Chapter 1: Modern Conceptions of the Human Person Flashcards
western society made a progressive shift when
scientific methodologies were introduced and developed.
In contrast to the ancient use of logos and innate knowledge, a more innovative approach to seeking knowledge about the cosmos was found through
empirical observation and scientific advancement.
In general, the modern period, beginning in the 16th century, was the age of
scientific discoveries and
enlightenment.
What were harshly questioned and rejected during the age of scientific enlightenment?
The traditional
concepts of truth and authority
The scientific age emphasized the importance and
power of
reason
may be discovered only through the application of reason.
Truth
was the existential turning point and object of philosophical inquiry.
The study of the human person
the concentration of philosophy during this period was on
philo anthroplogy
focused on the nature and role of consciousness and rational will in understanding and interpreting reality in particular.
philo anthropology
major proponent of this modern shift
Descartes
He is frequently referred to as the “Father of Modern Philosophy.”
Rene Descartes
explores the value of thinking and the primacy of
the mind, emphasizes logical reasoning, thereby elevating the power of the intellect above everything, even the body.
Cartesian Method
DESCARTES: _____ must examine itself and its existence.
mind
DESCARTES: ______ is a part of a theoretical model that is separate from the body or the outside world.
mind
The two criteria for truth
Clear and distinct
can be used to achieve this which simply means to doubt everything, including the one that posits it.
methodic doubt
the starting point and the right attitude toward philosophical enlightenment.
methodic doubt
The only thing that we cannot possibly doubt is
doubting itself
means doubting one’s own doubt is a contradiction in and of itself.
performative contradiction
The only thing that is clear and distinct is that
one doubts, and when one doubts, one may intuitively
state what one thinks.
implies thinking
doubt
affirming the very existence of the
thinking mind.
thinking
if one thinks (doubts), one ______
exists
“l think (therefore), I am.”
Cogito Ergo Sum
a precursor to an endless stream of
consciousness.
doubt
an intuitive, not a logical, demonstration of arriving at the fulcrum
of existence.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Primary concern of Rene Descartes
The epistemological question of our knowledge of truth
Descartes sought to arrive at certainty without relying on
science or empirical evidence
always susceptible to change and questionable assumptions,
sense-experience
According to him, the mind may exist outside of the body since the
affirmation of the physical body is dependent on the mind.
Rene Descartes
The mind determines a person’s
sense of
self and identity
Descartes believed that the _____ is the most essential thing, while the body is
not even an _____ but a _____.
mind; ancillary, problem
(immaterial, spiritual)
mind
(material, physical)
body
Descartes defined the human person as
res cognisans
(thinking thing)
res cogitans
the seat of authority and the fulcrum
of existence.
cogito
(consciousness)
cogito
the essential attribute of all corporeal
substances found in the natural sciences.
res extensa
(extended thing)
res extensa
For him, reason alone is sufficient for knowing oneself and the reality around the person.
Immanuel Kant
a moral absolutist and rule-rationalist
Immanuel Kant
KANT: enlightened reason to develop a coherent and non-overridable set of
moral principles to guide us in making moral judgments.
The moral agent alludes to Kant’s ethical way of thinking to pose one of the three important philosophical questions. What is it?
“What ought I to do?”
it is not the consequence of one’s actions or one’s emotions that legitimize an act’s moral worth. It should be grounded on
rational will
Kant claimed that reason alone is adequate or sufficient for establishing and justifying moral law since it is both
transcendentally and universally authoritative on all rational beings.
Kant asserted that the only thing that is
absolutely good and without qualification is
good will
“act only according to that maxim by which you may simultaneously will that it would
become a universal law.”
Principle of Universal Law
“act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.”
Principle of Humanity or Ends
“every rational being is able to regard oneself as
a maker of universal law, that is, we do not need an external authority (like God, the state, our culture, or anyone else) to determine the nature of the moral law since we can discover this for ourselves.”
Principle of Autonomy
For Kant, the inherent and ultimate good is to
perform our moral duty for duty’s sake.
summum bonum
preeminent good
For Kant, there is no direct conflict between
religion and morality
first existentialist thinker.
