PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

CHAPTER I: PHILOSOPHIZING

I. What does it mean to philosophize?

1. We shall not begin with a definition of philosophy. Philosophy is easier to do

than to define.

At this stage, it is safe to say that we associate philosophy with thinking.

Crucial element in thinking is insight.

2. Insight is a kind of seeing with the mind. eg. insight into a joke

Two things to be considered regarding insight:

a) the insight itself
b) what I do with insight

I can analyze the insight, but if I am merely enjoying a joke, analysis can kill my
enjoyment, but if I am to deliver the joke to others, analysis can deepen and
clarify the original insight and help in the effective delivery.

3. Another example: death of grandfather at 110 years old. I listen to story of

grandfather in his youth, think of myself as full of high spirits, dashing, popular,
but high spirits are not inexhaustible. Insight: generations of men start life full of
vigor, then wither away and die after they have given life to their own sons.

Homer made a metaphor of this insight: “As the generation of leaves, so the
generation of men…”

Metaphor sharpens the insight and fixes it in the mind.

Also, one portion of reality casts light on another: by contemplating the fall and
return of leaves, we understand also rhythm of the generations of men.

4. Another example: number 4 can be analyzed into 2 + 2 = 4 or 1+1+1+1=4.

How did we gain insight into “4”? By counting, e.g. cars, abstracting the
common and prescinding from individual characteristics of cars.

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 Abstraction is one of the tools for analysis of insights. An abstract thought is a
concept. An analysis by abstraction is a conceptual analysis.
My insight into the generations of men can be analyzed conceptually, but note that
conceptual analysis can desiccate an insight: the throbbing, tumultuous
generations of men become an abstract fund of energy and high spirits. It is then
necessary to return to the original insight.

5. To summarize,

Insight is a seeing with the mind: only you can do it. I cannot see it for you but I
can help you to see it.

Many ways of doing with the insight. Some insights are so deep they cannot be
exhausted.

It takes an insight to do something with insight, like the metaphor of Homer.

Insights bring us to the very heart of reality, and reality is deep and unfathomable.

II. Why do we Philosophize?

6. Philosophy as an activity is rooted on lived experience.

Experience is the life of the self: dynamic inter-relation of self and the other, be it
things, human beings, the environment, the world, grasped not objectively but
from within.

Self is the “I” conscious of itself, present to itself.

Presence to itself entails also presence to other, the not-I.

7. This relatedness of the self to the other is characterized by tension,

disequilibrium, disharmony, incoherence.

8. Tension calls for inquiry, questioning, search.

9. Depending on the level of experience, there are three levels of inquiry:

a) common sense
b) scientific
c) philosophical

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 Common sense is the generally accepted set of regulative meanings and
procedures applied to particular circumstances, e.g. I feel like urinating, so I look
for the “WC”.
Scientific inquiry is concerned with a particular need, treats the world as a means
in order to achieve a concrete end, e.g. I have a stomach ache, I go to the doctor, I
take medicine.

10. Philosophical inquiry is inquiry into the coherence, sense of human life as a
totality, as a whole, comprehensive reality and ultimate (final) value. e.g. I have a
terminal case of stomach cancer; I am given only 3 months to live, so I ask “What
is the meaning of life?”

“sens de la vie”: “sens” can mean the direction of a river, the texture of a cloth,
the opening of a door, the meaning of a word. Likewise, my life can have a
direction, a texture, openings (possibilities), meaning.

III. Beginnings of Philosophizing (When do we begin to philosophize?)

11. Wonder: for Plato, the poet and the philosopher are alike in that both begin from
wonder: e.g. children’s questions, “Is there a Creator?” “Why does life go on?”

12. Doubt can also impel man to ask philosophical questions. Descartes’ philosophy
started from doubting the existence of everything. Adolescents also doubt their
identity.

13. Limit Situations are inescapable realities which cannot be changed but only
acknowledged. E.g. failure, death of a beloved. We may not be able to control
them but we can control our response to them through reflection. They provide
opportunities and challenges for us to make life meaningful. (existentialists)

14. Metaphysical Uneasiness is to be unsure of one’s center (Gabriel Marcel).

Equivalent to Soren Kierkegaard’s Angst.

Metaphysical uneasiness is contrasted with curiosity. To be curious is to start

from a fixed external object (outside of me) which I have a vague idea of.
Metaphysical uneasiness is beyond the physical, the external, and is more internal.

Curiosity tends to become metaphysical uneasiness as the object becomes part of

me.

Philosophizing here begins from an inner restlessness which is linked to the drive
for fullness.

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 15. Philosophical questions ultimately can be reduced to question of WHO AM I?
IV. Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Man

1. Ancient (Greeks): cosmocentric approach.

The Greeks were concerned with the nature and order of the universe.

Man was part of the cosmos, a microcosm. So, like the universe, man is made up
of matter (body) and form (soul).

Man must maintain the balance and unity with the cosmos.

2. Medieval (Christian era: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas): theocentric

approach.

Man understood from the point of view of God, as a creature of God, made in His
image and likeness, and therefore the apex of creation.

3. Modern (Descartes, Kant): anthropocentric approach.

Man is now understood on his own terms, but basically on his reason, thus
rationalistic.

4. Contemporary philosophies arose as a reaction against Hegel.

One reaction is Marx who criticized Hegel’s geist, spirit, mind and brought out his
dialectical materialism.

Another reaction is Soren Kierkegaard who was against the system of Hegel and
emphasized the individual and his direct relationship with God. Kierkegaard led
the existentialist movement which became popular after the two world wars.

V. Existentialism

1. The father of existentialism is a Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-

1855)

Three events in Kierkegaard’s life influence his philosophy:

a) unhappy childhood, strict upbringing by his father
b) break-up with the woman he loved
c) quarrel with a university literature professor

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These events and his criticism of the rationalistic Hegelian system led him to
emphasize the individual feelings.
The aim of Kierkegaard was to awaken his people to the true meaning of
Christianity.

To achieve this aim, there are two ways:

a) the direct confrontation (which is risky)
b) indirect: to start from where the people are and lead them to truth

Example 1: two ways to help a friend who fell in a ditch:

a) direct: pull him out from above which he may refuse or he may
bring you down.
b) indirect: to jump into the ditch with him and lead him up.

Example 2: two ways to help a jilted friend:

a) direct: tell him to forget the woman because there are other
women, in which case he may avoid you.
b) indirect: sympathize and share the hurt with him but gradually
lead him to the realization that it’s not the end of the world.

Kierkegaard chose the indirect way and saw himself as another Socrates. The
indirect way is the Socratic Method.

Kierkegaard started from where the people were, the aesthetic stage, the stage of
pleasure, so he wrote first aesthetic works.

The next stage is the ethical stage, the stage of morality (of good and evil) with
reason as the standard.

The highest stage is the religious, where the individual stands in direct immediate
relation (no intermediary) with God.

Here, because God is infinite and man is finite, the individual is alone, in
angst, in fear and trembling.

What counts here is faith, the individual’s belief in God, going beyond
reason.

The favorite example of Kierkegaard here is Abraham who was asked by

God to sacrifice his son Isaac (by his wife Sarah) to test his faith. The
command was between God and Abraham alone, cannot be mediated by
others (Sarah would not understand it), and to apply the ethical would be
murder.

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 (Abraham had been promised by God to be the father of a people through
his son Isaac by his wife Sarah who was already very old to bear a child.
He had another son Ishmael by his maid. Ishmael was sent out to the
present Middle East and became the ancestor of the Muslim race.
2. Existentialism is not a philosophical system but a movement, because
existentialists are against systems.

There are many different existentialist philosophies, but in general they can be
grouped into 2 camps: theistic (those who believe in God) and atheistic (those
who do not believe in God.

Theistic Atheistic
Soren Kierkegaard Albert Camus
Karl Jaspers Jean-Paul Sartre
Gabriel Marcel Maurice Merleau-Ponty

*Martin Heidegger
( *He is between the two because he refuses to talk about God )

In spite of their divergence, there are common features of existentialist

philosophies to label them as existentialist.

First, existentialists emphasize man as actor in contrast to man as spectator.

Many existentialists use literature like the drama, novel, short story, to
convey this idea.

Second, existentialists emphasize man as subject, in contrast to man as object.

Being as object is not simply being-as-known but known in a certain way:

conceptually, abstractly, scientifically, its content does not depend on the
knower. It is given, pure datum, impersonal, all surface, no depth, can be
defined, and circumscribed.

Being as subject is the original center, source of initiative, inexhaustible,

the ‘I’ which transcends all determinations, unique, the self, in plenitude,
attainable or known only in the very act by which it affirms itself.

Man as both subject and object, as can be shown in reflexive acts (e.g. I
brush myself, I wash myself, I slap myself) where there is the object-me
( changing and divisible) and the subject-I (permanent and indivisible ).

The existentialists, however, while not denying the reality of man as

object, emphasize the subjectivity of man, of man as unique, irreducible,

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 irreplaceable, unrepeatable being. e.g. as a passenger in a crowded bus, I
am treated as an object like a baggage, but I am more than that.

The subjective must not be confused with subjectivism or being

subjectivistic.
The subjective merely affirms the importance of man as origin of meaning
(in contrast to the emphasis of ancient and medieval periods on truth).
e.g. God, not an object to be proven but God-for-me.
e.g. values both objective and subjective (value-for-me).

Thirdly, existentialists stress man’s existence, man as situatedness, which takes on

different meanings for each existentialist.

For Kierkegaard, existence is to be directly related to God in fear and

trembling.

For Heidegger, existence is Dasein, There Being, being thrown into the
world as a self-project.

For Jaspers, to exist is not only to determine one’s own being horizontally
but also vertically, to realize oneself before God.

For Marcel, esse est co-esse, to exist is to co-exist, to participate in the life
of the other.

For Sartre, to exist is to be free.

For Merleau-Ponty, to exist is to give meaning.

