Philosophy of the Human Person

-in the History of man’s search for

answer to philosophical Question, three
views are dominant:

• the Cosmocentric
• the Theocentric
• the Anthropocentric
This period may be characterized as a period that held
Cosmocentric view.

Ancient Philosophers wondered about the world (kosmos in

Greek)

The concerened question is the origin of the world (universe)

arche (starting point, beginning, and or origin)

They want to understand the world for they found themselves

ignorant about the working of the universe.

“Where did all things come from?”

Thales of Miletus (c.620-546 B.C.)
- water is the underlying principle of all things.

Anaximander (c.612-545 B.C.)

- thought that water could not simply explain the hot, the
wet, and the dry, so he claimed that the answer must be
“boundless” (apeiron in Greek).

Anaximenes (c.585-528 B.C.)

- the fundamental principle must be air because it can
better account for change and for life.

Pythagorean
- that numbers as the first principle, because they
observed how the world is govern by mathematical ratio.

Atomist
-speculate that there must be a tiny, invisible entities,
invisible to the naked eye that make up everything. (“atom”)
• Church sustained man’s intellect

• The world became secondary to

God (theos in Greek)

• Christianity greatly influenced

philosophy

•Philosophers philosophized using

theocentric view.
 Avicenna, St. Augustine, and St Thomas

Avicenna (980-1037)
- the first Muslim philosopher
- he argued that the existence of a being
can be traced to another being, and that starting
point of the entire chain of existence is
God.

St. Thomas of Aquinas’

- Summa Theological (Christian faith)
- “five ways” of proving the existence of
God.
• characterized by subjectivity and
individualism, hence, centered on man
(anthropos in Greek)

• Anthropocentric view was a result both of

the rise of modern science and the
diminished authority of the Church in the
17th century.

• Bertrand Russell (1996) explained that

science is a technique rather that a doctrine
that explained the origin of the world.

• Rationalism and Empiricism

Rationalism is committed to the view that
knowledge is acquired through reason
independent of sense of experience

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

- clear and distinct ideas cannot be doubted unlike
the data of the senses.
- clear and distinct ideas are the fountain of
knowledge.

Plato
- ideas alone are real whereas things are illusory.

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
- knowledge for all rationalists is based on ideas.
John Locke (1632-1704)
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
David Hume (1711-1776)

Empiricism holds that all knowledge is

ultimately derived from sense experience.

John Locke (1632-1704)

- human mind at birth is like a
blank sheet of paper (tabula rasa) that is
later filled through sense experience.