SHS

Introduction to the Philosophy of

the Human Person
Quarter 2: Module 4
Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person
Grade 11 Quarter 2: Module 4
First Edition, 2020

Copyright © 2020
La Union Schools Division
Region I

All rights reserved. No part of this module may be reproduced in any form without
written permission from the copyright owners.

Development Team of the Module

Author: Tifaith C. Lopez, T-I

Editor: SDO La Union, Learning Resource Quality Assurance Team

Illustrator: Ernesto F. Ramos Jr., P II

Management Team:

Atty. Donato D. Balderas, Jr.

Schools Division Superintendent

Vivian Luz S. Pagatpatan, Ph.D

Assistant Schools Division Superintendent

German E. Flora, Ph.D, CID Chief

Virgilio C. Boado, Ph.D, EPS in Charge of LRMS

Lorna O. Gaspar, EPS in Charge of Introduction to the Philosophy of the

Human Person

Michael Jason D. Morales, PDO II

Claire P. Toluyen, Librarian II
 Introduction to the
Philosophy of the Human
Person
Quarter 2: Module 4

3
 Target

Life has a beginning and end. Human beings and other creatures
formed by God are all destined to depart from life. On this chapter of this
course you will understand human beings are oriented towards their
impending death.

This modules has the following objectives:

a. To legally and traditionally defines death.

b. To reflect on the meaning of life.
c. To explain the meaning of one’s life
d. To enumerate the projects or goals one wants to accomplish in life.

After going through this learning material you are expected to:

a. Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve and to define

the projects he/she wants to do in his/her life. PPT11/12.4Ih.B.1
b. Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life. PPT11/12.4IIh.B.2

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 Jumpstart
Activity 1

Directions: Fill out the bucket list below by answering the column A guide
questions in relation to the column B. You can use another paper for this
activity. Bucket list – It refers to a list of things that one has not done
before but wants to do before dying. (www.meriam-webster.com)

Things that you have Things you wish you

done…… have done… but did
not

Family

Education

Spiritual

2. From the bucket list above, write down what you have realized.

___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

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Activity 2

Direction: Finish the phrases below that best suits your experiences in life.
You can also use another sheet of paper on this activity.

1. I find life as
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________

2. When it rains,
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
3. My goal is to
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
4. If someone gives me joy, I

5. Death is

Rubrics
Category 4 3 2 1
Topic Content is Content is Content is Content is
closely related nearly somewhat slightly
to the topic. related to the related to the related to the
topic. topic. topic.
Content The statement The The Statement is
is very well statement is statement is slightly
organized. pretty well hard to organized.
organized. understand.

Great Job! Later as you continue reading this learning

materials we will see if your answer is correct.

6
 Lesson What is Death?
1

Discover
Traditional definition:

Death- was a simply equated to the stopping of heartbeat and breathing.

Legal definition:

- Section 2, paragraph (j) of the Organ Donation Act of 1991 (Republic

Act 7170):
(j) “Death”- the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory
functions or the irreversible cessation of all the functions of the entire
brain, including the brain stem. A person shall be medically and legally
dead if either:

(1) In the opinion of the attending physician, based on the acceptable

standards of medical practice, there is an absence of natural
respiratory and cardiac functions and, attempts at resuscitation
would not be successful in restoring those functions. In this case,
death shall be deemed to have occurred at the time these functions
ceased; or
(2) In the opinion of the consulting physician, concurred in by the
attending physician, that on the basis of acceptable standards of
medical practice, there is an irreversible cessation of all brain
functions; and considering the absence of such functions, further
attempts at resuscitation or continued supportive maintenance
would not be successful in restoring such natural functions. In the
case, death shall be deemed to have occurred at the time when these
conditions first appeared.

What happens to the human person after death?

Concepts of life after death in Christianity

The Christian end-time expectation is directed not only at the future of

the church but also at the future of the individual believer. It includes
definite conceptions of the personal continuance of life after death. Many
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baptized early Christians were convinced they would not die at all but would
still experience the advent of Christ in their lifetimes and would go directly
into the Kingdom of God without death. Others were convinced they would
go through the air to meet Christ returning upon the clouds of the sky: “Then
we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord”
(1 Thessalonians 4:17). In the early imminent expectation, the period
between death and the coming of the Kingdom still constituted no object of
concern. An expectation that one enters into bliss or perdition immediately
after death is also found in the words of Jesus on the cross: “Today you will
be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In the Nicene Creed the life of the
Christian is characterized as “eternal life.” In the Gospels and in the apostolic
letters, “eternal” is first of all a temporal designation: in contrast to life of this
world, eternal life has a deathless duration. In its essence, however, it is life
according to God’s kind of eternity—i.e., perfect, sharing in his glory and bliss
(Romans 2:7, 10). “Eternal life” in the Christian sense is thus not identical
with “immortality of the soul”; rather, it is only to be understood in
connection with the expectation of the resurrection. “Continuance” is neutral
vis-à-vis the opposition of salvation and disaster, but the raising from the
dead leads to judgment, and its decision can also mean eternal punishment
(Matthew 25:46). The antithesis to eternal life is not earthly life but eternal
death.