Soren Kierkegaard
the human person tends to flounder and plunge oneself for a long time in the aesthetic life because of the
hedonistic lure and pragmatistic reward of our mundane activities.
allows the individual to focus on or heighten the “will” of the flesh and one’s
sensibilities.
hedonistic attraction
allows the individual to submerge the ego to instrumental pleasures
and immediate amusements.
pragmatic incentive
extremely challenging since it demands conscientious effort, disinterestedness, and authentic response toward the ineffable and uncertainties of life.
ethical life
involves the fascination with the arts and the propensity toward the erotic.
aesthetic life
the three phases of life represent the
natural unfolding of existence to the human person in order for one to achieve his/her ultimate telos.
To defeat and overcome the boredom of the commonplaceness of human life, the aesthete should
magnify his/her sense of pleasure that is found in art appreciation.
heightens the mind to a higher plane of understanding life.
aesthetic life
one is bound to choose the ethical life when
the existential subject in the aesthetic life is ennobled
When the mundane life is heightened by virtuous living, the individual becomes
a moral subject
“Is this the ultimate telos of all human
beings?”
religious life
The heart of Nietzsche’s philosophy stems from
his stern rejection of Christianity as traditional morality
Why does Nietzsche reject Christianity?
It infers a weak ground of morality and subsumes moral decadence.
religion has nothing to do with morality, and it is not a suitable framework for
understanding the human person.
In the aftermath of the death of God, any _____________ have become obsolete.
a priori meanings and transcendental presuppositions
What new ethos is needed to combat nihilism?
grounded on the concrete call and existential response of the individual to life.
the consequential givenness of life once we cut the umbilical cord from any metaphysical assumptions and divine affinities.
Responsibility and authenticity
the pronouncement “God is dead” is neither pessimistic nor negative but an existential realization that
the meaning of God becomes problematic in an age where religious hypocrisy and
theological pretense are more celebrated
For him, there is only one true Christian, and he died on the cross; the rest of humanity are all hypocrites.
Friedrich Nietzsche
For Nietzsche, despite the purposelessness of life, humans have an immanent capacity and inherent creativity to
surpass life’s absurdities and difficulties.
(Übermensch)
a new breed of organism
For Nietzsche, as a philosophical trope, the “child” represents the notion of
present life and saying “yes” to the fullness of life
A “child” avoids anything nihilistic since
one looks refreshingly at life dynamically and creatively, not just out of necessity.
In the Will to Power, “Necessity is not a fact but an
interpretation
Why is the negative or reactive value judgment is a great slander against life?
It states that there must be a fundamental hatred against life itself if one must live life.
Living life affirmatively means
living life now in the call of being.
To surpass human facticity, one must __________ and ______ to find meaning in this purposeless existence.
rise above one’s current condition; breathe
This overcoming of the self is not merely overcoming Plato’s intelligible world but _____________ by
trying to transcend the fundamental hatred of life; abstaining the privilege
prominence of the beyond (divine) over the present (human).
The major aim of his philosophy is to provide the fundamental structure of human experience.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Ponty attempted to characterize phenomenology using
the theory of perception.
person’s lived experience
Erlebnis
He argued that knowledge is essentially based on perceptual experience.
Ponty
the key to constructing a modern type of epistemic foundation.
Motivation
Consciousness is perceptual by nature because?
They cannot enter consciousness until they first pass through the senses
The relationship between the perceiving-knowing subject and the perceived-known object
Physical aspect of perception
PONTY: perception is more than just a sensory experience; it is an
event-horizon that allows our perception of an object.
motivation is crucial in his theory of perception
because an object is known by
knowing actively through the knower’s
motivation to perceive and evaluate the object based on its many appearances.
implies passive perception and a very simple procedure that provides us with
an accurate image of reality.
Common sense realism
This knowledge of the relation between perception and reality is most
likely enough for dealing with the practical needs of everyday living.
