LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE

HUMAN PERSON

PHILOSOPHY & ITS’ ORIGIN

- Ancient time in Greek Ionia
- “Phusis” = an English word of “Nature”

MYTHOLOGICAL
- Relating, based on, appearing in myths or mythology

THALES
- Father of Western Philosophy
- Fishing Village in Miletus
- Around 650 B.C
- Diverged from mythological tradition in explaining things…

SOUGHT TO ANSWER QUESTIONS LIKE.

- What is the underlying substance that the reality is made of?
- How do things come to be, change, and pass away?
- Is there something that remains amidst all changes?

FACTS
- Is there something that remains amidst all changes?
- Assumed that it is within man’s rational ability to abstract and explain reality.
- It was also assumed for the first time that there must be an order in the universe and that
universe must be;
- An orderly system known as “cosmos” & govern by laws or “logos”-w/c explained by man
through “abstraction”

WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

THE MELESIANS

- Thales 650 B.C

o Earth is flat
o Shrewd businessman & established monopoly of the olive
o Brought geometry to ancient Greece.
o Have successfully predicted an eclipse.
o Fundamental substances of reality are “water”

- Anaximander (610-540 B.C.)

o Very good prose writer
o Earth is cylindrical and is suspended in space
o First philosopher to first attempt to draw a map
o Fundamental substance is “apeiron”-no precise characteristics/attributes, ageless
& eternal, & encompasses all the world.

- Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.)

o The earth is flat & round-earth and heavenly bodies are like saucers floating in
the air.
o Fundamental substance of reality is “Air”- Holds our souls together; it
encompasses the whole world.
o Earthquakes-lack of moisture
o Lightning –violent separation of clouds by the wind
o Rainbow- formed when densely compressed air is touched by the sun.

PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

- Pythagoras 531 B.C

o Leader of a religious cult “Pythagoreans”
 o Philosophy is a way of life
o Philosophy & religion is one-Philosophy & Mathematics as good for purification of
the soul.
o “Number”- is the primary constituents of reality.
o Even #s-finite numbers
o Odd #s- infinite numbers
o #10- perfect number.
o Oblong, triangular, square numbers.
o #5- is a number for marriage.
o Beauty, balance & scale can be explained through number.

- Heraclitus (500 B.C)

o Known for his mystical idea about “Change”.
o Change- is the only thing that permanent in this world (also known as flux or
becoming).
o Known to have said:
o “You cannot step twice into the same river; we are & we are not”

- Parmenides (450 B.C)

o Leader of Eleatic School.
o “Reality is made up of one continuous object/plenum called “being”.
o Change & motion- is an illusion.
o Being- indestructible, immovable, complete & without beginning or end.

- Empedocles (493-433 B.C.)

o He believed himself to be immortal that he had magical powers.
o He was known to have cured somebody who was comatose for 24 months.
o He leaped into the mouth of Mt. Etna, an active volcano in Sicily, southern Italy,
that had led to ultimate death.
o Reality is made up of four elements;
 Earth, Air, Fire and Water

- Anaxagoras (480 B.C)

o There are many seeds of elements as there are kinds of things.
o When you divide matter, each separated part will contain elements of everything
else.
o Another important contribution;
o The idea about “Nuos”
o “Nuos/mind”- external but is infinite & is self- ruled and has the greatest strength
& power over all things.
o Famous Quotation:
o “All things have a portion of everything, while & is self-ruled and is mixed with
nothing, but it is alone, itself by itself…it has knowledge about all things.

- Zeno of Elea (490 B.C)

o Loyal follower of Parmenides
o Reiterated the idea that reality is “being”
o Famous idea: “There is no motion”
o 4 arguments against motion but there are two main ideas.
 Achilles & the tortoise.
 The arrow in flight is at rest.

- Warner
o Philosophy emerged as something revolutionary since their mythological
explanation about the nature of the universe would be set aside in favor of more
coherent and rational one.

- Friedrich Waismann (Austrian Philosopher)

o “Philosophy is a vision”. It is a new way of looking at things.
 o Changing one’s perspective will give us a different and broader perspective in
understanding others.

LESSON 2: NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

3 MAJOR STAGES IN THE APPREHENSION OF KNOWLEDGE

- Perception
- Abstraction
- Judgement

1st STAGE – PERCEPTION

- An activity that does not makes us different from animal.
- The two types of perception
o External Perception - Happens when we perceive things using our five senses.
The result of the external perception is called “percept” – the immediate product
of external perception. A mental concept that is developed because of the
process of perception.

o Internal Perception - When you use your imagination & memory- the product of
this process is the “image/phantasm”. -is a representation of the external form
of a person/thing.

2nd STAGE – ABSTRACTION

- Distinguished us from the animals
o Charles Coppens, S.J
 described it as a simple apprehension/conception: Simple apprehension
is the act of perceiving the object intellectually, without affirming or
denying anything concerning it.
- Apprehension
o as an act of the mind, is an intellectual grasping of the object.
o It involves the use of the intellect where we grasp what is universal among the
different particulars that we have observed form the perception.

- Principle
o Universal
 Principle that actualizes the thing (substantial form)
o Particulars
 A principle that makes the thing specific.
- thus, the results of this process of abstraction/simple apprehension/conception are
“concepts”. From the percepts and images, you were able to arrive at the concepts
using your intellect.

- This process is not yet complete. Concepts are said to be building blocks of knowledge.
They do not have truth value at this point.

- According to Acuña; concepts are either be vague or precise, sufficient/insufficient, but

they are neither true nor false.

- When words express concepts, they are technically called “terms”. Consequently, to
complete the process of abstraction, we need a third stage.

3rd STAGE - JUDGEMENT

- This is second stage in order to complete the act of the mind. This is where we are going
to make a knowledge claim because we are going to take at least two concepts and put
them together to make a statement or proposition that could either “true or false” about
the world. You are therefore affirming or denying something about the concept, or you
may be pronouncing agreement or disagreement between these two concepts.
 - “Blue” & “sky”
o You can check depending on the weather condition of the day.
o This process is called judgment and the result of this process is
“statement/proposition”.

- Sentences
o Declarative –tend to express a statement
o Interrogative- tend to express a question
o Imperative- tend to express a command
o Expletive- tend to express a wish
o Exclamatory- tend to express a express surprise

- Statement
o David Hume article, Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the
Understanding.
o Analytic Statement- The truth or falsity of the knowledge claim being made by
the analytic statement could be found within the statement itself.
o Empirical Statement- the truth or falsity depends on the state of affairs being
claimed.

THEORIES OF TRUTH
- Coherence
- Correspondence
- Pragmatic

Coherence Theory
- Deals with the consistency of the truth of the statements being claimed within the system
that is being used or employed.
- Coherence- The quality of being logical & consistent.
- Well-formed formula

Correspondence Theory
- Has to do with the correspondence of knowledge claims being made with the situation in
the world.

Pragmatic Theory
- Is the tantamount to the good or practical consequences that the believe in the idea
would bring.
- William James- The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth
happens to an idea.
- He also added that, “The true, to put it briefly, is only the expedient in the way of
our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
 LESSON 3: HOLISTIC POINT OF VIEW VS.
PARTIAL POINT OF VIEW

Blind Men & the Elephant

- A Poem by John Godfrey Saxe
Here is John Godfrey Saxe’s (1816-1887)
- Moral: The simple reason is that our sensory perceptions and life experiences can lead
to limited access and overreaching misinterpretations. How can a person with a limited
touch of truth turn that into the one and only version of all reality?

HOLISTIC VS. PARTIAL POINT OF VIEW

- Holistic point of view

o Holism comes from the Greek word "holos" which literally means all, entire,
totality. Holism is a school of thought that maintains the interdependence of
factors to another agencies of causalities. In other words, properties of a given
phenomenon or system (e.g.  philosophical, biological, psychological, emotional,
spiritual, social, political, linguistic) cannot be determined by a certain structure or
component alone. Therefore, this kind of system aims to determine and explain
the whole or totality of a given system by examining the behaviors and activities
of certain component parts.
o Looks at all the aspects of the given problem or situation.
o All aspects are given importance when making conclusions.
o All aspects are tied together to form a general overview of the problems or
situation.

- Partial Point of View

o In philosophy, a point of view is defined as a way or a method how one sees or
perceives the reality or a phenomenon. Therefore, when one says a partial point
of view, he has clearly stated and admitted that the way he sees reality or certain
phenomenon is based on a single factor or causal agency. A partial point of view
then is a perspective that is based on one of the component parts of a whole.
o Looks at only limited number of aspects of the given problem or
situation/situations.
o Conclusions are made based on considering some, but not all sides of the
problem/situation.

“When falsity becomes a reality?”

LESSON 4: THE HUMAN PERSON AS EMBODIED SPIRIT

Philosophical viewpoint about man

- Plato
o On the existence of the 2 worlds– “World Soul / Ideas and World of experience /
Material World”
o Man is made up of “body and soul”
o But Plato look at the body with contempt-- “because it is the source of error”;
“Body & material object”: therefore, considered having less or no value at all.
o Considered the body as prison of soul, which prompts him to set the ideal of
liberating the soul from the body. The soul is immortal while the body is mortal.
So, when we die, our body will decay but our soul will return to world of ideas.
o Thus “human being is essentially his soul”
o Plato’s analogy of the state to the individual
- Aristotle
o Considered things are composed of two co-principles which he call he call
“matter & form”
o A form-- is a principle which actualizes the thing & makes a thing what it is
o Matter– as viewed as potentiality to receive the form.
o In short, Form– is viewed as act, and Matter– is viewed as potency
o Matter and Form
 It should always be noted that matter and form are not complete realities
but only co-principle of a thing (substance). And so co-principle matter
and form do not exist themselves separately

- Examples of natural law

 Life - Reproduction
 Educate one’s offspring - Seek God
 Live in society - Avoid offense
 Shun ignorance

- Basis for the natural law

o The truth that God has created everything and is the root of all things (written in
the hearts of the human being)
o Natural Law morality is knowable by all persons, independent of their religious
faith. (Engraved in the conscience)
o There are objective moral values and teachings that can be universalized,
addressed to all people of goodwill.

- Relationship between “God’s law & natural law”

o Misconception: Natural Law is not purely philosophical terms, as completely
separated from God’s Law.

o Reality: God’s Law & Natural Law are intimately connected, for in obeying the
Natural Law, we obey the Divine Law itself. “eternal, objective, universal”

- 3 STEPS PROCESS OF MORAL DECISION-MAKING

o Discerning Stage
 Includes many elements such as summarized in the common
“pedagogical” STOP formula. (Stop, Think, Consult Others, Pray)

o Moral Demands
 Following the dictates of our conscience (decide whether to act not to act
a certain action)

o Judgment or Decision Stage

 Refers to the judgment of conscience we make or the morality of any
proposed action, and our decision to follow this dictate of our conscience
or not (conscience judges a certain action whether good or bad)