• What is a human

person?

• Is it composed of
body and spirit?

• Are they
separated or
united?
Philosophers also think about upon the
concept of the Human Person and what
makes him/her in nature and entity.

“Human Person” refers to the individual,

and all the attributes and the
characteristics that set him/ her apart
from other human beings.
Lets find out the truth…
Aristotle:
hylemorphic
doctrine. The
Greek word hyle
means matter
while morphe
means form.
This doctrine is also called
matter and form theory.

The body and soul are in the

state of unity.

Matter is potentiality while

form is the actuality.
This doctrine states that every composite
being are made up of prime matter and
substantial form.

Prime matter and substantial form are two

fundamental principles of any composite being
such as dog, cat, table, tree, car, man.

The existence of any composite being is made

possible by the union of these two principles
Aristotle recognizes matter as pure potency
or potency since it has no act of itself. It
depends on the form for its act.

Both are related to one another . Prime

matter and substantial form are united
through a formal union.

Man is composite of body (her material

aspect) and soul (the spiritual aspect).
Aristotle’s hylemorphic doctrine is applicable to the
idea of human composite.

Both the body and soul are the integral parts of the
human person.

Thus, the human person is an embodied spirit.

Man cannot exist without these two essential
components.
Different kings of soul according to Aristotle:

Rational soul - ranks the highest for it takes

responsibility the functions of
vegetative and sensible souls. It is
capable of thinking, reasoning,
willing, reflecting, and deciding
apart from sensing and growing.

Sensitive soul - it feeds itself, it grows,

reproduces, and it has feelings.

vegetative soul - capable of feeding, growing, and

reproducing itself.
The Union of Body and Soul

“The soul is the source of these

phenomena and is characterized by them, viz. by
the power of self nutrition, sensation, thinking, and
movement; further, since it is the soul by which
primarily we live, perceive and think – it follows
that the soul must be an account and essence, not
matter or subject … it is the soul which is the
actuality of a certain kind of body.”

Aristotle, De Anima II
Plato:
Plato claimed that
there are two worlds:
the world of
Forms/World of
Ideas where
permanence resides
and the Sensible
World/World of
Matter where change
resides.
It is the world of Forms where intelligibility
dwells. It is the perfect world where Ideas Exist.

Meanwhile the material world is imperfect.

Everything in this world is just a mere copy, an
imitation from the world of forms. It is a sensible
world. It is known through senses.

The beings is the sensible world simply

participate in the world of ideas; they are not
properly called beings.
Thus, the real beings are in the world of
ideas.
For Plato, man is a reflection of the combination of
the world of ideas and the world of matter.

The soul pre-existed in the world of ideas. But

because of its primitive fault it was punished. Its
punishment is imprisonment in a body in the world
of matter.

The soul is perfect then but because of its body it

became imperfect.
 “To seek the nature of the soul, we must premise that
the soul is defined as the first principle of life of those
things which live: for we call living things “animate”, and
those things which have no life “inanimate.” Now life is
shown principally by two actions, knowledge and
movement. The philosophers of old, not being able to rise
above their imagination, supposed that the principles of
these actions was something corporeal: for they asserted
that only bodies were real things; and that what is not
corporeal is nothing: hence they maintained that the soul
is something corporeal.”

St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

St. Thomas Aquinas conceives the soul is an
affirmation and development of Aristotle’s
idea.

It is both clear in their accounts that the

soul creates the knowledge and movement
in a body as a first principle of life.

The universal element common in all living

beings is the soul.
St. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between the
kinds of mover and moved. The thing which is
moved accidentally does not cause invariable
movement – that is, the soul – while what is
moved essentially is the body.

St. Thomas distinguished between contact of

quality and contact of power. With power, a body
is in contact with another body; but under the
contact of quality, a body can be touched by an
incorporeal thing.
Both Aristotle and St. Thomas
Aquinas studied them as a
function of the world of
which it is a part.
 The attainment of
Happiness as an end of Man
What is happiness?
Aristotle claims that there is
one supreme end, or a final
good for man.

By this he implies that every

activity aims to achieve some
good or end.
Man does not act unless he
thinks that the object of his
action is good.

Some good things are desired

only because of their
usefulness in the attainment of
other good.
Man should establish
an object of the
“good life”
 Man is guided by his
reason in acting towards
an end
For Aristotle, the highest
attainable good consists
in the contemplative
activity of the intellect.
The contemplation of God
as the supreme good is
the virtue of man and
the source of his
happiness.
“Happiness is the greatest good”

- Aristotle
Happiness is the last end of a
rational nature. It consists in the
possession of the absolute good.
Happiness is the perfect good.
So if one achieves happiness there
would be nothing more to be
desired
And since God is the absolute
Good, therefore, only with
God can make man become
absolutely happy. God alone
constitutes man’s absolute
happiness.
This absolute happiness can
only be achieved in the
beatific vision, that is, when
man sees God face to face.