The Philosophical Self 2kr4m

St. Augustine Immanuel Kant Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Historical Background • 340-430 BCE • Thagaste, a Roman city in Algeria • His father was a pagan, but his mother was a devout Catholic

Historical Background • He resorted to Neoplatonism. • He believed that there is no real contradiction between Christianity and the Philosophy of Plato. • That’s why we say that Augustine “Christianized” Plato’s philosophy.

Philosophical Thought • God’s Foreknowledge • God knows what we will do in the course of our lifetime. • Are we just God’s puppets? • No, for God gave us freewill. • Knowing is different from willing.

Philosophical Thought • • • •

The Kingdom of God The Kingdom of the World …a struggle between the two kingdoms. It is a struggle because we humans tend to concern ourselves more with worldly allurements than to things that makes us holy.

Questions • How did Augustine’s thought influence our view of man today? -Foreknowledge -The two Kingdoms

Immanuel Kant • (1724-1804) • He was born in an era with two conflicting movements. • Empiricism vs Rationalism • Kant reconciled the two. • Spent 6 years as a private tutor after college

Transcendental Idealism and Categorical Imperative – Act only according to the maxim by which you can, at the same time will that should become a universal law. – Argued that the human mind creates structure of human experience, that the reason is the source of morality. – Addresses the question, “what can we know” – Every event has a cause.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961)

All seeing is seeing something

Maurice Merleau-Ponty • French philosopher • Academic proponent of existentialism but much more concerned with matters of perception • Phenomenology of perception: The study of the essence of perception and consciousness

Maurice Merleau-Ponty • Phenomenology – a method of describing the nature of our perceptual to the world • Concerned with providing a direct description of human experience.

• Perception has to come from a body  What does it mean to have a body?  What does it mean to see versus to think?

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology • “If there is, for me a cube with six equal sides, and if I can link up with the object, this is not because I constitute it from the inside: it is because I delve into the thickness of the world by perceptual experience.”

– You see all sides of the cube because your body moves through space. – All perception happens because of a body. – All perception is also a perception of the body.

The body in the world • “Our own body is in the world, as a heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system.” -Phenomenology of Perception

Rediscover the world, rediscover the self • “We shall need to reawaken our experience of the world as it appears to us in so far as we perceive the world through our body, and in so far we perceive the world with our body. But by this remaking with the body and the world, we shall also rediscover ourselves, since, perceiving as we do with our body, the body is a natural self and, is it where, the subject of perception.” -Phenomenology of Perception

THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES (PHILOSOPHY) PHILOSOPHERS

KEY CONCEPTS

VIEW OF THE SELF

Summum Bonum – The greatest good.

The self craves for perfect and enduring happiness.

Transcendental Idealism and Categorical Imperative

Act only according to the maxim by which you can, at the same time will that should become a universal law.

Phenomenology of perception: The study of the essence of perception and consciousness

Body as the primary site of knowing the world.

Premodernism St. Augustine 470BC-399BC Modernism

Immanuel Kant 1724-1804

Postmodernism Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1908-1961

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES Premodernism

Modernism

St. Augustine Immanuel Kant “My heart is restless until it “Live your life as though your every rests in you.” act were to become a universal law.” Similarities Focus on the Consciousness Emphasizes the conscious & Unconsciousness thought

Human Freedom

Emphasizes the conscious thought

Postmodernism

Maurice Merlau-Ponty “The body is our general medium for having a world.” Emphasizes the conscious thought

There is human freedom There is human freedom since one since predestination does not can choose our actions under the exist. guidance of categorical imperative.

“Imitate the good, bear with the evil, love all.” – St. Augustine’s message to teachers

Existential phenomenology which seeks to evoke and interpret structures of “being-inthe-world” Influenced by Descartes: Reconciled Influenced by Descartes: empiricism and rationalism, two Considered Descartes’ notion of bodies of philosophy that rose from the mind-body compound. Descartes’ dualism, resulting to more holistic view of the self. The Educational Theories: Theory of Proponent of Existentialism and Knowledge, Theory of Learning, Phenomenology Theory of Human Nature, Theory of Transmission, etc.

Focus on the Mind & Body

Emphasizes the mind

Transcendental idealist (a combination of rational and empirical views). Emphasizes both mind and body

Religious View

Sees the self in the eyes of faith.

Wants to have moral norms independent of religion.

Philosophical Influence

Contribution to Education

Differences View of the Self

Both rationalism and empiricism are inadequate.

Emphasizes both mind and body