QUEZEL KARM CABAHUG BS ICT 4

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

In Aristotle's tree of porphyry, the substance is distinguishes between material and immaterial. The
immaterial is the minerals, and the material corporeal is the body. From materials, there are those which
are corporeal (has body) and those which are non-corporeal, like minerals. Things that which have body
can be sentient (capable of movements or senses) and non-sentient (incapable of movements or senses).
Nonsentient beings are the plants and sentient beings are animals. Then, it is here where Aristotle tries
to distinguish man from animals. From animals, there are those which are incapable of reasoning, and
those which have the capability of reasoning. Those animals that which have no reason are considered to
be beasts. and those animals that have the capability of reasoning or thinking are humans. Thus, to be
called human, one must have the capability of reasoning or thinking.
The capability of thinking is what separates us from other species, i.e. animals. This is one way of being
human. Further, it is thinking that allows us to recognize our existence and the existence of other things.
This notion is derive from Descarte's universal doubt. Descarte's universal doubt is his idea of doubting all
existence, even himself, even his ideas. Then, he manage to figure out something that he cannot doubt,
which is doubt itself. One cannot doubt that he is doubting, and that is certain. And when there is
doubting, there must be thinking; if there is thinking, there must be a being who is thinking; and that
person who is thinking, must therefore exists. Hence, cogito ergo sum, "I think therefore I am", or "I think
therefore I exist". So, from Descarte's doubting, he managed to prove the existence of the self, and this is
achieve by the person's capability of thinking.
Basically, to be human is to think. Without thinking, we are are just like those beasts who are brutes and
inclined with bodily pleasures.
Humans have the rational ability to be compassionate, humans are innately emotional beings, they are
bound to feel feelings. Humans have moral choices, humans within themselves have moral compasses
which they can use to guide the choices to whether it becomes morally right or morally wrong. Moral
compasses however become clouded by the standards set by the society. These choices can create a
ripple of consequences that humans can suffer or succeed. The choices humans makes have their
corresponding effects to their lives, these choices can affect on whether humans succeed or suffer.
Humans can shape their own paths. To be human is our awareness of death, knowing that we all will end
up to death. That we do not last forever.
To be human is to be perfectly imperfect. That means that although by the nature of man, we can never
be completely perfect some aspects of our identity can be perfect. Such as a person being able to
emphatize with the society and community around him but may not be able to play any musical
instrument. Our imperfection can be balanced by the aspects that can be perfect. Ergo, to be human is to
have the capacity to become perfectly imperfect in the eyes of the higher beings.
The topic greatly interests me since I, as a human person, grow to be inquisitive and self curious
especially on the matters of the self in relation to identity. As Karl Jasper stated, “My true self places itself
above my character – ascending from a purely formal independence in passive contemplation and active
influence”. The self is defined as something superior than the individual’s character, more so, it is never
constant, it changes, like the casting off of shells to find what is untrue and discard it, and then obtain what
is found to be suitably sufficient for the self and gain the so-called, “authentic, infinite, true self.” I believe
that life is a constant journey to determine one’s identity, ones true self, since I realized that the self is
never constant, it always change, it is erratic, and somehow infinite and endless in accordance to the limits
of a lifetime. I firmly believe that man still is the one that decides what one believe he or she is. There is
QUEZEL KARM CABAHUG BS ICT 4

an existence of the true self and that is one attained by the choices of man to live a life of purpose and
from this purpose, man determines ones true self.
Existentialism for a fact was once rooted to a self that was once a separate form, a thing separate
from an individual. A time when existentialism was constructed on a nation that there is a so-called true
self or real self in manner that takes responsibility of the choices made, the proposition that there is a
thing behind that is responsible for choosing, the self as it is. But this very notion was refuted by Jean Paul
Sartre’s statement, “Man is nothing else but what he makes for himself.” This notion sheds light to
existentialism as something that a person is endowed with freedom. The freewill to choose the self, to
choose what to become, a simple definition encapsulated by the fact that life as it is, is an empty being,
and a self is something that can occupy this emptiness, this nothingness and this self is manufactured
through the freewill or the freedom that an individual possesses.

