Lesson

THE HUMAN PERSON

5 AS AN EMBODIED
SPIRIT

A. Freedom and the Right to be Free

It is a well-settled truth that men naturally desire happiness although this concept of
happiness varies. For some, to be happy is to be free and indeed, what is the essence of life
without freedom? It is freedom that makes man truly become a human person, and this is the
reason why men, as proven by history, engage in war. “Give me liberty or give me death,” says
Abraham Lincoln.

Man’s soul has two faculties or powers, namely, the will and the intellect. The will and the
intellect must be taken as a whole, for the two are inseparable (Ramos, 2016). The will is the
means by which we make choices. Reason or the intellect guides us in making choices. Thus, man
has free-will. This is not as simple as choosing what color of pants to use nor deciding whether to
wear an I.D. in school or not. Rather, it involves decision making with moral consequences and
we call this human acts.

Free-will is innate in man. It is this God-given free-will (which is properly guided by reason)
that makes us superior over brute creation. The exercise of the will allows us to decide for
ourselves freely and every decision man undertakes should lead to happiness, which is man’s
greatest good. But again, it is helpful to bear in mind that the happiness that all of us desire must
be the kind of happiness in philo-spiritual moral context as taught by the Christian philosophers
like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. True happiness is found in union with God. This is our
Summum Bonum.
 Now, therefore, our actions which are products of the exercise of free will should lead us
to happiness, and this is in turn should lead us closer to men and to God. But God who gave us
freedom of choice because of His infinite goodness always respects our decisions. From the philo-
theological point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas, he believed that it is God’s divine plan that we
must have freedom so that in this world or in this life we might love Him (Copleston, 1950). He
did not will that freedom must be used for moral evil, but a gain free choice is the essence. God
lets us choose freely by letting us to choose right or wrong, good or evil.

B. Actions Have (Moral) Consequences

Way back in our Franciscan (Capuchin) formation, our formators would always tell “be
willing to pay the price of your decision.” It is metaphorically saying, “Face the consequence of
your decision.” And, yes indeed, oftentimes the price is too costly. We usually complain that the
consequence is too heavy.

We were eighteen in our batch and I learned after several years that all of us left or were
asked to leave and three of our professed formators also left the formation. Now, the question
is, did we pay the price? My honest answer is, yes, I did! I just do not know with others, with my
other classmates and formators.

The above-mentioned scenario is just one of the many proofs that indeed, actions have
consequences. However, the actions mentioned in this chapter is not the kind of ordinary actions
that arise from bodily movements (or Matter in motion) known as acts of man. Acts of man is
simply the result of human functions like walking to school, combing hair, singing a favorite song
or doing the “pabebe wave.” The point of arguments of this chapter is Human Acts. By human
acts, we refer to the voluntary actions of the human person, that these actions are done with full
knowledge and consent. From these, we can infer that acts to be human must be done with full
knowledge and out of free-will. In a nutshell, only those that fall under human acts possess moral
significance (Montemayor, 1994).

C. Evaluate and exercise Prudence in Choice

 Man is destined to make choices, the moment we reached the age of reason, decision
making always confronts us. And most often than not, we find ourselves confronted by a dilemma
most especially if moral issue is of the essence. Confusing as it may, we have to make a stand.
We have to make decision against all odds. The decisions or choices we make establish our
identity, our uniqueness is identified by the choices we make. Several philosophers attempted to
find the truth on the abovementioned proposition, and with their philosophical arguments we
come to understand better the human person. Existentialism is born.

Existentialism is a branch of philosophy that “emphasizes fundamental questions of

meaning and choice as they affect existing individuals.” As a philosophy, its primary question of
inquiry includes topics on choice, freedom, identity, alienation, inauthenticity, human despair
and awareness of human mortality (Soccio, 1998).

Existentialism as a philosophy has the existing individual as its main focus rather than
searching for truth in universal concepts which is beyond grasp as traditional philosophy does.
As a philosophy, it is concerned with the genuine concerns of concrete existing individual (human
person) as they confront choices and decisions in everyday life (Stumpf, 1999).

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): “The question is not what I to believe, but what
am I to do?”

Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and reared by a religious family
who belonged to Danish Church, a split group of Lutheran Church. In 1830, Kierkegaard enrolled
in the University of Copenhagen and took up Theology because his father want him to become a
minister of their church. Soon, he realized that theology did not interest him and for ten years he
spent his life drinking and other related activities.

Thereafter, he returned to the same university to continue his theological studies and
passed the same with honors in 1840. Kierkegaard was exposed and trained in philosophy. He
wrote several books containing his philosophical arguments in Existentialism which made him an
authority over the matter.

The clause “think in Existence” seems to be a battle cry in Existentialism. For Kierkegaard,
it meant to recognize that every individual is confronted with personal choices (Stumpf, 1998).
Human beings oftentimes find themselves in an “existential situation,” says Kierkegaard. This is
best understood in a situation wherein if a human person is engaged in conscious activity of will
and held that “the real action is not the external act, but internal decision in which the individual
puts an end to mere possibility and identifies himself with the content of his thoughts in order to
exist in it” (Soccio, 1998).

