Who is the human

person?
Why is it
necessary to study
the NATURE of
human person?
 WHO IS THE HUMAN PERSON
3 Aspects of Human Nature
1. Somatic – human being’s
material composition (body,
material composition or
substance of human nature).
Human person is a material
creature, which consists of
his/her physical body.
(physiological)
2. Behavioral – human being’s
mode of acting. Human
behavior may be manipulated or
controlled. The human acts in
accordance to his or her
condition as distinctly unique
from any other beings.(effects)
3. Attitudinal – human being’s
inclinations, feelings, ideas,
convictions and prejudices
Theories on Human Nature

1. The Human Person as an

Immortal Soul – it is the source
of movement or has the
capacity to have motion
coming all from the inside.
One of the dialogues of Plato, Socrates
asserts that “Every soul is immortal,
for that which moves itself is
immortal, while what moves, and is
moved by something else stops living
when it stops moving…this is the very
essence and principle of a soul, for
every bodily object that is moved from
the outside has no soul, while a body
whose motion comes from within,
from itself have a soul.”
2. The Human Person as a
Composite of Body and Soul –
the soul is what makes the
natural body becomes an
actuality.
Aristotle distinguished 3 kinds
of substance: matter, shape or
for m and the product of both
(composite of for m and body)
 Natural bodies: either life or
do not have life
 Natural body that has life
potentially within
(‘ensouled”)
For Ar istotle, life, or having a
soul, is the source of a human
person’s being alive which enables
him/her to do actions or activities
that are suited to being a human
person. In effect, he is saying that
the body cannot be separated
from the soul, because the soul
is the form of the natural body.
3. The Human Person as a
“Thinking Thing” – mind is
distinct and unextended; and that
the body is a non-thinking thing-
distinct and extended; and that
his reality is how distinct he is
from the body, and that he can
exist without it.
On the other hand I have a clear and
distinct idea of myself, in so far as I
am simply a thinking, non-
extended thing (that is, a mind), and
on the other hand I have a distinct
idea of body, in so far as this is
simply an extended, non thinking
thing. And accordingly, it is certain
that I am really distinct from my
body, and can exist without it.
-Rene Descartes
Human Condition
 the nature of the human
person is revealed
 defined as inevitable positive
or negative events of existence
as a human being
Man as Freedom
 Existentialism is a
philosophical tradition that
focuses on the centrality of the
human person’s existence
Sartre asserts that the human
person has no fixed nature –
that his/her reality is his/her
freedom. He claimed that the
human person has free will and
he/she has to exercise this
capacity because it is only in
choosing that the human person’s
existence becomes authentic.
Characterized the dimension of
being as having consciousness
 Knowing being in his capacity
as being
 Conception of consciousness as
consciousness of something
 Consciousness posits a
transcendent (constitutive
structure of consciousness)
being (surpass)
 Ontological proof
2 types of consciousness
1. being-in-itself
 it is dissolved in identity – a
“what is”
 being which constitute an
absolute plenitude; it can
neither derived from the
possible nor reduced to the
necessary
2. being-for-itself
 presence of consciousness
 lacks self-identity
(possibilities)
 being of action
3. nothingness
 not merely a mental state
but an experience
Man is consciousness, a being-for-
itself who as consciousness is
presence for itself. Having
transcendence as its essence, a man
has to exercise this freedom-the
nothingness perpetually in question at
the very heart of his being. Since man
has no definite essence because he is a
transcendent being, man has to create
himself from the nothingness which
reveals his lack of self-identity.
THE BODY AS LIMITATION
AND TRANSCENDENCE

T H UM B - LE SS LIF E
 Did you know that humans
are the only animals on earth
with fully opposable thumbs?
Opposable refers to the
ability of the thumb to “lie
across the palm,
perpendicular to the four
fingers.”
The anthropological fact our thumbs
emphasize a very important insight about our
being human – the development of our species
does not owe itself only to our unique capacity
to think, but to the things made possible by the
design of the human body.
Human Limitations

Projection of people’s own frustration about

their own limitations. We have only a certain
amount of strength to carry things or
accomplish tasks. These are our
limitations because we are embodied
beings.
Human existence is embodied
existence . Many things that are
related to our existence as persons
are related to our bodies – age, sex,
relationship, etc. Our age count
began as soon as our embodied
existence, not imagined
existence, began . In other words, a
large part of who you are and how we
define ourselves is determined and
delineated by our bodies.
We are “confined” to the details
about ourselves. Confine comes
from the Latin confinis made of
two words: con – ‘together’ +
finis – ‘end or territory’. It is as
if our bodies are made up of
fixed boundaries that we
cannot transgress. They have,
in a sense, been given to us on a
permanent basis. (limitations)
The Body as Transcendence
While the body limits us, the
very same limitations create
opportunities for us. We hardly see
that the body also opens
possibilities.
In other words, if not for our
opposable thumbs, we would not
have learned as a species of many
things – writing, creating tools,
playing with objects.
 While the
body limits
us, the very
same
limitations
create
opportunities
for us.
The paradox of the body as both
limitation and possibility
teaches us to be thankful that we
cannot be everything, because
trying to be so would end us
being nothing at all. This is
paradox. Paradox is a
statement that bring together
two opposing ideas as true at
the same time.
 “It is through our limitations that
possibilities becomes real.”

