THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Prof. Hyman Jay H. Blanco, RCrim,MSCri

THE GREEKS AND THEIR WORLD
The Beginning of Philosophy
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY
 Philosophy begins when human beings start
trying to understand the world, not through
religion or by accepting authority but through the
use of reason.
SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHY

May 20, 2011

 What we needed to know was how to conduct our
lives and ourselves.

Philosophy of Man
 Thus, the more urgent questions are not
something like “what the world is made of?” but
rather “what is good?”, “what is right?”. “what is
just?”
 Socrates believed that man’s soul pre-existed his
body. In his original ideal existence as a soul or
pure mind in the realm of ideas, man knew all
things by direct intuition, and had all this
knowledge stored in his mind.
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PLATO: DUALISTIC NATURE OF MAN

May 20, 2011

 He thinks that there two sorts of stuff that make
up he world, two sorts of things that especially
come together in human beings

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 A human being is composed of body and soul.

BODY – material, mutable, mortal

SOUL – spiritual, immutable, immortal
 Following Socrates, Plato thought of human
beings as essentially their souls.
 While we have bodies, we are souls.

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ARISTOTLE: THE COMPOSITE NATURE OF
MAN

May 20, 2011

 Man is not pure mind or spirit as Plato thought
man to be.

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 Man, in his present earthly existence, is a
composite nature of body and soul, mind and
matter, sense and intellect, passion and reason.
 Philosophy, therefore, aims at the development of
the WHOLE MAN, the full realization and
actualization of all man’s power and
potentialities – primarily of his rational
prerogatives and secondarily of the emotional,
social, political, esthetic and economic aspects of
his composite being. 6
 June 01, 2011
Philosophy of Man
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
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Christianity and Philosophy
THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

June 01, 2011

 After the ascension of Jesus Christ into Heaven,
the catechesis of Christian doctrine was based on
the oral preaching of the witnesses of His life.

Philosophy of Man
 By the middle of the second century, Christians
felt the need to have to recourse to theological
speculation in order to:
1. Express more precisely the dogmatic formulas
contained in the symbols of faith.
2. To tear down heretical arguments.

3. To defend themselves from the calumnies

coming from the Roman authorities.
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AUGUSTINE’S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

June 01, 2011

 For Augustine, as for Plato, there are two main
divisions of reality, the physical and the non-
physical. In the non-physical world are souls,

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spiritual substances, God and Forms in the Mind of
God. In the physical world are images, material
objects, space and time.

 Dualistic view of man

- human beings are composed of two substances,
bodies and souls.
- our souls are most important to us. They are not
something that we have, they are something that
we are.
- we are spiritual beings at the core of our nature
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ST. THOMAS AQUINAS’ PHILOSOPHY

June 01, 2011

 As did all medieval theologians, Aquinas
accepted the Christian worldview as a given.

Philosophy of Man
 Everything important about life has been
revealed in the scriptures – The Old and The
New Testaments.
 While faith in the revealed word of God required
to know what is true, we must also have reason
(philosophy) to help us to understand what we
believe.
 Aquinas was not afraid that reason might lead
people astray from God’s truth, but rather
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welcomed it as another avenue to God
 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
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The Revival of Reason
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERNITY

June 8, 2011
 During the middle ages, the Catholic Church
incorporated the Ptolemaic system into the
Christian view of the world. On this view, God

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made the world to be the center of everything.
Psalm 93 (addressing God) also claims: “Thou hast
fixed the earth immovable and firm.”
 In the 16th century, a Polish churchman called
Copernicus pointed out that many of our fearsome
mathematical problems would melt away if we
treated the sun as the center of the solar system.
 When he did this, he showed that the planetary
movements that were becoming increasingly
difficult to explain suddenly made good, clear
sense.
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DESCARTES’ PHILOSOPHY OF MAN: “I
THINK THEREFORE I AM”

June 8, 2011
For Descartes, his self is his nonphysical mind, or
soul:
1. If I exist and my body may not exist, then I am

Philosophy of Man
not my body.
2. I exist.
3. My body may not exist.
4. Therefore, I am not my body.
 For Descartes, human beings are very different
from animals and everything else in nature. We
can do lots of things in a mechanistic way, such as
refuse to act on a strong desire, plan future
events, make decisions, and so on. We can do all
these things because we are not entirely physical 13
things; we are also nonphysical things; we have
minds.
DESCARTES’ PHILOSOPHY OF MAN: “I
THINK THEREFORE I AM”

June 8, 2011
 So, we are bodies and minds
 It is the job of science to study bodies along with

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the rest of nature; and it’s the job of philosophy to
study the mind.
 Although he recognizes the importance of the
body, Descartes, like Plato before him, believes
that what is essential to being a self is the
nonphysical mind, not the body.

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 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
15 The 19th Century and Beyond

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
THE 19TH CENTURY

June 8, 2011
 It was a time of greatly increased activity in the
sciences of man and correspondingly rapid
development of various disciplines.

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 Perhaps the most significant theme , common to
all branches of science, was the declining
influence of religion.
 Theological discourse was thus only human
discourse.
 Herder: “It is necessary to read the Bible in a
human manner, for it is a book written by men
for men.”
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 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
INTELLECTUALBACKGROUND OF
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY:
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Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855)

June 8, 2011
 Rejected the intellectualization of God. He
believes that reason plays no role in religion.
 He believed that we desire more than anything

Philosophy of Man
else is a close personal relationship with God.
 If we never fulfill this desire, we will never be
happy.
 To have a personal relationship with God is to
have absolute faith in Him, a belief that is not to
be proven by evidence that He exists.
 However, a fulfilling relationship with God can
be freely chosen by us or not.
 “Man’s existence can only become significant
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when one realizes his own freedom.”
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

June 8, 2011
 “God is dead and we have killed Him.”
 This meant that the essence of God in modern

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man was dead.
 Also dead was the part of a person that
recognized universal God-given ideals of reason
and truth, goodness and beauty.
 He rejected reason as the core of human nature.

 Knowledge is not man’s strongest desire but

rather the desire for power.
 There is no pre-established human nature, only
the freedom to be whatever we choose to be. 19
 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
JEAN – PAUL SARTRE
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Existentialism
WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM?

June 8, 2011
 Derived from the word “Existence” which comes
from the Latin word “Existere” which means to
“stand out”, “to emerge” or “to come out

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from”

 Stresses the difference between “existing” and

“living”

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SOME THEMES OF EXISTENTIALISM

June 8, 2011
 Rejection of reason and of the idea that man is,
by nature, a rational being.

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 Existentialism takes man as the center of
attention. The focus is on the individual and
more importantly, the uniqueness of each
individual.

 Existentialist focus on freedom as the chief

aspects of ourselves. We are free to choose our
lives, even our selves.
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SARTRE’S PHILOSOPHY OF MAN

June 8, 2011
“Life is an empty bubble

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in the sea of nothingness.”
 Man comes from nothingness
 Life is meaning-less

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SARTRE’S PHILOSOPHY OF MAN

June 8, 2011
“Existence precedes
essence.”

Philosophy of Man
 Human beings have no fixed nature or essence.
We are not born into this world with a certain
way to be. Instead we are pure potential for
becoming whatever we choose to become.

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