Eternal life is personal life, and precisely therein is fulfilled the essence
of humanity created according to the image of God. Within eternal life there
are differences. In the present life there are variations in talent, duty,
responsibility, and breadth and height of life, just as there are also
distinctions in “wages” according to the measure of the occupation,
the sacrifice of suffering, and the trial (1 Corinthians 3:8). Correspondingly,
the resurrected are also distinguished in eternal life according to their “glory”.

Other beliefs:

Reincarnation – It is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of

a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each
biological death.

How can we know for certain?

“No man knows whether death may not even turn out be the greatest
blessing for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain
that it is the greatest of evil” –Socrates

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Socrates on Death

Death is either:

-Possibility #1- dreamless sleep

- Possibility #2-Passage to another life
Therefore, either way, death is nothing to fear.
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
-Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
But what if there is no afterlife?
Would you still fear death?
Maybe what we actually fear is the process of dying.
How does death feel?
Epicurus on death

- All sensation and consciousness ends with death.

- When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he is no
longer is and therefore feels nothing.
- Fearing nonexistence gets in the way of enjoying life

Who am I? What is the meaning of life?

A. Socrates
Socrates, a great teacher in Athens around 469 BC, believes that
knowing oneself is a condition to solve the present problem
(Berversluis 2000).

Socrates in Clouds is the head of the school; the work of the

school comprises research and teaching. Socrates has two different
ways of teaching. His expository method answers the student’s direct
or implied questions, fills the void ignorance with information,
proceeds by analogy and illustration, or clears the ground for
exposition by demonstrating that some of the beliefs hitherto held
by the student are irreconcilable with other beliefs or assumptions.
His “tutorial” or well-known Socratic method is: (1) to assess by
questions the character of the student; and (2) to set him problems,
exhort him to reduce each problem to its constituent elements, and
criticize the solution that he offers.

The first process is also called ironic process, a process that

serves the learner to seek for knowledge by ridding the mind of
prejudices and then be humbly accepting his ignorance. The second
process has cleared the mind of the learner of the ignorance, and
then draws truth out of the learner’s mind. This can be done by
means of a dialog or a conversation. This method considers,
examines, compares, and studies the similarities and dissimilarities

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 of the idea being discussed, so that the clear and precise notion of
the idea is achieved.

Happiness
For Socrates, for a person to be happy, he has to live a virtuous
life. Virtue is not something to be taught or acquired through
education, but rather it is merely an awakening of the seeds of good
deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a person. Knowing
what is in the mind and heart of a human being is achieved through
self-knowledge. Thus, knowledge does not mean only theoretical or
speculative, but a practical one. Practical knowledge means one does
not only know the rules of right living, but one lives them. Hence, for
Socrates, true knowledge means wisdom, which in turn, means
virtue.
Socrates’ major ethical claims were: (1) happiness is impossible
without moral virtue; and (2) unethical actions harm person who
performs them more than the people they victimize. Although it is
not totally clear what Socrates meant by these notions, he seems to
have believed that an unethical person is weak, even psychologically
unhealthy. He apparently thought that we, today, would call that
cognitive and non-cognitive capacities are harmed as the unethical
person gives into his or her desires and ultimately becomes enslaved
by them.
Someone in the grip of corruption can no longer be satisfied and
endlessly seeks new pleasures. In addition, the individual’s intellect
and moral sense are impaired. Socrates, thus, saw someone steeped
in vice as lacking the freedom, self-control, and intellect clarity that
are needed to live happily. The immoral person literally become a
slave to his desires.

B. Plato

Contemplation in the mind of Plato means that the mind is in

communion with the universal and eternal ideas. Contemplation is
very important in life of humanity because this is the only available
means for mortal human being to free himself from his space-time
confinement to ascend to the heaven of ideas and there commune
with the immoral, eternal, and the infinite, and divine truths. This
contemplation does not mean passive thinking or speculation, or
knowing and appreciating what is good; rather, it is doing well in life.
Human beings, therefore, are in constant contemplation of the truth,
since the things we see here on earth are merely shadows (one
appearance) of the real truth (reality) in the world of ideas; the good,

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 since here on earth, the body is inclined to evil things; the beauty,
since the things we see here on earth are not fair or foul to others.
Hence, humanity should contemplate beauty that is absolute,
simple, and everlasting.

