MAN AS A PERSON

ACCORDING TO BASIC ANTHROPOLOGY

 MAN IS A PERSON
*A person (plural people or persons) is a being that has certain capacities or
attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and
being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship,
ownership of property, or legal responsibility.
 MAN IS A SUBSTANTIAL UNITY : A UNION OF BODY AND SOUL
* each a distinct substance acting on the other; the soul was equivalent to
the mind.
MAN IS A SUBSTANTIAL UNITY : AN AUTONOMOUS BEING
*a person is autonomous to the extent that he directs his actions in
accordance with his own values, desires, and inclinations. ... The crucial
question then becomes what it means to say that a given reason, value, or desire
is truly a person's own.
 THE HUMAN PERSON IS THE MOST
PERFECT IN THE WHOLE NATURE
(SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS)
-WITH REASON TO UNDERSTAND THE
WORLD
- WILL TO DIRECT HIMSELF TO TRUE
GOOD
 MAN IS A SOCIAL BEING
* Man is a relational being. He is open to himself and to others. Hence, man
is inter-subjectivity, a community of LOVE.
 MAN POSSESES DIGNITY AND RIGHT
* Dignity is related to GOODNESS, EXCELLENCE and PERFECTION
* The characteristics of man that point to his dignity are INTELLIGENCE,
FREEDOM and LOVE
ACCORDING TO CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

 MAN IS A CREATURE
* He is made by God and preserved by God.
* To affirm GOD as Creator is to highlight man’s relationship with GOD
* All human activities, skills, talents, etc. are seen as expressions of the creative,
immanent and personal action of God.
 MAN IS THE IMAGE OF GOD
*Man’s likeness to God is not only in his reason but also in his responsible
conduct. He has the capacity to respond freely to the call of God.
*Man appears as the first creature that is conscious of where he has come
from of the potentialities open to him
 MAN IS FALLEN AND REDEEMED
* from the dawn of history, man abused his freedom set himself against god
and sought to find fulfillment apart from god.
* as a consequence, man became aware of his limitations and his ability to
become what he ought and desires to become. man’s reason has been clouded
and his will weakened by sin and thus the image of god has been distorted
* the Christian response to God’s call must involve entrusting oneself
completely to the Lord. Each moral choice is a step of faith into the future which
prepares for the next step into the unknown destiny which god has prepared for
those who love Him.
NATURE AND GRACE

 Grace is a gratuitous gift of god to all persons who love him.

Thomas Aquinas mean by saying "grace builds on nature" God's grace helps
us do more than we can on our own. God brings us to truths that we could never
discover without the help of grace.
MAN AND SOCIETY

 The Greek philosopher aptly said: “He who is unable to live in a society, or
who has no need of it because he is sufficient to himself, must be either a
beast or a God.”
 Paradox is that man creates society but society also creates man; that there
can be no society without a man, just as there can be no man without society.
MAN AND THE STATE

 The human person is a citizen of the State. As a citizen, he/she needs to be

maka-tao, maka-bayan, maka- kalikasan and maka-Diyos.
 He needs to exercise his sense of nationalism and globalism which require
that he lives moral values and social virtues of pagkakaisa, pakikipagkapwa-
tao and pagkabayani.
HUMAN RELATIONSHIP AND THE
NECESSITY OF LAW
 Man as a participant in the realm of beings. He is metaphysical paradox; an
individual yet universal. He possesses unique accidental individuating features
and qualities that make him physically and personally different from others. •
 Thus, to be human, he is not to isolate himself as individual but to be in a
society in harmonious relation or interaction with others.
 According to Martin Buber, a Jewish existentialist philosopher, there are two
ways of relating with others: I-IT Mode and I-THOU Mode:
 • I-IT Mode – man treats his fellowmen as objects, tools or instruments. This
treatment falls under the utilitarian mechanism. He uses others like machine
to achieve his purpose or interest. Only what is useful is good.
 • I-THOU Mode – man considers his fellowmen as subjects and ends in
themselves. There is an atmosphere of openness, commitment, reciprocity,
personal involvement, care and love. Each protects and upholds his self-worth
not because of individual usefulness but because one or the other is valued.
NECESSITY OF LAW

 Law protects the mechanism in the exercise of human freedom. It regulates

the relationship of free individual.
 • Its clips off excessive selfish drive that violates other’s right. It is something
that restricts a very minimal part of human freedom for the preservation of
the integrity of that same freedom.
MAN AND ETHICS

 HEDONISM
* As a philosophical doctrine, Hedonism regards pleasure as the ultimate good.
It holds that the supreme end of man consists in the acquisition of pleasure.
* As an ethical theory, it asserts that human acts are good if they give sentient
pleasure of the moment, while they are bad if they do not offer temporal
happiness to man. The basis of morality, then, is pleasure that momentarily
satisfies them.
* A strong reaction to Hedonism was posited by Epicurus, a Greek philosopher
and founder of Epicureanism. He thought one’s aim should be a life of lasting
pleasure best attained by the guidance of reason.
* He argued that happiness was goal of life, and saw it not as the pure
indulgence of pleasure but as attainment of honesty and social justice.
 UTILITARIANISM
• Utilitarianism theory of ethics that holds that the rightness or wrongness of an
action is determined by the happiness, its consequences produce. It makes
usefulness or utility as the norm of morality. If an action gives useful result, it is
good, while if it does not, then it is bad.
• This theory is classified into: egoism and altruism. The former holds that an act is
good if it produces temporal happiness and satisfaction to the individual, while it is
bad if an act prevents this happiness to occur. The latter holds that an act is good
if it is useful to society. This social utilitarianism seeks the greatest good of the
greatest number.
 MORAL EVOLUTIONALISM
* Moral evolutionism, as an ethical theory, holds that morality is flexible,
relative and continuously changing and evolving towards its perfection. This
postulates applies the theory of biological evolution to morals.
* The theory of biological evolution as laid down by Charles Darwin and Alfred
Russel Wallace, states that life forms with certain characteristics tend to
reproduce in larger numbers and survive environmental changes better than other
life forms that lack these characteristics.
* The concept of changing morality is akin to the adjustment theory of
Herbert Spencer who defines life as the continuous adjustment to self to other
selves. Morality, according to Spencer, means, therefore, the adjustment of the
individual to his fellows, co-existing in a society. The concept of good act of man
is that which makes man well adjusted, while a bad act, that which makes him
unhappy due to maladjustment.
 MORAL POSITIVISM
* Moral positivism is the theory that holds that the laws of the State are the
source of all moral laws. An act is good if it is in conformity with the laws of the
State, while it is bad if an act is forbidden.
* This theory makes morality relative. It reverses the natural order of things
being that man with his voting rights precedes the State. Moreover, rightness or
wrongness of an act does not depend on whether it is forbidden or allowed.
Morality is fixed or absolute, notwithstanding the absence of laws.
 COMMUNISM
* The moral philosophy of communism is anchored on its logical consequence
of its view of reality. This view of reality as espoused by Karl Marx and Frederick
Engel is rooted in three basic concept:
• That productive labor is the fundamental attribute of human nature;
• That the structure of any society is determine by its economic means of
production;
• That societies evolve by a series of crises caused by internal contradictions
analyzable and resolvable by dialectical materialism.