For Camus, to exist is to live in absurdity.

Fourthly, existentialist stress on freedom which means differently for each

existentialist.

For Kierkegaard, to be free is to move from aesthetic stage to ethical to

religious.

For Heidegger, to be free is to transcend oneself in time.

For Sartre, to be free is to be absolutely determining oneself without God.

For Marcel, to be free is to say “yes” to Being, to pass from having to

being in love.

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 Fifth, existentialists propagate authentic existence versus inauthentic existence.

Inauthentic existence is living in the impersonal “they”, in the crowd, in

bad faith (half-conscious, unreflective) e.g. L’etranger of Camus,
functionalized man of Marcel, monologue of Buber.
Authentic existence is free, personal commitment to a project, cause, truth,
value. To live authentically is to be response-able.

All existentialists make use of the phenomenological method, which does not
explain deductively or inductively but simply describes the experience of man as
he actually lives it.

CHAPTER II: PHENOMENOLOGY

I. Phenomenology

1. Traditional study of philosophy begins with logic, then metaphysics, then

cosmology and ends with philosophical psychology or philosophical
anthropology ( philosophy of human being ).

Man is defined by traditional scholastic philosophy as rational animal, a

composite of body and soul.

Under the aspect of body, man is like any other animal, a substance,
mortal, limited by time and space.

Under the aspect of soul, man is rational, free, immortal.

The soul is deduced from the behavior of man to think and decide.

2. Our critique of the traditional definition of man is that:

a) it is dualistic
b) it looks at man more as an object, an animal
c) it proceeds from the external to the internal

The phenomenological approach, on the other hand, is:

a) holistic
b) describes man from what is properly human
c) proceeds from the internal to the external

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3. Phenomenology was started by Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938) whose aim was to
arrive at “philosophy as a rigorous science”.

By “philosophy as a rigorous science” Husserl meant a “presuppositionless

philosophy,” a philosophy with the least number of presuppositions.
Unlike Descartes, Husserl was dissatisfied with the sciences of his time
because they start with a complex of presuppositions.

In particular, he was reacting against naturalistic psychology which treats

mental activity as causally conditioned by events of nature, in terms of SR
relationship (stimulus-reaction). Presupposition here is that man is a
mechanistic animal.

So, Husserl wanted philosophy to be a “science of ultimate grounds”

where the presuppositions are so basic and primary they cannot be
reduced further.

4. How does one arrive at that philosophy? By transcending the “natural attitude”.

The natural attitude is the scientific attitude which was predominant in Husserl’s
time and carried to the extreme to become scientistic.

The scientistic attitude observes things, expresses their workings in singular

judgements, then by induction and deduction, arrives at concrete results.

But this attitude contains a number of assumptions:

 It assumes that there is no need to ask how we know.
 It assumes that the world (the object) is out there, existing and explainable
in objective laws, while man the subject is pure consciousness, clear to
itself, able to know the world as it is.
 It takes for granted the world-totality.

In short, the natural attitude looks at reality as things, a “fact world”.

The way of knowing in the natural attitude is fragmented, partial, fixed,

clear, precise, manipulative, and there is no room for mystery. It was moving
away from the heart of things.

So, the motto for Husserl and the phenomenologists was “back to things
themselves!”

By “back to things themselves” Husserl meant the entire field of original

experience.

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 The ultimate root of philosophy was not to be found in a concept, nor in
a principle, not in a Cogito.

Phenomenology attempts to go back to the phenomenon, to that which presents

itself to man, to see things as they really are, independent of any prejudice. Thus
phenomenology is logos of the phenomenon.
II. Some characteristics of the phenomenological attitude.

5. Certain characteristics of the phenomenological attitude clearly fulfils the aim of

Husserl and Co. to go back to things themselves.

a) The phenomenologist posits unity first before analyzing the parts or aspects of
this unity.

By positing unity first, he is faithful to original experience because in

original experience, we see no opposition between subject and object.

When he is interested in a part, it is insofar as this lies in the context of

the totality of human experience. E.g. language is not just body of words but
embodiment of thought, of culture.

b) The phenomenologist describes, explicitates, unfolds what is already there.

Because reality is rich and inexhaustible, the description is never final.

c) The phenomenologist is primarily concerned with experience and with man,

with the world as lived by man.

d) The phenomenologist uses “epoche”, the bracketing of the natural attitude.

III. Some important steps in the phenomenological method

6. Epoche literally means “bracketing” which Husserl borrowed from mathematics

and applied to natural attitude.

What I bracket in the epoche is my natural attitude towards the object I am

investigating, my prejudice, my clear and conceptual knowledge of it that is
unquestioned.

When I bracket, I do not deny nor affirm but simply hold it abeyance; I suspend
judgement on it.

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 Epoche is important in order to see the world with “new eyes” and to return to
the original experience from where our conceptual natural attitude was
derived.

7. Eidetic Reduction is one of the important reductions in the phenomenological

method.
“Reduction” is another mathematical term to refer to the procedure by which we
are placed in the “transcendental sphere” the sphere in which we can see things
as they really are, independent of any prejudice.

“Eidetic” is derived from “eidos” which means essence. In eidetic reduction I

reduce the experience to its essence.

I arrive at the essence of the experience by starting out with an individual

example, then finding out what changes can be made without it ceasing to be
what it is. That which I cannot change without making the object cease to be the
thing it is, is the invariant, the eidos, of the experience.

8. For example, I am doing a phenomenology of love. I start by bracketing my

biases on love. Then I reduce the object love to the phenomenon love. In eidetic
reduction, I begin with an example of a relationship of love between two people.
I change their age, race, social status, and all these do not matter in love. What is
it I cannot change? Perhaps, the unconditional giving of self to the other as he is.
This then forms part of the essence of love.

9. Phenomenological Transcendental Reduction reduces the experience further to

the very activity of my consciousness, to my loving, my seeing, my hearing, etc.

Here, I now become conscious of the subject, the ”I” who must decide on the
validity of the object.

I now become aware of the subjective aspects of the object when I inquire into the
beliefs, feelings, desires which shape the experience.

The object is seen in relation to the subject and the subject in relation to
the object.

In our example of love, maybe I see the essence of love as giving of

oneself to the other because of my perspective as a lover. If I take the
perspective of the beloved, maybe the essence is more receiving that giving.
If I take the perspective of religious, maybe love is seen as activity of God.

Example of “rain” (cf. clipping,book)

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10. It is in the transcendental reduction that Husserl came up with the main insight of
phenomenology: intentionality of consciousness.

Intentionality of consciousness means that consciousness is intentional, that

consciousness is always consciousness of something other consciousness itself.
There is no object without a subject, and no subject without an object. The
subject-of-the-object is called noesis; the object-for-the-subject is called noema.

There is no world without man, and no man without a world.

11. Marcel uses a phenomenological method less technical than Husserl’s. He calls it
secondary reflection.

Reflection is rooted in experience, but there are two kinds: primary and
secondary.

Primary reflection breaks the unity of experience and is the foundation

of scientific knowledge. This is equivalent to the natural attitude of Husserl.

Secondary reflection recuperates the unity of original experience. It

does not go against the data of primary reflection but refuses to accept it as
final.

Example: Who am I?
Primary reflection: I am so and so, born on this day, in such a place with
height and weight, etc – items on the ID card.
Secondary reflection: I am my body, I feel pain when the dentist pulls my tooth.
I experience terrible feeling when I sell my body.

12. To summarize, phenomenology as a method is a method in which the relation

between the investigator and the investigated object is considered to belong
essentially to the object itself.

In any cases where the object of investigation is a human being,

phenomenology becomes a method in which all the relevant items of research
are exclusively considered only with regard to the totality of the human being.

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CHAPTER III: MAN AS EMBODIED SUBJECTIVITY

I. Man as Incarnate Subjectivity: The Notion of Embodiment

1. Our starting point is the “I exist” which is a unity, that is to say, I exist is also I
manifest, to myself and to others.

This is due to the datum of My Body.

My body lies between having and being, a paradox: I have my body
I am my body

I have my body insofar as my body is an object, like other bodies, but my

body is also me, the “I” manifested. I cannot say entirely “I have my
body” like I have my dog because there is no separation between me and
my body.

I am my body insofar as my body is a subject, a unique body, but I cannot

be totally identified with my body. I cannot say entirely “I am my body”
because I exceed the manifestations of my body.

The way I exist my body is one of incarnate subjectivity, embodied

subjectivity.

My body is a subjectivity incarnated; thus, no separation of body and

consciousness.

I am a felt subjectivity, a consciousness plunged into a world but exceeds

it.

My body opens me up to a world. (cf. quotation from Merleau-Ponty)

My body is an intermediary to the world.

Intermediary understood in 2 senses: familiarity (bridge)

distance (obstacle)

2. Because of my body, I am a being-in-the-world-with-others.

My being-in-the-world-with-others is characterized by facticity-transcendence.

Facticity-transcendence is a unity; the two cannot be separated.

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 Facticity means my having a perspective, a “here” and “now”, and
“alreadythere”, a situation, a point of view.

I am constantly “here” and not “there”, I am born healthy or weak, rich or

poor.

Nothing is offered to me except from a certain point of view, a situation,

and from this perspective everything presents itself to me.
It is true that I can change this perspective but I will be substituting
another for this. Thus, the necessity of a perspective due to being an
engaged-subjectivity.

Transcendence means I can call into question, revoke, overcome, surpass my

determination.

The “here” and “now” of facticity points to a “there” and “not-yet”.

A perspective or point of view is a direction to another perspective or

point of view..

At every moment I take a stand, an attitude towards my facticity; I project

myself.

For example, sensation is both a structure, a fact, but modified by my projects

( there is more to see, hear, etc. )

It is impossible to look at the sensory system as it unfolds because I am

the system being unfolded.

Thus, my presence to the world is twofold: static and dynamic (being-able-to-be).

Man is one with the world but also distant from it (able to say “no” and
plan ahead.