We must understand that the limits

enable us to create our own unique identity.
We may not be everything, but we have to
start of with something in order to make our
existence count in the world.
The Human Person as an Embodied Spirit:
Ancient and Contemporary Thought

In the earlier periods there was less a sense

of shame regarding the naked body.
I. Ancient Greek Philosophy:
Plato and Aristotle
a. Plato
In Plato’s eye, man has an
immor tal soul and a mortal
perishable body. The soul has a
tripartite nature consisting of a) a soul
or an “immortal rational” part, which
existed before it became part of the
body b) a courageous or “spirited”
part, and c) an “appetitive” part.
Plato writes that the soul,
“is the giver of life to the
body, the per manent,
changeless and divine
element as opposed to the
changing, transitor y and
perishable body. This
makes human being “a soul
using the body.”
b. Ar istotle
The primary principle of what
animates man – from nourishment to
understanding – is the soul, which
is united with the body as its
for m. The soul has the power of
communicating its existence to the
body not just through movement but
also through understanding or
thinking.
II. Medieval Christian
Philosophy: St. Augustine

“Man consist of soul and body, a

soul in possession of a body which
does not constitute two persons but
one man. The human soul is an
immaterial principle which
animates (gives life to) the body.”
 St. Thomas Aquinas
Man is composed of material and
spiritual substance – body and soul.
The soul makes man animate and yet
it is not a body. The soul is
incorporeal; hence, no part of it is
material. The soul is definitely
subsistent; it is the first principle
which animates living things. The
soul is also incorruptible because it
has existence “per se” and neither be
generated nor corrupted by accident.
 III. The Modern Period and
The Primacy of the Mind
over the Body
According to Rene Descartes, the
greater importance is given to the
mind’s activity – thinking. The
concepts res cogitans (thinking thing)
and res extenza (extended thing). As
the terms indicate, the body is viewed
simply as an extension or a machine
of the mind.
 Impact of the priority given to the
mind over the body:
a. Perception over manual labor

b. View against women

 IV. Phenomenology
a.Edmund Husserl’s “back to
the things themselves”
b.Gabriel Marcel’s “living in a
broken world”
Having and Being
The Body as an Object
Gabriel Marcel says that we
relate to our bodies as if it is
something we have. “I have a
body.” We relate the body the
same way that we relate to things
we own. To treat the body as
something that we have to treat it
as an object. “ I am my body!”
The Body as Subject
The body is not something that
we can simply lose. If we lose
our bodies, we can not go on to
say that we are still ourselves. To
lose our bodies, literally, is to
die. Our bodies are not just
objects. It is our being, I am
my body.
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The
Intelligent Body, The Embodied Mind
“There is no experience that is not an
embodied experience.” Our bodies
open our existence to the world.
Because of our bodies, we are in the
world. We grow and move about in the
world in such a way that our bodies
learn to be in harmony with it. The
body has knowledge. The body learn
things long before we become
conscious of what it learns.
V. Integrated Unity of Body and
Spirit in the Asian Culture
Shenti and Tao
Shenti implies a person or self
with all the connotations of the
physical, social and the mindful.
Tao refers to the way of the
universe, the way things are.
Thus, the Tao is the goal, the
path, and the journey all in one.
The oriental approach to
understanding truth, everything is
qi: the body is Qi and the mind is
also Qi. They are one and the same
Qi only manifested in different
forms and moving differently as Yin
and Yang – thinking/moving,
resting/working, talking in/letting
go. The body is the mind and the
mind is the body.
Anger or worry can lead to
imbalance in certain bodily
organs, and could affect the
mind. An imbalance in the Qi
affects the Shenti (both body
and mind). One cannot be a
fighter if he cannot master his
mind, if he cannot control his
Qi.
As a spiritual system, Tao
means the way to achieving a
true understanding of the
nature of mind and reality, to
the way of living in harmony
with the changes of nature.
 The person who attains highest union with
the Tao is called a Hsien or immortal, one
who has “Returned to the Source”, to the
true ground of being. We thus live life as
Shenti, not just a body or just a mind. We
go trough life in search for the Tao as one
unified being – both body and soul.
Briefly describe the
different perspective of the
body and mind in different
periods in history by
capturing the main points
in the form of slogan per
historical period. (Oslo
Paper – 01/13/20)
the human person in his/her environment

Approaches to understanding the

relationship of the human person
with the environment

1. COSMOS-CENTRIC APPROACH
Human beings are a microcosm
of the cosmos. It means that the
universe is reflected in us; we
are the small version of the universe.
2. THEOCENTRIC APPROACH
Pope Francis said succinctly:
“The human environment and the
natural environment deteriorate
together; we cannot adequately
combat environmental degradation
unless we attend to causes related to
human and social degradation”. The
creation story tells of how God
entrusted the earth to man and woman
by giving them the role of
stewards of creation .
3. THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC
APPROACH
This approach, anthropos (man) +
centric, is like the theocentric approach
that puts the human person in dominion
over the earth, but de-emphasizes the role
of God.

GOAL: To assess our own selves and find

the right approach in dealing with nature
in order to save whatever is left of it,
before it is too late.
 The central role of the human
person in addressing
environmental problems

The fight for the environment should

begin on the personal level; individually,
we should do our part in preserving and
protecting our environment. However, to
have a greater impact, the fight should be
brought to the social and political level;
laws and policies should be enacted to save
and revive the natural world and to protect
nature from further degradation.