MAN IN THE CONTEXT

OF HIS NATURE
 Man is a being, a creature, whose destiny is to live in
two worlds, viz. the spiritual and physical or material
world.
 Man is destined to live in the spiritual world because
he summoned by God to live with Him in His kingdom;
 and man is destined to live in the physical world since
he is part of the world and, besides, he lives among
entities in the world, viz, plants, minerals, animals,
etc.
 Man is a living paradox. He is simple yet complex.
He is a flesh-spirit and a divide union.
 Man possesses a body. This categorical statement
creates no problem and meets no objection. The
judgment is immediate.
 Man is the only recipients of a substantial unity of
a material body and spiritual soul.
 • Human = refers to anything exclusively pertinent
to man.
 • Nature = from Latin word “natus” means “born ‘
or “nature” which means “to be born” or “being
born”. Nature- is the ultimate operation of reality.
 • Human Nature – refers to anything exclusively
human which man intrinsically possesses right at
his birth. Human can be characterized as universal
and static. Universal pertains to all born humans
and static because it remains as it is in every man
from birth(womb) to death (tomb).
Three fold-level of Human Nature”
 1. Somatic level – refers to the body substance, constitution, or
stuff of man and secondarily to the bodily structure and color
of man which are conditioned by man’s culture and
environment.
 2. Behavioral level – refers to the mode of acting of every man.
 3. Attitudinal Level – refers to the mental reaction of man to a
given stimulus. Attitudes can grow or stunted. Lies at the heart
of every man’s uniqueness, this level caters to individual
attitudes toward life.
Human nature changes only in terms of its accidental
constituents, i.e. the growth of the human body, the change or
development of one’s attitude, and the change of behavior which
appropriate to the human milieu.
 Human nature: an overview People may differ in many aspects.
They may differ In size, color of skin, race, socioeconomic
status, and many more. Despite these differences, they are all
beings with divergent concepts and views about human nature.
PRE-SOCRATIC VIEWS OF MAN
 Thales- “ Man has 80% water in his brain and 70% water in his
body , or a “man has a water stuff”.
 • Anaximenes- “Man is a human body with a condensed air and a
rarefied human soul”.
 • Heraclitus- “Man has fire stuff in him in the form of heat.”
 • Anaximander – “Man is a human being that has evolved from
animals of another species which are lower than his.”
 Pythagoras- “Man is a dipartite of body and soul .” That a soul is
immortal, divine, and is subjected to metempsychosis.
 Protagoras or the sophists- “ Man is the measure of all things, of all
things, that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.”
SOCRATIC PERIOD
 1. Socrates- the acclaimed greatest philosopher in the Western
civilization. He defined “ Man is a being who thinks and wills”.
He put more emphasis on the attitudinal level of human nature
since he give more value to the human soul rather then the body.
He argued that human soul be nurtured properly through the
acquisition of knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. He emphasizes the
moral sphere of the attitudinal level of human nature. Man for
him should discover truth , truth about good life, for it is in
knowing the good life that man can act correctly. That man’s
attitude towards life should be oriented towards knowledge. For
it is in knowledge that man can properly translate such
knowledge into really living a good life.
 If man contends himself with knowledge and virtue he is a man
of wisdom or considered a wise man. He who is a wise man who
has disciplined his soul to know what is right and does what he
knows to be right in the actual situation. Knowledge is the
ultimate criterion of action in man. The dictum of Socrates is
“Knowing- what- is- right means- doing- what- is- right”.
Socrates tells more the ignorance of the knowledge of the right
and good life enable man to do evil deeds. Man does evil deeds
due to ignorance.
PLATO’S PERIOD
 2. PLATO- define “ Man is a soul using a body.” because the
nature of man is seen in the metaphysical dichotomy between
body and soul. For Plato the body is material, it cannot live and
move apart from the soul; it is mutable and destructible. The
soul is immaterial, it can exist apart from the body. The soul is
a substance because it exists and can exists independently .
In Plato’s view there are three parts of soul:
1. The Rational Part is located in the head , especially in the brain. It is in
this part where the soul enable to think, to reflect, to draw conclusions.
This is the most important and the highest part of the soul. This
distinguishes man from the brutes.
2. The Spiritual part is in the chest. It is here that the soul experience
abomination and anger.
3. The Appetitive part in the abdomen where man drives to experience
hunger, thirst, and other physical aspects.
Man can control his appetite and self-assertion of spirit through reason. Plato
believes that Reason controls both Spirit and Appetite. When this happens
man will have a well-balanced personality. He declares that the appetitive
and spiritual parts are subjected to death; they are mortals. Only the
rational part is immortal. This gives birth to the conception that idea is
eternal and immortal since it is rooted in reason. The emphasis of Plato on
human nature in the light of reason.
 3. ARISTOTLE Aristotle maintains that there is no dichotomy between man’s
body and man’s soul. Body and soul are in a state of unity. In this unity the
soul acts as the perfect realization of the body while the body is the material
entity which has a potentiality of life. The body has no life. It can only
possess life when it is united with the soul.
 Aristotle speaks of Man as a single essence composed of body and soul.
 Man’s body matter and man’s soul form. That is why he speaks of soul as the
body’s perfect realization because form for him is the perfect realization of
matter. Soul is the principle in life; it causes the body to live. The body is
matter to the soul and the soul form to the body.. Body and soul , therefore
are inseparable. They constitute man as a whole.
 According to Aristotle there are three Kinds of soul:
According to Aristotle there are three Kinds
of soul:
 1. Vegetative – the lowest type of soul which is found in all living things,
Plants, specifically possess this type of soul. It is capable of following
functions: It feeds itself, it grows and it reproduces.
 2. Sensitive –soul exists in animals. It feeds, it grows, and it reproduces, and
it has feelings(particularly pain and pleasure because it has developed a
nervous system)
 3. Rational- it exists only in man. It ranks highest than vegetative and
sensitive because it assumes the functions of them and it is capable of
thinking, reasoning and willing. Man is higher than the brutes, animals and
plants. Man is capable of thinking and judging aside from sensing and growing.
Aristotle’s view of human nature is seen in the argument of matter and the form
of man. Man is essentially body and soul. Aristotle rejects the idea of Plato on
the dichotomy of the soul and the body and the preexistence of the soul prior to
the body. No wonder the Christian doctrines are patterned after Thomistic lines
of thinking are more Aristotelian than Platonic. But Aristotle , like Plato
advocates Reason as man’s highest faculty because Reason distinguishes man
from other form of life-possessing like plants and brutes.
 Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God
created the heavens and
the earth.