Philosophy of Human Person


→ "Philosophy" came from Greek Words:
→ Philo which means "to love"
→ Sophia which means "wisdom"
→ Philosophy originally meant "love of wisdom"
→ Philosophy is also defined as the science that by natural light of reason
studies the first causes or highest principles of all things.


→ It is an organized body of knowledge.
→ It is systematic.
→ It follows certain steps or employs certain procedures.


→ It uses a philosopher’s natural capacity to think or human reason or
the so-called unaided reason.


→ It makes philosophy distinct from other sciences because it is not one
dimensional or partial.
→ A philosopher does not limit himself to a particular object of inquiry.
→ Philosophy is multidimensional or holistic.
→ First Cause or Highest Principle
→ Principle of Identity – whatever is; whatever is not is not.
Everything is its own being, and not being is not being.
→ Principle of Non-Contradiction – it is impossible for a thing to be and
not to be at the same time.
→ Principle of Excluded Middle – a thing is either is or is not; between being
and not-being, there is no middle ground possible.
→ Principle of Sufficient Reason – nothing exists without sufficient reason
for its being and existence.

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
→ Metaphysics
▪ It is an extension of a fundamental and necessary drive in every
human being to know what is real.
▪ A metaphysician’s task is to explain that part of our experience
which we call unreal in terms of what we call real.
▪ We try to make things comprehensible by
▪ simplifying or reducing the mass of things we call appearance to a
relatively fewer number of things we call reality.
→ Thales
▪ He claims that everything we experience is water (“reality”)
and everything else is “appearance.”
▪ We try to explain everything else
▪ (appearance) in terms of water (reality).
→ Idealist and Materialist
▪ Their theories are based on unobservable entities:
mind and matter.
▪ They explain the observable in terms of the unobservable.
→ Plato
▪ Nothing we experience in the physical world with our five senses is
real.
▪ Reality is unchanging, eternal, immaterial, and can be detected
only by the intellect.
▪ Plato calls these realities ideas of forms.
→ Ethics
▪ It explores the nature of moral virtue and evaluates human
actions.
▪ It is a study of the nature of moral
▪ judgments.
▪ Philosophical ethics attempts to provide an account of our
fundamental ethical ideas.
▪ It insists that obedience to moral law be given a rational
foundation.
→ Socrates
▪ To be happy is to live a virtuous life.
▪ Virtue is an awakening of the seeds of good deeds that lay
dormant in the mind and heart of a person which can be achieved
through self-knowledge.
▪ True knowledge = Wisdom = Virtue
▪ Courage as virtue is also knowledge.
→ William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
▪ An African-American who wanted equal rights for the blacks.
▪ His philosophy uses the same process as Hegel’s dialectic
(Thesis > Antithesis > Synthesis).

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→ Epistemology
▪ It deals with nature, sources, limitations, and validity of
knowledge.
▪ It explains: (1) how we know what we claim to know; (2) how we
can find out what we wish to know; and (3) how we can
differentiate truth from falsehood.
▪ It addresses varied problems: the reliability, extent, and kinds
of knowledge; truth; language; and science and scientific
knowledge.
▪ Sources of knowledge
▪ Induction
- Gives importance to particular things seen, heard, and
touched
- Forms general ideas through the examination of
particular facts

▪ Empiricist
- Advocates of induction method
- Empiricism is the view that knowledge can be attained only
through sense experience.

▪ Deduction
- Gives importance to general law from which particular
facts are understood or judged
▪ Rationalist –
- Advocates of the deduction method
- For a rationalist, actual knowledge is based on logic, the
laws, and the methods that reason develops.
▪ Pragmatism
- The meaning and truth of an idea are tested by its
practical consequences.
→ Aesthetics
▪ It is the science of the beautiful in its various manifestations –
including the sublime, comic, tragic, pathetic, and ugly.

