Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Human Existence

according to Western PhilosophyBenito Villareal III

Philosophy of Man

Greek Understanding of the

Human Person

What is Greek Philosophy?• Etymological Approach

Greek word "philosophy" (philosophia). The term "philosophy" is a compound word, composed of two parts: philos (love) and sophia (wisdom), so that literally it means love of wisdom. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom.

• Phenomenological Approach

philosophy was a knowledge of the way things really were as opposed to the way things appeared to be.

What is philosophy of man?is the study of man, an attempt to investigate man as person and as existent being in the world; man’s ultimate nature.

Socrates (469-399 B.C.)

• For him, he sought to discover the truth and the good life.

He stresses the value of the soul, in the sense of the thinking and willing subject, and he saw clearly the importance of knowledge, of true wisdom, if the soul is to be properly tended.

Knowledge leads the way to ethical action. To him, knowledge and virtue are one, in the sense that the wise man, he who knows what is right, will also do what is right.

Plato (427-347)

Describes the soul as having three parts, which he calls reasons, spirit, and appetite.---kinds of activity going in a person

concept of soul

Reason, for there is an awareness of a goal or a value.Spirit, which is the drive

toward action responds to the direction of reason.

Appetite, the desire for the things of the body.

• The soul is most like the divine and immortal and intellectual and indissoluble and unchanging, and the body, on the contrary, most like the human and mortal and multiform and unintellectual and dissoluble and ever-changing.

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• Man’s highest exercise is the cultivation of the mind and control of the body; this is the object of the wise man, the philosopher.

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• Self-realization is the highest good attainable by man.

• The highest, richest, and supernatural form of self-realization stems from the full cultivation of man’s highest nature, namely, rational.

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He argues, that man does good and becomes happy in life by fulfilling his human nature through the exercise of his rational faculty in accordance with virtue.

Reason is his highest nature which, by moral determination, he ought to become through the exercise of virtue.

The Romans

• Epictetus (c. 50-130) Stoicism

The most influential of all the Stoic philosophers was born in Heiropolis (Asia Minor) about the middle of the

1st cent. A.D.

Epictetus Stoic view of man-Man can be enslaved on the outside,

“externally” (have one’s body in chains) and be free “internally” (be at peace with oneself in aloofness from

all pleasure and pain.

Epictetus, Dualism of mind – The inner realm is a realm of freedom. The realm is a realm of determinism

(things outside of our mind, including our own bodies, are determined by factors beyond control). We have control over our thoughts and our

will, but we do not have control over external fortune.

Plotinus (205-270 A.D.)

He was one of the leading neo-platonic philosophers of the Roman Empire. He was born in Egypt and studied philosophy at Alexandria (Egypt).

He believed in the source of all creation called by Him, the One.

Union with the One was the essential goal of all persons, a unification that was attainable through meditation

and contemplation (the attainment of spiritual union).

The Middle Ages: The Theo-centric Period

• St. Augustine (c. 354-430)He was probably the greatest of all the

Christian philosophers and theologians. After being educated both in Carthage and Rome he took a position in Milan as a professor of rhetoric. There he came under the influence of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who succeeded in leading him into the Christian fold.

Augustine’s Doctrine on Original Sin

Original sin is a situation wherein the entire human race finds itself (massa damnata), but from which only some individuals are rescued by an utterly gratuitous act of God’s mercy. God desires the salvation of all in Christ; only those who are justified by faith and baptism are actually saved.

This doctrine is against Pelagianism, that infants could not be guilty.

• St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)He was born in Italy of a noble family.

He studied at the famous Abbey of Monte Cassino then at the University of Naples. In 1243 he joined the Dominican Order, much to the displeasure of his parents.

He wrote the famous books called The Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica.

He believed in the following: Every agent acts for an end. Every agent acts for a good. All things are directed to one end, which is God. Man’s happiness does not consist in wealth, worldly power, and goods of the body. Instead, man’s ultimate happiness is God.

For St. Thomas, “essence”-ultimately is a “manner (way) of existence.” Essence is relatively to existence. Existence “esse” is the ultimate actuality and is also the nature “essence” of God. In him alone, essence and existence are identical.

