Everything about Self Philosophy totally explained
Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others. The task in
philosophy is defining what these qualities are, and there have been a number of different approaches. The
self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of an idiosyncratic
consciousness. Moreover, this self is the
agent responsible for the thoughts and actions of an individual to which they're ascribed. It is a
substance, which therefore endures through time; thus, the thoughts and actions at different moments of time may pertain to the same self (
See John Locke's theory of consciousness as the basis of personal identity). As the notion of
subject, the "self" has been harshly
criticized by Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, on behalf of what
Gilles Deleuze would call a "becoming-other".
Most philosophical definitions of self are expressed in the first
person, as with
Descartes,
Locke,
Hume, and
William James. A third person
definition with which we might all agree doesn't refer to specific
mental
qualia but instead strives for
objectivity and
operationalism.
To another person, the self of one individual is exhibited in the conduct and discourse of that individual. Therefore, the
intentions of another individual can only be inferred indirectly from something emanating from that individual.
The particular characteristics of the self determine its
identity.
Ego: The self as an illusion
spirituality, and especially
nondual,
mystical and eastern
meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as being in the illusion of individual existence, and separateness from other aspects of creation. This "sense of doership" or sense of individual existence is that part which believes it's the human being, and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is ultimately
unaware and
unconscious of its own true nature. The
ego is often associated with
mind and the sense of
time, which compulsively
thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather than simply knowing its own self and the present.
The spiritual goal of many
traditions involves the dissolving of the ego, allowing self-knowledge of one's own true nature to become experienced and enacted in the world. This is variously known as
Enlightenment,
Nirvana, Presence, and the "Here and Now".
Lao Tzu: Self-knowledge
Lao Tzu in his
Tao Te Ching says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self requires strength."
Socrates and Plato: Soul as the essence of self
Aristotle: The self as activity
Aristotle, following
Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it's to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle didn't consider the soul as some kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we can't separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle's view, is an
activity of the body, it can't be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first activity" of a living body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or 'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human soul. Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; the
De Anima (
On the Soul) provides a good place to start to gain more understanding of his views.
Aristotle's view appears to have some similarity to the Buddhist 'no soul' view (see Ego below). For both, there's certainly no 'separable immortal essence'.
Aristotle also believed that there were four sections of the soul. The four sections are calculative part, the scientific part on the rational side used for making decisions and the desiderative part and the vegetative part on the irrational side responsible for identifying our needs.
Avicenna and Descartes: The self as independent of the senses
While he was imprisoned in a castle,
Avicenna wrote his famous "Floating Man"
thought experiment to demonstrate human
self-awareness and the substantiality of the
soul. His "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all
sensations, which includes no
sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have
self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self isn't
logically dependent on any physical
thing, and that the soul shouldn't be seen in
relative terms, but as a primary
given, a
substance. This argument was later refined and simplified by
René Descartes in
epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness."
Hume: The bundle theory of self
Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we're the same person we were five years ago. Though we've changed in many respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changed without changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there's a distinction between the various features of a person and the mysterious self that supposedly bears those features. When we start introspecting,
"we are never intimately conscious of anything but a particular perception; man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement".
"It is plain, that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. It is likewise evident that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects."
On Hume's view, these perceptions don't
belong to anything. Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, but by being composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal experience. (Note that in the Appendix to the
Treatise, Hume said mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, yet he never returned to the issue.)
Maharshi: Self-enquiry and self-surrender
Ramana Maharshi's primary teachings are documented in the book Nan Yar (Who am I), originally written in Tamil (see note at the end of this section about Nan Yar). Given below are selections from the book:
- Since all trace of the 'I' doesn't exist, alone is Self.
- Self itself is the world; Self itself is 'I'; Self itself is God; all is the Supreme Self (siva swarupam)
Although his primary teaching was Self-Enquiry, he was also known to have advised the use of Self Surrender (to one's Deity or Guru) as an alternative means, which would ultimately converge in to the path of Self-Enquiry.
Dennett: The self as a narrative center of gravity
Daniel Dennett has a deflationary theory of the self. Selves are not physically detectable. Instead, they're a kind of convenient fiction, like a
center of gravity, which are convenient as a way of solving physics problems, although they need not correspond to anything tangible — the center of gravity of a hoop is a point in thin air. People constantly tell themselves stories to make sense of their world, and they feature in the stories as a character, and that convenient but fictional character is the self.
Others
Other broader understandings of Self place it to mean the essence of any living being. With this understanding, Self is the hand of God or the expression of life that makes any living entity inherently unique.
The concept of the self has been disputed by some prominent philosophers. The
Buddha in particular
disagreed with the concept of an enduring self.
Later however the Buddha came to see the Truth of Self as truly Permanent, which was written down in the Heart Doctrine. (Tathagathagarbha)
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