▪ It is important because of the following:

- It vitalizes our knowledge. It makes our knowledge of the
world alive and useful.
- It helps us to live more deeply and richly. A work of art
helps us to rise from purely physical existence into the
realm of intellect and the spirit.
- It brings us in touch with our culture. The answers of
great minds in the past to the great problems of human
life are part of our culture.

▪ Hans-Georg Gadamer
- A German philosopher who argues that our tastes and
judgments regarding beauty work in connection with one’s
own personal experience and culture.
- Our culture consists of the values and beliefs of our time
and our society.

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 → Logic
▪ Reasoning is the concern of the logician.
▪ It comes from the Greek word logike, coined by Zeno, the Stoic
(c.340–265BC), which means a treatise on matters pertaining to
human thought.
▪ It does not provide us with knowledge of the
world directly and does not contribute directly to the content of
our thoughts.
▪ It is not interested in what we know regarding certain subjects
but in the truth or the validity of our arguments regarding such
objects.
▪ Aristotle
- First philosopher to devise a logical method
- Truth means the agreement of knowledge with reality.
- Logical reasoning makes us certain that our conclusions
are true.
▪ Zeno of Citium
- One of the successors of Aristotle and founder of
Stoicism
- Other influential authors of logic
- Cicero, Porphyry, and Boethius
- Philoponus and Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes


→ Philosophizing is to think or express oneself in a philosophical manner.
▪ Discusses a matter from a philosophical standpoint


→ Phenomenology was founded by Edmund Husserl.
→ A method for finding and guaranteeing the truth that focuses on careful
inspection and description of phenomena or appearances.
→ It comes from the Greek word phainómenon meaning “appearance.”
→ It is the scientific study of the essential structures of consciousness.
→ Husserl’s phenomenology is the thesis that consciousness is intentional.
→ Every act of consciousness is directed at some object or another,
possibly a material object or an “ideal” object.
→ Phenomenology uncovers the essential structures of experience and
its objects.
→ Husserl’s Phenomenological Standpoint
▪ The first and best known is the epoche or “suspension” that
“brackets” all questions of truth or reality and simply describes
the contents of consciousness.
▪ The second reduction eliminates the merely empirical contents
of consciousness and focuses instead on the essential features,
the meanings of consciousness.
▪ Phenomenologists are interested in the contents of
consciousness, not on things of the natural world as such.

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
→ Existentialism is not primarily a philosophical method nor is it exactly a
set of doctrines but more of an outlook or attitude supported by
diverse doctrines centered on certain common themes.
▪ The human condition or the relation of the individual to the
world;
▪ The human response to that condition;
▪ Being, especially the difference between the being of a person
(which is “existence”) and the being of other kinds of things;
human freedom;
▪ The significance (and unavoidability) of choice and
decision in the absence of certainty and;
▪ The concreteness and subjectivity of life as lived, against
abstractions and false objectification.
→ Existentialism emphasizes the importance of free individual choice,
regardless of the power of other people to influence and coerce our
desires, beliefs, and decisions.
→ To be human, to be conscious, is to be free to imagine, free to choose,
and responsible for one’s life.
→ One of the continuing criticisms of existentialism is the obscurity and
the seeming elusiveness of the ideal of authenticity.


→ Postmodernism is not a philosophy.
→ “Postmodernism” has come into vogue as the name for a rather diffuse
family of ideas and trends that in significant respect rejects, challenges,
or aims to supersede “modernity”.
→ Postmodernists believe that humanity should come at truth beyond
the rational to the non-rational elements of human nature, including the
spiritual.
→ Beyond exalting individual analysis of truth, postmodernists adhere to
a relational, holistic approach.


→ For analytic philosophers, language cannot objectively describe truth
because language is socially conditioned.
→ Analytic philosophy is the conviction that to some significant degree,
philosophical problems, puzzles, and errors are rooted in language and can
be solved or avoided by a sound understanding of language and
careful attention to its workings.