Man is a self-projecting project.

II. Man as Temporality

3. Human existence therefore is not given once and for all in one instance but as
ecstatic.

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Man is a movement which continually reaches beyond itself; man is temporal,
past-present-future.

Our common conception of time is a series of “nows”:

Future: a now that has not become real yet
Past: a now that is gone because of the appearances of another now, the present.

The image we have of time here is like a river, flowing from the waterfall
( the past) towards the sea (future ).

But this presupposes a witness, standing on a rock and watching the river
flowing.
Things themselves have changeless, indivisible being in them. Change
presupposes a certain position which I take up and from which I see
things.

Time arises from my relation to things, my being-toward-the-world.

From a certain perspective, the water is not moving from the past to the
future but from the future sinking into the past—the future is a brooding
presence moving to meet me, the landscape if I were to sit on a boat in a
stream.

Time is not a process I record but a dimension of my being.

For Husserl, time is the protention (going away) and retention (staying) running
from the central “I”.

For Merleau-Ponty, time is the protention and retention running not from the
central “I” but from my perceptual field.

Time, is not a line but a network of intentionalities.

A------------------B------------------C-----------------Future
:

A’ B’
:

A”

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 a) A, A’, A” are bound together not by identifying synthesis but by
transitional synthesis.

b) A, B, C, run into each other. A becomes B because A has been but an

anticipation of B as present and its own lapse into the past.

c) Present asserts the presence of the whole past and anticipates all that is
to come.
Time is my field of presence which I the subject disrupt to adumbrate a
perspective, to introduce non-being into it, a non-being which is the past
and a non-being which is the future.

The past is not past, nor the future future unless there is a subject
conscious and giving non-being into it.

Present is not closed but opens to the past and future, implies a subject.

Subjectivity is presence but an open presence.

Time is subjectivity introduced into the world and implying an ekstase

towards the future and towards the past.

The present is privileged because being and consciousness coincide, and

yet it is also vague.

The present is the foundation and opening to the past and future.

The ecstatic outreaching of temporality makes possible “sens” (sense, reason,

direction, significance).

Time also provides the matrix in which I can be mutually present to another
subject.

Two temporalities are not exclusive: each one arrives at self-knowledge

only by projecting itself into a present where both ca be joined together.

This gives rise to the social world land historicity.

Heidegger’s notion of time is shown in his description of the structure of Dasein

(There-being) as care.

Care is “having to be ahead of itself while being-already-in-the-world and

being absorbed in intra-worldly beings.”

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 ahead of itself: existentiality: future being-already-in-the-
world: facticity: past, having been being at: fallenness:
making present

The future is the coming towards itself of Dasein, presupposes the “having
been”

Having been is the past that is still there: what I have been and what I am
in some way.
Making present: Understanding its own being, Dasein understands the
human situation as a whole and unveils intra-worldly beings. This
presupposes the future (anticipation) and the past (return).

III. Man as Historicity

4. Historicity is simply temporality + sociality.

We share a common past, present and future with others.

We are a point of intersection of historical lines of events, a historical product.

We cannot deny but have to accept certain facts of history, which are our
limitations.

But being conscious of this, we are also aware of our possibilities.

We become a source of creativity. We can make history.

Historicity is therefore both a destiny (limitations) and a responsibility (task).

IV. Man as Homo Faber (worker)

5. The insights into man as embodied subjectivity, temporality and historicity can be
seen in the notion of work.

Insofar as man is body, he is limited, he needs to provide for his physical

wellbeing, he has to struggle against nature, he has to work.

But since man is also spirit embodying itself, everytime man works, he wrests a
surplus from nature.

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 This surplus is the transformation of nature by man’s rationality in order
to build up forces for higher purposes.

Man through work humanizes the world, embodying his own spirituality
in the world. E.g. house, clothes, private property. Man exteriorizes
himself in work.

To work is not only to make the earth subservient to man, but also to
liberate ourselves from nature. It is not only geared towards production of
wealth but also towards projection by man of a human milieu.
Modern work has reached a point where man is able to wrest a surplus from
nature, leaving room for other modes of self-realization beyond the selfrealization
of work concerned as “production”.

Modern work also entail division of labor, which makes work social: people
work for one another and with one another.

This co-existence in work also provides the interconnection in mankind’s history.

Work is historicity.

Every generation finds at its disposal the means of production produce by

the preceding generation; and the generation now leaves behind the means
of production that will serve as the starting point for future generation.

History becomes common history because of work.

This insight becomes very important in our era of globalization and in the
issue of sustainable development.

A danger is to make everything of human existence work (as in Marx). To work

is only a way of realizing oneself. Another aspect of self-realization is leisure or
play.

In a sense, modern work is becoming leisure, but there will always be an

aspect of alienation, where the worker works for an end outside of the
activity (e.g. wage).

There is also the danger of functionalization, where the worker is reduced to his
function, often monotonous and repetitive.

For Paul Ricoeur, the counterpart of work is word, which gives meaning
and sense of the whole.

Besides productive labor, there is something more to our earthly existence.

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 This something “more” is called culture.

Culture is contemplation expressed and communicated.

Labor and culture interpenetrate; they cannot be separated. But depending on

which of the following characteristics predominate, we can call an activity labor
or culture (leisure, play).

LABOR CULTURE
Activity in which man aims at world to Activity in which man aims at himself in
change it. order to express and communicate himself.
Result is a product (which man can use to Result is a sign (in order to speak of human
perfect himself). existence).
For our fellowman (making) To our fellowman (communion).

Every sign is a product to some extent, and every product has stamp of interiority.

CHAPTER IV: MAN AS KNOWING

Phenomenology of Knowing

1. When I am asked what it is to know, I find it hard to answer the question, and yet
I know what knowing is.

I know for instance that knowing is different from liking, loving or

aversion.

Like St. Augustine’s speculation on time: he knows what time is but as

soon as he is asked to express this knowledge, he does not seem to know it

2. There appears to be two kinds of knowledge:

Pre-reflective Consciousness: the lived experience of knowing, the

beingpresent to the knowing human being which I am.

Reflective Consciousness: consciousness of knowing; the experience of

knowing made thematized.

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 Pre-reflective: counting-consciousness, loving-consciousness,
joyconsciousness.

Reflective: consciousness of counting, consciousness of loving,

consciousness of joy.

3. Consciousness becomes reflective when I pass from being-in the presence of

placing-myself-in-the-presence; the thematization of what was non-thematic, the
explicitation of what was implicit.

4. The irreflechi is important because philosophy begins with it and is nourished by

it.
5. Our phenomenology of knowing begins with epoche: placing in brackets all kinds
of theories regarding knowledge (e.g. empiricism, idealism).

6. Let us take a concrete example of knowing a table, in particular, perceiving a

table.

What does perceiving a table involve? The existence of a perceiving

consciousness and the reality of the table to which consciousness is present.

This perceiving consciousness is intentional, is never closed but openness to that

which is not consciousness itself.

vs. Franz Brentano: consciousness is first consciousness and then only

orientation-to.

vs. Scholasticism: consciousness is first separated from reality and then

enters into contact with it by means of impressed species which do not
have entitative being but only intentional being.

Consciousness is intercourse with reality. Perception of the table involves a

perceiving consciousness which is a being-with-the-reality of the table.

Without the reality of the table, there is no perception of the table.

The table gives itself to the perceiving consciousness.

Without the showing, the self-giving of the table, I may be only dreaming
or imagining.

The intentionality of perceiving consciousness and the “self-giving” of the

perceived is the foundation of objectivity and of the truth of a statement.

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 This is the dialectic unity of noesis (the subject-of-the-object) and noema (
the object-for-the-subject ).

Through knowledge, man and the world become themselves. Man

becomes himself because he breaks through the determinism of nature,
and nature becomes a world-for-man.

Paul Claudel: connaitre: co-naitre: a being born together.

I perceive the table only from a standpoint determined by the attitude of my body.

Reality gives itself to me only in profiles correlated with my standpoint.

Yet, the profiles are the profiles of the same table, and there is a
pregrasping (anticipation) of other possible profiles pertaining to the table.
There is a unity and totality of profiles.

I also perceive the table against a background, a horizon, the field perception.

Perception thus is always perception of the whole thing, integrated into a wider
field, which in turn is also part of a horizon of more remote meanings. It is this
structure of nearby and faraway horizons which constitutes the “worldness” of the
world.

7. But perceiving consciousness is not all of knowing consciousness for it is also

permeated with spiritual understanding.

Two facets of knowing: sensitive knowing and spiritual understanding.

sensitive knowing is knowing the object through the senses, and the senses
are limited by time and space.

Spiritual understanding is knowing the essence of the object, which is not

limited by time and space.

This essence is expressed in the concept.

Concepts are immutable, transcends the changeable character of the

concrete, and is the basis for the possibility of speaking of absolute truth.

As immutable, the concept is abstract and universal; it divides yet unifies.

8. The first vague content of knowledge is explicitated in the judgment.

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 To judge is to predicate a concept by comprehension or extension to the
terminus of knowing.

To overcome vagueness of the encounter, necessary to have many

judgments.

Verbal copula “is” used in every judgment.

In the judgment, the question of truth arises.

9. Traditional definition of truth: the agreement of the judgment with reality.

Phenomenology accepts this traditional definition of truth of the judgment

(which does not really say anything) but refuses to separate the explicit
“is” in the judgment from the implicit saying of “is” which the existent
subject-as-cogito himself is.

Truth of the judgment is inseparable from original, implicit saying of “is”

which existence is.

Truth of the judgment is preceded by a certain “event”, the event in which

the judged meaning becomes meaning-for-the-subject – the event of truth
as unconcealedness.

Original truth is aletheia.

Aletheia requires a certain “light” – lumen naturale – which man as

subjectivity, as existent is.

Existent subject is the “letting be” of the meaning of things. (logos of the
Greeks).