Common Sense Realism
a complex process in which many things are going on “under the bonnet” of conscious awareness.
percpetion
Rather than passively reflecting an independent reality, our perception
of the world is influenced not just by the external world but also by
the constitution of our emotions,
passions, or feelings.
perception is a complex activity and process which involves
the affective states, not just the physical and cognitive states of the mind.
two separate aspects of human perception
sensation and interpretation
For him, the dualistic distinction between the “mind” and the “body” is the
consequence of willful ignorance or flawed analysis.
Edmund Husserl
As a school of thought, Husserl asserts the idea that all knowledge about reality and our perception of ourselves is grounded on the
“phenomena” of experience
The basic reality is that we perceive ourselves as a
unity of experience
_________ states that to be conscious means to be conscious of something. By who?
intentionality of consciousness; Husserl
According to Husserl, when it comes to interpreting the external world, one should avoid being scientistic and relativistic; otherwise, it becomes
it becomes subjectivistic and open to arbitrary interpretation.
HUSSERL: The accurate description of reality is the basis of
truth
a phenomenological attitude that is free of empirical biases and scientific
presuppositions.
Epoche
It refers to the act of suspending or bracketing one’s judgment and refusing to
consent to the existence of whatever is presented.
Epoche
The key to interacting and understanding the world is
to suspend one’s judgment and look at the event objectively
The key to interacting and understanding the world is
to suspend one’s judgment and look at the event objectively
entails limiting the phenomena of experience to presence
Refusing to consent (epoche)
accepting the given as something present in one’s consciousness without affirming that it exists in the way that it presents itself in one’s experience.
epoche
refers to the reduction of the object of inquiry or observation to its essence
(eidos).
Eidetic Reduction
One intuits if the essence of the object under investigation or analysis holds essential or non-essential qualities.
Eidetic reduction
It means that one must be able to see the difference between reality
(essential/necessary) and mere fantasy (non-essential/contingency).
Eidetic Reduction
In eidetic reduction, once the essential qualities
have been identified, one must
describe the object accurately without affixing or deleting any
qualities from what is already present in the consciousness.
refers to the psychological reduction of the
object of inquiry in the consciousness in relation to the intersubjective realm of meaning.
Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction
The object’s sense or meaning becomes clear at this point.
Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction
Husserl’s phenomenology, however
arduous, is an attempt to
rigorously arrive at a presuppositionless understanding of reality
was another well-known French thinker and Christian existentialist who advocated the phenomenological method.
Gabriel Marcel
His philosophical career toward phenomenology was influenced by Husserl,
but he made this method a bit simpler and more straightforward.
Gabriel Marcel
Marcel was a harsh critique of what model?
Descartes
Marcel’s philosophical
attitude is premised on being
being an active participant in the world.
In other words, the essence of being
human is defined by
one’s immersion in the world of concrete experiences.
a way of thinking that examines its subject by applying abstraction,
generalization, impartiality, and analytic assessment.
Primary reflection
is a way of thinking that understands a subject while using concrete
examples, representative models, tangible objects, and synthetic assessment.
Secondary Reflection
Being a “subject” means that the
individual has self-worth
dignity to protect
treat oneself and others with dignity.
humans should not create sophisticated and convoluted systems that complicate human existence but rather
participate in personal introspection on the human condition.
first known self-professed thinker to declare himself an existentialist atheist.
Jean-Paul Sartre
How can existentialism be viewed in a philosophical approach?
understanding
human existence
How can existentialism be viewed in a philosophical movement?
how one can make sense of human
existence.
it is an approach oftentimes used in literary criticisms and critical analysis about the human condition.
existentialism
existentialism starts with
assumption of the meaninglessness of life and the absurdity of human existence.
According to Sartre, “Life has no meaning a priori…. It is up to you ____________”
to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
For Sartre, human life is pretty much defined by the
actions and decisions that we make
From an existentialist point of view, what is an existential subject?
human person
Existentialism focuses in the reality where
human beings dwell is not just the physical environment but the
the lived world that we choose.
For existentialists, what is more important than knowing one’s purpose since the latter cannot be fully determined by any human being in a lifetime?
finding meaning in life