→ Logic is centered in the analysis and construction of arguments.
→ Critical thinking is distinguishing facts and opinions or personal feelings.
→ Critical thinking also takes into consideration cultural
systems, values, and beliefs and helps us uncover bias and prejudice
and be open to new ideas not necessarily in agreement with previous
thought.

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 → Two basic types of reasoning:
▪ Inductive reasoning which is based from observations in order to
make generalizations.
▪ Deductive reasoning which draws conclusion from usually one
broad judgment or definition and one more specific assertion,
often an inference.
→ An argument (deductive argument) is valid and sound if it is a product
of logically constructed premises.
→ Validity comes from a logical conclusion based on logically constructed
premises.
→ An argument (inductive argument) is strong if it provides probable
support to the conclusion.
→ A strong argument with true premises is said to be cogent.
→ Fallacies
▪ A fallacy is a defect in an argument.
▪ Fallacies are detected by examining the contents of the
argument.
▪ Common fallacies
→ Appeal to Pity
▪ An attempt to win support for an argument or idea by exploiting
his or her opponent’s feelings of pity or guilt.
→ Appeal to Ignorance
▪ What has not been proven false must be true and vice versa.


→ Equivocation
▪ A logical chain of reasoning of a term or a word several times, but
giving the particular word a different meaning each time.
→ Composition
▪ Something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of
some part of the whole.
→ Division
▪ Something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its
parts.
→ Against the Person
▪ It links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of
the person advocating the premise.
→ Appeal to Force
▪ An argument where force, coercion, or the threat of force is
given as a justification for a conclusion.
→ Appeal to the People
▪ An argument that appeals or exploits people’s vanities, desire for
esteem, and anchoring on popularity.
→ False Cause
▪ Since that event followed this one, that event must have been
caused by this one.
→ Hasty Generalization
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→ Hasty Generalization
▪ Making an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence.
→ Begging the Question
▪ An argument where the proposition to be proven is assumed
implicitly or explicitly in the premise.

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 → Hasty Generalization
▪ Making an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence.
→ Begging the Question
▪ An argument where the proposition to be proven is assumed
implicitly or explicitly in the premise.

→
→ According to Thomas Merton (1948), there is no other way to find who
we are than by finding in ourselves the divine image.
→ We have to struggle to regain spontaneous and vital awareness of our
own spirituality.
→ Transcendental and transcendence convey the basic ground concept
from the words’ literal meaning (from Latin), of climbing or going beyond,
with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages.

→
→ At the heart of Hinduism lies the idea of human beings’ quest for
absolute truth, so that one’s soul and the Brahman or Atman (Absolute
Soul) might become one.
→ Human beings have dual nature: the spiritual and immortal essence
(soul) which is considered real; and the empirical life and character.
→ Hindus generally believe that the soul is eternal but is bound by the law
of Karma (action) to the world of matter, which it can escape only after
spiritual progress through an endless series of births.
→ Humanity’s basic goal in life is the liberation (moksha) of spirit (jiva).
→ Hinduism holds that humanity’s life is a continuous cycle (samsara)
where the body goes through a transmigratory series of birth and death,
even though the spirit is neither born nor dies.

→
→ Gautama’s life was devoted to sharing his “Dharma” or Law of
Salvation – a simple presentation of the gospel of inner cultivation
of right spiritual attitudes, coupled with a self-imposed discipline
whereby bodily desires would be channeled in the right directions.
→ The teaching of Buddha has been set forth traditionally in the “Four
Noble Truths” leading to the “Eightfold Path” to perfect character or
arhatship, which in turn gave assurance of entrance into Nirvana at
death.
→ Four Noble Truths
→ Life is full of suffering.
→ Eradication of desire may be accomplished only by following the
Eightfold Path of earnest endeavor.