Early Modern Period

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• Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in France. He was known as a “jack of all trades” contributing to the areas of anatomy, cognitive science, optics, mathematics and philosophy. He is considered to be the father of modern rationalism.

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Cogito ergo sum “I think, therefore, I am.

The “I” in this claim is not a physical person, but an immaterial mind. Through reasoning there is a claim that cannot be doubted.

He sees God as the link between the rational world of the mind and the mechanical world of the intellect. The existence of god is possible by the presence in our minds of the idea of an all-perfect being.

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Joseph Butler (1692-1752) Joseph Butler was an Anglican clergyman.

In his own analysis of human nature, on which he based his moral theory, that, accordingly, highest in authority is conscience. As he put it: “Had it strength, as it has right; had it powers; as he has manifest authority, (conscience) would absolutely govern the world.”

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

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In 1608 he left Oxford and had the good

fortune of becoming the tutor of the Earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish.

Born in Malmesbury, Hobbes was educated at Magdalen Hall, University of Oxford.

During his travels Hobbes met and discussed the physical sciences with several leading thinkers of the time, including Italian astronomer Galileo and French philosophers René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi.

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Social Contract and the Sovereign

is a democratic organization wherein participants are considered equal, expecting the sovereign, who enjoyed a privileged status, unbound by the social contract and entirely above the law, free to do what he will provided he guarantees that his subject live up to the terms of the compact that no power superior to his own displace his sovereign position.

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Baruch “Benedict” Spinoza

(1632-1677)

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He was born in Amsterdam in 1632 in a family of Portuguese Jews who had fled from persecution in Spain.

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He was trained in the study of the Old Testament and the Talmud and was familiar with the writings of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides.

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Spinoza’s on God

Spinoza offered a strikingly unique conception of God, in which he identified God with the whole cosmos.

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His famous formula was Deus sive Natura, God or nature, this pantheism in which God or nature is intimately connected with all things, existing in all things as all things exist in God and flow directly from God.

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The Levels of Knowledge

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At the level of imagination our ideas are derived from sensation,

The second level of knowledge goes beyond imagination to reason.

The third and highest level of knowledge is intuition.

John Locke (1632-1704)

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Locke was an English philosopher (born at Wrington in Somerset) who studied and taught at Oxford.

His father was a lawyer and a parliamentarian who fought against Charles 1.

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In 1690, when he was 57 years old, Locke published two books which were to make him famous as a philosopher and as a political theories: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatise on Civil Government.

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He regarded the mind of a person at birth as a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which experience imprinted knowledge, and did not believe in intuition or theories of innate conceptions. Locke also held that all persons are born good, independent, and equal.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

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He was born in Geneva on June 28, 1712, and was raised by an aunt and uncle following the death of his mother a few days after his birth.

He was apprenticed at the age of 13 to an engraver, but after three years he ran away and became secretary and companion to Madame Louise de Warens, a wealthy and charitable woman who had a profound influence on Rousseau’s life and writings.

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In 1742 Rousseau went to Paris, where he earned his living as a music teacher, music copyist, and political secretary.

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For Rousseau, man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

The Nineteenth Century

• Max Scheler (1874-1928), German social and religious philosopher, whose work reflected the influence of the phenomenology of his countryman Edmund Husserl.

• Born in Munich, Scheler taught at the universities of Jena, Munich, and Cologne. In The Nature of Sympathy (1913; trans. 1970) he applied Husserl's method of detailed phenomenological description to the social emotions that relate human beings to one another—especially love and hate.

THE EMOTIONAL POWERS IN MAN AND VALUES

According to Scheler, if man is to achieve the total realization of his ideal qualities and of his full humanity, all his various emotional powers must be cultivated and not just one or another of them

1. Identification (Einsfuhlung) is the experience in which a person identifies his own self with nature, with another person or with a group, and feels an emotional unity.

2. Benevolence (Menschenliebe), or a general love of humanity, regards individuals lovable qua “specimens” of the human race.

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Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

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British philosopher, economist, and jurist, who founded the doctrine of utilitarianism. He was born in London on February 15, 1748. A prodigy, he was reading serious treatises at the age of three, playing the violin at age five, and studying Latin and French at age six.

