What Is Self Essay Sample

At certain point in life, one may ask, “who am I?” and “how do I define me?” Certainly it is a question that is difficult to fathom, as one cannot determine the nature of him other than what others may seem to perceive. When we were young, our parents tend to call us names based on the things that we as small children often demonstrate to our parents to their amusement. However, as we grow older we tend to realize the sort of stupidity that we do as a child that makes us want to forget those things we did as we enter the course of maturity. Innocence, it is that fuels our actions as a child, which provides an early definition of who we are and a hint of expectations to the people around us as who we are going to be in the future. The definition of us is not clear from the beginning, but such definition was provided for our behalf by our parents. It is apparent that if we have demonstrated interest in Science as a child that the people around us would expect us to be a scientist. However, such presumptions change as we experience the world more and as maturity sets in. Therefore, it is not the perpetual assumptions perceived by people in me that defines me and provides the definition of who I am as a self.
According to Locke, self-consciousness of our perceiving self is relevant in demonstrating personal identity or otherwise referred to as the person’s knowledge of the self. In addition, the argument that the self is a the same as the immortal the soul is opposed by lock based on the rational that the soul is not the self in its nature, but a separate entity that compounds the particles of identity. In my previous articulation of childhood experience, it was mentioned that small children tend to behave differently from the others and does things that other child not normally do. For instance, is child likes to dance in from of his parents, it doesn’t conforms a conclusive fact that the child wants to be a dancer one day because the dancing might be a way for the child to attract attention, which can be presumed to be a manifestation of himself being an attention grabber rather than a promising prodigy of performing arts. In this example, the child’s identity of being a great dancer could not be a manifestation of his self and his soul at the same time. It is possible that the child’s self consciousness is geared towards being an attention grabber, but his soul commends something else. Therefore, Locke’s definition of self and soul as different entity is true.
However, the modern principles of self, based on Descartes’s perspective suggest that the act of thinking about oneself is therefore, a proof that there is a self, that thinking and reasoning is self in its own. The body is a physical and mortal object that will not function without thinking. Therefore, the body is a shell and thinking is the core that provides the definition of the shell, its identity, the self and its entirety. It is often that when we did something stupid our parents would say, “What were you thinking?” As a child, most of us if not all experienced messing up things in the house or spilling our milk on the floor and our parents would wonder what went to our mind for doing such things. On the other hand, we also wonder what sort of thoughts we had for doing it because we appeared to be out of our apparent consciousness when doing those bad things. Therefore, our consciousness and self is all but one. There is irony in this because I once doodled with my crayons on newly installed wooden floors; my parents said I made such a mess. I am not in my apparent consciousness that I am a mess, but the way my mother reacted seems I am. It is ironic that it is not in my awareness that I myself am a person capable of doing messy things, but from another perspective my self manifests differently. There is no doubt that the state consciousness is in prevalence during that experience. Consciousness allows people to feel pain and happiness and as child happiness is immense, what’s ironic is that there was no realization of self as careless and messy although there is consciousness of being amused and happy. Therefore, self and consciousness is not at all the same and it proves that self is a way of thinking as Descartes suggests and not a state of awareness.
It could also be possible that people can realize their true self by looking at the soul as Socrates and Plato suggests. According to them, the self is synonymous to the soul as the soul resides in the body its immortal essence provides the concepts of reason, physical appetite and passion. If the soul and self is the same then the question here is whether the soul can justify identity since identity is a manifestation of one’s self. The soul cannot be the self because the self encompasses physical manifestation perceivable and subject to the perception of senses. The soul on the other hand is a product of thought that encompasses a description of identity, but does not represent self as an identity. It is somehow difficult to assess what the self is all about, but the easier way to understand it is for each person to contemplate on the things that they do that defines them. One may claim that he knows himself more than anyone else, but lacks the capacity to see himself from another perspective. In a nutshell, self is a definition that one might give to him based on his thoughts, way of thinking and actions.