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 → Right belief in and acceptance of the “Fourfold Truth”;
→ Right aspiration for one’s self and for others;
→ Right speech that harms no one;
→ Right conduct, motivated by goodwill toward all human beings;
→ Right means of livelihood, or earning one’s living by honorable
means;
→ Right endeavor, or effort to direct one’s energies toward wise ends;
→ Right mindfulness in choosing topics for thought; and
→ Right meditation, or concentration to the point of complete absorption
in mystic ecstasy


→ In the beginning, Christians do not see the need to prove God’s
existence.
→ Looks at the reasonableness of belief in
→ God’s existence.
→ Asks whether or not the existence of God provides the best
explanation of the existence of the world, as we know it.
→ Knowledge of God begins with faith and is made perfect by understanding.
→ Faith supplements and enlightens reason that it may proceed to ever
richer and fuller understanding.


→ Forgiveness
▪ It frees us from our anger and bitterness caused by the
actions and/or words of another.
▪ On the other hand, the hardness of our heart is reinforced by
whole series of rational arguments.
→ Beauty and Nature
▪ There is perfection in every single flower.
▪ A hug, sunrise and sunset, eating together as a family are
experiences of miracles which can be truly moments of grace that
touch us deeply and spontaneously lift our hearts.
→ Vulnerability
▪ To be vulnerable is to be human.
▪ We need to acknowledge the help of other people in our lives if we
want to be true with ourselves and live with meaning and
direction.
→ Failure
▪ Failures force us to confront our weaknesses and
limitations and to surrender to a mystery or look upon a
bigger world.
▪ Acceptance of our failures makes us hope and trust that all can
be brought into good.
→ Loneliness
▪ It is our choice to live in an impossible world where we are always
“happy” or to accept a life where solitude and companionship have
a part.
▪ Our experience of loneliness can help us realize that our
dependence on other people or gadgets is a possessiveness that
we can be free from.

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 → Love
▪ To love is to experience richness, positivity, and transcendence.
▪ Love can open in us something which takes us beyond ourselves


→ Philosophers in both East and West were asking questions about the
universe we live in and our place in it.
→ Eastern sages probed nature’s depths intuitively through the eyes
of spiritual sages.
→ Greek thinkers viewed nature through cognitive and scientific eyes.
→ Pre-Socratic philosophers represent the first intellectual and
scientific attempt to understand the origins of the universe.


→ The domination of humanity is linked to the domination of nature
based on the anthropocentric model.
→ An unfair or unjust utilization of the environment results to
ecological crisis.
→ Researches exposed the environmental consequence of
international politico- economic specialization for specific
countries and global regions as well as the implications for both abuses
of natural resources and of the generation of waste and emissions.
→ The Ecocentric model puts the ecosystem first and assumes that the
natural world has intrinsic value.
→ Nature is not valued for the future survival of human species per se, but
is invaluable in itself.
→ Human made changes threaten the health of nature.

→ Anthropocentrism
→ Ecocentrism
→ Biocentrism


→ Early Greek philosophers, the Milesians, regarded Nature as
spatially without boundaries, that is, as infinite or indefinite in extent.
→ Anaximander employed the term “boundless” to mean
that Nature is indeterminate―in the sense that no boundaries
between the warm and cold or the moist and dry regions are originally
present within it.
→ Evolution of the world begins with the generation of opposites in a
certain region of Nature that eventually burst and formed the universe.

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 → Pythagoras described the universe as living embodiment of nature’s
order, harmony, and beauty and our relationship with it in terms of
biophilia (love of other living things) and cosmophilia (love of other
living beings).
→ Chinese cosmic conception, on the other hand, is based on the
assumption that all that happens in the universe is a continuous whole
like a chain of natural consequences.
→ The universe does not proceed onward but revolves without beginning or
end.
→ Happiness lies in his conformity with nature or tao.


→ The beautiful encourage us to believe that nature and humanity are part
of an even bigger design – an ultimate goal in which every aspect of the
sensible world has its place in a larger purpose – that draws our thoughts
toward a supersensible reality.
→ Kant believes that the orderliness of nature and the harmony of nature
with our faculties guide us toward a deeper religious perspective.
→ Understanding our relationship with the environment can also refer to
the human beings with ecology and nature.