Truth as unconcealedness presupposes the “coming to pass” of man’s

essence as light “and” meaning.

The “moment” of the emergence of man as subject is equiprimordially the

“moment of vision” at which truth is born. Thus truth is historical.

Second reason why truth is historical: the event is never-ending, clings to

history of existence. Meaning, not pure unconcealedness but chiaroscuro
of unconcealedness and concealedness.

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 Third sense of truth as historical: event of unconcealedness is possible
only in a particular phase of the knowing subject’s personal history and in
a particular phase of the collective history of mankind.

Historicity of truth is an aspect of truth’s relativity.

Relativity of truth does not mean rejection of absolutenss of truth.

Absoluteness of truth lies within historicity of truth. At the moment of the

birth of truth, truth acquires a transhistorictiy, an indisputability. E.g.
mother killing her child.

Transhistoricity of truth also means intersubjectivity of truth.

Historicity of truth does not mean that today’s truth will be tomorrow’s
untruth. Rather, the truth of “now” integrates and makes more profound
the truth of yesterday.
10. One criterion of truth is fruitfulness.

Criterion of fruitfulness varies in physical sciences, human sciences,

religion, practical living.

Fruitfulness is the result of genuine dialogue with reality.

Heidegger: Man is not the lord of Being but the shepherd of Being; his
becoming is consciousness of himself is a “letting be” of his essence.

But the truth of man’s essence must also be brought about: deciding about
the truth.

History of the west lies in forgetfulness of Being.

Need to be receptive to Being. “We never come to thoughts, thoughts

come to us.”

CHAPTER V: MAN AS LIBERTY (FREEDOM)

Outline:
I. Two Extreme Positions:
a) B.F. Skinner: Man is absolutely determined

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 b) Jean Paul Sartre: Man is absolutely free
II. Middle Position: Phenomenology of Freedom of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
III. Freedom and the Person: Gabriel Marcel
IV. Two Types of Freedom: Freedom of Choice and Fundamental Option
V. Freedom and Responsibility (Robert Johann)
VI. Freedom and Justice

I. Two Extreme Positions:

A. Absolute Determinism: B.F. Skinner

1. We begin our phenomenological description of freedom using epoche, bracketing

two extreme positions on freedom: absolute determinism and absolute freedom.

2. The behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner holds that man is absolutely

determined.

Man’s behavior is shaped and determined (caused) by external forces and

stimuli:
a) genetic, biological and physical structures
b) environmental structures: culture, national and ecclesiastical (church)
c) external forces and demands.

Our behavior, being conditioned by these factors, is manipulable: man can be

programmed like a machine. E.g. governmental, educational, and
propagandistic techniques.

3. Against Skinner, we hold that there are other levels of experience which cannot
be explained by or reduce to external factors and stimuli, such as:

a) I can make myself aware of my biological and physical limitations,

b) I can question my own environmental structures, revolt or validate them.
c) I can achieve distance from external demands and forces: hesitate, reflect,
deliberate and challenge them.

4. There are difficulties with absolute determinism:

Explaining away self-questioning and self-reflection is doing self-questioning and

self-reflection.

Not all causal motives are necessitating causes because goods that we face and the
motives we use are limited, conditioned and mixed.

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 If the feeling of freedom is rejected, then no basic experience is trustworthy,
which would lead to total skepticism and inaction.

If the statement ‘man is absolutely determined’ is true, then the statement is also
determined, and the opposite ‘man is absolutely free’ would also be determined,
and so there would be no truth value anymore to the statement.

5. If human beings are manipulable like machines, there would be no problem in

making a society just.

B. Absolute Freedom: Jean Paul Sartre

6. Jean Paul Sartre, in his early stage, holds that man is absolutely free.

7. In his essay ‘Existentialism is a Humanism” Sartre discusses his position by

stating that with man, “existence precedes essence.” (He develops absolute
freedom in metaphysical terms in his book “Being and Nothingness”.) Man first
exists and then creates his own essence.

There is no pre-existing essence that man has to conform when he exists.

There is no God, because if there is a God, He would be a creator, and essence
would exist first before existence, thus man would be determined.

“Man is what he is not (yet), and he is not what he is “because he can be what he
wants to be.

8. Man cannot be free in some things only and not free in others; he is absolutely
free or not at all. There is no middle position: man is absolutely free.

Objection 1 to Sartre: How can you say I am absolutely free when I am not free
to be born in such and such a place, of parents so and so, on such and such a day?

Answer of Sartre: You can always live as if you were not born in such and such a
place, of parents so and so, on such and such a day.

Objection 2 to Sartre: How can you say I am absolutely free when I cannot climb
a big rock or pass through it? So I am limited.

Answer of Sartre: The rock is an obstacle to your freedom only because you
freely want to climb or pass through it.

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 9. For Sartre, freedom is a negation, a negating power of consciousness.

10. In interpersonal relationship, this means reducing the other person to an object,
described as the Sartrean stare.

The other person, because he is also free, also reduces me to an object. So for
Sartre, “Hell is other people!” (from the play “No exit”)

II. Situated Freedom: Maurice Merleau-Ponty

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his last chapter of the Phenomenology of Perception,

criticizes Sartrean absolute freedom and holds the middle position of structured
freedom.

2. For Merleau-Ponty, criticizing Sartre, if freedom is absolute, always and

everywhere present, then freedom is impossible nowhere.

There would be no distinction between freedom and unfreedom. E.g. the slave in
chains is just then as free as the one who revolts and breaks his chains. We are
free when we control our situation as well as when we are powerless.

3. Such a freedom as Sartre’s cannot embody itself in any form of existence,

because once freedom has realized something, we have to say at once that it lies
outside its so-called embodiments.
4. In such kind of freedom, it is difficult to speak of choice, because choice implies
value, and seeing values is impossible from the standpoint of a freedom which
transcends all situations.

5. For Merleau-Ponty, our freedom is Situated Freedom.

6. Freedom is interwoven with a field of existence. Our choices are not made from
absolute zero, but from this field of meaning.

Outside myself, there is no limit to my freedom, but in myself, there are limits.

We have to make distinction between:

Explicit intention: I plan to climb the mountain
General intention: whether I plan to climb the mountain or not, it appears high to
me.

Underneath me is a natural “I” which does not give up earthly situation and from
which is based my plans.

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 Insofar as I have hands, feet, body, I bear intentions which do not depend on my
freedom but which I find myself in.

I find myself already in a world of meaning. E.g. I cannot structure date of

perception in arbitrary fashion. E.g. habits, tiredness. E.g. historical situation.

It is true I can change habits or I transcend facticity, but I can only do so from
these standpoints.

7. A good example of situated freedom is a revolution: it is neither purely

determined nor completely free.

8. In contrast to Sartre’s subject who is distance from the world, Merleau-Ponty’s

subject is dialogue with the world.

III. Freedom and the Person: Gabriel Marcel

1. Gabriel Marcel understands freedom in relation to the person.

2. The person is characterized by disponsibilite, availability in contrast to the ego

which is closed.

3. We start out in existence as an ego having freedom and grow to being a person.
4. Marcel’s philosophy can be systematized in terms of having and being (as what
Roger Toisfontaine,SJ, did in his book De l’existence a l’etre). Having and Being
are two realms of life.

5. Having pertains to things, external to me, and therefore autonomous (independent

of me).

Things do not commune with me, are not capable of participation, closed and
opaque, quantifiable, and exhaustible.

The life of having therefore is a life of instrumental relationship.

Having is the realm of the problem. A problem is something to be solved but

apart from me, the subject.

Having is also applicable not only to things but also to ideas, fellowman, faith. I
can have many ideas, posses other people, have my religion. Here I treat my
ideas, other people, religion as my possessions, not open for sharing with others.

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 6. Being on the other hand, pertains to persons, open to others, able to participate,
creative, non-conceptualizable, a plenitude.

The life of being is the life of communion.

The realm of being is the realm of mystery. A mystery is a problem that

encroaches on the subject, that is part of me, the subject.

Being is also applicable not only to persons but also to things (art), ideas, faith. I
am my painting; I am my ideas; I am my faith. Here my art, ideas, religion are
part of me which I can share to others.

7. Freedom for Marcel belongs to the realm of being, because freedom is not distinct
from us, not a possession. Freedom is a mystery, not a problem.

8. A thing possessed may be used or neglected by the owner without losing its
character, but with freedom, when I deny or abuse it, betray it (it loses its
character as freedom).

9. As belonging to the realm of being, freedom breaks the confines of having to

affirm my being which is essentially openness, participation, creative belonging
with other beings and with fullness of Being itself.

10. Man is gifted with freedom (freedom as a fact), and that is why he experiences a
lack, but which is really an exigency of Being.

In answer to this appeal of Being, man either fulfills or betrays his freedom.
To fulfill freedom is to affirm, to be in communion with others, with Being.

Therefore, freedom as a fact points to freedom as value. I am free in order to

become free (freedom as achievement), to become fully a person.

IV. Two Types of Freedom: Freedom of Choice and Fundamental Option

1. There are therefore two types of freedom: freedom of choice (horizontal

freedom) and fundamental option (vertical freedom).

2. Our first and commonly understood experience of freedom is the ability to choose
goods. E.g. I choose to study instead of playing mahjong; I choose to buy a cheap
pair of shoes instead of an expensive pair of shoes because I am supporting my
sibling’s education.

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 3. But we reflect deeper, our choice implies a prior or may lead to a preference of
values. When I choose to study instead of playing mahjong, I value learning more
than pleasure. When I choose the cheap pair of shoes I value helping my
sister/brother more than my comfort.

This freedom is called fundamental option because it is our general direction or

orientation in life.

It is called vertical freedom because values form a hierarchy; some values are
higher than others.

For the German phenomenologist Max Scheler, preferring and realizing higher
values is love, and preferring and realizing lower values is hatred or egoism.

In the ultimate analysis, there are only two fundamental options: love and
egoism.