Since every human person (in the parlance of Existentialism) is confronted with a situation
where he must make a choice, this choice defines his identity vas a unique individual. It follows
now with necessity that man’s actions produce consequences and man is accountable for the
consequences. If we analyze these lines of arguments, we can now validly infer that a thief cannot
make an excuse of his being poor, that someone committed wrong because he was emotionally
carried away like committing rape, or a guy using illegal drugs for the reason that he is
problematic. It is our choice; thus no one is to be blamed.

It is now settled that the human person as an existing individual is concerned with what
he is ought to do. It is so because every action or choice a man would make, follow with it
consequences and accountability. The human person can either be confronted with a condition
known as Inauthenticity or Authenticity.

Inauthenticity. Soren Kierkegaard described it as a “condition that results when the nature and
needs of the individual are ignored, denied, and obscured or sacrificed for institutions,
abstractions, or groups” (Soccio, 1998).

Authenticity. In the context of Kierkegaard’s Existentialism, “it is a condition of an individual

living honestly and courageously in the moment, refusing to make excuses, and not relying on
groups or institutions for meaning and purpose” (Rader, 1980).

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980): “Existence precedes essence.”

Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. His father died when he was very young, thereafter,
his mother stayed with her parents and the young Sarte was raised by his grandfather. Sarte
studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and was attracted and influenced by the
philosophy of Henri Bergson. In the year 1934 to 1935, he enrolled at the Institut Francais in
Berlin where he studied the philosophy advanced by Husserl. Sartre became a professor of
philosophy for about ten years.

Sartre eventually realized that conventional and academic philosophy purely theoretical)
is disappointing. He believed that abstractions and highly elaborative systems of metaphysics are
irrelevant and no bearing to his actual existence. He then arrived to the conclusion that life is
made up of difficult decisions or choices and concrete experiences, and that traditional
philosophy fails to answer living issues and choices that each individual make.

Jean-Paul Sartre believed that the freedom of the human person always follow with
responsibility; that man is always accountable for his passion. As an Existentialist, he opined that
“man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Cedeno, 2003). Furthermore, he held that
our choices are unlimited, meaning, man is not duty-bound to force himself to be this or that
kind of person. Man is not a prisoner of the past by means of heredity or even environmental
conditioning. In his Existentialist mind, he was more than convinced that science and nature
cannot dictate on what we are supposed to do and so with God.

If Soren Kierkegaard is a theist, Sartre is obviously an atheist. He held that God is truly
dead. This is so because according to him, God does not answer us but chose to remain silent
during the time of absurdity and horror. Man experience freedom and the high price of
accountability that follows. Sartre termed this reality of life as forlornness.

Forlornness, for Sartre, is his belief that man faces life alone by himself, that is, without
God and certainty, only absolute freedom and the responsibility that follows. When man makes
a choice, his identity can either be authentic or inauthentic. In the mind of Sarte, an authentic
self “exists only by the choices it makes uncontrolled by the values of the crowd or others.” In
line with this, he taught that man creates his essence by how he lives. Parallel to this, Sarte also
used the term Inauthenticity. By this, he meant that inauthenticity results from refusing to
choose responsibly and courageously. Inauthenticity happens when we hide behind abstraction
in the form of social duties and roles established by the group rather than the individual person.

Existence Precedes Essence

 As proponent of Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre proclaimed that existence precedes
essence. He simply wanted to tell that man is what he makes of himself; that man is the one
creating his own values and is not supposed to be controlled or even dictated by his past or an
identity (Maboloc, 2016). The issue to be resolved then is, what now is the destiny of man? Sarte
addressed this issue by using the phrase Absolute Freedom, that is, the destiny of man is found
in his capacity to make choices through the exercise of free will or the power of volition (Calano,
Pasco, Ramoya 2016).

D. Determinism

If there are philosophers who asserted and defended that human beings have free-will;
that man is free to make choices for himself, there are also thinkers who argued otherwise. A
philosophy known as Determinism is also born out of inquiring minds. Man, being rational are
sometimes pushed to the limits in reconsidering his most basic concepts and ideals. And at times,
radical or unorthodox points of view emerges.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904)

B.F. Skinner, for brevity, was born in U.S.A. He studied the English and Greek classics at
Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Records showed that he finished his Master’s degree in
1930 and his Doctor’s degree in 1931 at Harvard University. Skinner contributed much to the
development of Determinism.

For B.F. Skinner, Determinism is a philosophical doctrine which tells that all events,
including human actions are ultimately determined by causes Which are outside or independent
to the will of the human person. From this proposition, it is inferred that individual human
persons have no free-will, thus, he cannot be held morally responsible for his actions (Maboloc,
2016).

Determinism is also understood as a theory which asserts that every acts or events,
human behavior and the events of history follow strict laws of causation or necessary connection.
It viewed human beings (the human person) is not possessing freedom of the will or the power
to originate independent or genuine choices (Stumpf, 1999).