→ Deep Ecology
▪ Ecological crisis is an outcome of anthropocentrism.
▪ Deep ecologists encourage humanity to shift away from
anthropocentrism to ecocentrism.
→ Social Ecology
▪ Ecological crisis results from authoritarian social structures.
▪ Social ecologists call for small-scale societies, which recognize
that humanity is linked with the well-being of the natural world in
which human life depends.
→ Ecofeminism
▪ Ecological crisis is a consequence of male dominance.
▪ In this view, whatever is “superior” is entitled to whatever is
“inferior.”
▪ For the ecofeminists, freeing nature and humanity means
removing the superior vs. inferior in human relations.
▪ The three theories mentioned value the care, conservation,
preservation of nature, and humanity.


→ Fromm proposed a new society that should encourage the emergence of a
new human being that will foster prudence and moderation or
frugality toward environment.
→ Being fully present where one is.
→ Trying to reduce greed, hate, and illusions as much as one is capable.

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
→ To be free is a part of humanity’s authenticity.
→ Understanding freedom is part of humanity’s transcendence.
→ Freedom consists of going beyond situations such as physical or
economic.


→ The imperative quality of a judgment of practical intellect is meaningless
apart from will.
→ Practical intellect guides will by enlightening it.
→ If there were no intellect, there would be no
→ will.
→ Will is an instrument of free choice.
→ Moral acts, which are always particular acts, are in our power and we are
responsible for them.
→ Human beings are rational and reason is a divine characteristic, thus,
humans have the spark of the divine.


→ Human beings have the unique power to change themselves and the
things around them for the better.
→ Human beings are moral agent: both spiritual and material.
→ Through our spirituality, whether we choose to be “good” or “evil”
becomes our responsibility.
→ Human being has a supernatural, transcendental destiny


→ The human person has the desire to be God:
→ The desire to exist as a being which has its sufficient ground in itself (en
sui causa).
→ The human person builds the road to the destiny of his/her choosing.
→ Sartre’s existentialism stems from the principle “existence
precedes essence.”


→ Law of Nature (Lex Naturalis) – a general rule established by reason that
forbids a person to do that which is destructive of his life or takes away
the means of preserving the same and to omit that by which he thinks it
may be best preserved.
→ Hobbes first law of nature is to seek peace which immediately suggests a
second law which is to divest oneself of certain rights to achieve peace.
→ The mutual transferring of rights is called a contract and is the basis of
the notion of moral obligation and duty.
→ One cannot contract to give up his right to self-defense or self-
preservation since it is his sole motive for entering any contract.

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
→ Human being is born free and good but now is in chains and has become
bad due to the evil influence of society, civilization, learning, and
progress which resulted to dissension, conflict, fraud, and deceit.
→ To restore peace, bring his freedom back, and returned to his true self,
he saw the necessity and came to form the state through the
social contract whereby everyone grants his individual rights to the
general will.
→ There must be a common power or government which the plurality of
individuals (citizens) should confer all their powers and strength
(freedom) into one will (ruler).


→ The philosophical concept of interaction between the self and the other
→ The mutual recognition of each other as persons
→ Also called "a unique relationship between distinct subjects"
→ Refers to the characteristic of human person to engage in a very
intimate and personal relationship with others who are different from him
or her but who are also like him or her Human Interactions

 /
→ Acceptance of differences and embracing diversity
→ We understand that each person is unique, therefore, differences will
exist among groups of people
→ We have to accept that people will have different views and beliefs
→ What unites us all is our shared humanity and dignity


