MODULE 5:

WHO IS THE HUMAN PERSON?

At the end of the module, students are expected to:

• Recognize their own limitations and possibilities;

• Evaluate their own limitations and possibilities for the

transcendence;

• Explain the theories on human nature;

• Illustrate the human condition of freedom.

Who is the Human Person?
Throughout the history, the philosophers have come up with the
explanation of who the human person is.

OXFORD DICTIONARY- define human being as “a man,

woman, or a child of species homo sapiens, distinguished from
animals by superior mental development:
– Power of articulate speech
– Upright stance

Those are the physical and mental traits.

However some philosophers would say that human beings are

also spiritual ethical and existential beings.
Why is it necessary to study the human
person?

Life is quite complex, as we know.

Thus, you need to discover, who you are, what

you’re capable or what you can become.

Understanding your nature will help you

improve and achieve your possibilities and help
you live a life fully worthy of a human person.
THREE ASPECTS OF THE HUMAN
NATURE:

•Somatic
•Behavioral
•Attitudinal
SOMATIC

Refers to the body, material

composition, or substance of a human
person.
BEHAVIORAL
Refers to the human person’s mode of acting.

In the study of human behavior, B.F. Skinner

(American psychologist): known for the theory of
behaviorism. Any conditions that take effect on
behavior must be taken to account.

By understanding and analyzing these conditions

behavior may be predicted.

He therefore suggested that human behavior can be

manipulated or controlled.
ATTITUDINAL

•Refers to the human person’s inclination,

feelings, ideas, convictions, prejudices and
biases.

•It is a person’s mental reaction to a certain

stimuli or tendency to act.

•These tendencies may define a person’s future

action and what he or she values as right or
wrong.
 THEORES ON HUMAN NATURE

The Human Person as...

1. an Immortal Soul

2. a Composite of Body and Soul

3. a Thinking Thing
HUMAN PERSON AS AN IMMORTAL SOUL

•One important theory on human nature is the claim that

the human person has a soul.

•In Phaedrus, one of Plato’s work, 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 outside has no soul,
while a body whose motion comes from within, from
itself has a soul.
HUMAN PERSON AS AN IMMORTAL SOUL

• Thus, the human person in PLATONIC ACCOUNT

has an immortal soul which is the source of movement,
THEREFORE, you, a human person have a soul
because you are moved from within. No outside force
compels you to have a life or to have motion.
 MODULE 5:

WHO IS THE HUMAN PERSON?

HUMAN PERSON AS A COMPOSITE OF
BODY AND SOUL

•Aristotle explained this theory through his work De

Animus (1968) which explains all the capacities
possessed by all living things. His work involves the
relation of the psyche (soul) and the body;

•In order to understand the relationship between the soul

and the body, Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of
substance: matter, shape or form, and the product of
both (composite of form and matter). He added that of
the kind of substance, there are natural bodies which
have life or do not have life;
HUMAN PERSON AS A COMPOSITE OF
BODY AND SOUL

• If the natural body has life, it is meant to have self-

nutrition and growth and decay. Hence, every natural
body which has life in it is a substance in the sense of
composite.

• Matter (first substance) – your natural body is matter.

As a corporeal being, the human person is material
which is an affirmation of the somatic aspect of human
nature; the body has organs which are so well organized
and ready of their different functions for nutrition and
growth.
HUMAN PERSON AS A COMPOSITE OF
BODY AND SOUL

• Soul (second substance) –it is not a body but the form

of a natural body that has life potentially within it. This
means that the natural body is “ensouled”; that is, you
are with a soul, a non-corporeal substance that is the
form (which is the actuality of the substance).

• For Aristotle, life, or having a soul, is the source of a

human person’s being alive which enables him or her to
do actions or activities that are suited to being a human
person.
HUMAN PERSON AS A COMPOSITE OF
BODY AND SOUL

• The body cannot be separated from the soul, because

the soul is the form of the natural body. The soul is what
makes the natural body which is a potentiality that
becomes an actuality.

