Introduction To The Philosophy Of The Human Person PDF

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON 1ST QUARTER, WEEK 1 LESSSON: THE BIG PICTURE INTRODUCTION Both module one and module two are the introductory section of this course, Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. These are intende...

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON 1ST QUARTER, WEEK 1 LESSSON: THE BIG PICTURE INTRODUCTION Both module one and module two are the introductory section of this course, Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. These are intended for the first-time learners of philosophy before turning to philosophical concepts about the human person. It is helpful to begin first in understanding the nature of philosophy and to learn some methods of doing philosophy. A. The Big Picture What is a philosopher doing? In philosophy, asking question/s is an important part of the routine to help you get along with it. To start with, “have you ever wondered what is a philosopher doing?” Probably some of your answer might turned out to be like this: contemplating, reflecting, or philosophizing, and so forth and in order to get the appropriate answer, let’s ask a philosopher himself. Meet our first philosopher, according to Plato (427-347 BCE), a philosopher strives to attain a synoptic vision of things: to see things as a whole, that is, to see all the main features of experience. The word synoptic comes from the Greek word synoptikos, which means seeing the whole together or taking a comprehensive view. Analogy of a jigsaw puzzle Think of life as a jigsaw puzzle with an enormous number of pieces, and think of synoptic philosophy as our attempt to fit the puzzle together. We don’t have any idea what this puzzle will turn out to be until we fit all the pieces together. In this analogy, what a philosopher tries to do is to see the picture on the puzzle – the whole picture, nothing less – and to see it clearly, unmistakably, and realistically. In this puzzle analogy, it alarms us not to settle on the fragmented view of scattered designs; nor to allow ourselves to be seduced into believing that any mere fragment of reality is really the whole picture. The mandate of synoptic philosophy is to keep working with the jigsaw pieces until the picture is seen and the puzzle is resolved. The task of a philosopher is to keep himself informed on the latest conclusions, general principles, hypotheses, models, and theories that emerge from the work of the field of specialist. In today’s understanding the ‘holistic’ thinking might be considered as the knowledge of the ‘generalist’; and the ‘partial’ thinking is the attribute of the ‘specialist’. 1 But there are some rewards and risks of being a generalist as well as being a specialist. Table 1 shows the advantages and the disadvantages holistic and partial thinking. Table 1. ADVADTAGE and DISADVATAGE of HOLISTIC and PARTIAL THINKING HOLISTIC THINKING PARTIAL THINKING Advantage Disadvantage Advantage Disadvantage It produces greater awareness in our perception of daily life. Can be charged of They tend to It leads to a greater trying to know neglect a general understanding of everything and, hence, Authority or expert knowledge of life. oneself and others. to “play God.” of a specific It turns us to better knowledge. A narrow field too communicator – and Can be considered as often signals a less alienation, “layman” by the Has greater narrow mind. isolation and specialist. understanding of loneliness. the details, its Loss the ability to Our conscious and Can be considered as implications of a communicate or to unconscious dilittantes and dabblers particular share his ideas to operations move more by the specialist. knowledge. the general public. efficiently within a coherent world-view “Popularized” and can Theory or They tend to be that is relatively free of even “distort”, hypothesis builder alienated, internal contradictions “misuse”, and and discoverer of secluded, lonely and conflicts. [Internal misunderstand” the new knowledge. with the general conflicts means stress discoveries of the form of living. and a loss of specialists. psychological energy]. What is this thing called philosophy? Traditionally philosophy is defined as “lover of wisdom.” The term originated in ancient Athens back in 600 B.C. which was a combination of two Greek words philien which means love and sophia for wisdom. The Greek term philosophy was purely descriptive in nature for it refers to the activity of those individuals who passionately pursue by means of reason of knowledge of the real and the good. It was Pythagoras (570 – 495 B.C.E.) who first coined the word philosophy, he called himself a “philosopher”. Honestly it was not helpful to rely to the description of philosophy if we want to understand what philosophy is all about. Defining philosophy is a tricky business. To pursue it you either end up confused or frustrated. There is no exact definition of philosophy that would accommodate and hold together all the contents, purposes and nuisances of this discipline. 2 Conceptual Engineer To have an understanding what is philosophy is all about is to know what a philosopher does when he is philosophizing. Simon Blackburn (1991:1) describes a philosopher to a “conceptual engineer.” Similar to an engineer who studies the structure of material things, so the philosopher studies the structure of thought. Understanding the structures involves identifying the component parts, how these parts functions and interconnected. It means what would happen for better or worse if changes were made. Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing which we live in. A concept is the basic unit of a philosophical viewpoints. In a stricter sense, this is what every philosopher thought of or any philosophical projects entail. Concept is defined in the dictionary as a ‘general notion’, or the ‘idea of class of objects’ but in philosophy ‘concept’ might be described as philosophical jargon that is derogatory and full of entanglements (of ideas). The task of a philosopher is to arrive with a complete concept of reality that is free from ‘entanglements’ of ideas (i.e., ideas that were misleading, false, erroneous, deceptive). Concept, Language and Experience  Concepts, language and experiences are interrelated. Concepts gives form to the experience; concepts are abstract representation inside your brain of your experiences, that is why it is impossible for an individual to have a concept of something unless they have experienced it personally.  Concepts they make articulation possible without concepts of something you cannot express it in any way. In short, without ideas there is nothing to be articulated, there is nothing to think or write about.  Language is the articulation of your concepts; language is the expression of your thought since concept is a what runs in our head it needs to be expressed in conventional symbols that other will understand.  Language and concept are not the same; concept is universal in character while language is arbitrary. For example, a concept of a dog refers to the abstract idea of its “dogness” which applies to all dogs in the world. While the language we used to refer to ‘dogness” varies across culture as represented by its usage, for instance in Tagalog we call it aso, in French they call it chien, in Italian it is cane, and so forth. The main point here, is that a concept is universal and permanent while the language which we refer to our ideas is arbitrary. This is how the dynamic of concept and language works as we come up with language and ideas. References Blackburn, Simon. (1999). Think: a compelling introduction to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Christian, James L. (1998). Philosophy: an introduction to the art of wondering. 7th ed. Florida: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. 3 Creel, Richard. E. (2001). Thinking philosophically. UK: Blackwell Publishers, Inc. Solomon, Robert C. and Kathleen Higgins. (2010). The big questions: a short introduction to philosophy. 8th ed. California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. 4