→ Thus, none of us is privileged to call people names or label others much
more judge others because of their shortcomings or decisions that didn't
yield positive results.
→ For Wojtyla, the social dimension is represented by 'We relation' and for
Buber, the interpersonal is signified by the 'I-You relation.'
→ Buber conceives the human person in his/her wholeness, totality,
concrete existence and relatedness to the world. Wojtyla maintains that
the human person is the one who exists and acts (conscious acting, has a
will, has self- determination).
→ For Wojtyla, action reveals the nature of the human agent and
participation explains the essence of the human person. The human
person is oriented toward relation and sharing in the communal life for
the common good

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 → Buber's I-You philosophy is about the human person as a subject, a being
different from things or from objects, who have direct and mutual
sharing of selves. In contrast, the I-It relationship is a person to thing,
subject to object relationship.
→ Intersubjectivity recognized the capabilities of our differently abled
brothers and sisters or PWD's having their talents and ability to
performed tasks though different in manner but achieving the same
purpose or end.
→ Community sensitivity, through positive and supportive attitudes toward
PWDs, is also an important component. Other sectors considered as
minorities or not receiving equal respect and recognition in the society
are those who are experiencing poverty, women in general, senior citizens
and sometimes those who were not able to reach higher education level
and the unemployed.


→ Simple awareness of the existence of the other
→ Awareness of the self as being seen by others
→ "Self-consciousness is considered by philosophers as a defining
characteristic of the self-other relationship"


→ A particular perspective taken to embody certain aspects of the
relationship between observer and observed, especially as reflected in the
way in which an author or film director (unconsciously or otherwise)
directs attention.


→ An individual presents himself or herself in a certain way when dealing
with others; people act out characters when dealing with certain people or
when in certain situations


→ Humans strive to achieve deeper and more substantial interactions and
relations with other people.
→ This deeper and more genuine interaction is called dialogue which is made
possible when the self realizes that the other is a genuine and unique
individual.
→ A dialogue is an interaction between persons that happens through
speech or the use of words, expressions, and body language guage


→ Empathy
▪ The ability to share emotions - It is driven by a person's
awareness that the I other is a person with thoughts and
feelings - Empathy enables us to experience another person's
emotions, such as happiness, anger, and sadness

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 → Availability
▪ The willingness of a person to be present and be at the disposal of
another - you are there for a person who might need your help -
the characteristic of being useful to others and do something for
them
→ Ethics of Care
▪ An ethical theory that emphasizes the moral dimension of
relationships and interactions-it encourages individuals to help
other people, most especially the vulnerable - philosophers believe
that people have a moral obligation to respond to the needs of
people; and one cannot turn a blind eye on the problem of others
→ Alienation
▪ Some people view other people negatively and consider human
actions as being influenced by selfish interests This arises when a
person ceases to view the other as a distinct and authentic
person and merely considers the other person as a mere object or
a means to satisfy personal interests


→ We now live in a society where transfer of information is fast and
efficient that we can easily link and connect with other people through
social media.
→ Social media and social networking sites might lead to depression and
disconnect users instead of connecting them.
→ As Soren Kierkegaard has put it, we tend to conform to an image or idea
associated with being a certain type of person rather than being
ourselves.


→ The early Medieval Period is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages but
it was nonetheless a time of preparation.
→ Many barbarians had become Christians but most were condemned as
heretic due to their Arian belief.
→ Christianity’s influence widened when the great Charlemagne became
King of the Franks.
→ The way of life in the Middle Ages is called feudalism, which comes from
medieval Latin feudum, meaning property or “possession.”
→ Peasants built their villages of huts near the castles of their lords for
protection in exchange of their services.

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
→ The title “modern philosophy” is an attack on and a rejection of the
Middle Ages that occupied the preceding thousand years.
→ Modern period is generally said to begin around the backdrop of:
→ Christopher Columbus’ landing in the “new world” which altered not only
the geography but the politics of the world forever.
→ Martin Luther’s protest which caused several centuries of upheaval in
Europe, change the nature of Christian religion, and eventually,
change conceptions of human nature.
→ Reformation brought not only the rejection of medieval philosophy
but also the establishment of the “Protestant ethic” and the
beginnings of modern capitalism.


