INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE

HUMAN PERSON 5. Philosophy is used at present to unify, synthesize,

universalize, interpret and explain more profoundly the
I. DOING PHILOSOPHY vast quantity of factual but gradually particular,
unrelated findings, data, and information accumulated
THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY by modern sciences.

x. Philosophy does not aim to produce useful or PHILOSOPHY guides people in the pursuit of truth and in
material distinguishing truth from what is false or from mere
benefits that technology and other sciences give. opinion.
x. It does not aim to help people provide food on the
table or PHILOSOPHY helps people understand their capacities
make life easier or comfortable. and potentials and give them a better appreciation of
x. It does not aim to provide people with the latest themselves.
gadgets or
instruments. PHILOSOPHY desires to present an idea of the whole
x. It does not offer definitive and exact answers to universe with all its elements and aspects and their
questions interconnectedness to one another.
people ask.
WISDOM outweighs WEALTH
PHILOSOPHY IS THE RATIONAL ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN -Sophocles
THINGS
- Aims to provide food for the mind and nourishment Imagination is more important than knowledge
for the spirit. -Albert Einstein

- Learn how to systematize all important knowledge in

the domain of reason.
PHILOSOPHY: A DISCIPLINE OF QUESTIONING
- Is able to suggest many possibilities which could
PHILOSOPHY (LOVE OF WISDOM)
deepen one’s thoughts, broaden one’s perspectives
Desires for INTELLECTUAL INQUIRY
and widen one’s view.
QUESTIONING
The GOALS of Philosophy
-THE CORE OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
1. Philosophy discovers the origin of Human Problem
ANYONE WHO ASKS QUESTIONS IS THEN
and look for the true solutions and remedies to human
PHILOSOPHIZING.
sickness, whether physical or spiritual. (Montemayor,
1995)
QUESTION
-THE CORE OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
2. Philosophy searches for the meaning of life. Through
it, we will be able to understand the complexities of life;
IS A CONSCIOUS SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE
and we will find that there is more to existence than
doing our ordinary daily tasks.
THREE FUNDAMENTAL CONDITIONS
3. Philosophy is all about being reasonable of the
1. It is for the knowledge of something.
human experience. Philosophy should explain why and
how things happen. We don’t act on something without
2. It is an awareness of ignorance.
a reason.
3. It is an awareness that there is more to be known.
4. Philosophy leads to enlightenment and action; just
like Buddha and Jesus. Philosophy does not only lead us
to what is ‘true’ but also to articulate or express or
share this truth to others.
THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF A PHILOSOPHIC
QUESTION/ PROBLEM
- Isaiah Berlin
1. OFTEN VERY BROAD OR GENERAL
2. NO SINGLE METHODOLOGY FOR ANSWERING THE
QUESTION/S
3. HAVE NO PRACTICAL UTILITY.
IT IS DYNAMIC AND PERSONAL
IT IS DYNAMIC
-It is an unending series of questions and answers.
PHILOSOPHY is a discipline where the questions are
more important than the answers and every answer
becomes a new question.
IT IS PERSONAL
-It is a “one man’s answer to a question may be valid
for him but not for the next man”.
PHILOSOPHY AS A SECOND-ORDER INQUIRY
It offers constant scrutiny and criticism of the
assumptions and methods of the sciences.
It is the self awareness of the sciences and the source
from which all the sciences draw their world view and
methodological principles.
Philosophy is there to watch over them, like a mother
keeping a watchful eye over her children.
“PHILOSOPHY IS VISION”
- FRIEDRICH WEISMANN
-It is a new way of looking at things.
The importance of these questions lies on other
disciplines that emerged because somebody dared to
ask trivial and general questions.
HOW DID PHILOSOPHY START?
Philosophy humbly starts from wonder – the capacity
of man to consciously question the realities around
him, out of curiosity.
- ARISTOTLE
“Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu.”
- ARISTOTLE
-“NOTHING IS IN THE INTELLECT THAT WAS NOT FIRST
IN THE SENSES.”
APPROACHES IN STUDYING PHILOSOPHY
HISTORICAL
-Historical since it sheds light on the people and
societies of the past. It studies Philosophy via
historical development.
ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, MODERN, CONTEMPORARY
THEMATIC
It seeks illumination on the themes of current
philosophical inquiry.
COSMOCENTRIC, THEOCENTRIC, ANTHROPOCENTRIC,
EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY
THE ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHERS
IONIAN
Ionia was the place where western philosophy began
and was the homeland of Thales, Anaximander,
Anaximenes and Heraclitus.
Thales
 born in Miletus
 He believed that the originating principle of
nature and the nature of matter was a single
material substance: water.
 Everything comes from water and everything
leads back to it.
Anaximander
 born in Miletus
 He claimed that the fundamental substance of
reality is the infinite or the apeiron.
 The apeiron has no precise characteristics or
attributes.
Anaximenes
 Claimed that the fundamental substance must
be air.
 Air holds our soul together, it encompasses the
whole world and it is in constant movement.
 Living being needs air for respiration
Heraclitus
 Came from Miletus and was the last of the
Ionian philosophers who remained in his
country.
 He is known for the mystical nature of his
philosophy about change,
 He believes that the only thing permanent in
this world is change (known as flux or
becoming)
 He was known who have said that “You cannot
step twice into the same river.
 He viewed the world as always changing which
he likened to an ever-living fire. The process of
becoming finds it origin in Fire, the origin of all
matters. Fire itself is the symbol of permanent
change because it transforms a substance into
another substance without being a substance
at all.
Pythagoras
 He was the leader of Pythagoreans who
treated philosophy as a way of life.
 He believed that the primary constituent of
reality would be numbers. Anything could be
explained through numbers.
ELEATICS
 A pre-Socratic school of philosophy founded by
Parmenides in the early fifth century BC in the
ancient town of Elea.
 rejected the epistemological validity of sense
experience, and instead took logical standards
of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of
truth.
 The Eleatics maintained that the true
explanation of things lies in the conception of
a universal unity of being.
 Senses cannot cognize this unity, because their
reports are inconsistent; it is by thought alone
that we can pass beyond the false
appearances of sense and arrive at the
knowledge of being, at the fundamental truth
that the "All is One".
Parmenides
 Known as the leader of the Eleatic school. His
philosophical idea is a contradiction of the idea
of change from Heraclitus.
 He proposed that the only thing that is
permanent in this world is being. Change is
merely an illusion.
Zeno of Elea
 A student and loyal follower of Parmenides at
around 490 B.C.
 He pronounced and reiterated the idea of
Parmenides that reality is being.
 He went to prove by pronouncing that there is
motion.
PLURALISTS
 Pluralism it is the theory that there is more
than one basic substance or principle.
 Their doctrine is that the multiplicity of the
first principle and the action of a cause that
gives rise to movement.
Empedocles
 He believed in himself to be immortal and that
he had magical powers. He was known to have
cured somebody who was comatose for 24
months. To proved that he was immortal he
leaped into the mouth of Mt. Etna, an active
volcano in Sicily that led to his untimely death.
 He was the proponent of the notion that
reality is made up of the four elements,
namely, earth, air, fire and water.
Anaxagoras
 He believed that there is not just one element
that reality is made of but are Homogenous
seeds or element.
 For him, matter becomes infinitely divisible
that whenever you divide matter, each
separated part will contain elements of
everything else.
 Aristotle called them Homeomeries or the
things that will remain qualitatively the same
even if they are divided into smaller and
smaller parts. All beings are composed of a
mixture of homeomeries.
ATOMISM
 Represent another effort to reconcile the unity
of being with the multiplicity of the physical
world.
 Atomist claim that non-being exists: they are
the voids or the space.
 Atom is being, a purely physical unit consisting
every reality. It is through the motions of
atoms that becoming is made possible. The
unity and plurality for the Atomist can be
explained though the unity of these multiple
atoms through pressure and contract.