Existence is a matter of choice, this is with accordance to the idea that the Sartrean approach of
the self gave me as an insight, from my point of view, every human person is born with a void within
himself or herself, that each of us is born in a life unplanned, a life that greatly needs a form, an entity,
and an essence. This void or this nothingness is an entity that somehow makes one realize the feeling of
emptiness. Thus is the imperative to find a self to fill this void to a human person. What I thoroughly
understood with my notion, a human person is always forced by existence to find its purpose, to find the
self, to fill the void. The human person, in his or her daily life, exhibits this filling of the void. The encounter
of the world, the outward sense, by experience and reflection, is an act to fill the void, to manufacture
the self. The self is not something that occurred spontaneously, or something that becomes relatively
inert to an individual. As to how I understood Sartre’s notion, it is something we choose, something that
a human person wants, rather needs to possess. This very idea of possession gave me the unbending fact
that the very self is manufactured through a human person’s freedom or freewill.
It was stated that the self as conceived as a subject according to Husserl is the ego; the being that
orchestrates or works as a conductor of consciousness. But Sartre articulating that there is no entity that
conducts the consciousness, existence of the self is inherent contradicted this statement. A person’s self
is already there, existing as it is and therefore there is no such thing as an essence, an ego that conducts
the consciousness. The object in the other hand poses a different perspective. One perceives the other
“I” as an object, but that same “I” perceives that “I” (myself) as another object. This perception is called
facticity. The self is viewed and shaped by facticity, the economic factors, culture, and the world. This
same facticity can somehow provide a glimpse of the “self” that the human person was looking for. But
the self cannot only be viewed by facticity alone, or else humans will become a determinate being, which
is a contrary to the Sartrean view of existential philosophy, which defines humans as indeterminate and
free beings. The self cannot be facticity alone. Though by Sartrean approach, this facticity can be
determined, a response, it is freedom. The freedom to ones facticity determines ones determinants of the
self, and this freedom is driven by ones consciousness.

Consciousness is the center of all conceptions of the self. Through it, one can be aware of one’s
existence. According to Sartre, consciousness can be divided into two, “Pre-reflective consciousness”, and
reflective consciousness. For pre-reflective consciousness, it can be understood as an initial sense of
experience, a thing that a person preliminary undergoes when an event happens. After this, the reflective
consciousness is experienced. After the pre-reflective consciousness, a person can either experience pure
reflection or impure reflection. Pure reflection is realizing the event and reflecting upon it with the
QUEZEL KARM CABAHUG BS ICT 4

