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Plato's philosophy on the self
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Historical Development of Self Concept Theory
The development of idea of self or self-concept can be traced back into the times of classical philosophy, as traced by Hattie (1992). A sense of self was related to Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle to identity, individuality and the knowledge of self (). Further, Renaissance philosophers promoted a sense of “self” and “knowing self” as the basis of existence through their debates. Hume (1711-1776) brought about a diversion from the intellectual mainstream and rejected the idea of a distinct stable self-concept, and instead emphasized upon the fluidity of “knowing self” and primacy of experience as a well-spring for a constantly changing perception of reality.
The psychological aspects of self, including references to identity, style, and self knowledge was addresses by James in 1890. He divided self into three parts: it’s “constituents”, the feelings and emotions they arouse, and actions they prompt (James, p. 292). According to James, the self and self-concept were core constructs within the person and he described “self-as-knower”. This implied that the “self” is known, and labelled it as “I”. In contrast, the sense of self related to experience and the environment was labelled the “ME”, and the feeling of the self was linked to the process that generated both the “I” and the “ME”.
Further, the objective self or “ME” comprised of four levels or components which were organised in a hierarchical structure. These were “bodily self”, “social self”, “material self” and “spiritual self”.
By ‘spiritual self’ James meant thinking and feeling, i.e. what we most truly seem to be. "We take a purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue and discriminate, or our m...
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...personality and other areas of mental health also used experimental approaches to find out the relationship between self esteem and poor mental health associated with poor self-regard.
Carl Jung’s Self
In his earlier writings Jung considered the self equivalent to the psyche or total personality. However, when he began to explore the racial foundations of personality and discovered the archetypes, he found one that represented human striving for unity (Wilhelm & Jung, 1931).
The self is the midpoint of personality, around which all of the other systems are constellated. It holds these systems together and provides the personality with unity, equilibrium, and stability.
If we picture the conscious mind with the ego as its centre, as its centre, as being opposed to the unconscious, and if we now add to our mental picture the process of assimilating the unconscious.
Primarily, one of the dominant and fundamental theoretical variances concerning Freud and Jung’s personality theories was that relating to their opposing notions regarding the unconscious human mind. Firstly, Freud understood that the centre of ones inhibited beliefs and distressing recollections was found in the unconscious mind. Freud stated that the human mind focuses on three constructs: namely the id, the ego and the super ego. He claimed that the id shaped ones unconscious energy. Freud said that it is not limited by ethics and morals, but as an alternative simply aims to fulfil ones desires. The id strives to keep with the “pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately.” (Boere) The next unconscious
David Hume explores the issue of what exactly comprises the “self”. Hume states in his Treatise of Human Nature that
The self represents the coherent whole resulting from the union of an individual's consciousness and unconsciousness. It is formed through a process referred to as 'individuation', within which the diverse aspects of personality are merged. Jung often depicted the self as a square, mandala, or circle.
Anil Ananthaswamy describes the self as the role the brain plays in our notions of self and existence. That our sense of self is layered, pulling information from
older people imagine clear to a greater degree by their social roles. (Kuhn, 1960). The need for self-esteem plays an important role in psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which depicts self-esteem as one of the basic human motivations. Maslow suggested that people need both esteem from other people as well as inner self-respect. Both of these needs must be fulfilled in order for an individual to grow as a person and achieve self-actualization.
Freud’s understanding of the unconscious is organized into three echelons: the conscious mind, the preconscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind involves everything we are cognizant of. The preconscious mind signifies regular recollections. The unconscious mind contains emotions, reflections, memoirs and compulsions that are unknown to our conscious perception. Along with the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious, there are the three additional elements to Freud’s structure of personality: the id, ego and superego. Unlike Freud, Jung had a more optimistic theory of the unconscious.