Plato’s Theory of Immortality

According to Plato, the body is the source of endless trouble to us by

reason of the mere requirement of food, and is liable also to disease, which
overtake and impede us in the search after true being; it fills us full of love,
lusts and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolishness. For example,
when war comes, money has to be acquired by and for the sake of the body.
The body, for Plato, causes us turmoil and confusion in our inquiries. Thus,
to see the truth, we must quit the body- the soul cannot have pure knowledge.

C. Aristotle
Realizing Your Potential
Aristotle’s account for change calls upon actuality and potentially
(Hare et al. 1991). For Aristotle, everything in nature seeks to realize
itself- to develop its potentialities and finally realize its actualities.
All things have strived toward their “end”. A child strives to be an
adult; a seed strives to be a tree. It is the potentiality to be changing.
Aristotle called the process entelechy, a Greek word for “to become
its essence”. Aristotle has much more to say about change. Change
takes place in time and space. Since space and time are infinitely
indivisible, Aristotle analyzed the notion of infinity.
Entelechy means that nothing happens by chance. Nature not
only has a built-in pattern, but also different levels of being. Some
creatures, such as humans, have more actuality than potentiality
and some, such as bees, have more potentiality than actuality.
However, for the world of potential things to exist at all, there must
first be something actual (form) at a level above potential or perishing
things (matter).
Aristotle divided everything in the natural world into to two main
categories; nonliving things and living things (Price 2000). Nonliving
things such as rock, water, and earth have no potentiality for
change. They can change only by some external influence. Water
changes into ice, for instance, when the external temperature
reaches freezing. However, living things do have the potentiality for
change.
At the top of the scale is the Unmoved Mover (God); pure actuality
without any potentiality. All things in the world are potentially in
motion and continuously changing. Therefore, said Aristotle, there

11
must be something that is actual motion and which is moved by
nothing external. He called this entity the Unmoved Mover.
For Aristotle, all things are destructible but the Unmovable Mover
is eternal, immaterial, with pure actuality or perfection, and with no
potentiality. Being eternal, it is the reason for and the principle of
motion to everything else. Because motion is eternal, there never was
a time when the world was not. The Unmoved Mover has neither
physical body nor emotional desires. Its main activity consists of
pure thought can only be itself.
Striving to realize themselves, objects and human beings move
toward their divine origin and perfection. Our highest faculty is the
reason, which finds its perfection in contemplating the
Unmoved Mover. Aristotle explained how an Unmoved Mover cause
motion of the world and everything in it by comparing it to a beloved
who “moves” its lover by the power of attraction. The object of love is
the cause of a change in the lover, without itself being changed.
Similarly, God is the object of the aspirations of other substances
but is not Himself susceptible to change or motion (Here et al.1991)
As the “form” adult is in the child directing it toward its natural
end, the Unmoved Mover is the form of the world moving it toward
its divine end. The highest human activity resembles the activity of
the Unmoved Mover. Just as the Unmoved Mover think about
perfection itself. According to Aristotle, the most pleasant activity for
any living creature is realizing its nature; therefore, the happiest life
for humans is thinking about the Unmoved Mover (Price 2000).

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 Explore
Enrichment Activity 1: Define Death

Directions: Write an Acronym meaning about death. You can put words or
phrase\s based on what you have learned from lesson 1 or based from your
own definition of death.

D-____________________________________
E- ____________________________________
A- ____________________________________
T- ____________________________________
H- ____________________________________

Deepen
Enrichment Activity 2: My Legacy

Direction: Write a simple poem or draw a picture showing the legacy do you
want to leave behind after your death. You can use separate paper on this
activity.

________________________________________________

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Rubrics
Category 4 3 2 1
Topic Content is Content is Content is Content is
closely related nearly somewhat slightly
to the topic. related to the related to the related to the
topic. topic. topic.
Content The statement The The Statement is
is very well statement is statement is slightly
organized. pretty well hard to organized.
organized. understand.

14
 Lesson
2
Finding One’s Purpose

Discover

Meaning of Life (Where Will This Lead To?)

