Department of Education

Bureau of Learning Delivery

Teaching and Learning Division

Grade Levels: Grade 11/12

Core Subject: Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

Semester: First Semester (WEEK 8)

 VIII.HUMAN PERSONS AS ORIENTED
TOWARDS THEIR IMPENDING DEATH

Learning Competencies: At the end of the module, you should be able

to:
8.1. Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve and to define
the projects he/she really wants to do in his/her life
PPT11/12-IIi-8.2
8.2. Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life
PPT11/12-IIi-8.4

Lesson 8. Human Persons as Oriented Towards

their Impending Death

1. Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve and to define the
projects he/she really wants to do in his/her life
2. Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life
What is the meaning life?
How can humans attain a
meaningful life?

What happen to
the human
person after
death?
Recognize the Meaning of One’s Life
Socrates- Happiness

• Socrates believes that knowing oneself is a condition to solve the present problem.
• For Socrates, for a person to be happy, he has to live a virtuous life.
• Virtue is not something to be taught or acquired through education, but rather it is merely an
awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a person.
• Knowing what is in the mind and heart of a human being is achieved through self-knowledge.
• True knowledge means wisdom, which in turn, means virtue.
• Socrates’ major ethical claims:
• happiness is impossible without moral virtue;
• Unethical actions harm the person who performs them more than the people they victimize.
The secret of happiness, you see, is not
found in seeking more, but in developing
the capacity to enjoy less.

Plato- Contemplation
 Is very important in life of humanity because this is only available means for man to be free of
his space confinement- truth. DOING GOOD IN LIFE.
 Is the source of endless trouble to us.
 Causes us turmoil and confusion of inquiries.
 To see the TRUTH we must quit the body.
 For Plato, contemplation means that the mind is in communion with the universal and eternal
ideas.
 Contemplation is very important because this is the only available means for a mortal human
being to free himself from his space-time confinement to ascend to the heaven of ideas and there
commune with the immortal, eternal, the infinite, and the divine truths.
 The body, for Plato, causes us turmoil and confusion in our inquiries.
 To see the truth, we must quit the body—the soul in itself must behold things in themselves.
 Knowledge, however, can be attained (if at all) after death: for while in the company of the body,
the soul cannot have pure knowledge.

Aristotle- Realizing your Potential

 Aristotle’s account of change calls upon actuality and potentiality.

 Everything in nature seeks to realize itself—to develop its potentialities and finally realize its
actualities.
 Entelechy means that nothing happens by chance.
 Nature not only has a built-in pattern, but also different levels of being.
 For the world of potential things to exist, there must first be something actual (form) at a level
above potential or perishing things (matter).
 All things in the world are potentially in motion and continuously changing; there must be
something that is actual motion and which is moved by nothing external (Unmoved Mover).
 The Unmoved Mover is eternal, immaterial, with pure actuality or perfection, and with no
potentiality.
 Objects and human beings move toward their divine origin and perfection as they strive to
realize themselves.
 Reason finds its perfection in contemplating the Unmoved Mover.
  The Unmoved Mover is the form of the world moving it toward its divine end.
 The highest human activity is contemplating about the Unmoved Mover.

We become what
we contemplate.

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Nietzsche analysed the art of Athenian tragedy as the product of the Greeks’ deep and non-
evasive thinking about the meaning of life in the face of extreme vulnerability.
• Athenian tragedy reminded its audience of the senseless horrors of human existence but at the
same time provided an experiential reinforcement of insights that we can nonetheless marvel at
beauty within life, and that our true existence is not our individual lives but our participation in
the drama of life and history.
• Morality was based on healthy self-assertion, not self-abasement and the renunciation of the
instincts.
• Realizing one’s ―higher self‖ means fulfilling one’s loftiest vision, noblest ideal.
• The individual has to liberate himself from environmental influences that are false to one’s
essential beings and draw a sharp conflict between the higher self and the lower self, between the
ideal aspired to and the contemptibly imperfect present.

Arthur Schopenhauer

• Schopenhauer begins with the predicament of the self with its struggles and its destiny: What am
I? What shall I do with my life?
• Schopenhauer utilized Kant’s distinction between the noumenal (the world-in-itself, which is
Will) and the phenomenal (the world of experience and inclination) realms.
• Schopenhauer departs from Kant both in denying the rationality of the Will and in claiming that
we can have experience of the thing-in-itself as Will
• For Schopenhauer, there is but One Will, and it underlies everything.
• Every being in the phenomenal world manifests the Will in its own way: as a natural force, as
instinct or, in our case, as intellectually enlightened willing.
• Will is ultimately without purpose, therefore, cannot be satisfied and this led Schopenhauer to
see the willful nature of reality—a reality that has no point and cannot be satisfied.
• Schopenhauer contends that all of life is suffering which is caused by desire.
 • Our desire make us see other people as separate and opposed beings in competition for the
satisfactions we crave leading us to harm each other.
• We can alleviate suffering by ―putting an end to desire.‖

Martin Heidegger
• In Heidegger’s analysis, human existence is exhibited in care, a finite temporality which reaches
with death.
• Care’s threefold structure:
 Possibility. Humanity constructs the instrumental world on the basis of the persons’
concerns.
 Facticity. A person is not pure possibility but factical possibility: possibilities open to him
at any time conditioned and limited by circumstances.
 Fallenness. Humanity has fallen away from one’s authentic possibility into an authentic
existence of irresponsibility and illusory security.
• Heidegger claims that only by living through the nothingness of death in anticipation do one
attain authentic existence.
• Death is not accidental, nor should be analyzed rather it belongs to humanity’s facticity
(limitations).