It is love which makes me a person, which makes me truly free.

4. Freedom of choice and fundamental option are interrelated: our choices shape our
fundamental option, and fundamental option is exercised and concretized in our
particular choices.

V. Freedom and Responsibility (Robert Johann)

1. These two types of freedom can be seen in the corollary of freedom which is
responsibility. Responsibility is the other side of freedom.
2. Just as there are two kinds of freedom, there are also two meanings of
responsibility.

3. The first meaning of responsibility corresponds to the first type of freedom, free
choice, namely accountability.

I am accountable for an action that is free, whose source is the ”I”: I acted on my
own, I decided on my own. I am free from external constraints.

4. Being responsible, accountable, for my action, however, does not necessarily

make me a responsible person. Here we encounter a second meaning of
responsibility corresponding to the second type of freedom – response-ability.

Response-ability means the ability to give an account, the ability to justify my

action as truly responsive to the objective demands of the situation.

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 A response that meets the objective demands of the situation is a response that
meets the demand of justice.

A responsible action then from a response-able person requires putting the Other
in the forefront in place of myself. I am free from internal constraints, like
egoism and whims.

5. Greater freedom then is not just being able to do what I want to do but being able
to do and wanting to do what the situation objectively (versus subjectively)
obliged me to do.

VI. Freedom and Justice

1. The relationship between freedom and justice can be seen when we take into
consideration the network of relationships with fellow human beings and the
goods intended by freedom.

2. Justice is giving to the other what is his due.

3. When we choose goods (things, money, political power, etc.), we must consider
that they are finite and exhaustible, and that the other also needs them.

Absolute love for finite goods leads to corruption, in the object and in the subject.

4. If the human being is to keep his freedom, he must asses his real needs with
respect to what is available around his world and the equally real needs of his
fellowman.

5. This requires an objective order of values, like a balancing measurement, a libra.

6. What is due to the other is all that he needs to preserve and enhance his dignity as
a human being.

We are obligated to give to the other what the other needs to enhance his dignity.

His dignity includes his being and becoming free.

7. But we are obliged to give only what we can give within the limited matrix of
possibilities.

8. Freedom then conditions justice, and justice is a condition of freedom.

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 Freedom conditions justice, because giving what is due to the other means
allowing him to use his talents to fulfill his humanity, giving him freedom. So, to
violate the freedom of the other is to deny him justice.

Justice is a condition of freedom, because I can only use my freedom for the
promotion of justice, of what is due to the human being. In the exercise of my
freedom, I must observe justice so that the resources of fellow human beings and
the world of nature are not exhausted and totally lost, otherwise there will be no
more goods to choose from.

9. This relationship of freedom and justice is applicable to society.

In a society, there must be a balance of freedom and justice.

This means that there must be structural order in society such that higher values
are not subordinated to lower values.

The social structure must be such that exchange of economic goods and
distribution of political power is geared towards enhancement of the human
being.

The practical norm to follow for the ideal is “to each according to his needs (Acts
2:45) …from each according to his means (Acts 11:29)”

10. In cases of conflict between freedom and justice, the use of violence must be
avoided. Instead, structures for deliberation are needed. People must be able to
participate in dialogue to settle their differences.
CHAPTER VI: INTERSUBJECTIVITY (MAN AND FELLOWMAN)

I. Dialogue
II. Love
III. Justice

I. Dialogue

1. The noted Jewish Philosopher on dialogue, Martin Buber, makes a distinction

between the social and the interhuman:

a. the social is the life of a group of people bound together by common

experiences and reactions; in short, group existence.
b. the interhuman is the life between persons, the interpersonal, the life of
dialogue, the I-Thou.

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 For example, Buber joins a procession for the sake of a comrade (social),
then suddenly, he sees someone in the café he had befriended a day before
( interhuman ).

The interhuman can happen to persons with opposing views, like two
boxers in a boxing match.

2. I-Thou (dialogue) is to be distinguished from I-It (monologue).

One way of distinguishing dialogue from monologue is to describe the obstacles

to dialogue which would be the characteristics of monologue.

We must note first that our life with other persons is in reality never pure dialogue
not pure monologue but a mixture. It is question of which of the two
predominates.

3. The first obstacle to dialogue is Seeming, in contrast to being.

Seeming proceeds from what one wishes to seem. I approach the other from what
I want to impress on the other.
The look of seeming is “made-up”, artificial.

Being proceeds from what one really is. I approach the other from what I really
am, not wanting to impress on the other.

The look of being is spontaneous, without reserve, natural.

The seeming that is an obstacle to dialogue must be distinguished from the
genuine seeming of an actor who is playing a role and of a lad who imitates a
heroic model.

Seeming that attacks the I-Thou is a lie in relation to existence, not a lie in relation
to particular facts.

For example, two men, Peter and Paul, whose lives are dominated by seeming:
Peter as he wants to appear to Paul, Paul as he wants to appear to Peter,
Peter as he actually appears to Paul, Paul as he actually appears to
Peter, Peter as he appears to himself, Paul as he appears to himself. Six
appearances and two bodily beings!

In I-Thou, persons communicate to each other as they are, in truth.

Objection to Buber: Is it not natural for man to seem?

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 Answer of Buber: No, what is natural for man is to seek for confirmation of his
being , a “yes” from the other for who he is, but this is difficult and so he resorts
to seeming because seeming is easier.

4. The second obstacle to dialogue is Speechifying, in contrast to personal making

present.

Speechifying is talking past one another. For Sartre, this is the impassable walls
between partners in conversation. Most conversations today are really,
monologues.

In dialogue, on the other hand, I personally make present the other as the very one
he is, I become aware of him, that he is different from me, unique, maybe even
with opposing views.

To be aware of a person is different from becoming aware of a thing or animal. It

is to perceive his wholeness, determined by the spirit. It is to perceive his
dynamic center.

In our time, we have the following tendencies that make dialogue difficult:
Analytical: we break person into parts;
Reductive: we reduce the richness of a person to a schema, structure, concept,
Deriving: we derive the person from a formula.
Thus, the mystery of the person is leveled down.

5. The third obstacle to dialogue is Imposition, in contrast to unfolding

In the interaction between persons, they influence one another. But there are two
basic ways to influence another: Imposition and Unfolding.
Imposition is dictating my own opinion, attitude, myself on the other.

Unfolding on the other hand, is finding the other the disposition toward what I
myself recognized as true, good and beautiful. If it is true, good and beautiful, it
must also be alive in the other person in his own unique way. All I have to do is
in dialogue is to bring him to see it for himself.

A typical example of imposition is the propagandist. The propagandist is not

concerned with the unique person he wants to influence but with certain qualities
of the person that he can manipulate and exploit to win the other to his side. He is
concerned simply with more members, more followers.
Political methods are mostly winning power over the other by depersonalizing
him.

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 A typical example of unfolding is the educator. The educator cares for his
students as unique, singular, individuals. He sees each as capable of freely
actualizing himself. What is right is established in each as a seed in a unique
personal way. The educator helps the student unfold what is right. He does not
impose.

The educator trust in the efficacy of what is right. The propagandist does not
believe in the efficacy of his cause, so he must use special methods like the
media.

This idea of Buber has influenced a theologian of liberation, Paolo Friere, who
wrote The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. According to him, there are two ways of
teaching:

a) Banking method: the teacher “deposits” information in his students’ minds

and he “withdraws” it during examination.
b) Dialogical method: the teacher teaches by learning from his students their
unique situation, and from there, he unfolds what is right. Both the
teacher and student are responsible to what is true, good, and beautiful.

6. To summarize, genuine dialogue is turning to the partner in all truth.

To turn to the other in all truth also means imagining the real, accepting the
wholeness of the other, including his real potentialities and the truth of what he
cannot say.

To confirm the other does not mean approval. Even if I disagree with him, I can
accept him as my partner in genuine dialogue; I affirm him as a person.

Further, for genuine dialogue to arise, every participant must bring himself to it.
He must be willing to say what is really in his mind about the subject matter.
This is different from unreserved speech, where I just talk and talk.

Silence can also be dialogue. Words sometimes are the source of

misunderstanding (Zen Buddhism).

II. Love

Introductory note: There are many kinds of love (love of friendship, marital love, etc.).
Our phenomenology of love here is not a description of a particular kind of love but of
love in general between persons.

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1. We begin our phenomenology of love by first using epoche, bracketing the
popular notion of love as a pleasant sensation, as something one “falls into”.

According to Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving, love is an art that
requires knowledge and effort.

Erich Fromm cites three reasons for this wrong popular notion of love as “falling
in love.”

a) the first reason is that nowadays the problem is stressed on being loved rather
than on loving. Note the proliferation of books on “how to win friends and
influence people,” “how to be attractive,” etc.
b) the second reason is that nowadays the problem is focused on the object rather
than the faculty. Nowadays people think that to love is easy but finding the
right person to love or be loved is difficult. So love is reduced to sales and
follow the fad of the times.
c) the third reason is the confusion between the initial sate of falling-in-love and
the permanent state of being-in-love.

2. The experience of love starts from the experience of loneliness.

Loneliness is one of the basic experiences of the human being because of

selfawareness.

Thrown out of a situation which was definite and secure; into a situation
which is indefinite, uncertain, open, the human being experiences
separation.

This experience of separation is painful and is the source of shame, guilt,

and anxiety.

There is then a deep need in man to overcome loneliness and to fine at-onement.
Some answers to this problem are the following:
a) orgiastic states: trance induced by drugs, rituals, sexual orgasm, alcohol. The
characteristics of these states are: violent, intense, involving the total
personality, but transitory and periodical. They are also addictive.
b) conformity with groups: joining a party or an organization. The
characteristics of these groups are calm, routine-dictated. In our society,
today, we equate “equality” with “sameness” rather than “oneness” where
differences are respected.
c) creative activity: a productive work which I plan, produce, and see the result.
Nowadays, this is difficult.