• Tragedy, according to Nietzsche, grew from his unflinching recognition

and the beautification, even the idealization, of the inevitability of
human suffering (Johnston 2010)
• Our true existence is not our individual lives but our participation in
the drama of life and history
• Realizing ones "higher self” means fulfilling ones loftiest vision,
noblest ideal. On his way to the goal of self-fulfillment

A. Friedrich Nietzsche
The individual has to liberate himself from environmental influences
that are false to one's essential beings, for the "unfree man" is "a
disgrace to nature'.'
The free human being still has to draw a sharp conflict between the
higher self and the lower self, between the ideal aspired to and the
contemptibly imperfect present.
• Unless we do "become ourselves," life is meaningless.
• total reality = phenomenal realm (highly differentiated world of
material objects in space and time) + noumenal realm (single,
undifferentiated something that is space less, timeless, non-material,
beyond the reach of causality) which is inaccessible to experience

B. Arthur Schopenhauer
 The noumenon cannot cause the phenomenon –– so Schopenhauer
concludes: the noumenon and phenomenon are the same reality
apprehended in two different ways: the noumenon is the inner
significance, the true but hidden and inaccessible being, of what we
perceive outwardly as the phenomenal world.
• Schopenhauer's ethics: humans are separate physical objects in space
and time, temporary manifestations in the phenomenal world, of

15
 something noumenal –– this implies that in the ultimate ground of
our being we are the same something –– so the wrongdoer and the
wronged are in the last analysis the same –– this explains
compassion.
• Schopenhauer contends that all of life is suffering caused by desire
Our desires lead us to harm each other ultimately, amounting harm to
ourselves.
• The person who wickedly exerts his will against others suffers too
(Solomon & Higgins 1996)
• Schopenhauer's ethics: humans are separate physical objects in space
and time, temporary manifestations in the phenomenal world, of
something noumenal –– this implies that in the ultimate ground of
our being we are the same something –– so the wrongdoer and the
wronged are in the last analysis the same –– this explains
compassion.
• Human existence is exhibited in care
• Care is understood in terms of finite temporality, which reaches with
death.
• Death is a possibility that happens

C. Martin Heidegger
Threefold structure of care:
 Possibility. Humanity gets projected ahead of itself. Entities
that are encountered are transformed merely as ready-to-hand
for serviceability and out of them. Humanity constructs the
instrumental world on the basis of the persons' concerns.
 Facticity. A person is not pure possibility but tactical
possibility: possibilities open to him at any time conditioned and
limited by circumstances. A person's situation as a finite entity
is thrown into a world where he/she must project his/her
possibilities not disclosed by theoretical understanding but by
moods.
 Fallenness. Humanity flees from the disclosure of anxiety to
lose oneself in absorption with the instrumental world, or to
bury oneself in the anonymous impersonal existence of the
mass, where no one is responsible. Humanity has fallen away
from one's authentic possibility into an authentic existence of
irresponsibility and illusory security. Inauthentic existence,
thus, is scattered and fragmented.

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 D. Jean-Paul-Sartre
For Sartre, the human person desires be God; the desire to exist as a
being that has its sufficient ground in itself (en sui causa).
For an atheist, since God does not exist, the human person must face
the consequences of this.
The human person is entirely responsible for his/her own existence.

Sartre’s dualism

• En-soi (in itself) — signifies the permeable and dense, silent and
dead. From them comes no meaning, they only are. The en-soi is
absurd, it only finds meaning only' through the human person, the
one and only pour-soi. the world only has meaning according to.

• Pour-soi (for-itself) the world only has meaning according to what the
person gives to it. Compared with' the en-soi, a person has no fixed
nature. To put it in a paradox: the human person is not what he/she
is.

• For Sartre, there is no way of coming to terms with the other that does
not end in frustration. This explains why we experience failure to
resolve social problems from hatred, conflict and strife

E. Karl Jaspers
• Freedom reveals itself as a gift from somewhere beyond itself.
• Freedom without God only leads to a person’s searching for a
substitute to God closer to oneself, usually, he himself tries to
be God.
• Jaspers asked that human beings be loyal to their own faiths
without impugning the faith of others.

F. Gabriel Marcel
• Philosophy's starting point is a metaphysical "disease.
• secondary reflection – process in which the search for a home
in the wilderness, a harmony in disharmony, takes place

Marcel's Phenomenological Method

• Primary Reflection – this method looks at the world or at any
object as a problem, detached from the self and fragment. This
is the foundation of scientific knowledge. Subject does not
enter into the object investigated. The data of primary reflection
lie in the public domain and are equally available to any
qualified observer

17
 • Secondary Reflection – Secondary reflection is concrete,
individual, heuristic, and open. This reflection is concerned not
with object but with presences. It recaptures the unity of
original experience. It does not go against the date of primary
reflection but goes beyond it by refusing to accept the data of
primary reflection as final

This reflection is the area of the mysterious because we enter into the
realm of the personal. What is needed in secondary reflection is an
ingathering, a recollection, a pulling together of the scattered fragments
of our experience.

