Philosophy Reviewer

Freedom of the Human Person

Prepared by: Sir Jowinik Marvik Bautista

Philosophical Inquiry

WHAT IS FREEDOM?

WHAT IS HUMAN FREEDOM?

Freedom of choice is the basic characteristic of a person. The capacity to choose distinguishes him from all other
animals. He is a rational and creative being endowed with free will, and with the right to determine his life.

CHOICES HAVE NOT MADE US FREER BUT MORE PARALYZED.

Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice.

CHOICES HAVE NOT MADE US HAPPIER BUT MORE DISSATISFIED.

WHAT IS HUMAN FREEDOM?

Basically, freedom is the absence of coercion, intimidation, or constraint imposed upon the subject by another person,
institution, thing, or circumstance. It is the power rooted in reason to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to
perform deliberate actions on one’s responsibility.

—ALBERT CAMUS

“Your freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins.”

FREEDOM FROM:

Freedom from – means and implies restraints, which are interior or exterior.

Interior: ignorance, disordered passions, desires, anger, fears …

Exterior: violent forces or threats of violence.

FREEDOM FOR:

Freedom for – means and implies growth as a full person.

First level: implies freedom to choose to act, to do good or evil.

Second level: consistency to do good.

DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN FREEDOM

To choose to be born with a different sex;

1. Physical limitations – Human freedom is restricted by the ascriptive traits of a person. A person does not have the
power to make choices such as:

a. To have different ethnic identity or race;

b. To choose to remain youthful; or

c.To live forever.

d. Exterior Factors Negating Human Freedom

PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS

are the subjective obstacles or factors that control the mind such as fear, envy, or laziness. These are negative power
within the consciousness of the human person that destroys his ability to direct his own life.

02 SOCIAL LIMITATIONS

03 Exterior Factors Negating Human Freedom

are the components or elements of organizational culture such as norms (folkways, mores, laws, rules) values,
language, beliefs, symbols, traits and fashions, fads, and crazes.

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Liberty?

Freedom comes from the Old English word freodom, meaning “power of self-determination, state of free will;
emancipation from slavery, deliverance.”

Liberty comes from the Latin “libertatem” (nominative libertas), which means “civil or political freedom, condition of a
free man; absence of restraint, permission.”

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Liberty?

"Freedom" is predominantly an internal construct. Viktor Frankl, the legendary Holocaust survivor who wrote Man's
Search For Meaning, said it well:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way (in how he approaches his circumstances).”

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Liberty?

"Freedom" is predominantly an internal construct. Viktor Frankl, the legendary Holocaust survivor who wrote Man's
Search For Meaning, said it well:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way (in how he approaches his circumstances).”

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Liberty?

In other words, to be free is to take ownership of what goes on between your ears, to be autonomous in
thoughts first and actions second. Your freedom to act a certain way can be taken away from you – but your attitude
about your circumstances cannot – making one's freedom predominantly an internal construct.

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Liberty?

On the other hand, "liberty" is predominantly an external construct. It's the state of being free within society from
oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
Liberty of the individual is the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other "goods" that mankind cherishes.
Living in liberty allows each of us to fully enjoy our freedoms.

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Free Will?

Free will is not the same as freedom of action.

Freedom of action refers to things that prevent a willed action from being realized. For example, being in prison means
you are not free to paint the town red. Being in a straitjacket means you are not free to wave hello. Being paralyzed
means not being able to move your limbs.

These are not issues of free will. Free will means being free to try to escape (or not), to try to wave (or not), and to try
to move your limbs (or not).

Understanding Freedom:
Freedom and Free Will?

Free will and true freedom in light of human sin.

John Murray “Redemption Accomplished and Applied”

The Intersubjectivity of the Human Person

Chapter 3 Lesson 2 Philosophy

E, Ikaw? Anong ambag mo?

— JOHN DONNE

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were;
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell
tolls; it tolls for thee.

INTRODUCTION

He is a metaphysical paradox: an individual yet universal. Man has individuating factors, yet he is a part of humankind.
He must be a “person-who-always-exists-with-others-in-the-world” in harmonious intersubjective relation or
interaction with others.

The I-it and I-Thou Relationship

Martin Buber

01

I-it Relationship

• A human person treats his/her fellow human persons as objects, tools, or instruments.

• He reduces them into a thing of utility, what is useful is good.

• Human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a
world which consists of things.
I-Thou Relationship

 Human person considers his/her fellow humans as subject and ends in themselves. (Four causes)

 In this interaction, there is an atmosphere of openness, commitment, reciprocity, personal involvement, care,
and love.

 Human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue
involving each other's whole being.

I-Thou is a relation in which I and Thou have a shared reality. Buber contends that the I which has no Thou has a reality
which is less complete than that of the I in the I-and-Thou. The more that I-and-Thou share their reality, the more
complete is their reality.

Filipino Perspective
- Pagpapakatao
- Pakikipagkapwa
- Pakikipagkapwa-tao

The Human Person in the Society

Chapter 3 Lesson 3 Philosophy

— ARISTOTLE

The human person by nature is a political being. The human person is a being of society. Basically, the human person is a
member of a family, the smallest unit of society.

THEORIES OF SOCIO-POLITICAL CONSTRUCTS

PANTHEISTIC THEORY

DIVINE RIGHT THEORY

SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

CHRISTIAN THEORY

Pantheistic Theory

 The belief that God and the universe are the same or the doctrine that God is an expression of the physical
forces of nature. For Plato, this God is the External Idea behind the things we perceive.