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 All the above answers are not interpersonal.

3. Love is the answer to the problem of loneliness, but love can be immature.

Immature love is symbiotic union where the persons lose their individuality. The
following are immature forms of love:
a) biological: the pregnant mother and the fetus: both live together.
b) psychic: two bodies are independent but the same attachment
psychologically.
c) passive: masochism. The masochist submits himself to another.
d) active: sadism. The sadist is dependent on the submissiveness of the
masochist.

4. Loneliness ends when the loving encounter begins, when a person finds or is
found by another.

The loving encounter is a meeting of persons.

The meeting of persons involves an I-Thou communication.

This meeting of persons happens when two persons are free to be themselves yet
choose to share themselves.

The meeting of persons is not simply bumping into each other, nor an
exchange of pleasant remarks, although these can be embodiments of a
deeper meeting.

This meeting of persons can happen in groups of common commitments

although social groups can impose roles.

5. The loving encounter presupposes the appeal of the other to my subjectivity.

The appeal of the other is embodied in a word, gesture, glance.

The appeal of the other is an invitation to transcend myself, to break away from
my occupation with self.
I can ignore the casual remark of the other as a sign for a meeting.

My self-centeredness makes it difficult for me to understand the other’s appeal to

me.
I need more than eyes to see the reality of the other, to see his goodness and value.
I need an attitude that has broken away from self-preoccupation. If I am absorbed
in myself, I will not understand the other’s appeal but will just excuse myself. I

36
 must get out of the role I am accustomed to play in daily life to understand the
other’s appeal.

6. What is the appeal of the other? It is not the corporeal or spiritual attractive
qualities of the other.

Qualities can only give rise to enamoredness, a desire to be with the other, but
love is the firm will to be for the other.
Once the qualities ceases to be attractive, then love also ceases.
Also the person is more than his facticity.

The appeal is not any explicit request.

Because even if I have satisfied his request, the other may go away dissatisfied,
because my heart was not in the fulfillment of his request.

7. The other’s appeal is HIMSELF.

The call of the other is his subjectivity: “Be with me, participate in my
subjectivity. The other person is himself the request.

The appeal of the other makes it possible for me to liberate myself from myself.
The appeal reveals to me an entirely new dimension of existence: that my
selfrealization may be a destiny-for-you. “Because of you, I understand the
meaninglessness of my egoism.”

8. What is my reply to the other’s appeal? It is not the outpouring of my qualities

to the other.

Compatibility of qualities is not necessarily love.

Neither is my reply the satisfaction of her request or desire.

Sometimes, the refusal to grant her request or desire may be the way of loving
her, if granting it will do her harm.

9. My reply to the other’s appeal is MYSELF.

As a subject, the other is free to give meaning and new meaning to her life.
Her appeal then to me is an invitation to will her subjectivity, to consent to her
freedom, to accept, support and share in it.

My reply then is willing the other’s free self-realization, her destiny, her
happiness. It is like saying, “I want you to become what you want to be. I want
you to realize your happiness freely.”

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10. This reply is effective:

a) Love is not only saying but doing. Since the other person is not a
disembodied subject, to love her implies that I will her bodily being, that I
care for her body, her world, her total well being.
b) Willing the happiness of the other implies I have an awareness, a personal
knowledge of her destiny. My love will open possibilities for her but will
also close others, those that will hamper her self-realization.
c) I can be mistaken in what I think will make the other happy or I may
impose my own concept of happiness, so love requires respect for the
otherness of the other.
d) This respect for the other also necessitates patience, because the rhythm of
growth of the other may be different from mine. Patience is harmonizing
my rhythm with the other’s like a melody or an orchestra.

11. How about the self?

Is love concerned only with the other, and not at all with myself? No,
because in love I am concerned also with myself.

• This does not mean to be loved but in a the sense that in love, I place a
limitless trust in the other, thus delivering myself to her.

• This trust, this defenselessness, is a call upon the love of the beloved, to
accept my offer of self.
The appeal of the lover to the beloved is not to will to draw advantage
from the affection for the other.
The appeal of the lover to the beloved is not compelling, dominating or
possessing the other. Love wants the other’s freedom in that the other
himself choose this safe way and avoid that dangerous path.

• There is indeed an element of sacrifice in loving the other which is often

(mis)understood as loss of self. I renounce motive of promoting myself,
abandoning my egoism.

• But this does not mean loss of self. On the contrary, in loving the other I
need to love myself, and in loving the other I come to fulfill my self. I
need to love myself first in loving the other because in loving I offer
myself as a gift to the other, so the gift has to be valuable to me first,
otherwise I am giving garbage to the other. This loving the other takes the
form of being loved: I am loved by others. I come to fulfill myself in
loving the other because when my gift of self is accepted, the value of self

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 is confirmed by the beloved, and I experience the joy of giving: I also
receive.

• Thus, there exist I loving the other the desire to be loved in return. But the
desire is never the motive in loving the other.

12. The primary motive in love is the you-for-whom-I-care.

The “you” is not a “he” or “she” I talk about.

The “you” is not just another self (“not jus a rose among roses” of the Little
Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery)

The you is discovered by the lover himself, not with eyes nor with the mind but
with the heart. (“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eyes,” said the fox to the Little Prince). “I love you
because you are beautiful and lovable, and you are beautiful and lovable because
you are you.”

13. Since the you is another subjectivity, he is free to accept or reject my offer of self.
Love is a risk.

14. What if the other does not reciprocate my love?

a) the rejection of the beloved can be a test of how authentic my love is.
b) If I persist in loving the other in spite of the pain, then my love truly is
selfless.
c) The experience of rejection can be an opportunity for me to examine
myself, for self-reparation, for emptying myself, allowing room for
development.

15. Reciprocated love

• When love is reciprocated, love becomes fruitful, love becomes creative.

Loving, although it presupposes knowing, is different from knowing. In
knowing, I let reality be, but in loving, I will the other’s free
selfrealization, I somehow “make” the other be. In any encounter, there is
a “making” of the other. E.g. the teacher makes the student a student; the
student makes the teacher a teacher. In the loving encounter, the making
of the other is not causalistic because love involves two freedoms.

• To understand the creativity of love, let us do a phenomenology of

beingloved. What does the lover make of me the beloved? When I am
loved, I experience a feeling of joy and sense of security. I feel joy

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 because I am accepted as myself and a value to the lover. I feel free to be
just myself
and what I can become. I feel secure because the other participates in my
subjectivity; I no longer walk alone in the world. So what is created in
love is a “we”. Together with the we is also a new world – our world,
one world. (Cf. The Little Prince p.64). Again the creative influence of
lover is not causalistic because the beloved must freely accept the offer of
the lover. Only when the beloved says “yes” will the love become
fruitful. E.g. the teacher’s love is fruitful only when the student accepts
freely the education.

• The “we” created in love is a union of persons and their worlds.

Therefore, they do not lose their identities. In the union of things, the
elements lose their identities, but in love (which is a union of persons) a
paradox exists: the “I” becomes more an “I” and the “you” becomes more
herself.

16. We can clarify and deepen this paradox in love by describing the nature of love as
a gift of self.

a) a gift is “something” I cause another to possess which hitherto I posses

myself, the giver.
b) The other has no strict right to own the gift.
c) The giving is disinterested, unconditional: There is no “string attached” to
the giving. I do not give in order to get something in return; otherwise the
giving is an exchange or selling.
d) The giving is not a giving up in the sense of being deprived of something
because the self is not a thing that when given no longer belongs to the
giver but to the given.
e) The giving is not coming from a marketing character because I do not give
in order to get something in return.
f) The giving is also not of the virtuous character. I do not give in order to
feel good.

17. Why do I give myself in love?

Because I experience a certain bounty, richness, value, in me.

I can express this disinterested giving of self to the other a as other in the giving
of sex or material things, but when I do so, the thing becomes unique because it
has become a concrete but limited embodiment of myself.
To give myself means to give my will, my ideas, my feelings, my experiences to
the other – all that is alive in me.

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 18. Why do I love this particular other?

Because you are lovable, and you are lovable because you are you.
The value of the other is her being a unique self. Therefore, since every person is
unique, everyone is lovable.
If I am capable of living this particular person for what she is, I am also capable
of loving the others for what they are.

19. Other essential characteristics of love

From the nature of love as disinterested giving of self to the other as other, we can
derive other essential characteristics of love:

a) Love is historical because the other is a concrete particular person with a

history. I do not love abstract humanity, but concrete persons. I do not
love ideal persons, nor do I love in order to change or improve the other.
E.g. the friends of Jesus, his apostles, were not ideal people! We always
associate the person we love with concrete places, things, events like songs.
When friendship is breaking down, and we want to reconcile, we recall the
things we did together. (cf. The Little Prince p.68)

b) Persons are equal in love because persons are free. The equality in love is
the equality of being, not of having. In love, I do not surrender my liberty
to the other, I do not become a slave to the other. The wife’s submission to
her husband is done in freedom in recognition of his position in the family.
Rather, in love two freedoms become one and each becomes more free.
The union of several freedoms in love results in a community, which is
different from a socity. In a community person are free to be themselves.

c) Love is total because the persons in love are indivisible. I do not say, “you
are my friend only isofar as you are my colleague.”

d) Love is eternal because love is not given only for a limited period of time.

e) Love is sacred because persons in love are valuable in themselves.

III. Justice

1. One can hardly talk of love, freedom and responsibility without mentioning
justice.

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 We are responsible not only for people we have affinity, intimacy, but also for
any human being.

Love implies a certain freedom but I also experience a certain demand to love or
be loved – and I would be unjust if I do not show some concern for the other.

Many times, I also clamor for my rights. I demand to be treated justly.