Leucippus
 is reported in some ancient sources to have
been a philosopher who was the earliest Greek
to develop the theory of atomism—the idea
that everything is composed entirely of various
imperishable, indivisible elements called
atoms.
 He often appears as the master to his pupil
Democritus, a philosopher also touted as the
originator of the atomic theory.
Democritus
 was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher
primarily remembered today for his
formulation of an atomic theory of the
universe.
 His exact contributions are difficult to
disentangle from those of his mentor
Leucippus, as they are often mentioned
together in texts.
SOPHIST
 was a specific kind of teacher in ancient
Greece, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
 The term originated from Greek sophisma,
from sophizo "I am wise"; sophistēs, meaning
"wise-ist, one who does wisdom," and, sophós
means "wise man".
 It was synonym for a wise man and designated
anyone who excelled in a particular science or
art.
 There was a shift because philosophers were
not so concerned about providing the rational
basis of their ethics since these normally were
the offshoot of religious beliefs.
 Many different solutions given to the problem
of the origin and nature of the world, solutions
which often contradicted one another, created
an attitude of skepticism, and led men to
concentrate on other questions.
Gorgias
 was a Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher
and rhetorician who was a native of Leontini in
Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first
generation of Sophists.
 has been labelled "The Nihilist“ because some
scholars have interpreted his thesis on "the
non-existent" to be an argument against the
existence of anything that is straightforwardly
endorsed by Gorgias himself.
 Nihilism is the belief that all values are
baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated. It is associated with pessimism
and a radical skepticism that condemns
existence.
 Nihilism is the belief that all values are
baseless and that nothing can be known or
communicated. It is associated with pessimism
and a radical skepticism that condemns
existence.
 The work developed a skeptical argument,
which has been extracted from the sources and
translated as below:
 Nothing exists;
 Even if something exists, nothing can
be known about it; and
 Even if something can be known about
it, knowledge about it can't be
communicated to others.
Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be
understood
Protagoras
 Is the most famous sophist. He was
born in Abdera circa 484 B.C.
 For him, man determines the truth of the
object, and he determines it according to his
own knowledge
 Knowledge for him is based exclusively on the
senses which are constantly subject to change
like everything else.
 For him, "Man is the measure of all things",
interpreted by Plato to mean that there is no
absolute truth, but that which individuals
deem to be the truth.
Socrates
 was a classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher
credited as one of the founders of Western
philosophy, and as being the first moral
philosopher, of the Western ethical tradition of
thought.
 He did not write down any of his teachings,
information about him and his philosophies
depends upon secondary sources.
 The statement "I know that I know nothing" is
often attributed to Socrates, based on a
statement in Plato's Apology. (Knowledge)
 Socrates stressed that “the unexamined life is
not worth living… and ethical virtue is the only
thing that matters.” (Virtue)
Plato
 Aristocles was nicknamed Plato on account of
his broad shoulders. He was born in Athens in
427 B.C.
 He was a philosopher in Classical Greece and
the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first
institution of higher learning in the Western
world. He is widely considered the most pivotal
figure in the development of philosophy,
especially the Western tradition.
 Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most
famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the
foundations of Western philosophy and
science.
Aristotle
 was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist
born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidiki, in the
north of Classical Greece.
 At seventeen or eighteen years of age, he
joined Plato's Academy in Athens and
remained there until the age of thirty-seven.
 He established a school closed to the temple
dedicated to Apollo Lyceus, named Lyceum.
 The school was also known as “Peripatos” and
its members as “Peripatetics”, because
Aristotle had a custom of giving his lessons
while walking up and down the garden of the
place.
 The Lyceum came to rival the Academy and for
some time even eclipsed it completely.
 The fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato
contributed to his former views of Platonism,
but, following Plato's death, Aristotle
immersed himself in empirical studies and
shifted from Platonism to empiricism. He
believed all concepts and knowledge were
ultimately based on perception. Aristotle's
views on natural sciences represent the
groundwork underlying many of his works.
BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
METAPHYSICS
 Introduced by Andronicus of Rhodes
 Literally means, beyond Physical
 It is the philosophical study of reality.
 It is the science that is concerned with being
qua being – the study of being itself.
COSMOLOGY
 Concerns about the material world.
 NASA defines cosmology as “the scientific
study of the large scale properties of the
universe as a whole.”
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
 Deals with the role of each individual in the
society, as well as the role of government.
 Social philosophy is the philosophical
investigation about social behavior of humans
in the society.
THEODICY
 Described by Alvin Platinga, as the answer to
the question of why God permits evil.
 It is defined to be a theological concept that
tries to prove God in reply to the exitential
problem of evil that influences contrary to the
existence of an all-powerful and
omnibenevolent God.
EPISTEMOLOGY
 Concerns with the certainty of knowledge, the
search for truth.
 It is the study of the nature, limits, and validity
of knowledge, knower and known, etc.
AXIOLOGY
 Philosophically studies value.
 It is divided into three branches:
 Ethics
 Aesthetics
 Logic
ETHICS
 Discusses the criteria of right and good.
 Aristotle’s approach to ethics is teleological,
meaning “in terms of end, or telos”
 In Aristotle’s thinking, everything tends
towards a purpose or an end, and our actions
as well seek a purpose or an end.
AESTHETICS
 Referred to as the philosophy of art which
discusses the nature and criteria of beauty.
LOGIC
 It is a tool for philosophizing.
 It studies the truth and holds to consist the
systematic study of inferences.
 The subject matter of logic consists of the
methods of judgment, types of propositions,
hypothesis, definition, etc.
The steps in doing Philosophy
-vs. scientific method

1. Know the issue or problem

2. Arranging and assessing the data
3. Suggesting the hypothesis
4. Testing the hypothesis
5. Finding out the truths (conclusion)
6. Philosophical criticism and reflection

The methods of doing Philosophy

1. Methodic doubt
2. Logic
3. Dialectic
4. Phenomenology
5. Practical Philosophy