 Moreover, for Hegel, the State is a social substance and terrestrial divinity that exists prior to the citizens, and
a human person’s existence is not real but a mere accident of the universe.

Pantheistic Theory

 The Platonic-Hegelian thoughts as applied to the realm of politics may be the basis for the theory of State
Absolutism. Under this theory, the State has absolute power, dominion, and control over its citizens. The State
is not the creation of a human person. It destroys individuality with its concomitant rights and freedom.

Divine Right Theory

 • Asserts that the State is a divine institution. As divinely instituted, its ruler holds his office by divine rights. His
government is directly answerable to God and not accountable to the government. All power and authority
come from God and do not emanate from the people.

1. The existence of the State originated from a contract freely entered into by its citizens. It is the view that
persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form
the society in which they live.

2. Social Contract Theory

Contended that humans are materialistic and pessimistic that their actions are motivated solely by self-interest, thus, a
State’s ability can only be guaranteed by a sovereign authority, to which citizens relinquish their rights. The citizens
surrender all their rights to the State to end their inherent evil tendencies and impulses.

Theorizes that when human beings form a social contract to live in society, they delegated authority to a government;
however, they retained sovereignty and the power to withdraw that authority when necessary.

Christian Theory

• Stands at the center of extreme assumptions. As social being, human person is rational. He is born and grows
into full self as a person only in relation to others. He is being by others, with others, and for others. Thus, his
social nature is the root existence of a State which comes about as a result of people’s will/consent.

• As a personal being, the human person is not only an individual who is dependent or subservient to the State,
but a person with inherent rights, human dignity and destiny that transcends the State.

Human Person as Oriented towards Impending Death

Chapter 3: Lesson 4

SAINT JEROME

Takot ka bang mamatay? Bakit?

INTRODUCTION

Death is the end of a long beginning of human life. The human person is temporal. He has a beginning as well as an
end.

His life event has its final direction: DEATH. According to Martin Heidegger, death is already in the past, but “not yet” in
the future, it is the “already” and the “not yet” in human existence; thus, it is an impending possibility and an inevitable
reality.

Indeed, every human person avoids and abhors death. Death is a state where humanity has no certain answer to what
would be the real score after losing this physical and material reality. But there is one thing left after death: “the longing
for immortality and hoping to answer all vague questions concerning the mystery of human existence”.

It is sad to know that despite the advances in medicine, death still occurs in our human vocabulary. Death is not the end
of life, but the beginning of the cycle of life.

A seed must die and fall into the ground from the branches in order to grow again. The greatest illusion a human person
can ever have is to believe that in this life he/she can enjoy life in eternity and live happily ever after. Life without death
is a fairytale.
Death is imminent in the nature of the human person. Its imminence, possibility, probability, and inevitability are
recognizable beyond a reasonable doubt.

Because it is the possibility which is own most, death is mine, something that I stand before myself in own most
potentiality for being, because the issue in death is no other than my being in the world. Death is the possibility of no-
longer-being-possible, of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there; the possibility of being cut off from others and from things.

Many are indeed ignorant of death as the possibility which is own most, non-relational and cannot be outstripped. They
are engrossed in the immediate concern with things, thus covering up their own most being towards death, fleeing in
the face of it. But the facts remain that they are being towards death that man is dying even in his “fallenness”, in his
being absorbed in everyday world concern.

Epicurus of Samos

Death, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death does not come, and, when death has
come, we are not.

HINDUISM

Most Hindus believe that humans are in a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth called Samsara. When a person dies, their
atman (soul) is reborn in a different body.

Hindus believe that they must be liberated from Samsara. This liberation is called Moksha. Moksha is liberation towards
Brahman or Ultimate Self. This process of Samsara and Moksha is guided by Karma.

Filipino Concept

a) Ang bawat tao ay mamamatay din.

“Una-una lang yan”

Walang nananatili sa mundo; ari-arian.

b) Ang kamatayan ay ang isang tunay na sukatan ng pagkakapantay-pantay.

c) Ang kamatayan ang nakapagbubuklod sa pamilya.

d) Sa kamatayan nakasalalay ang malalim na kahulugan ng buhay.

Mga Termenolohiya

a. Binawian ng buhay

- Ang buhay ay pahiram

b. Sumakabilang buhay

- Pahiwatig na di lamang sa kasalukuyan ang buhay

c. Yumao/Pumanaw

- Pag-alis o Paglisan; “Iniwan na nya tayo”

d. Namahinga/Namayapa

- Ang kamatayan ay paglisan sa maingay na mundo patungo sa isang lugar na payapa.

Alexander the Great

1) My physicians alone must carry my coffin. (Best Doctors)

2) Secondly, I desire that when my coffin is being carried to the grave, the path leading to the graveyard be strewn with
gold, silver, and precious stones which I have collected in my treasury.

3) My third and last wish is that both my hands be kept dangling out of my coffin.

HAPPY-
DEATH?

—PSALMS 90:10-12

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are
soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of Your anger, and Your wrath according to the fear of You? So
teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Or “present to you a heart of wisdom.”

LEGACY IN THE MAKING

Create a 30-second video saying how you want to be remembered. Upload in the Canvas assignment. Deadline will be
until December 5-6.