2. What justice is Not:

a) Justice is not identified with the legal order . Man makes the legal rules for
justice. Revision of legal rules is done because of injustice in some laws. One
can manipulate complex of laws to commit great injustice.
b) Justice is not equated with price-list of sorts, charts of punishments . Can
merits be justly appraised? Can we judge persons at one particular instance in
their lives?
c) Justice is not necessarily equity. Because equity may be established simply in
order to play safe. “I fear” is different from “I ought”.
d) Justice is not equated with isolated just demands. Sometimes, satisfying a just
demand can lead to greater injustice.

3. Features of Justice:

a) True justice has to do with the humanity of laws.

b) Genuine justice has to do with respect for rights of persons.
c) Justice depends on the spirit of love. Justice is not justice unless it is also the
beginning of love. “I ought” is outward while “I fear” is inward, selfish.
Justice is genuine only if it leads to protest not inspired by partisan interest.
d) Justice exists within the totality of existential relationship of man and
fellowman, and to a certain extent man and nature.

4. Difference between Love and Justice:

LOVE JUSTICE
Spontaneous deliberate
something felt something owed
Warm cold
more internal more external
liberal, generous, magnanimous calculating
Subjective, seeks privacy objective and public
5. Responsibilty and Love

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 “You become responsible for what you tamed”

Love is not pure emotion but a task, the will to be with the other, to will his/her
happiness.

Head and heart should be integrated. Heart needed for personal involvement;
head needed for intelligent discernment. Both needed for total orientation of our
lives for universal love.

6. Responsibility and Justice

Responsible action and achievement of justice coincide.

Justice had when our actions are such as they ought to be.
Responsibility: responsiveness to actual values and factors inherent in the
situation.
Injustice: to take for myself what is due to the other.

Beings below persons do not posses anything strictly belonging to them. Being
has claim, wants us to listen, but only persons can be, are self- possessed, have
objective value.

Justice has to do with rights of others.

Justice is to give each his due.
Right comes before justice.
Man has rights because he is a being that exists for itself and of itself, a whole
unto himself, a person.
A person is unique, irreducible, sacred, inviolable.
Still I am a person only in the presence of other person, not before impersonal
nature. Eg. typhoons does not do injustice if it deprives me of life.
I have a right before your presence because you as a person are obliged to respond
to me as a person. Apart from this obligation, I have no rights.

7. Implications

a) Injustice internalized: injustice is done only because you who are obliged
to be responsive to me refuse to be so. Something worse befalls him who
does injustice than against whom injustice is committed.
b) Positive content of justice: my obligation to be responsive to you not only
forbids me to hurt you but also forbids me to be indifferent from you.
c) Founded relationship of responsiveness: emphasis place not on rights but
on obligations to the other/s.

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 8. Love and Justice

a) No love without justice. Love without justice is sentimentality. My love

is untrue to itself if it is not universal. My response should include those
with whom I feel no attraction.
b) No justice without love. Justice without love can lead to legalism, to
mechanized justice. The foundation of justice is affective with Being that
constitutes me as a person land makes my life a project of love.
c) Love is the principle and consummation of justice, while justice is the
“form in which and through which love performs its work” (Paul Tillich)
d) Justice is the minimum of love, and love is the maximum of justice.
CHAPTER VII: MAN AS BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH

I. Human Life from the Point of View of Death: Martin Heidegger

II. Death from the Point of View of Human Life: Roger Troisfontaines

I. HUMAN LIFE FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF DEATH (MARTIN

HEIDEGGER’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH)

1. There is a sharp contrast between the human being, Dasein, and death: Dasein
(There-being) is a being-in-the-world, endless possibility, ahead of himself,
constantly realizing possibilities, always unsettled, while in death, the human
being reaches the wholeness, loses his potentiality for being, his being human.

 Therefore, it is impossible to describe this experience of transition from life to

death, because no one has come out alive to tell us about death.

 So how can we have a phenomenology of death?

Our first experience of death is the death of others, but the death of others
does not give us an objective knowledge about it.
Because a person once dead becomes a thing.
Because we never experience the loss of being that the dying human being
suffers.
Because to analyze the death of others is to represent it, but representation is
always in something and with something, and in death the totality of the
human being is involved which is not representable.

 Thus, death is a not-yet (possibility) which will be, in which the human being
will be no-longer-Dasein, and which is my own.

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  Because this not-yet- has to be, then this not-yet is already accessible to the
human being.
As long as the human being exists, he is already his not-yet.
Analogy with the unripeness of a fruit, e.g. papaya: The ripeness of the papaya
is the end of its lack-of-ripeness, the end of the not-yet of the papaya. As long
as the papaya is not ripe, it is already its not-yet.
But the human being’s death is different from the papaya’s: In the case of the
papaya, its ripeness is the fulfillment of its being, whereas a human being may
or may not reach fulfillment of his being at death. (Sad to say, for the most
part, Dasein ends in unfulfilment.)

 If Dasein is already its end, then a phenomenology of death is not a

description of death itself, of Dasein as being-at-an-end, nor of an after-life,
but of Dasein as a being-towards-death.
2. Hiedegger describes the Dasein’s being-towards-death in terms of the
fundamental structure of the Dasein’s being which is care.

 Care is “ ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in (the world) as Being-alongside

entities which we encounter (within the world)
Three characteristics therefore of Dasein are: existence (ahead-of-it-self);
facticity (Being-already-in) and fallenness (Being-alongside entities).

 In being ahead-of-itself, in ex-isting, as a self-project, the human being comes

to disclosure of his extreme possibility, the possibility of his no longer being
“there”.
Death is the uttermost not-yet of the human being, a possibility that does not
just happen but impending (bound to happen).
The impending of death is distinctive because it is my ownmost possibility.
Death is mine alone. Nobody else can take my death.
Death is a possibility which will mean my no-longer-possible, my no longer
existing.

 Death is also a facticity which I cannot outstrip. I cannot not die.

 As being-alongside, death means my being cut-off from others and things, my

no longer being related to people and things (non-relational).

 I exist with the possibility of death, though I may go through life absorbed
without my being aware of it.
The possibility of death is revealed only in anxiety (angst), in the experience
of dread wherein the human being comes to face his potentiality for being.
Dread is different from fear. Fear is before something determinate, while
dread is before something indeterminate, my being-in-the-world.

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3. The everyday being-towards-death is the inauthentic attitude towards death.

 The publicness of everyday concern considers death as a mishap.

The “they” is impersonal; the “they” hides death by saying, “people die… one
of these days one will die too, in the end, but right now it has nothing to do
with us.”
The “they” levels off death and makes it ambiguous. The “they” hides the
mineness, non-relational, cannot be outstripped characteristics of death.

 The inauthentic human being loses himself in the “they” and forgets his
potentiality for being.
He talks to the dying man, “you will not die, everything will be normal and
carefree.”
For him, the carefreeness of everyday concern must not be disturbed. He does
not talk of death; to talk of death is fear and cowardice. For him, the attitude
towards death should be of indifferent tranquility.
 For Heidegger, this indifferent tranquility means the alienation of Dasein from
his ownmost non-relational potentiality.

 The everyday human being’s attitude towards death is one of evasion.

4. The authentic human being faces death as possibility.

 Facing death does not mean actualizing it (committing suicide( because that
would mean demolishing all potentialities of the human being instead of
bringing them into totality.

 Facing death does not mean calculating it because death is not something at
one’s disposal.

 The authentic mode of being-towards-death is one of anticipation.

 To anticipate death is to understand death as a possibility of impossibility of

any existence at all for him.
This projection of his utmost possibility will provide the person with a vision
of his present existence and the latent possibilities lying before him.

 The authentic human being understands death as an ownmost possibility, and

becomes aware of his potentiality for being, his self-fulfillment. Being aware
of his self-fulfillment, he wrenches himself away from the impersonal “they”
and makes himself an individual, alone.
Thus, death individualizes the human being, because death does not belong to
everybody but to one’s own self.

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  Anticipation of death reveals that the human being’s concern (relation with
things) and solicitude (relation with fellow human beings) are nothing when
his own potentiality for being is itself the issue in death.
This does not mean cutting off relations but in projecting himself as himself,
the authentic person understands and chooses his possibilities of relations in
the light of the possibility of death as non-relational.

 In anticipating death, the authentic person does not outstrip death, does not
evade it, but accepts this possibility.
In accepting death as possibility, he frees himself.
By anticipation, he is free for his own death and delivered from becoming lost
in possibilities.
While before he was secured in the impersonal “they” but dictated by it, now
in anticipation, in accepting death as extreme possibility, he understands and
chooses possibilities in the light of this extreme possibility.
Now, he is free to be himself, to be the person he himself wants to be.
The authentic human being now comes to grip of his wholeness in advance;
he is now open to the possibility of existing as a whole potentiality-for-being.

 The authentic human being understands death as certain, not the certainty of
something objective but the certainty of his being-in-the-world.
This awareness calls for not just one definite kind of behavior but the full
authenticity of existence. (This corresponds to freedom as fundamental
option.)
The indefinite certainty of death (you do not know when, how you are going
to die) calls for the authentic person to be open to the constant threat of death,
which is anxiety.
Anxiety opens the human being to the totality of his being.

 In short, Heidegger seems to be saying that I have to live each day as if it were
the last day of my life.

II. DEATH FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF HUMAN LIFE

By Roger Troisfontaines

1. We can look at human life as one of union with the world, with others, and with
our body.

 The greatest suffering in death is separation.

Bliss is always found in the experience of union, whereas separation brings
pain and sadness.

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  The mode of union broken by death can be looked at in two ways: a) the only
possible union possible to man and b) particular mode subordinated to other
higher modes.

 In a), death becomes a definitive misfortune; no way out in death.

In b), if love has been spiritualized, if the objective being-there is
subordinated to being-with (which cannot be objectified), if egoism is
subordinated to “we”, then separation of death does not reach the depth of
love.
Death is not felt as definitive absence but makes manifest the depth of our
love.
Our reciprocal presence could do away with external signs.

