WESTERN CONCEPT OF MAN THE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO THE CONCEPT OF MAN ANCIENT PERIOD: It is concern with the philosophical

inquiry asking the origin of all things and that includes man. Unscientific they maybe, yet their arguments are valid to prove their stand. Their philosophy is totally cosmological. SOCRATES MAN is a being who thinks and wills. He put emphasis on the attitudinal character of man, that is, he gives more value to the human soul instead to human body. Thus, man should discover the truth; the truth about good life, for it is in knowing the good life that man can act correctly. Mans attitude towards life therefore should be oriented towards knowledge, the knowledge of what the good life is so that he can properly translate such knowledge into reality living a good life. The character of man such knowledge and virtue are not distinct from each other. For no one can talk of something like virtue if in the first instance he does not know what is it. One must know first what is good before he can act what is to be good. Thus, the knowledge of the good for Socrates is not its own reward or an end. But for one who succeeded in virtue of what one knows to be good will gratified to have wisdom as his reward. Thus, for Socrates to be a wise man is the one who has disciplined his soul to know what is right and does what he knows to be right. In the real life. Here knowledge becomes the ultimate criterion of action. Thus, we throw the question: Is knowing doing? Does one really do what one knows? Socrates said. Knowing what is right means doing what I right. PLATO MAN is a soul using the body. Man as a soul existed prior to the body before it is incarnated. The body and the soul exist separately, it has a dichotomy. For the soul in the world of forms receives an authentic existence, a perfect life. Upon its imprisonment in the body, it lives a life of imperfection. The soul that lives in the body of imperfection can live a life of perfection through contemplating the world of forms. So, what is man for Plato? Man is compose of the following: 1. Man is a soul using the body. 2. The soul has three parts: rational (located at the head that makes man think), appetitive (located at the abdomen that makes man feel hunger, thirst and other human needs), and spiritual (located at the chest that makes man experience love, anger, etc.). ARISTOLE

He opposed the teaching of his master Plato; he believed that there is no dichotomy between the soul and the body. Instead he believed that man is a rational animal. His definition of man gives us a hint that man the human body and human soul is substantially united in order to be called man. Its union is indispensable. In the unity of the soul and body, the soul acts as the perfect realization of the body while the body is a material being which has the capacity to receive life. The body has no life but can receive life due to the presence of the soulthe principle of life. The body is the matter to the soul and the soul is the form to the body (this is known as the principle of hylemorphism). There are three classification of the soul: 1) rational soul1, 2) sensitive soul2 and 3) vegetative soul.3

MEDIEVAL PERIOD: This period finds the ultimate explanation and answer to GOD. Man in search of truth turn to God as the author of life. ST. AUGUSTINE Man is created in the image of God, he is an Imago Dei, as a perfect being, man receives from God by participation the necessary qualities of being like that of God is perfect and man is imperfect by the fact that the qualities received from Him are limited. The notion that man is an image of God, it means not physical, since God is absolute spirit, but through the faculties that man acquire from God indicated Gods image in us. Man is created by God out of His abundance of love, and out of his respect, to the gift He gave man, the gift of freedom, God allows evil to exist as the circumstantial output of the practice of freedom. When man does evil, during the performance of his freedom, man is turning away from God. He commits sin So, Gods salvific redemption through Christ came into picture only when man has to be redeemed. Man is not a body only or a soul only only when the body and the soul are in union we speak of man. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Man is a substantial4 union of body and soul. Their union is not a matter of accident. The soul (spiritual nature) makes the body (material nature) moves because of its animating activitythe soul as the principle of life. As a
1 The word rational comes from Latin ratio which means reason. Man acts accordingly to what he thinks is right and he encompasses two other souls and that which makes him the highest form of animal. 2 It is found in the animals. They act according to what they feel. 3 The vegetative soul is found in plants because of its capacity of feeding, growing, and reproducing themselves. 4 The word substantial means the body has a significant function towards the soul likewise the soul towards the body.

substance, its function is to think, to will and feel. In order to reach out to the world the soul relies from the bodys capacity for sensation. That is why the soul has to be united to the body. The body is equipped with facilities to which it is designed for. This body can act only through the soul. Following the teaching of his master Aristotle, the soul is the form of the body and the body is the matter of the soul. MODERN PERIOD: This era has been characterized using sciences as the means to understand their deepest concerns.