Jean-Paul Sartre

• the human person desires to be God; the desire to exist as a being that has its sufficient ground in
itself (en sui causa).
• The human person builds the road to the destiny of his/her choosing; he/she is the creator.
• Sartre’s dualism:
 en-soi (in-itself ) – signifies the permeable and dense, silent and dead.
 pour-soi (for-itself) – the world only has meaning according to what the person gives to
it.
• The person, first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world, and defines himself
afterward.
• Freedom, therefore, is the very core and the door to authentic existence.
• The human person who tries to escape obligations and strives to be en-soi is acting on bad faith
(mauvais foi).

Karl Jaspers
• Jasper’s philosophy places the person’s temporal existence in the face of the transcendent God,
an absolute imperative.
• Transcendence relates to us through limit-situation (Grenzsituation).
• To live an authentic existence always requires a leap of faith.
• Authentic existence (existenz) is freedom and God.
• Human beings should be loyal to their own faiths without impugning the faith of others.
Gabriel Marcel

• Philosophy has the tension (the essence of drama) and the harmony (that is the essence of
music).
• Marcel’s Phenomenological Method
 Primary Reflection. This method looks at the world or at any object as a problem,
detached from the self and fragment.
• Secondary Reflection. Secondary reflection is concrete, individual, heuristic, and open. It is
concerned not with object but with presences and recaptures the unity of original experience.
• Secondary reflection is an ingathering, a recollection, a pulling together of the scattered
fragments of our experience.
• Beyond one’s experience, beyond the circle of fellow human beings, one turns to the Absolute
Thou, the unobjectifiable Transcendent Thou.

Goals One Wants to Accomplish

• These self-examination activities will bring more understanding about you and the project/s you
may want to accomplish.

Death involves reflection on its significance in one's life thinking about the larger values that
give life its meaning in the end death only to the point that it frees us.

Task 1:
Direction: Choose (3) from words below that best describe your future. Write your choices
in your notebook. Explain your answer.
a. Success
b. Fortune or Money
c. Fame
d. Power
e. Recognition
f. Happiness
g. Meaning or Purpose
h. Sickness
i. Contentment
j. Faith
k. Love
l. Death
Task 2:
Answer the following questions:

1. What is your personal definition of life? How do you appreciate life?

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2. Is death absence of life? Why or Why not?

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Task 3: Guided Learning:

1. From the perspective of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, how can human beings attain happiness?
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2. In your view, how can one attain a ―higher self‖?
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3. Discuss how desire can lead us to suffering from the point of view of Schopenhauer.
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4. Explain Martin Heidegger’s concept of ―Care‖.

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5. Compare Jasper’s and Marcel’s philosophies. What are their similarities and differences?
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Task 4:

A. Know thyself. Write your strengths and weaknesses.

Task 5: Goals One Wants to Accomplish

Before you itemize what you want to achieve, first, ask questions regarding what you want to
achieve.
Task 6: Matching Type: Match column A to column B. Choose the correct answer.

A. B.
1. Gabriel Marcel A. Everything in nature seeks to realize
2. Karl Jaspers itself- to develop its potentiality and
3. Aristotle finally realize its actualities.
4. Socratic Method
B. To asses by questions the character of
the student; and (2) to set him problems,
exhort him to reduce each problem to its
constituent elements, and criticize the
solutions that he offers. (tutorial)
C. Philosophy has the tension (essence of
drama) and harmony (essence of music).
Philosophy's starting point is a
metaphysics "disease". The search for a
home in the wilderness, a harmony in
disharmony, takes place through a
reflective process that Marcel calls
secondary reflection.
D. To live an authentic existence always
requires a leap of faith
 Words to Ponder:

Arthur Schopenhauer- Unless we do "become ourselves" life is

meaningless.

Aristotle- For Aristotle, everything in nature seeks to

realize itself- to develop its potentiality and finally
realize its actualities.

Entelechy- Greek word for "to become its essence". The

potentiality to be changing (process). For example a
child strives to be an adult'; 'a seed strives to be a
tree. nothing happens by chance

Expository method- that answers the student's direct or implied

questions (direct)

Friedrich Nietzsche- The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche's first book),

analyzed the art of Athenian tragedy as the product
of the Greeks' deep and non-evasive thinking about
the meaning of life in the face of extreme
vulnerability

Gabriel Marcel- For Marcel, philosophy has the tension (essence

of drama) and harmony (essence of music).
Philosophy's starting point is a metaphysics
"disease". The search for a home in the wilderness,
a harmony in disharmony, takes place through a
reflective process that Marcel calls secondary
reflection.

Happiness- For Socrates, for a person to be happy, he has to

live with a virtuous life.

Karl Jaspers- To live an authentic existence always requires a

leap of faith.

Martin Heidegger- claims that only by living through the nothimgness

of death in anticipation do one attain authentic
existence. Death is non-transferable.
Plato- This contemplation does not mean passive thinking
or speculation or knowing and appreciating what is
good; rather, what it is doing good in life.

Plato's theory of immortality- According to Plato, the body is the source of

endless trouble to us by reason of the mere
requirement of food, and is liable also for disease,
which overtake and impede us in the search after
true being: it fill us full of love, lusts and fears, and
fancies of all kinds, and endless foolishness

Socrates 469 BCE- Believes that knowing oneself is a condition to

solve the present problem

Socratic Method- (1) to asses by questions the character of the

student; and (2) to set him problems, exhort him to
reduce each problem to its constituent elements, and
criticize the solutions that he offers. (tutorial)

Threefold structure of care. - (a) possibility, (b) facticity, (c) fallenness