 Being of communion is now dependent on the fidelity or betrayal of the

survivor.
I, the survivor can declare the dead person to be nothing anymore: I have
accomplished his death, his annihilation for me.
Or, I can keep myself within his radiance; he does not die for me.
Our being in communion rests on our oath (explicit in marriage, implicit in
friendship).

 There are persons with whom we are closer when they are dead than those
with whom we rub shoulders everyday.

 Because love in which I participate now can blossom into the beyond, I can
desire death not for itself but inasmuch as it conditions awaited encounter. e.g.
the saints and mystics.

 Death then is a test of love: my response to it reveals my limitation to the flesh

or my leap to the beyond.

2. We can also look at human as a growth of freedom and consciousness.

 Human life is a passage from the imposed to the personal.

Birth breaks the primitive symbiosis (attachment to the mother’s womb) and
projects the human being to become biologically autonomous but still
dependent on the parent (s).
Childhood is gradual exercise of freedom to choose attitude that will define
his character.
Puberty (adolescence) is the age of questioning.
Vocation age decides the orientation of one’s life.

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  And yet this growth of freedom is always from a given fund which is one’s
body, with all its possibilities and defects, character, situation, etc.
The body was given to me, imposed on me. I did not choose my body at birth.
Together with the imposed body are the limitations of my freedom.
This interpreted by the theologian Karl Rahner as concupiscence: I am never
totally free for good or evil.

3. Now in death, I surrender the received body, the body I did not choose, and
together with it, the limitations.

 I am now free to choose the body I want, my body.

 What is true of my relation to my body would also be true of all other

relations which define my being. In death, I question again my attitude
towards the world, others, myself, the Absolute.

 Death then is a final option, an act that is totally free.

From the outside, death is passive, but from the inside, the dying person is
making a final decision with regards to his fundamental option.
There are only two fundamental options: love and egoism.
Death as a final option is a “yes” or “no” to one’s fundamental option of love
or egoism.
 In Christianity, heaven is total freedom to love and hell is total freedom to
hate. My options in this life therefore are “rehearsals” for the final option I am
becoming free, I am not yet free in full.

 It would be absurd to think of death as final annihilation of my being a person

if we see human life’s as increasing freedom and consciousness together with
diminishing of physical energy.

 Like the cocoon which must die in order for the butterfly to be born, human
death is a condition for freedom to be fully a human person.

CHAPTER VIII: MAN AND THE ABSOLUTE

1 We begin our discussion on the relation of the human person with the Absolute
with the notion of person.

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  In Thomistic philosophy, the person is first of all a substance (sub-sistere:
subsists by itself) a complete whole; subsists by itself, distinguished from
others.

 “Person” means an individual substance on the level of free rational existence,

that is to say, “existing by itself,” acting by and through itself.

2 Contemporary thought considers the person in terms “individual”, “person” and

“personality”.

 An individual is a whole, existing apart from others, once born. For examples,
a dog exists apart from other dogs and animals.
But the dog is determined from birth to be a dog, its capital of life is
exhausted (at the moment of birth).
In the case of human being, he is more than a natural whole, he is a
selfconscious, thinking freedom. He must build up “capital of life.”

 A person is a task (a task of self-becoming), a project, rational and free. But

not every person is a personality.

 Personality is the successful achievement of the task as person, the realized

human completeness.
 Hence, we can say the individual is the original datum, the person is the task,
the personality is the realization of the task.

3 This task is one of unification or integration, of becoming all of one piece.

 A personality therefore is one who has strong convictions, one who knows
what he thinks, one who is not in the multitude, one who is not inconsistent,
one who is independent, self-possessed.

 Self-possession (is acquired because it’s a task) means being having oneself in
hand, remaining true to oneself, faithful to one’s ideal and project in life, one
in now and time, free and responsible, single-mindedness.

 This self-possession is acquired.

 But what is it that gives my life its orderly unity in the present and time? Is it
not the direction of my life to an ideal, day to day, year to year? Is it not a
value?
If thinking, willing, speaking, doing, are intentional, directed towards
something other than themselves, there must be one object that binds them
together.

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  Therefore. a personality is both highest self-possession & firmest
selfcommitment, inner independence & moral participation.
This is similar to the teaching in the Bible Gospels, “only by giving oneself
can one possess oneself,” and to Chinese Philosophy’s “sageliness within and
kinglines without.”

 Values, however, may be subjective: satisfies my biological needs e.g. money,

or objective: in itself is a value.

 Only by commitment to objective values can I possibly integrate, unify myself

as person. Person then is task of self-possession within an objectively directed
project of life.
Now, only the person is of objective value. Things have no self-value; they
belong to the realm of “means”, are instruments for our use.

 A person is objective value because a person is unique, irreducible,

unrepeatable.

 So, only by commitment to persons can I integrate, unify myself.

 This commitment to persons for what they are is love.

 Thus, love is the crowning point of all of the person’s activity.

4 Yet, human love is radically insufficient to integrate, unify the person.

 We are not fully masters of ourselves: we are subjects to impulses, natural

reactions.

 Our love for finite thou’s is never satisfactory: we can disappoint each other,
hurt each other.

 Work as an embodiment of love can become monotonous.

 Then there is the flight of time: we experience joy and goodness, but they are
not permanent; they demand to be so, but time takes these away from us.

 Then, we are all destined to die.

“You know what they say: ‘It takes nine months to create a man, and a single
day to destroy him.’ we, both of us, have known the truth of this as well as any
one could even know it… It does not take nine months to make a man, it takes
fifty years – fifty years of sacrifice, of determination, of – so many things! And
when than man has been achieved, when there is no childishness left in him,

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 nor any adolescence, when he is truly, utterly, a man – the only thing he is
good for is to die.” (Andre Malraux, Man’s Estate.)

We can leave immortal works, our knowledge and love can live on in our
children and generations to come, but can this give us an assurance, a
meaning to our life if selfhood vanishes from the earth?

What then is the ultimate meaning of this love, of this bond with other beings?

From here we can take two options: Either

a) I accept the unsatisfying answers of my fellowman as final, thus making
my existence meaningless, absurd. (e.g. Albert Camus and Jean-paul Sartre)
or
b) I take this search for personhood as implying an Absolute beyond my
fellowman, thus making my life meaningful, but also raising the question
“Does this Absolute really exist?”

5 In b), I discover that beneath my commitment to human “thou’s” is a certain

longing for an Absolute that can guarantee fulfillment, thus giving meaning to my
life.

 Self and other are two poles of experience, inseparable and correlative: no self
without the other; the self is grasped only in interaction with the other.

 But there is another dimension of the self: the relatedness to an Absolute,

which is called by different names: “God,” “Allah,” “”Tao,” “Nirvana,”
“Yahweh.”
 This relatedness to the Absolute is not just another relation among the other
relations but a dimension of the self where I transcend all particular
preoccupations to pass judgment on the totality of my existence, to call all
particular relationships into question.

 In this dimension, I can never rest content with anything, I or history has
achieved. There is always something more to myself.

 This something “more” is the Beyond, the Ground and Horizon of my person.
“Ground” because the Absolute is immanent in my activity, what drives me to
go out of myself.
“Horizon’ because the Absolute is transcendent, the aim, goal of my life.

 Thus, my search for personhood ultimately is a search for the Absolute.

This relation to the Absolute is affirmed in my everyday action.

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 For Christianity and Judaism, this Absolute is not a particular other but an
Absolute Person, an Absolute “Thou” who is present in every other and whom
I can address myself to and can respond to me.
Buber: “He who talks to God but not to people is not talking to God; he who
talks to people but not to God is not talking to people.”

6 But does this Absolute really exist?

 If “exist” is meant as empirical, there is no possible verification, no

“objective” certainty that the Absolute exists.
I cannot make the Absolute conform to human verification.

 But if “exist” is human existence, and human existence is relatedness, the

dialectic bond between I and the other so that the other is only other in relation
to the I, then the question is “how real is the Absolute to me?” The reality of
the other is not empirically proven. I do not prove the existence of the person I
love. The more I love the person, the more real he is to me.
Likewise, the existence of the Absolute Other is beyond any objective
verification.

 The certainty of the Absolute is grasped in faith. faith is to be certain of the

uncertain.
For Kierkegaard, faith is a paradox, a “leap into the dark”: to believe as
certain what cannot be objectively proven (therefore uncertain).
The proofs of the existence of God in St. Thomas and other philosophers
already presupposes belief. They were meant to show that to believe is not
irrational.

 An objection: Is not the Absolute simply a product of wishful thinking, a

projection of my frustrated desires?
Answer: The Absolute cannot simply be a product of my frustrated desires
because if it were so, why is there still a dynamism to know, to love? If I
know I can never reach self-fulfillment, why give bent to my search for
something more - I could simply lower down this ideal and rest satisfied. If
the Absolute does not exist, why do I continue to seek it?

 This faith in the Absolute is implied in human love.

When I truly love a person, I am saying implicitly. “you shall not die”. This
does not mean the other will not die but that our union will not die. Implicit in
this fidelity is a trust in the Absolute. (Marcel)
Faith is an unconditional trust in the Absolute, that the Absolute will not fail
me. To believe in Latin is credere, from coro dare, meaning “to give one’s
heart.”

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 I seek the Absolute in human love, such that the human others are “ciphers” in
which the mystery of the Absolute is written.

 Faith and love are also linked to hope.

To hope is like a pregnant woman, “on the way.” To hope is to be ready at
every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if
there is no birth in our lifetime.
Hope is linked to faith and love because faith is “the vision of the present in a
state of pregnancy.” faith is seeing the present commitment in love as bearing
a fulfillment in the Absolute, and hope is being “on the way” to that
fulfillment.
For Marcel, the human person is a “homo viator” ( a traveler ).
For Lu Xun, “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but
when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

7 So faith, hope and love are linked together.

 Faith is to believe in the revelation of the past.
 Love is to commit myself to others in the present.
 Hope is to see the fulfillment in the future.

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