Lesson 1 - Part 2 - From the Perspective of Philosophy

- St. Augustine, Rene Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume,

IV. ST. AUGUSTINE

 He became a priest and bishop of Hippo
 His thoughts focused on two realms;
1. God as the source of all reality and truth
 According to him without God as the source of all the truth, man could
never understand eternal truths.
2. The sinfulness of Man
 According to St.Augustine, the cause of sin or evil is an act of man’s
freewill.
 Evil, therefore does not live in God’s creatures but rather in man.
 Moral goodness can only be achieved through the grace of God.

 The Role of Love

 St. Augustine is in agreement with the Greeks that man searches for
happiness.
 He stated that real happiness can only be found in God. For God is love
and He created humans for them to also love.
 Disordered love results when man loves the wrong things which he
believes will give him happiness. He explained;
1. Love of physical objects leads to the sin of greed
2. Love for other people is not lasting and excessive love for them is th
sin of jealousy
3. Love for the self leads to the sin of pride
4. Love for God is the supreme virtue and only through loving God can
man find real happiness.
 All things are worthy of love but they must loved property.
 St. Augustine contends that if man loves God first and everything else to a lesser
degree then all will fall into its rightful place.

V. RENE DESCARTES
 He is known as the Father of Modern Philosophy
 Descartes contribution to the present bulk of knowledge is remarkable.
 He introduced what is known as the Cartesian method and invented analytic
geometry.
 In his method, he ask himself, is there anything I can know with certainty?
 In his research for answers, nothing satisfied him for he saw that there were
always differences in the facts, ideas, and opinions.
 Descartes’ System:
 Through math, he discovered that the human mind has two powers:
1. Intuition or the ability to apprehend direction of certain truths
2. Deduction or the power to discover what is not known by progressing in an
orderly way from what is already known. Truth arrived at using step by step
process.
 With what he discovered, Descartes believed that reasoning could produce
absolute truths about nature, the existence, morality and God.
 Ideas discovered this way do not rely on some experiences because they are
innate in the human mind
Descartes’ view of human nature: “I think, therefore I am.”
 This phrase is Descartes legacy. This is also the first principle of his philosophy.
 He believes that to doubt is to think. What is a thing that thinks?
 He deduced that a thinker is a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies
wills, refuses and that also imagines and feels.
 The cognitive aspect of human nature is his basis for existence of the self.
The Mind-Body Problem:
 Descartes considered the soul/mind - also the self, as a substance that is
separate from the body.
 Descartes believed that all bodily processes are mechanical.
 The body, according to him, is like a machine that is controlled by the will and
aided by the mind.

VI. JOHN LOCKE

 John Lock’s interest is on the working of the human mind, particularly the
acquisition of knowledge.
 Locke believed that knowledge results from ideas produced a posteriori or by
objects that were experienced.
 The process involves two forms:
1. Sensation wherein objects are experienced through the senses and
2. Reflection by which the mind looks at the objects that were experienced to
discover relationships that may exists between them.
 Locke contended that ideas are not innate but rather the mind at birth is a “tabula
rasa” – i.e. blank slate
 Locke stated that, “nothing exists in the mind that was not first in the
senses.”
 Ideas can also be the result of reflection which demonstrates the power of
thinking and volition or will.

VII. DAVID HUME

 Hume was credited for giving empiricism its clearest formulation.
 Empiricism is the school of thought that espouses the idea that knowledge can
only be possible if it is sensed and experience. Men can attain knowledge by
experiencing.
 The self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions. What are impressions?
 For David Hume, if one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can
all be categorized into two:
1. Impressions are the basic objects of our experience or sensations. They
therefore form the core of our thoughts. When one touches an ice cube, the
cold sensation is an impression. Impressions therefore are vivid because they
are products of our direct experience with the world.
Impressions are immediate sensations of external reality. These are more
vivid than the ideas it produces.
2. Ideas, on the other hand are copies of impressions. Because of this, they are
not as lively and vivid as our impressions. When one imagines the feeling of
being in love for the first time, that still is an idea.
Ideas are recollections of these impressions.
 These two together make up the content of the human mind.
 It all begins with impressions. Without impressions, there will be no formation of
ideas.

Hume’s View of Human Nature

 The part of human nature is what other philosophers called the soul.
 Hume termed it the “Self”. He concluded that man does really have an idea of the
so-called self because ideas on sense impressions and people have no sense
impressions of a self.
 In looking for the self, Hume only discovered sense impressions.
 He believed that just like casuality, the self is also a product of the imagination.
 He also stated that there is no such things as personal identity.
 So for Hume, there is no permanent/unchanging self.