emphasis and basis of emotion. Impure reflection on the other hand, is realizing the event and reflecting
upon it with the basis of past experiences. These experiences of consciousness and reflection, and the
encounter of the world is the outward sense of understanding. But the consciousness and reflection is not
limited in this sense, the experience can also be directed to the inward sense, the so-called self. But
Sartrean approach does not view consciousness as an entity, nor can one view the self as subject and
object.
Humans strive to know one self but always fail, a paradox that describes the impossibility of the
human to fulfill the search and construction for the self. With the existence of the paradox of the self,
humans live to conceptualize the self. This conceptualization of the self is presented into three notions.
The first notion is associated with the pre-reflective consciousness. Since the self has no form, it cannot
be known, therefore it is just the simple awareness of being-in-the-world. This same awareness does,
although it does not exist in the world, but it exists in human reality. The second notion happens when
consciousness realizes and reflects on the experiences. The ego or the self does not exist in consciousness,
since the self is in the world (outward sense). Sartre depicted the self as something manufactured, a self
that was not the real self of the being. This self continues to encounter and reflect on experiences in order
to have knowledge on how to represent the self in us, in order to know the real self. This is what Sartre
described as the “Transcendent unity of states and action”, where the ego is placed outside consciousness
in order for the consciousness to perceive the self or the ego as an object.
This ego, although placed outside of consciousness (which meant that it is not with consciousness)
does not mean that the ego is not important. According to Sartre, even with the paradox of the self, the
search and construction of oneself is an imperative to a human being. Without the search of the self, a
person is lost, and finds its self-constructed by other people’s self. The next notion can be understood as
a projection of one’s self, what one desires, what one values, and determining one’s possibilities. These
three notions presented to conceptualize the self as one coherent process. It is a process of intuition,
reflection, and projection.
Humans seek both objectivity and subjectivity of one’s self from which is impossible. Subjectivity
is with relevance to recognition, an aspect that perseveres to seek affirmation of the self one demanded
to be. And while seeking this recognition, the subjectivity of the self, to others consciousness, this can be
done by the other person’s freedom to accept the recognition. For simplification, we want others to be
free in order to take an objective view of ourselves, and at the same time, we want other not to be free to
rule under their freedom. This is the paradox that Sartre emphasized as the paradox of inter-subjective
relationships. It is then important that the topic in “The Look” be emphasized the awareness that others
perceive self as an object. This awareness constructs a feeling of shame. The main idea of “The Look”
focuses on the state of recognition, the state of being known by others in order to become the object of
another’s consciousness. For Sartre, the self can be determined and defined as how one seeks oneself,
how one views oneself. It is as to the person’s relationship to the others that magnifies the self that they
seek. But still, what this approach brings is just paradox, one seeks the identity of the self that can never
be fully known. The greater awareness of the paradox itself is to know one’s self.
In an article I’ve read, The author concludes that upon uncovering Sartre’s approach to the self,
the self is non-existent, but leads to the fact that awareness of the search and construction of the self is
important and is consistent in the encounter of the world by experience and reflection. The author argues
about the proposition of Sartre that there is no such essence that exist in the self because there are no
basis that intends, that chooses. But still, in line with the Sartrean approach, this essence issue can still be
resolved through the subject of consciousness, freedom, and pure and impure reflection. To simplify, the
human person make choices continually in their lives about their future desires, their project, and that their
QUEZEL KARM CABAHUG BS ICT 4

actions that constitute this are derived from a sense of self, that in between pure and impure reflection
(which is the state of bad faith) their comes the state of freedom. And from this freedom, is the possibility
of change, of reorientation of the self, and from this constant reorientation of the self is the determination
of the self.
The article proved to reconstruct the very definition of the self, of what it means to exist and on
what basis do we, humans, exist. The perception of the self as three different conceptions poses a very
great role of making me understand fully the determination of the self. Being dissected with the processes
presented by the three notions relieves the confusion of the impossibility of searching and constructing the
self. The self is still according to man’s decision; humans have the freewill to choose their identity. In our
everyday living we struggle through our encounters of the world by reflection and experience to know
solely our identity, a self that can never be found, but is still essential. I have found this statement very
interesting since to strive for identity is an everyday goal for all of us. An individual does something in order
to be rewarded, to be known, to be recognized, all that we do comprises our daily goal for recognition of
our identity from others. As Sartre’s work stated on “The Look”, one should be aware that we perceive
others as an object just as how that same other perceives us as an object. I realized that people needed
others construction of identity not for the sole reason of copying and become the same self of that other
self, but to construct a new one.
The concept of subjectivity still intrigues me since I still believe that there still is this entity, that
so-called ego or self that orchestrates consciousness. Consciousness alone cannot be a stand alone, or
something that just occurred spontaneously. It has to have its roots. It was stated that consciousness is
not an entity as Sartre wrote. But in my perspective, consciousness is something that is inert in the self,
and that self conducts consciousness, it does not stand-alone with the self and the self is the one that
chooses and intends. By actions, one chooses one’s self and by these actions decisions are made. The
decisions or choices made prepares one to project oneself, to desire something in the future, and
therefore by projecting oneself, a human person is free to become who he/she wants to become, the
freedom of choosing the self. Sartre also points out that a sense of self through subjectivity does not exist
and even though with the fact that this subjectivity does not exist, an imperative to search and construct
oneself is important to a human person, because without it the human person exhibit a sense of existential
anxiety where his or her projection of future are affected. From this proposition, it exhibits Sartre’s work
as a contribution to psychotherapy.