Human Identity in Question: Exploring the Philosophy of Self

The philosophy of self is the study of the many conditions of identity that make one subject of experience distinct from other experiences. In philosophy of self essay I will reveal this topic. 

To start with, the self is sometimes understood as a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness and agency. 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 from something that emanates from that individual. The particular characteristics of the self-determine its identity.

Another aspect of self-understanding is self-concept. Self-concept refers to the image of oneself. According to Carl Rogers, a psychologist defined the self as a flexible and changing personal identity, which means that the self is continuously developing through different interactions with significant people. Based on him, there are two components of self-concept, the real and the ideal self. The real self is the real us which consists of all the ideas including the awareness of ‘what I am’ and ‘what I can do’. The second component is the Ideal self. Ideal self is composed because of our desire to strive for self-fulfillment. Ideal self is the person’s conception of what one should be or wanted to be that includes one’s goals and ambitions in life. For me, Ideal self is what we strive for in the development and satisfying our goals for ourselves. My ideal self is to become good at socializing because my real self is not good at it. Another one is to speak out my emotion without considering the feelings of other people. This is one of my most hated characteristics of my real self, I can’t speak out what I feel because I’m afraid to hurt somebody’s feelings even if that somebody is hurting me. And my most ideal self is to become successful in life.“An unexamined life is not worth living”, this is the keyword of Socrates' idea about self. He states that the soul is immortal and even if a human died, it’s not its end. There is what we call the world after death. In his concept he introduced the physical and ideal realm. The body belongs to the physical realm, while the soul belongs to the ideal realm. So in order to have a good life, one must live a good life. That’s what brought happiness even after life because we did the real purpose of life, to become good. Another concept from Plato, “The soul is immortal”. According to him the self consists of reason, spirit or passion, and physical appetite. Reason means thinking deeply about something, Spirit includes basic emotion, and physical appetite includes our basic biological needs. These three have relations with each other. In short, to live a happy life, humans must consistently make sure that their reason is in control of their spirit and appetite. Another concept from Aristotle which stated that, “The soul is the essence of the self”. For him, the body and soul are not two separate elements but are one thing. The soul is the essence of the self but it can’t exist without the body. In addition, he stated that we are a rational animal or through reason we became human. So basically, we are defined based on our reason that gives us distinct characteristics. Moving on to the St. Augustine concept, “I am doubting therefore I am”. He integrated the idea of Plato and Christianity. Furthermore, he stated that the physical body is different from and inferior to its inhabitant, the immortal soul. He also explained that humans are created through the image and likeness of God and we are created as a good individual.

Finally, to conclude philosophical view of self essay, my own philosophy of self, “I am constructed by God and shaped by my act”. This is related to St. Augustine and Gilbert Ryle concepts because I believed that God put us in this world to find our purpose by giving us body and soul equipped with different elements in finding our purpose. And our part is to shape this construction by finding ourselves through the actions we do in every experience.