However, despite all of the analysis and vast literature on the topic of selfhood there are still no completely agreed upon definitions of the self. Several scholars argue that it can never be given one simple, consistent description. The majority of authors are inclined to avoid the ‘unanswerable’ question of what self is and their constructions are based more on implicit understandings than clear-cut descriptions. As with the idea of consciousness, the self is catalogued amid those notions that are
If the idea of the self is somehow able to exists in a potentially altered version of Hume’s epistemology that accounts for what is known, now, about the subconscious synthetization of ideas, It could function in the deflection of such claims as the soul and god but could hold an idea of identity that could not be conflated with the two because it still must rely on experience. If Hume’s epistemology included the subconscious and it and be argued that from the subconscious ideas can form behaviorally from our impressions, our illusion of self could stand as an idea within Hume’s vision of the mind. This would circumvent many problems that are created when there is no justification for the self. Ideas such as guilt, punishment, and whether or not your life can have meaning are not necessarily uprooted by Hume’s analysis of how the mind
We have also read some information about how Carl Jung defines personality and he uses, eight personality types based introversion as well as extroversion. Jung states that our attitudes seem to have a tendency, to behave in a certain manner. Jung believed that individuals who classify themselves as introverts place importance on their personal views of the world, while individuals who classify themselves as extroverts seem to place more importance on detachment and surrounding influences.
James’ focus on the mystic experiences that religion entails was characterized by four circumstances. These four circumstances were ineffability, a noetic quality, mystical states are transient, and people can’t control when the experiences come and go. For ineffability, the experience must be had by a person and cannot be transferred to another. By noetic quality he was stating that the mystical state came as a state of knowledge to the individual. James goes on to ask if these states are “windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world” (Varieties, 428).
“Self” is the identity bestowed upon humans that allows us to distinguish ourselves from one another. A persons unique psyche is what entitles them to be considered an individual and mindfully independent. This distinct self identity follows a person through out every facet of their lives. It remains the same “self” from the time a person is born to the day they die, and possibly after. Despite many opinions, the true “self” does not come from our physical body, it comes from the mind and the soul. It is not what a person specifically thinks and feels, but the distinctive unparalleled way they do so. “Self” is embodied by our continued existence in every moment we experience. Our “self” is created to be stable and is best exemplified through consciousness. Consciousness, as defined by Miller in John Perry’s First Night, is “the non-physical and non-material aspects of you”. Some non-physical features of consciousness are demonstrated through our actions, memories, and how we perceive information. As new born babies, our consciousness is already established. Newborns have the ability to recognize their individual needs. They have a full understand of their idea of pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness. As we grow older, we better establish an awareness of our
The concept of the term “self” is a topic that has been analyzed for many years by many people. The self is the whole part of the being that contains the person. This is a very broad topic and although the term is simple it holds a vast amount if information. One of these people is a man by the name of Sigmund Freud. In the paper “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality” written by Freud, uses the term “Psychical Personality,” to explain the human thought processes, thinking and feelings that make up concept of “the self ” part of the person’s personality (Freud, The Dissection of the Psychical Personality, 2004, p. 70). The concept of the structural model of the psyche contains the Id, Ego and Superego, as developed by Freud tries to
Jung proposed that in addition to every one of us has ego and personal unconscious, we also have a deeper structure in our psyche known as collective unconscious (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). The collective unconscious stores hidden but present memories of human kinds and even the ancestors of human (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). It also represents the thoughts and feelings about something those shared by all human beings because we are all evolved from a common past (Hjelle and Ziegler, 1992). According to Jung, collective unconscious is universal and its nature is the same within each individual (Jung, 1981). Moreover, collective unconscious cannot be developed by a single individual but it can be passed along through heredity and is born anew in every creature (Jung, 1981). The collective unconscious also contains the pre-existent forms which are th...
Self-identity is one of the main themes of philosophy throughout its history. In general, “self-identity” is a term that means thoughts or feelings with which you distinguish you from others, and we use the term in ordinary conversation without a solid concept of “self-identity”. However, arguing about self-identity philosophically, there arise many questions: whether there is any essence of yourself, whether you are the same person as you when you were a baby, whether memory or experience makes you, and what is “self-identity.” To solve these questions, many philosophers have been arguing the topic “self identity” for so long.
Truth of oneself makes it visible when faced with absurd events in life where all ethical issues fade away. One cannot always pinpoint to a specific trait or what the core essence they discover, but it is often described as “finding one’s self”. In religious context, the essential self would be regarded as soul. Whereas, for some there is no such concept as self that exists since they believe that humans are just animals caught in the mechanistic world. However, modern philosophy sheds a positive light and tries to prove the existence of a self. Modern philosophers, Descartes and Hume in particular, draw upon the notion of the transcendental self, thinking self, and the empirical self, self of public life. Hume’s bundle theory serves as a distinction between these two notions here and even when both of these conception in their distinction make valid points, neither of them is more accurate.