• Our soul is what makes us a human person. The

capacity to reason, think, communicate, act, feel, and
distinguish right from wrong.
HUMAN PERSON AS A COMPOSITE OF
BODY AND SOUL

"A dead man is a Human in name only--it has the

same body but it has lost its soul".

•This theory implies that without a soul, the body

does not have life.
HUMAN PERSON AS A THINKING THING
Rene Descartes asserted that the human person is a
thinking thing.

Passage:
"On the one 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."
HUMAN PERSON AS A THINKING THING
Descartes’ assertion is a philosophical perspective which
believes that the nature of man is pure mind. This
perspective states that there is a clear and distinct idea
of a consciousness that through the mind, one thinks of
the self, existing without extensions.

He also claims that the mind is indivisible, while the

body is divisible into parts. What does the claim imply
about the nature of humanity? As a thinking mind, it is
clear that as you doubt existence as a singular self, you
will arrive at the distinct idea that you are, indeed, one
self because the mind is indivisible.
HUMAN PERSON AS A THINKING THING
On the contrary, if the self is the body and since
it is divisible and has parts, when you think
about yourself you might be confused of your
nature because two different parts may both exist
but are of different nature.
BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
HUMAN CONDITION
-It is the nature that defines a person.

-But through condition that the nature of the human

person is revealed.

-Human condition is defined as the inevitable positive

or negative events of existence as a human being.

While the three aspects of the human nature defines or

characterizes human person, one will understand how to
live according to this nature through human condition.
Being and Nothingness
- French Philosopher
- Being and Nothingness: A
Phenomenological Essay on ontology (one
of the best known work on Existentialism)

Existentialism - A philosophical tradition

that focuses on the centrality of the human
person's existence.

He claimed that the human person has free

will and they has to exercise this capacity
because it is only in choosing that the
human person becomes authentic.
Jean Paul Sartre
Being and Nothingness
Furthermore, he recalled from the philosophy of Edmund Husserl
(German Philosopher) who formalized Phenomenology as
philosophical tradition, the conception of consciousness as a
consciousness of something. This means that consciousness posits
a transcendent being.

Transcendence - The state of excelling, surpassing or going beyond

usual limits.

Two types of Being:

1. Being-in-itself
2. Being-for-itself
Being-in-itself
• Being-in-itself is completely constituted.
• It is dissolved in identity- a “what is”.
• This is the reason why it is the being of material objects ; without
consciousness, they are explicitly made or an actuality which is
solid or opaque.

Example:

The identity of the table as a table is to function as

furniture- it has no other possibilities of becoming something else
being is already an absolute.
As stated, consciousness requires transcendence or
surpassing itself; that table without that consciousness, however
has no transcendence.
Being-for-itself
• Since consciousness is characterized with an essential
structure of transcendence, then it cannot coincide with itself in
full equivalence as characterized like the being-in-itself.

• It is the exact opposite of the being-in-itself because it is the

decompression (to restore or reconstruct) of being.

•The being-for-itself is the consciousness to itself or the being

of action.

•Another concept central to existentialism is the concept of

Nothingness.
Nothingness
Man, as consciousness, a being-for-itself who as consciousness
is present to itself. Having transcendence, as its essence, man
has to excercise 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 identitiy.
SEATWORK #2
Identification
1-3. Theories of Human Nature
4. An aspect of human nature which pertains to the body and material
composition of a person.
5. An aspect of human nature concerned to a person's mental reaction
or tendency to act.
6. An aspect of human nature which referes to a person's mode of
acting.
7. Plato's work wherein Socrates asserted the immortality of the soul
8-9. Substances of the Human Person as claimed by Aristotle.
10. He asserted that the human person is a thinking thing.

Essay (5pts):
Describe the difference of behavioral aspect from attitudinal aspect.
Give an example.