Human Person as Embodied Spirit - Philosophy Reference

HUMAN PERSON AS EMBODIED SPIRIT By critically analyzing some philosophical proposals that answers the issues regarding body, we will try to elucidate our notion of body, thereby appreciate its vitality in living as truly human person. The following philosophical descripti...

HUMAN PERSON AS EMBODIED SPIRIT By critically analyzing some philosophical proposals that answers the issues regarding body, we will try to elucidate our notion of body, thereby appreciate its vitality in living as truly human person. The following philosophical descriptions of the body below are thematic analyses of various philosophers regarding the notion of human body. TOPIC 1: Human Person is a Soul, not a Body Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” explains the nature and origin of reality. For him, there are two kinds of world: the ‘World of Forms’ and the ‘World of Matters.’ On one hand, the World of Forms is said to be permanent. This permanency entails that anything that it contains are unchanging, superior and real. On the other hand, the World of Matters is just a ‘copy’ of the World of Forms, and therefore, anything that it contains is changing, impermanent, inferior, and unreal. For instance, the chair that we see inside this room is a copy of the real and actual chair in the world of forms. Human Person according to Plato Given this paradigm, Plato’s notion of human person is of dualist position. He asserts that real man lives in the world of forms. In the original status of man in the World of Forms, man is a soul; and the body belongs to the World of Matters. This explains why: The soul is conceived as superior and unchanging; while the body is inferior and changing. Now, the question is how the soul relates and interacts with the body? According to Plato: The soul is imprisoned in the body, so that the original status of the soul has become limited. It is not clear why the soul is imprisoned in the body, but Plato explains that the soul is the “charioteer” of the body – that is the soul controls the body. However, there are times in which the soul cannot control the body which results to error or evil because of the body’s material inclination; and as the body suffers from its errors, the soul suffers all the more. Liberation of the Soul from the imprisonment in the body However, Plato argues that to be imprisoned inside body is a mere accident, that is, the soul will be eventually freed from the errors committed by the body through: Acquisition of knowledge of the soul’s original status through education, and; Through the process of death in which the body dies and the soul return to its original status, wherein the effects of bodily evils will no longer harm the soul. Implication of Plato’s Notion of Human Person These explanations of Plato have several implications: The essence of the person is his or her soul; The soul is more important than the body;  Soul is perfect and the body is imperfect; The body makes the soul imperfect; and The soul gives life to the body. Moreover, these implications explain certain human conditions in the world, for instance: Religious teachings especially Christian moral teachings give emphasis on the purification of the soul and denial of the material body; Because of the imprisonment, the soul loses much of its original knowledge, the “embodied soul” – the person has to be educated to reclaim his or her original status of perfection – knowledge stays in the soul and not in the body; and As the body dies, the soul returns to its original form to embrace again the “Light of Truth.” TOPIC 2: Hylomorphism: Human Person as composite of Body and Soul If Plato made a distinct separation of the nature of soul and body, Aristotle has the same notion of human person as composed of soul and body, that although distinct from one another yet inseparable insofar as the notion human person is concerned. This means that the soul and the body are two aspects of the same person, which unlike Plato who identified person to the soul solely, and the body as imprisonment of this soul. For Aristotle, human person is the entire body and soul. Moreover, Aristotle explains the relation of the soul to the body in terms of hylomorphic doctrine: matter and form. To elaborate this doctrine, he asserts that man is a substance, that is, a being with independent existence. Man’s existence is composed of matter and form. Matter is the principle of potentiality and the form is principle of actuality. These two principles are inseparable in substance. Putting this in the context of human person, the soul is the form of human person which give the person the actual perfection of being a person, and the body is the matter which give the person the potential perfection of being a person. The soul gives “form” of a human person to the body which is “matter.” Human Person According to Aristotle Hence, for Aristotle, a body without soul cannot be rightfully called a human person, so as the soul without a body is not a human person. This Aristotle’s concept of intrinsic relation of the soul to the body asserts that: The soul and body are mutually dependent; The soul actualizes the potentialities of the body; and The body supplies potentialities for the soul’s actualization Implication of Aristotle’s Notion of Human Person These explain certain human conditions in the