RENE DSICARTES Descartes admitted that God is the only substance, simply because he is the unmoved mover and the author of life. Man finds his meaning through himself. No one ever influences man except himself. This belief of Descartes is the basis of his theory of knowledge. He said, a person can only gain true knowledge the moment he learns to doubt everything. But among the things he cannot is the fact that he is doubting and the doubting self is the thinking self. So, the thinking self is the only thing he cannot doubt. The self exist first before he can think. This is where his axiom began: cogito ergo sum which means I think therefore I am. Man as a substance is compose of two substance: 1) res cognitans and 2) res extensa. The second refers to mans extension such as length, size, weight and color. This refers to the body. And cognitans means think which refers to mans soul. The body of man can move without the soul. Mans body is like a machine that moves only if the essential parts are functioning well. The body moves because it has the necessary parts such as the heart, brain, vein, bone and skin. The blood carries with it the animating element and he calls it spiritus animals means animal spirits. This thing is generated from the blood and its warm. So, the permanent damage of the essential parts would mean death already to the person. KARL MARX Matter is the fundamental element of human nature. The life of man is determined primarily by the material conditions for him to live. Its only then that he can properly sustained his life when he anchored himself in the society. The society man becomes his formator. Mans nature lies at the very heart of society and labour. There is no individual human nature. Each action of man bears social repercussions, its like swimming, dancing, playing etc. human nature is not given but it is something made. Mans nature is mans own creation. That is

why man has to labour. Without labour man had no value and no meaning. In this world of socialization, its only in society labour finds its place. In turn a society creates a better place for each individual member. MARTIN HEIDEGGER Man is a dasein. Dasein is the being of man. Man as dasein means he is beingthere. He is there in the they or the crowd. Man has fallen into the crowd that is why he has to stand out from his fallenness into the crowd. We are the dasein, which means that nobody should decide for man the kind of life he wants to live. The freedom to choose the kind of life is depending on the fact that dasein is essentially my own. However, as a man we cannot escape the crowd, thus, we must wrestle our own existence along side with the following phenomena: dread, care, conscience, resoluteness, guilt, temporality and death. The meaning of dread does not mean that he fears, instead, he feels that he was left alone into the world of the crowd. Nobody chose their parents, his physical appearance, the nationality and race. Everything were packed already so we are left with no choice but to accept them. All of these put man into the state or situation of dread. Since man is left alone, he must struggle for his own existence. Concern means that man exist with others-other-than-himself. The others here means that they were also thrown5 like us. Concern refers to the material entities that stand side by side without existence as an individual person. These may refer to things that are available-at-hand or the things that could be available soon. Material things are viewed to be essential to our existence. That is why concern is necessary. Material entities should not enslave us. They are only the means not as an end themselves. A person who is a slave of the material entities and has not regained his existence because of the manipulative character of the crowd gets lost. And this gives way to conscience. Conscience refers to as an inner voice of man, it calls man to come back and find himself again. A person who listens to conscience is endowed with resoluteness. A man that finds contentment and satisfaction being one among the crowd is the one who does not stand out and does not mind to stand out. Thus man feels guilt it means that man feels that something is missing in his thrown-existence. He feels guilty because he is whole yet something is lacking. This is the point of his struggle to become whole at least in his thrown existence. Mans existence is governed by space and time. Temporality comes along with events. Mans continuous effort to become himself happens in a given

In phenomenology, thrown means being free; and to be free means being responsible. But in the practice of freedom sometimes the others turns into the crowd.

moment as well as in the future moment. Will a man be able to materialize his final design without considering the process of life-in-the-making? Death is one of the phenomena that one has to admit. Nobody can escape death. Yet it should not trouble us from being existent. Rather it should lead us to understand the next level of life.