Explore
Enrichment Activity 3: What I want in life

Direction: List at least 10 goals you wants to accomplish in life. It can be

long term or short term goals.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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Rubrics
Category 4 3 2 1
Topic Content is Content is Content is Content is
closely related nearly somewhat slightly
to the topic. related to the related to the related to the
topic. topic. topic.
Content The statement The The Statement is
is very well statement is statement is slightly
organized. pretty well hard to organized.
organized. understand.

Deepen
Enrichment Activity 4: Reflect on the meaning of your own life.

Direction: After learning from the views of the philosophers, write down your
own short reflection regarding the meaning of life. There should only be 3-5
sentences.

Reflect: Sino ako?

“You only live once – but if you work it right, once is enough.” –Joe E. Lewis

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover” –Mark Twain

19
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered,
you will never grow.” –Ronald E. Osborn

“We are not a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already
have capacities, talents, direction, missions, and callings.” –Abraham H.
Maslow

Rubrics
Category 4 3 2 1
Topic Content is Content is Content is Content is
closely related nearly somewhat slightly
to the topic. related to the related to the related to the
topic. topic. topic.
Content The statement The The Statement is
is very well statement is statement is slightly
organized. pretty well hard to organized.
organized. understand.

20
 Gauge
Let’s find out how far you have understood your lesson.

ASSESSMENT

I. MULTIPLE CHOICE: Read and understand each question. Select

and write the CAPITAL letter of your answer on the space provided
before the number.

_________ 1. Death was a simply equated to the stopping of heartbeat and

breathing. This meaning is meaning of

death.

A. Dictionary C. Traditional
B. Legal D. Webster

_________ 2. Based on Section 2, paragraph (j) of the Organ Donation Act of

1991 (Republic Act 7170) a person is considered dead, if?
A. The attending physician declared the person death based on
the acceptable standards of medical practice.
B. The nurses or any of the medical practitioners give
resuscitation to the patient and the patient is still
unconscious.
C. The attending physician finds out that the person has no
pulses.
D. The patient looks pale.
_________ 3. A lady after suffering from 5 years of fighting for her life because
leukemia, meets the creator on her 35th birthday. This lady is a
Christin believer, what do you think is she expecting on her
afterlife?
A. To be reincarnated C. To be another person
B. To have an eternal life D. To be born again
__________ 4. This pertains to the personal life, and precisely therein is fulfilled
the essence of humanity created according to the image of God.
A. Eternal life C. Death
B. Reincarnation D. Transcendence
__________ 5. According to Aristotle everything strives towards the end, what
Greek word did he use to describe the process which means “to
become its essence?
A. Entelechy C. Enthelenchy
B. Entilenchy D. Entelency

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_________ 6. This reflection is concerned not with object but with presences.
It recaptures the unity of original experience. It does not go
against the date of primary reflection but goes beyond it by
refusing to accept the data of primary reflection as final.

A. First Reflection C. Primary Reflection

B. Second Reflection D. Secondary Reflection

_________7. This method looks at the world or at any object as a problem,

detached from the self and fragment. This is the foundation of
scientific knowledge. Subject does not enter into the object
investigated. The data of primary reflection lie in the public
domain and are equally available to any qualified observer
A. First Reflection C. Primary Reflection
B. Second Reflection D. Secondary Reflection

_________8. Signifies the permeable and dense, silent and dead. From them
comes no meaning, they only are. The en-soi is absurd, it only
finds meaning only' through the human person, the one and only
pour-soi. The world only has meaning according to.
A. Self-Care C. En-soi
B. Careful D. Pour-soi

_________9. The world only has meaning according to what the person gives
to it. Compared with' the en-soi, a person has no fixed nature. To
put it in a paradox: the human person is not what he/she is.
A. Self-Care C. En-soi
B. Careful D. Pour-soi

_________10. A person is not pure possibility but tactical possibility:

possibilities open to him at any time conditioned and limited by
circumstances. A person's situation as a finite entity is thrown
into a world where he/she must project his/her possibilities not
disclosed by theoretical understanding but by moods.
A. False C. Fallenness
B. Facticity D. True

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23
1. C
2. A
3. B
4. A
5. A
6. D
7. C
8. C
9. D
10.B
Key Answers
References
Ramos, Christine Carmela R. (2016). Introduction to the Philosophy, First
Edition, Rex Bookstore, Manila Philippines

Website:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/Concepts-of-life-after-death

https://www.slideshare.net/kazekage15/human-persons-as-oriented-
toward-their-impending-death

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