world, for instance: A person comes to know the world through his or her senses. The mind which is a property of the soul forms ideas about the world from his or her sense data; and A person performs concrete action (property of body) guided by will and reason (property of soul) toward certain purpose or end. TOPIC 3: Dualism: Distinction between Body and Soul  Plato and Aristotle have provided suitable philosophical explanation of the relationship of the body and soul. However, the problem regarding this issue still remain bewildering during the period of Rene Descartes who addressed the issue in a more critical way, a kind of radical dualism between the body and the soul. The philosophical venture of Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is to come up with a clear and distinct idea of anything that exists, including the problem concerning the relation of body and soul and their existence. Like the Greek ancient philosophers, Descartes believed that human person is composed of body and soul, or in his terminology – mind and body. In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes used the argument about the existence of bodies and the material world to eliminate the “dream problem.” According to him, the essence of material bodies is their extension in a given region of space. From this, he concluded that individual bodies are merely mode of the any extended things – having shape, size, and dimension and occupying space. On the other hand, the dream problem can be simply described the knower might be in the state of dreaming while knowing something and therefore, what the knower knows are not the truth. Cartesian Analysis of the Body His argument is derived from the supposition that the divinely-given human faculties – i.e. understanding and will – are designed for some specific purposes. His argument has three distinct stages: First, since the understanding conceives of material things through its comprehension of geometrical form – such as shape, size and dimension, so it must at least be possible for things of this sort to exist. Second, since the imagination is directed to some image of material bodies and of the ways in which these material bodies are changing, it is probable that these things really exist. Finally, since the faculty of sense perception has the ability to receive images of physical objects to produce ideas in my mind about some external source outside my control, it is certain that such objects must truly exist. The above argument is offered to prove the existence of the body. But the question is how the body is related to the mind and how these two entities interact with one another? Human Person according to Descartes Descartes says that it is appropriate to consider human nature as a whole; considering that human person is a “res cogitans” or a “thinking thing” – having the faculties of understanding and will. But, he argued that mind and body are two distinct entities different in their essences, properties, and features. This is also known as the Cartesian Dualism. To prove this distinction, he has two explanations: First, he explains that we can think of the body and the mind independently; so the two are not dependent from one another when we are thinking about them. They can be thought of separately and without reference to each other. Second, he explains that the body is geometrically defined in region of space and it is possible to divide infinitely. But the mind can only be conceived as single, unitary, and indivisible entity with different faculties and operations. However, this explanation of Descartes makes it difficult to understand how the mind interacts with the body. For him, it is the “volition” or choice of the mind to cause movement in the body. But definitely, he emphasized, there is no direct connection between the mind and the body. He denies that the mind (or the soul) resides in the body as the pilot or captain or “charioteer.” Implication of Cartesian Dualism Nevertheless, this Cartesian dualism offers at most two advantages: It provides proof on the essential state of immortality of the human mind or soul, which cannot be substantially affected by death; and The distinction of mind from body offers scientific investigation to study the physical world in a mechanistic explanation. TOPIC 4: Embodied Subjectivity: I Am my Body and I Have my Body Although Cartesian dualism of body and soul has explains the immortality of the soul, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) disagreed that there are only though substance – soul and body, and these two are interacting in a certain manner. He explains that there is a “third dialectic” – which is the human order – can be termed as culture, which synthesizes the body and soul as one existing entity, a human person. Having just two substances interacting in a particular manner does not explain the existence of human person in reality. It disrupts the unity in the world. According to him, this unity is the unity of perceived objects. Given his notion of unity as unity of perceived objects in Structures of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception (1962), Merleau-Ponty made use the perception as the starting point in his inquiry regarding the relation of a person to his/her body. Merleau-Ponty’s view on Human Body By perception, he refers to experience of something intentionally, that