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE CONCEPT OF MAN EVOLUTIONISM: It claims that life originated from a single microscopic cell (monophyletic evolution). The animals at first were unicellular. Animals right at the very beginning has no backbone, however, in the long process the first that develops vertebrate are the fishes. Vertebrate are divided into three eras: 1) paleozoic, 2) mesozoic and 3) cenozoic (the era of human life6).

CHARLES DARWIN He contends that only those who fit to survive can survive. There is a struggle for existence among the species. He said that man and apes are descendants of one common root. Man is a product of evolution ascended from the line of the apes. PIERRE THEILHARD DE CHARDIN He believed that God through Christ is the centre of evolution. Christ is the starting point of evolution. Evolution undergoes three phases: 1) biogenesisit shows how life started, 2) noogenesis- it shows how man began and 3) Christogenesis- the phase during which Christ assume human nature. Man ascended from the animals (it maybe apes or not) but man has the highest degree of consciousness than brutes. Evolution is the ascension to the level of degrees of consciousness. Man is a product of evolution but divinely propelled and directed so that man being the prince of evolution would return evolution to its King, God. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Man is an architect of his own life and character. It means that man becomes good by so doing what is always good. Man has a basic feature that is freedom to decide for oneself. He admits that man comes from nothing. He believed that human nature does not exist because man is what he wills and conceives of his own. Man is thrown into life and the world where he is in. Throwness means to be free. Man is condemned to be free. It implies that
Babor, Eddie R. Man: in His Nature and Condition. 2nd ed. Quezon City: Great Books Trading, 1997.
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man is responsible for his own existence. However, he is not only responsible for his own individuality but also for all men. KARL JASPER His concept of man is based from philosophy. If man can be properly understood in philosophy, it is religion that makes it as such. It means that mans self-realization is a fact of mans relatedness to the God. Man has in him God. That is why his existence is not a dissociated existence but an associated one with God. He also further states that man can come to a full understanding of himself in the context of others. He can claim freedom of his own if he considers other as also free. Jasper presents a four-fold explanation of human existence which capsulized in his concept of encompassing. Man is encompassing in a four-fold manner. First, man is an existent, second, man is a conscious being, third, man is a spirit and fourth, man is Exitenz. SOREN KEIRKEGAARD Man must struggle to exist by dissociating himself from the crowdexistence when man is detached from the crowd, only then can he consider his life significant when one realizes his personal freedom, his commitment, and his responsibility. Man has to consider his individual existence not in terms of his being a biological entity, political entity, psychological entity, or social entity, but in terms of his being a human individual who is designated to own his life, to master his life, to frame his life and to consider his own values.

VICTOR FRANKL He develops a logotherapy in understanding man. Man needs to find meaning in his life whether it is pleasure or pain. Mans main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see the meaning of his life at a given moment.

EXERCISE: INSTRUCTION: Choose only three questions among the given problems below, and write your answer in a separate sheet of bond paper. FORMAT: font size -11 font style-calibri (body) spacing- 1.5 minimum pages- 3 language- English or Tagalog write your name at the centre on the first page only

1. How was Descartes able to conclude that man is a thinking machine? Do you consider a possibility that in the future machine may be considered like humans like the movie I, ROBOT? 2. Did Marx teach that there is a human nature? Why or why not? 3. It is believed that suffering is the fruit of being sinful. Is it still in the plan of God that man must suffer? Give an account of your personal experience whereby you suffer to the extent of blaming God as the cause of human suffering. 4. Explain what Augustine meant that man is created in the image of God? 5. When man can find an authentic meaning of his existence according to Keirkegaard? Is it possible that the poor who suffered poverty can still find authentic meaning of their existence using Keirkegaard belief?