-lesson 02 philosophy of man
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Philosophy of Man: DefinitionTRANSCRIPT
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
THE GREEKS AND THEIR WORLDThe Beginning of Philosophy
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY Philosophy begins when human beings start
trying to understand the world, not through religion or by accepting authority but through the use of reason.
SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHY What we needed to know was how to
conduct our lives and ourselves. Thus, the more urgent questions are not
something like “what the world is made of?” but rather “what is good?”, “what is right?”. “what is just?”
Socrates believed that man’s soul pre-existed his body. In his original ideal existence as a soul or pure mind in the realm of ideas, man knew all things by direct intuition, and had all this knowledge stored in his mind.
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PLATO: DUALISTIC NATURE OF MAN He thinks that there two sorts of stuff that
make up he world, two sorts of things that especially come together in human beings
A human being is composed of body and soul.BODY – material, mutable, mortalSOUL – spiritual, immutable, immortal
Following Socrates, Plato thought of human beings as essentially their souls.
While we have bodies, we are souls.
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ARISTOTLE: THE COMPOSITE NATURE OF MAN Man is not pure mind or spirit as Plato
thought man to be. Man, in his present earthly existence, is a
composite nature of body and soul, mind and matter, sense and intellect, passion and reason.
Philosophy, therefore, aims at the development of the WHOLE MAN, the full realization and actualization of all man’s power and potentialities – primarily of his rational prerogatives and secondarily of the emotional, social, political, esthetic and economic aspects of his composite being.
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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHYChristianity and Philosophy
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THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY After the ascension of Jesus Christ into
Heaven, the catechesis of Christian doctrine was based on the oral preaching of the witnesses of His life.
By the middle of the second century, Christians felt the need to have to recourse to theological speculation in order to:
1. Express more precisely the dogmatic formulas contained in the symbols of faith.
2. To tear down heretical arguments.3. To defend themselves from the calumnies
coming from the Roman authorities.
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AUGUSTINE’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE For Augustine, as for Plato, there are two main divisions
of reality, the physical and the non-physical. In the non-physical world are souls, spiritual substances, God and Forms in the Mind of God. In the physical world are images, material objects, space and time.
Dualistic view of man- human beings are composed of two substances, bodies and souls.- our souls are most important to us. They are not something that we have, they are something that we are.- we are spiritual beings at the core of our nature
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’ PHILOSOPHY As did all medieval theologians, Aquinas
accepted the Christian worldview as a given. Everything important about life has been
revealed in the scriptures – The Old and The New Testaments.
While faith in the revealed word of God required to know what is true, we must also have reason (philosophy) to help us to understand what we believe.
Aquinas was not afraid that reason might lead people astray from God’s truth, but rather welcomed it as another avenue to God
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MODERN PHILOSOPHYThe Revival of Reason
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THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERNITY During the middle ages, the Catholic Church
incorporated the Ptolemaic system into the Christian view of the world. On this view, God made the world to be the center of everything. Psalm 93 (addressing God) also claims: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm.”
In the 16th century, a Polish churchman called Copernicus pointed out that many of our fearsome mathematical problems would melt away if we treated the sun as the center of the solar system.
When he did this, he showed that the planetary movements that were becoming increasingly difficult to explain suddenly made good, clear sense.
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DESCARTES’ PHILOSOPHY OF MAN: “I THINK THEREFORE I AM” For Descartes, his self is his nonphysical mind, or
soul:1. If I exist and my body may not exist, then I am
not my body.2. I exist.3. My body may not exist.4. Therefore, I am not my body.
For Descartes, human beings are very different from animals and everything else in nature. We can do lots of things in a mechanistic way, such as refuse to act on a strong desire, plan future events, make decisions, and so on. We can do all these things because we are not entirely physical things; we are also nonphysical things; we have minds.
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DESCARTES’ PHILOSOPHY OF MAN: “I THINK THEREFORE I AM” So, we are bodies and minds It is the job of science to study bodies along
with the rest of nature; and it’s the job of philosophy to study the mind.
Although he recognizes the importance of the body, Descartes, like Plato before him, believes that what is essential to being a self is the nonphysical mind, not the body.
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15 CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHYThe 19th Century and Beyond
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THE 19TH CENTURY It was a time of greatly increased activity in
the sciences of man and correspondingly rapid development of various disciplines.
Perhaps the most significant theme , common to all branches of science, was the declining influence of religion.
Theological discourse was thus only human discourse.
Herder: “It is necessary to read the Bible in a human manner, for it is a book written by men for men.”
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INTELLECTUAL BACKGROUND OF CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY:Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
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SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855) Rejected the intellectualization of God. He
believes that reason plays no role in religion. He believed that we desire more than anything
else is a close personal relationship with God. If we never fulfill this desire, we will never be
happy. To have a personal relationship with God is to
have absolute faith in Him, a belief that is not to be proven by evidence that He exists.
However, a fulfilling relationship with God can be freely chosen by us or not.
“Man’s existence can only become significant when one realizes his own freedom.”
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) “God is dead and we have killed Him.” This meant that the essence of God in
modern man was dead. Also dead was the part of a person that
recognized universal God-given ideals of reason and truth, goodness and beauty.
He rejected reason as the core of human nature.
Knowledge is not man’s strongest desire but rather the desire for power.
There is no pre-established human nature, only the freedom to be whatever we choose to be.
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JEAN – PAUL SARTRE Existentialism
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WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM? Derived from the word “Existence” which
comes from the Latin word “Existere” which means to “stand out”, “to emerge” or “to come out from”
Stresses the difference between “existing” and “living”
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SOME THEMES OF EXISTENTIALISM Rejection of reason and of the idea that man
is, by nature, a rational being.
Existentialism takes man as the center of attention. The focus is on the individual and more importantly, the uniqueness of each individual.
Existentialist focus on freedom as the chief aspects of ourselves. We are free to choose our lives, even our selves.
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SARTRE’S PHILOSOPHY OF MAN
“Life is an empty bubblein the sea of nothingness.”
Man comes from nothingness Life is meaning-less
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SARTRE’S PHILOSOPHY OF MAN
“Existence precedes essence.”
Human beings have no fixed nature or essence. We are not born into this world with a certain way to be. Instead we are pure potential for becoming whatever we choose to become.
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ASSIGNMENT: Read “The Phenomenological Method” by
Manuel B. Dy. Bring your fillers, some art materials, a
magazine that can be recycled.