→ The title “modern philosophy” is an attack on and a rejection of the
Middle Ages that occupied the preceding thousand years.
→ Modern period is generally said to begin around the backdrop of:
→ Christopher Columbus’ landing in the “new world” which altered not only
the geography but the politics of the world forever.
→ Martin Luther’s protest which caused several centuries of upheaval in
Europe, change the nature of Christian religion, and eventually,
change conceptions of human nature.
→ Reformation brought not only the rejection of medieval philosophy
but also the establishment of the “Protestant ethic” and the
beginnings of modern capitalism.


→ As industry changed, social and political conditions transformed.
→ The revolutionary change in our way of life in modern times, which for
several centuries was confined principally to the Western people, has
in our lifetime come to affect all of humanity.
→ Human relations are transformed by social systems specifically, on
knowledge, laws, economics, and technology.


→ “Knowledge is virtue; ignorance is vice” is the summary of what Socrates
wants to teach about how human beings should live a good life.
→ The origins of the modern age may be seen in the phenomenal growth of
knowledge that can be traced to the revival of Greek science.
→ The process of intellectual growth still continues and changes
in our understanding in the years ahead may well be greater than
those that we have seen in our own lifetime.

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
→ One of the most important consequences of the application of knowledge
from Plato’s Republic to human affairs has been increased
integration of policy making.
→ As life has become more complex, the legal system has also grown to the
point where almost all human activities come in contact with the law in
one form or another.
→ This integration of policy making has brought people into an
unprecedentedly closer relationship and has resulted in a greater
complexity of social organization.


→ Technical improvements have made possible a mechanization of
labor that has resulted in mass production, the rapid growth in per
capita productivity, and an increasing division of labor.
→ • The contrast today between the level of living in relatively modern
countries and that in traditional societies is a clear
manifestation of this.


→ Modern knowledge and the technology it has created have had an
immense impact on the traditional societies’ way of life.
→ The complex and interrelated series of changes in humanity’s way
of life has changed the power relationships among societies by
rapidly strengthening the position of some at the expense of others.
→ Societies have also become more interdependent, and the
conduct of their relations has been transformed.
→ Modernization is seen as part of the universal experience, and in
many respects, it is one that holds great hope for the welfare of
humanity and yet, it has also been in many respects a destructive
process.


→ The more society is influenced by technology, the more we need to
consider the social, ethical and technological, and scientific aspects of
each decision and choice.
→ Science has greatly influenced the picture we have of human existence
and what is essential to humanity that the difficulty to the period of
rapid change challenges us to discover more about what is fundamental
to our existence.
→ Human success is measured by success in mastering science and
technology.
→ Science and technology have become the most distinctive symbol
of human autonomy.
→ Science and technology is not a single phenomenon; Technology is not
an object but our whole attitude toward the human world; Science and
technology are the culture itself.

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 ( )
→ Women’s friendship has a unique quality that may only exist between
women—a quality of friendship between women offering sympathy,
learning, validations, and advices.
→ True friendships allow each other to be completely themselves.
→ Female friends are extremely important to our emotional and physical
health.
→ Women may, unconsciously, have negative attitudes toward themselves
and other women.
→ Mothers customarily carry the moral obligations of providing safe
environment for their daughters.
→ Daughter’s relationship with their mothers could be profound or disabling.
→ Knowing and accepting ourselves are important ingredients in
establishing boundaries in friendship.


→ 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.


→ 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’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).

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person Page 18


→ Know thyself. Write your strengths and weaknesses. The Unknown side.
The side other know about you but you are not aware of yourself
→ Before you itemize what you want to achieve, first, ask questions
regarding what you want to achieve


→ Nietzsche 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.
→ 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.


→ 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.


→ 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.

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person Page 19


→ 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.


→ 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.


→ 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 a gathering, 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.

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