for synthesizing the discreet data of sense experience into a meaningful whole. Metaphorically, our self is the weaver who, using the loom of the mind, weaves together the fabric of experience into a unified whole so that it becomes my experience, my world, my universe. Without our self to perform this synthesizing function, our experience would be unknowable, a chaotic collection of sensations without coherence or significance.
immanuel kant
view of the self leads to an analogous dualistic view of the self,
sigmund freud