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He entered the University of Oxford at 12, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; however, he did not practice. Instead he worked on a thorough reform of the legal system and on a general theory of law and morality, publishing short works on aspects of his thought.

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In 1789 he became well known for his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

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Bentham’s hedonism known as utilitarianism furnished a basis for social reform. He held that nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure

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Any act or institution of government must justify itself through its utility that is, its contribution to“the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.

Utility is Bentham’s norm of morality.

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Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

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Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), February 22, 1788, Schopenhauer was educated at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Jena. He then settled in Frankfurt am Main, where he led a solitary life and became deeply involved in the study of Buddhist and Hindu philosophies and mysticism.

He was also influenced by the ideas of the German Dominican theologian, mystic, and eclectic philosopher Meister Eckhart, the German theosophist and mystic Jakob Boehme, and the scholars of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

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For Schopenhauer the tragedy of life arises from the nature of the will, which constantly urges the individual toward the satisfaction of successive goals, none of which can provide permanent satisfaction for the infinite activity of the life force, or will.

Thus, the will inevitably leads a person to pain, suffering, and death and into an endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and the activity of the will can only be brought to an end through an attitude of resignation, in which the reason governs the will to the extent that striving ceases.

Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1819) argued that existence is fundamentally irrational and an expression of a blind, meaningless force—the human will, which encompasses the will to live, the will to reproduce, and so forth.

Will, however, entails continuous striving and results in disappointment and suffering.

Schopenhauer offered two avenues of escape from irrational will: through the contemplation of art, which enables one to endure the tragedy of life, and through the renunciation of will and of the striving for happiness.

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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

British philosopher-economist. He had a great impact on 19th-century British thought, not only in philosophy and economics but also in the areas of political science, logic, and ethics

Mill’s moral philosophy is called utilitarianism.

Its fundamental moral philosophy is that we should always perform those acts, which will bring the most happiness or, failing that, the least unhappiness to the most people.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

 Danish religious philosopher, whose concern with individual existence, choice, and commitment profoundly influenced modern theology and philosophy, especially existentialism.

 Kierkegaard was a thinker who exerted an influence on the existentialist mode of thought.

 Keirkegaard’s work has been philosophically and theologically influential.

As he would put it: the only absolute either/ or the choice between good and evil. Freedom is the way to heaven.The only valid act is one of choice.

For Kierkegaard, subjective truth is individual truth, a call to faith.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818, into a comfortably middle-class family in the city of Trier, Germany. He was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena.

In 1842, shortly after contributing his first article to the Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, Marx became editor of the paper. His writings in the Rheinische Zeitung criticizing contemporary political and social conditions embroiled him in controversy with the authorities, and in 1843 Marx was compelled to resign his editorial post, and soon afterward the Rheinische Zeitung was forced to discontinue publication.

Marx was greatly influenced by the works of the great German idealist, G. W. F. Hegel.

For Marx, religion is the opium of the people. Opium in the sense that is eases suffering; a spiritual intoxication that prevents us from seeing the reality. Religion intoxicates the mind of man and prevents man from viewing life as it is.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-19000), German philosopher, poet, and classical philologist, who was one of the most provocative and influential thinkers of the 19th century.

Friederich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Prussia. His father, a Lutheran minister, died when Nietzsche was five, and Nietzsche was raised by his mother in a home that included his grandmother, two aunts, and a sister.

He studied classical philology at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Basel at the age of 24. Ill health (he was plagued throughout his life by poor eyesight and migraine headaches) forced his retirement in 1879.

Ten years later he suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. He died in Weimar in 1900.

As far ethics is concerned, Nietzsche appears at first glance to be a moralist.

He entitled a book Beyond Good and Evil and consequently advocated “trans-valuation of values.”

In Nietzsche’s Hermeneutics of Suspicion, the very core is the death of God.

In Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathusra (1891), he insist that Superman as the only man who can live in the world without the illusion of God since there is no limit to what humankind might set itself to attain.

For Nietzsche, superman is the meaning of the earth and the meaning of man.For “man is something that must be overcome”.

Good LUCK to everyone.