INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON – Lecture # 2

Philosophical Reflection

Reflection is the process that would aide in understanding the holistic point of view of what is going on around us.
Philosophical Reflection is an activity that requires a person to examine his or her thoughts, feelings and actions and learn from
experience. (Abella, 2016). . Philosophers always search for the essence of things and the ultimate reasons for our existence.
According to Gabriel Marcel philosophical reflection is the act of giving time to think about the meaning and purpose of life. He
mentioned two types:
 Primary Reflection – The ability to think logically. The ability of the mind to construct and evaluate arguments. It
examines its object by abstraction, by analytically breaking it down into its constituent parts. It is concerned with
definitions, essences and technical solutions to problems.
 Secondary Reflection - enables us to look deeper into our experiences and see the bigger picture of reality. It integrates
the fragmented and compartmentalized experience into a whole. It is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical,
biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. In effect we see the broader
perspective of life.
Reflection is not exclusive for philosophy in fact it is employed in any endeavour, research or disciplines.
*In research it is called methodological approach.

Moral theology employs the STOP sign as guidepost of moral decision making.
S=Search out the facts. It is necessary that all means should be exhausted to better understand the issue.
T=Think, reflect and analyse the facts, its negative or positive effects, advantages, or disadvantages
O= How it affects Others. We should always consider others in every decision that we make. Every action that we take has
always a social dimension. It affects ourselves, others and community where we belong.
P=Pray we are human beings with limitations
If our best efforts are not enough, then there is no way but look up for divine or God for enlightenment and guidance. Praying is
a unique tool of theology which is in the realm of faith but philosophy’s reasoning helps in undergoing a theological reflection as
St. Anselm said, “its faith seeking understanding.” St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great theologians of the church quoted in
Latin the relationship between philosophy and theology; ‘philosophia ancilla theologiae’ or philosophy is the handmaid of
theology the former is there to serve theology. Reason is also important in theology not just faith.

In order to reflect philosophically we need to use a framework. The framework we’re going to used is called AQAL.
AQAL - All Quadrants All Levels (first formulated by an American philosopher/psychologist Ken Wilber)

According to Wilber everything can be analysed using a vertical line.

The left side represents the interior, The right side represents the
subjective, aspect of everything. exterior, objective, aspect of
everything.

The interior (or “loob” in Filipino) if applied to human beings, includes one’s values, dreams, ideas, emotions, beliefs. It
basically consists of one’s inner life. It cannot be seen or measured but can be experienced directly. The exterior side of
everything are the things that we can see, measure and touch. They include the physical objects around us including our own
bodies.

A simple example of this inside/outside distinction is when a person smiles at you. You see the big smile so it is the exterior
aspect of an event. But at the same time there is a subjective meaning behind that smile: let’s say the person is happy. This is the
interior, subjective, aspect of the event. So you see two strands are interwoven behind any human event: the objective and the
subjective, the interior and the exterior.

Another basic distinction was introduced by Ken Wilber using a horizontal line that divides space into above and below:

Above the line represents what is singular, individual, one. The space below represents what is plural, collective, many. For
example you are an individual but you belong in a family, community, class (all instances of the collective).

An interesting thing happens when we combine the two lines.

We created what Wilber calls the quadrants. According to Wilber quadrants are “the inside and outside of the individual and
collective (Wilber 2006).”
There are many ways to describe the quadrants. We can use the simple location of each of the quadrant. So the interior of the
individual is the upper left quadrant (UL), the exterior of the individual is the upper right quadrant (UR), the interior of the
collective is the lower left quadrant (LL) and the exterior of the collective is the lower right quadrant (LR).

We can also use pronouns to label the quadrants as shown below:

But what we are interested is when we apply this to human beings. The inside of the individual becomes the mind, the outside
of the individual becomes the body, the inside of the collective becomes culture and the outside of the collective becomes
society.

Now when we reflect on the nature of any concrete issue like poverty, corruption, prostitution, global warming we can just put
the issue at the center of the quadrant and analysed its mental, physical, cultural and social components. This is looking at an
issue from an all quadrant, multiple and holistic perspective.

Let’s take for example the issue of poverty. How do we reflect on the issue using the AQAL framework? Well we know that
poverty has a psychological aspect (UL quadrant) to it. It affects the way we think, feel and even what we value. But it does not
stop there. Poverty also affects bodies (UR quadrant). It affects our nutrition, our medication and immune system. Some
children have stunted growth due to poverty. And who could deny that poverty also affects the culture such as arts, religion and
even the way we dress. Religious feast such as the procession of the Black Nazarene is in part motivated by poverty. And of
course it is obvious that poverty has an economic, political and even technological components (all parts of the social LR
quadrant).