Philosophy: Freedom of the Human Person PDF

LESSON 2 FREEDOM OF THE HUMAN PERSON The Power of Volition is the power to make your own decisions, and in here, the imperative quality of a judgment of practical intellect is meaningless, apart from will. → Reason can legislate (control), but only throu...

LESSON 2 FREEDOM OF THE HUMAN PERSON The Power of Volition is the power to make your own decisions, and in here, the imperative quality of a judgment of practical intellect is meaningless, apart from will. → Reason can legislate (control), but only through will can its legislation be translated to action. ▪ If there is no intellect, there would be no will. If there is no will, there will be no action. → The will of humanity is an instrument of free choice. It is within the power of everyone to be good or bad, worthy or worthless. This is borne out by: a. Our inner awareness of an aptitude to do right or wrong; b. The common testimony of all human beings; c. The rewards and punishment of rulers; d. The general employment of praise and blame. → Moral acts, which are always particular acts, are in our power and we are responsible for them. ▪ Character or habit is no excuse for immoral conduct (e.g. cutting classes). → For Aristotle, a human being is rational (based on facts or reason, and not by emotion). ▪ Reason is divine characteristic. Humans have the spark of the divine. If there were no intellect, there will be no will. ▪ Our will is an instrument of free choice. Reason, will, and action drives each other. Of all creatures of God, human beings have the unique power to change themselves and the things around them for the better. → A human being, therefore, has a supernatural transcendental destiny. ▪ He can rise above his ordinary being or self to highest being or self. → This is in line with the idea of St. Thomas that in the plan of God, a human being has to develop and perfect himself by doing his daily tasks. ▪ If a human being perseveringly lives a righteous and virtuous life, he transcends his mortal state of life and soars to an immortal state of life. 9  → However, the power of change, cannot be done by human beings alone, but is achieved through cooperation with God. ▪ Between humanity and God, there is a gap, which God alone can bridge through His power. For love is in consonance with humanity’s free nature, for law commands and complete; love only calls and invites. → St. Thomas emphasizes the freedom of humanity but chooses love in governing humanity’s life. ▪ Since God is love, then love is the guiding principle of humanity toward self-perception and happiness his ultimate destiny. St. Thomas Aquinas establishes the existence of God as a first cause of all God’s creations, human beings have the unique power to change themselves and things around them for the better. → As humans, we are both material and spiritual. We have a conscience because of our spirituality. God is love, and love is our destiny. Sartre’s philosophy is considered to be a representative of existentialism. → The human person is desire to be God. The human person builds the road to destiny of his / her choosing; he / she is the creator. → He emphasizes the importance of free individual choice, regardless the power of other people to influence and coerce our desire, beliefs, and decisions. ▪ To be human, to be conscious, is to be free to imagine, free to choose, and be responsible for one’s life. Jean Jacques Rousseau is the most famous and influential philosophers of the French enlightenment in the 18th century. He elaborated his theory of human nature in his book, Social Contract. → Human beings have to form a community or civil community to protect themselves from one another, because the nature of human beings is to wage war against one another. ▪ Since, by nature, humanity tends toward self-preservation, then it follows that they have to come to a free mutual agreement to protect themselves. → Hobbes thinks that to end the continuous and self-destructive condition of warfare, humanity founded the state with its sovereign power of control by means of mutual consent. 10  → Rousseau believes that a human being is born free and good. Now, he is in chains and has become bad due to the evil influence of society, civilization, learning, and progress. ▪ Because of this, human being lost his original goodness, his primitive tranquility of spirit. ▪ In order to restore peace, bring his freedom back, and as he returned to his true self, he saw the necessity and came to form the state through the social contract whereby everyone grants his individual rights to general will. → The term social contract is a certain way of looking at a society of voluntary collection of agreeable individuals. ▪ There must be a common power or government which the plurality of individuals (citizens) should confer all their powers and strength into (freedom) one will (ruler). Evaluate and exercise prudence (careful good judgement that allows someone to avoid danger or risks) in choices. ✰ Skinner maintains that behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. ✔ Skinner thinks that the problem is to free human beings not from control, but from certain kinds of control, and it can be solved only if we accept the fact that we depend upon the world around us and we simply change the nature of dependency. ✔ He believes that we do not need to destroy the environment or escape from it. What is needed is to redesign it. ✰ Yelon accepted that behavioral psychology is at fault for having overanalyzed the words reward and punishment. We might have miscalculated the effect of the environment in the individual. ✔ According to him, punishment is an educative measure, and as such is a means to the formation of motives, which are in part to prevent the wrongdoer from repeating the act and in part to prevent others from committing a similar act. ✰ There should be a balance in our relationship with others and the environment. ✰ Life is full of paradoxes, nobody could or should control it. We have to be open to life, learn to accept and live with paradoxes. Learning with contradiction is not the same as living contradiction. ✰ In the spirituality of imperfection, we learn to accept that life, our environment is both evil and good. We learn to be flexible and adaptable. ✰ The theory of freedom has negative and positive tasks. Our lives should not merely be controlled by rewards and punishments. ✰ The environment plays a significant part in our lives. Since the Stone Age, we had proven that we are not completely under its mercy. We have and shall continue to tame and adapt to the changes in the conditions of the environment. 11  ✰ As Plato believes, the soul of every individual possesses the power of learning the truth and living in society that is in accordance to its nature. Choices have consequences and some things are given up while others are obtained in making choices. 20th century gave rise to the importance of the individual, the opposite of medieval thought was God. For Ayn Rand, individual mind is the tool for economic progress, since the mind is important, the sector that molds it should not be controlled by the government. → He believes that thinking is volitional. A person has the freedom to think or to not. ▪ He cited the right to gain, to keep, to use, and to dispose of material values. Most developed countries have disposed their toxic wastes developing countries. LESSON 4 INTERSUBJECTIVITY Intersubjectivity is the condition of man (subject), among other men (subjects). → It refers to the shared awareness and understanding among persons; and it is made possible by the awareness of the self and the other. → It is originally coined by philosopher Edmund Husserl. He defined it as the interchange of thoughts and feelings, both conscious and unconscious between two persons as facilitated by empathy. Subjective vs. Objective → Subjective knowledge may designate unsupported or weakly-supported knowledge (claim), because it is opinionated and created with regards to one’s self. 12