Module 3: Who Is the Human Person?

Human being

"a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by: superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance."

Jean Paul Sartre (Man as Freedom)

- Asserts that the human person has no fixed nature - that his/her reality is his/her freedom. - The human person has free will and he has to exercise this capacity - Stated that consciousness is the knowing being in his capacity as being.

Attitudinal

- refers to the human person's inclinations, feelings, ideas, convictions, and prejudices or biases. - It is a person's mental reactions to stimuli or tendency to act.

Behavioral

- refers to the human person's mode of acting. - The human person acts in accordance to his/her condition as a human distinctly unique from any other beings - irrespective of culture, religion, or race.

somatic as matter

A view that stems from the advances made in science and biology which state that all functioning of consciousness are reduced to one principle

Understanding Human Condition

Existence Authenticity Anxiety Freedom Life's absurdity Man's situatedness

Human Nature as Freedom

Sartre suggests that it is a difficult task to live an authentic life because living an authentic life requires one to transcend (to go beyond) the nothingness.

Existentialism

is a philosophical tradition that focuses on the centrality of the human person's existence.

Ontology

is the area of metaphysics concerned with study of the nature and relations of being.

Somatic

refers to the body, material composition, or substance of a human person.

Existentialist

those who believe in existentialism

nothingness

which Sartre suggests is not merely a mental state but an experience.

Edmund Husserl

who formalized phenomenology as philosophical tradition, the conception of consciousness as a consciousness of something. Consciousness posits a transcendent being (Ontological Proof).

Being-in-itself

― Being of material objects; without consciousness, they are explicitly made or an actuality which is solid or opaque. ― Is the being which constitute an absolute plenitude; it can neither be derived from the possible nor reduced to the necessary.

The Human Person as a "Thinking Thing" (Rene Descartes)

― Descartes asserted that human person is a thinking thing and that the nature of man is pure mind and having a body is an accident.

The Human Person as a Composite of Body and Soul (Aristotle)

― Explained in his work, De Anima (1968), all the capacities possessed by all living things. ― His work generally involves the relation between the psyche (soul) and the body.

Being-for-itself

― The exact opposite of the being-in-itself. ― The presence of consciousness to itself. ― Lacks self-identity ― The being of action

The Human Person as an Immortal Soul (Plato)

― This theory claimed that the human person has a soul.

Human Condition

― is defined as the inevitable positive or negative events of existence as a human being.

Immortal Soul

― which is the source of movement (or has the capacity to have motion coming from the inside).