is, an experience directed toward something. How then the person through perception recognizes the relation of his/her body to himself/herself? Ponty argues that, Perception is a process by which the “external world” is somehow imprinted in the subject’s consciousness through recognizing certain information or data from this external world; By perception as well, one makes to recognize his/her own body as a gateway or “openness” to the world in which a person experiences and understands the external world; and Thus, perception is the person’s disposition affected by the “body” - not a body as a piece or part of the physical world, but as a body which the person lived, a living body. Human Person according to Merleau-Ponty In his Phenomenology of Perception, Ponty (1962:440) writes, “Insofar as I have hands, feet; a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose.” This means that  “I have my body” insofar as my body is a part of the external world; and “I am my body” insofar as I do my activity in the world through my body. In this sense, a human person can be conceived as an “embodied subjectivity” – a ‘subject’ doing ‘activity’ through his/her body, while performing such activity in a given ‘culture’, which Merleau-Ponty argues as the ‘synthesizer’, that directs the activity of the person in a meaningful living. TOPIC 5: Feminine Body: Expression and Means Recent development in philosophical thinking has emerged from the point of view of women. This philosophy or “movement” is known as “Feminism” or Feminist Philosophy. Just like any philosophical movement such as empiricism, rationalism, existentialism, etc., feminist philosophy also tackles different issues in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, theology, and environmental philosophy, etc. Feminist philosophers provide different approaches or point of views to which different philosophical issues are addressed with strong emphasis on the place of woman in the entire scheme of intellectual venture. One of the most tackled issues of feminist philosophers, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Lucy Irigaray, Susan Bordo, Sharon Bong and others, is the issue about the body – that is, the woman’s body. Traditional view on Woman’s Body In their initial formulation of feminist view of the body, feminist thinkers reject Aristotle’s notion of female body as “congenitally disabled or deformed” male body. Aristotle views female as mutilated male, a damaged male. As such, for a long period of human history, particularly the male-dominated and male-oriented societies in the world, women are considered second class citizen with limited rights, opportunities and privileges compared to their male counterpart who have the fullness of rights, opportunities, and privileges in society. Woman as Second Class The main reason for this categorization of women as second class members of society is due to woman’s inborn physical and biological statures and capacities. This means that, ⮚ Woman’s body is weak, soft, and fragile; man’s body is strong, hard, and sturdy, and ⮚ Man’s body superior; woman’s body inferior. Woman’s Body as Nature and Beyond Nature However, Simone de Beauvoir, the most influential feminist thinker of the 20th century said in her book ‘The Second Sex’, “a woman is one who is not born, but made.” This statement gives a strong emphasis on: The capacity of woman to become a woman, and not simply born as a woman. Being born as a woman implies that woman – the woman’s body in particular–resembles the nature. As the nature nourishes and gives life to other things in the world, so as the woman’s body gives and nourishes life of other living thing – a baby, for instance. However, not all women desires to look into their bodies the same as nature – just mere giving or nourishing life, since they believe that their bodies can do more than just like  nature, not mere subservient to “nature’s will”. They have choices, and their bodies could be the most eloquent expression and means of their choices as human persons. Woman’s Body as Expression and Mean Here, some feminist thinkers believe that their bodies are more than just chunks of nature, but a concrete expression of themselves as women, without referring to the existence males. This means that, Female bodies are distinct and clear expression that they exist independently from males; and As such, their bodies are the concrete expression of their femininity – “being a woman as such,” and not a “disabled or deformed man’s body.” Accordingly, in rejecting the nature’s aspect of the body, some feminist thinkers assert that their bodies are not for reproduction alone or just for nourishing function, although they do not totality deny the importance of these functions. The main point here is that woman’s body can be a vital mean for other purposes not only exclusive for reproduction function. Their bodies can be a means for: Exercising sociopolitical rights and responsibilities; and Investing in socioeconomic opportunities toward progress and development, which have been controlled by male-oriented societies. E TAKE DOWN NOTES Direction: Complete the table by filling in the philosophical ideas about body and soul. Write your in your notebook PHILOSOPHER CONCEPT / IDEA EXPLANATION 1. PLATO 2. ARISTOTLE 3. DESCARTES 4. MERLEAU-PONTY 5. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR