Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person – - PRIJOS (Indo-European) meaning dear,

2nd Quarter beloved →PRIYAS meaning dear

FREEDOM - PRIYA meaning wife, daughter (Sanskrit)

What is freedom? There is a connection with the Old English terms

frigu (love) and freon (friend).
 Freedom is very important in our lives.
The root meaning of freedom includes concept of
We want the freedom: LOVE AND DEVOTION TO A BELOVED.
o To explore life - FREEDOM came to be associated solely with
o To ask questions the word CHOICE.
o To make decisions - “I am free” comes to mean simply “I
o To think choose” or “I can decide for myself.
o To speak our minds - ”Freedom” is dissociated from goodness
o To spread our wings and discover and made synonymous with choice, with
the wonder of ourselves any choice.
o To meet new people and make - One misuses freedom, chooses not to
new friends choose, or chooses to be more or less than
 Freedom is a great power that we cannot what one is.
live without.
 But like any power, it can be used soundly “Emphasizing freedom of choice as such means
and poorly. It can give us life, or it can the sure loss of freedom.”
destroy us.  Soren Kierkegaard
The Meaning of Freedom Circumstantial Freedom
Alludes to Physical Freedom  The capacity and the chance to act out
 The absence of physical restrictions upon whatever actions we choose.
physical conduct.  A negative condition, since it implies
that we are free from outside powers,
Alludes to Liberty deterrents, and natural limitations that
limit or constrain action.
 The absence of constraints imposed by an
authority on somebody’s activities. Metaphysical Freedom

Alludes to Political Freedom  It holds that there is an absence of causal

laws which govern our actions and that we
 The capacity of a citizen to take an interest have some sort of power to decide what
in political issues or of a country to direct its will happen to us in the future.
own political issues.  It relates to our internal condition.
THE ETIMOLOGY OF FREEDOM Determinism
Friheden (Danish term)
 The view that all things are causally
- Freedom conditioned such that they could not be
otherwise.
Free  The denial of free will.
- Dear Hard-Determinism and Soft-Determinism
- Beloved
Hard-Determinism
FREE (English) &FRI (Danish)
 Believe not only that all things are
- FRI (Old High German) determined, but that they are determined
ultimately by purely external factors, factors
 outside one self and over which one has no
control.
Soft-Determinism
 Shifts the whole attention to the causes
that lie within the individual.
 Actions and choices are determined by
desires, inclinations, attitudes, or in a word
by the character.
The Misuses of Freedom
 The development of the self tends to get
stuck at the level of self-interest.
 Freedom becomes selfishness: “I can do
whatever I want. It’s a free country.”
 Since freedom of choice can offer no
criterion for choice, the self is faced with
overwhelming possibility.
When free choice is misused, that is, when the self
chooses to be something other than itself, freedom
becomes enslavement, as the self finds itself in
bondage to itself and to its own misused freedom.
CHALLENGES TO FREEDOM
The chief challenges to freedom are the arguments
from the notion of the Divine Foreknowledge,
although other arguments from the notion of Divine
Providence is also raised.
 Ambrose: “If God knows everything before
all else, and it must happen, then prayer is
nothing.”
 Many thinkers have nevertheless been
reluctant to accept the implications of
theological determinism.
Theological Determinism
 A form of determinism which states that all
events that happen are pre-ordained, or
predestined to happen, by a monotheistic
deity.
Divine Foreknowledge
In question by those who adapt the libertarian view
to human freedom.
 Libertarianism-the view that defines a free
act as one that is exclusively controlled by
the person’s will as long as he/she respects
the equal rights of others.
 A human person is free if he has the power
of contrary choice.
 God knows every little thing about you, and
that includes what you do and think each
moment of your life.
 In the event that God foreknows precisely
what we will do in each occurrence, at that
point, our freedom to act appears to be
truly undermined.
Divine Providence
 God provides for His created beings in
all things.
 “In other words, God can do anything
and has authority over all creation.”
 The established view of Divine
Providence says that God’s control over
the universe is supreme
 “God’s controlling everything that
happens appears at any rate as
potentially harming to our capacity to
do anything of our own freedom.”
 Augustine: “For human providence is
included under the providence of God.”
Absolute Freedom and Responsibility
 One is -now- what one makes
himself/herself to be.
Jean Paul Sartre
 We are always free: “Man cannot be
sometimes slave and sometimes free;
he is wholly and forever free or he is
not free at all.
 “Their existence comes before their
essence.”
 Memorably he said we are
“Condemned to be free”.
 Was persuaded that there is no
determinism of any sort.
Human Existence
 Out of our freedom, we do not settle on
choices for ourselves alone; we also do it
for others, and sometimes for the entire
humankind
 To live means to dream a million dreams
and move forward to get the totality of our
being
 To be sure, every mortal human person
wants to be God, however the fact is that
 we are finite, and our restrictions are
crushing.
 To exist is to be free, and to be free is to
act, to step up, to settle on decisions and
choices, to dream inconceivable dreams---
however inaccessible they are---and to
come up short.
TRUE FREEDOM
Soren Kierkegaard
 The fundamental meaning of Freedom:
Freedom of Self-Actualization
o The analysis of the self-offered by
Kierkegaard is that to be human
means to be a spirit, that is, a self.
o The relation of the self is not an
inert, stagnant relation, but a
dynamic relation of capable of self-
awareness and choice.
o The self is capable of choosing to
be itself or of choosing not to be
itself.
o The self is a self among other
selves, and a self in relation to
God.
 Freedom: means to be oneself, that is, to
live in right relation to oneself to others,
and to God.
 It must begin with the psychological and
metaphysical task of understanding what it
means to be a self.
THE SELF AND THE OTHER
Intersubjectivity
 It implies relationship, is indispensable to
human life.
 It is the psychological relation between
people
Edith Stein
 This philosopher developed the
phenomenology of around this
understanding of intersubjectivity.
I-THOU and I-IT
Martin Buber
 He is known for his work, I and Thou
published in 1923, contain his seminal
ideas, “I-It” and “I-Thou”
I-THOU
 It stresses the mutual and holistic existence
of two entities who regard each other as
equal and respect the other for who they
are.
I-IT
 It confronts the other as another being and
is not recognized as an equal and is
therefore, objectified.
THE “I”
Sarili (whole self)
 Composed of psychological personality
and moral character.
 Fr. Dionisio Miranda
Katauhan
 The personality, which is the essential
self, embodying the character traits,
attitudes or habits that distinguish one
individual from another.
Pagkatao
 It refers to character
 Described as the existential self which
constitutes ethnicity or set of values,
attitudes, principles, norms, ideals and
projects that lend the person his moral
form.
THE “THOU”’
 The “other” is understood based upon
an individual’s choice; one presumably
chooses to view the other as subject or
object
 Someone who lives alongside the “I”
and who is both another and one of the
others exists and acts in common with
and is always in an actual or
experiential way in relation with the “I”
o Kapuwa – loosely translated as
“fellow person”
 o “Other person” which means
the perceived state of shared
identity and interdependent
relationships
o Otherness – implies that no one
is self-sufficient but is almost
always in need of the other.
ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
Empathy
 An expression of intersubjectivity
 The human person is able to put
himself in another’s shoes
 Through empathy, the self understands
and comprehends the other person’s
mind and feelings
Responsibility
 Is consequential to the encounter
between the “I” and the other, where
the “I” looks at the other as a subject or
as a person that is unique
 Directed toward the other, is an act that
the human person cannot escape: “No
one can take my place in the discharge
of this responsibility.”
 The participants are viewed as subjects
or persons, that is endowed with rights
and duties and a partner with whom
authentic mutual relationship can be
established.
THE PARADIGM OF A JUST SOCIETY
Justice
As Fairness
 By Rawl
 Revived Social Contract to Political
Philosophy (presupposed a degree of
Rationality on part of contractors)
 Liberal tradition
 Attempted to combine libertarian view
and socialist view (personal liberty and
social equity
2 forms of Liberal View of Justice
 Contractual View (equity)
 Utilitarian view (happiness)
The Veil of Ignorance means individuals will
settle to least not at most, thinking that each
will have something to lose or to gain and thus
bring the Agreement. The Agreement that can
be honored or kept.
Principles of Justice
 The Principle of Equal Basic Liberty for
All
 The Difference Principle
Social Values is to every one’s advantage
 Liberty
 Opportunity
 Income and Wealth
 Self-respect
As Entitlement
 By Nozick
His argument is between
 Minimal state
 Justice as entitlement
Minimal State
 Individuals aid others;
 Less activities for the government will
give them more time to give protection
 As a night-watch man wherein
government cannot do all things so it
will rely on individual rights thus
protecting each other
The Principle of “we give our partial right to
protect our basic and other rights” wherein the
legitimacy of HOLDINGS

 Issue of holding (legit)

 Issue of transfer holdings (legit)
 The rectification of injustice in holdings
(illegitimate) gained through fraud,
intimidation, theft and exploitation

The illegitimacy of these holdings should be set

right by

1. Commonsensical attempt
2. Recompense subsequent victims

As Virtue

 By MacIntyre
 Individual character or worth
 Desert
o How deserving a person is

The good of man at the same time, the good of

community

Now, the individuals identify these primary

interests as reference

“We are all in this together”

MacIntyre

 He raised the issue of historical reality

of past injustices
o These injustices lost in history is
now justice or legit in present
society which Rawl and Nozick
didn’t gave importance on their
discourse.