Lesson 1 – A Holistic Perspective: The Philosopher’s Way

Objective(s): At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to:

 Distinguish a holistic perspective from a partial point of view

 Do a philosophical reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective

Philosophy and its Holistic Approach

 A philosopher’s way of thinking can be described as “abstractive”. This means that it rises
from the level of everyday life to a higher level that gives a bird’s eye view of the whole.
 Try to recall an experience in which you were able to climb a tower, reach the peak of a high
mountain, or view things from the window of an airplane. The view is certainly different from
up there than from the ground.
 When you are on the ground, you see roads, buildings, and all that make up the busy everyday
life, one at a time.
 When you are up there, you do not only see the same roads and buildings from a different
perspective, but you see them all at the same time. You see how they are connected to each
other. This is what we mean by seeing things from a holistic perspective.
 Like the elephant, the different parts may be seen as separate and different from each other.
Only when the blind men learn to perceive the elephant as a whole would they appreciate
how each part makes up one thing. Not one of the blind men was able to give a correct
answer. Each answer was far from what was true. We come closer to the truth about a thing
or someone when we look at that thing or person from various perspectives.
 The first philosophers noted in history hail from the ancient Greek civilization. What makes
this civilization so special for philosophy?
 If today we have airplanes, satellites, or spaceships that would allow us to see the world from
a holistic point of view, these great thinkers in the past used their minds “to see the whole.”
 They had insight. Insight means “seeing with the mind” (Ferriols, 2001).
 The ancient Greek philosophers asked the question, “What makes us all connected to each
other? What makes us one? What underlies everything that exists?”
 The first noted philosopher in western history is Thales(c. 624-545 B.C.). He was a thinker who
loved to gaze at the star. By sensing the harmony in the movements of the heavenly bodies,
he deduced the relationship of things in the universe. He said that everything is related to
each other because everything that exists contains water.
 Today, Thales’ answer to the question “What makes us one?” would be regarded as silly or
outdated. It is not our purpose to defend the answer of the first philosopher. Our aim is to
understand how a philosophical mind moves.
 From the previous paragraphs, we learned that having a philosophical insight means being
able to see with the mind. This means that to be able to think philosophically, you must learn
to look beyond what is immediately before you. Moreover, you must learn to see how a thing
is related to everything else. This is the mark of a holistic perspective.
 The movement from everyday experience towards a more holistic point of view is a salient
characteristic of philosophical thinking.

Activity 2: Application

1. Each of your subjects – biology, chemistry, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics,

math – has a concept of who a human person is. For example, in biology, a human person is a
living being composed of cells, tissues, organs and systems. In chemistry a human person is 99 %
oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus; 0.85% potassium, sulfur, sodium,
chlorine and magnesium and 0.15 % are more than a dozen trace elements. In anthropology, a
human person is a “member of the primate genus Homo, especially a member of the species
Homo sapiens, distinguished from other apes by a large brain and the capacity for speech”, etc.
Given a holistic perspective of reality, which is the correct definition of a human person? Justify
your answer.

Activity 3: Check for Understanding

1. Doing philosophy is looking at reality from a holistic perspective and not from a partial point of
view. Distinguish holistic perspective from a partial point of view. Give a concrete example.