What is the Self? Flashcards
What is philosophy?
“All philosophy has its origins in wonder.”
Plato
What is philosophy?
“Philosophy is simply the love of wisdom”
Cicero
What is philosophy?
“Philosophy is the science that considers the truth”
Aristotle
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
The ability to reflect on one’s life and one’s self is a distinctly human ability.
Probably came closest to capturing the essence of philosophy
Socrates
The central concern of philosophy is the psyche, the “true self” or “soul.”
Socrates
“True self” or “Soul”
Psyche
Every soul seeks happiness, and there is a clearly defined path to achieving happiness, though many don’t choose to take it.
Socrates
The only people who are truly happy are those who are virtuous and wise, who live reflective, “examined” lives and strive to behave rightly and justly in every area of their lives. These people create souls that are good, wise, and courageous and as a result they achieve genuine and lasting happiness.
Socrates
Spoke of a world of Form/Idea and a world of Phenomena/Senses.
Plato
A world permanent and eternal
Form/Idea
A world that constantly changing, and it dies and withers.
Phenomena/Senses
Objects are essentially or really the Form and that the phenomena are only mere shadows mimicking the form, momentary portrayals of the form under different circumstances.
Plato
Knowledge is already within the self, and we could understand the world around us through reason and thoughtful introspection. The idea that the self contains knowledge connects well with the Socratic dictum
“Know thyself” (Plato)
Tripartite structure of soul
- Appetite
- Spirited
- Reason
Adheres to a vitalistic principle of the soul or psyche that makes matter alive.
Aristotle
Having a soul means being alive, and only living things have a soul.
* The soul distinguishes the living and nonliving but does not exactly define the difference between the thinking and the non-thinking beings.
Aristotle
argues that a particular object has a form that is inseparable from it (matter). Thus, there is no form without matter and vice versa.
Aristotle
the philosophical theory that states that things are composed of both matter and form Following this line of thinking, the
body and the psyche cannot exist without the other.
Hylomorphism
Living a moral life is the ultimate goal, doing so means approaching every ethical dilemma by finding a mean between living in excess and deficiently, taking into account one’s need and circumstance.
Aristotle
Through Aristotelian lens, the self is inseparable from the body. It can be said that the body is the — of the experiencing self, meaning without the body, the self cannot experience; without the body, there is no self to experience in the first place.
sine qua non condition
is the assertion that the soul is but a prisoner of the body.
Neoplatonism
His ideas had strong influence on Neoplatonism
Plato
Founder of Neoplatonism
Plotinus
pushed for the freeing of the person from this bondage and to move towards perfection.
Plotinus
He is one of the greatest Christian philosophers of all time.
Saint Augustine of Hippo
He was highly influenced by Neoplatonist thought, especially the ideas of Plotinus and Plato.
Saint Augustine of Hippo
“The soul is given primacy over the body.”
Saint Augustine of Hippo
shares the view that the soul is not only different from the body, but it is also superior to it.
Saint Augustine of Hippo
As a Christian philosopher, he asserts the need for the soul to achieve unity with God through faith as well as reason.
Saint Augustine of Hippo
Rose to prominence in his contributions to philosophy and religion. He employs Aristotelian thought.
St. Thomas Aquinas
He believed that human soul continues to exist even in death. His reason is by operation of the soul whose object of thought can be the eternal or abstract entities, including perhaps God.
St. Thomas Aquinas
A human soul that is separated from its body is said to be incomplete and finds its completion again only when it animates a body once more, such as its resurrection during the second coming of Christ.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Its presence in the body is in fact what can only be described as good, as well as natural. The soul is enriched and nourished when it is joined with the body. The union of body and soul completes human nature.
St. Thomas Aquinas
Rationalist
* Influential in ushering the new age, modern age which began from the transition period to Renaissance.
* Methodic Doubt or Universal Doubt
Rene Descartes
Being conscious of self is the key to why one holds a personal identity and a sense of selfhood. Without the ability to be conscious of self or to be aware of self, one cannot gain any idea of personal identity; in other words, one cannot have a sense of self (Chaffee, 2016)
Rene Descartes
preferred to use mind instead of soul for clarity and to avoid ambiguity.
Rene Descartes
Knowledge is possible only through man’s faculty of reason.
Rene Descartes
Empiricist
* All knowledge is derived from sensory experience.
John Locke
Human mind at birth is a clean slate. It is a scraped tablet, upon which experience imprints knowledge.
Tabula Rasa
We acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring.
John Locke
