CHAPTER 3

THE HUMAN
PERSON AS AN
EMBODIED
 PHILOSOPHY
-Love of wisdom.
-About dwelling on the questions that
underlie our search of meaning.
-It has no ready-made answers.
THE BODY AS
LIMITATION
AND
 TRANSCENDENCE

• Ability to surpass one’s limitation.

• Going beyond limitation while exerting effort.

Trans- go beyond
Scandare- climb
THUMB-LESS LIFE ACTIVITY
Pick your partner. One of you will pretend that your thumbs are
gone for five minutes. While in this state, proceed with your normal
activities while your thumbs are not functioning. On a piece of paper
in one column ask your partner to write down as many activities you
can NOT do because your thumb is absent. In another column write
down the many things you CAN do even if your thumb is absent.

Example: Can you pick a coin?

 ACTIVITY
1. How did you feel about your self after failing to do certain
activities that you would normally do easily? Did you
appreciate the importance of a very small part of your body,
your thumb, more after this activity?
2. When you wrote down the column of things that you can still
do even in the absence of your thumb, did that change the
way you feel about your self? Did it comfort you a little to
know that you can still do certain things with out your thumb?
 ACTIVITY
3. Look at the list of the things that you can do without your
thumb. Imagine that these are the only things that you can do for
the rest of your life. Would you still consider your activities as
“Human” activities? Do you agree if someone says that without
your thumbs, your life is not as human as it should be.
 ACTIVITY

Did you know that humans are thee only animals in earth with
fully opposable thumbs?

Opposable- the ability of the thumb to lie across the palm,

perpendicular to the four fingers.
You discovered that a very simple detail about
our bodies has multiple implications with
regard to our lives. In other words with our
opposable thumbs, we would not have learned
writing, creating tools, and playing with
objects.
 THE BODY AS A SOURCE OF LIMITATION
AND POSSIBILITY
HUMAN LIMITATIONS
We love to watch movies about super heroes because they
showcase amazing feature that ordinary human beings cannot
do.
Superman was a projection of peoples own frustration about
their own limitations. These limitations were the direct opposite
of Superman’s powers.
 HUMAN LIMITATIONS
We have only a certain amount of strength to carry
things or accomplish tasks. We cannot prevent
accident entirely no matter how careful we are. We
cannot move as fast as we could from one place to
another. Despite all advances in technology, we can
never reverse the course of time. EMBODIED
BEINGS
 Human existence is embodied existence. Many
things that are related to our existence as a person
are related to our bodies – age, sex, race,
relationship and etc. We started counting our
birthdays to determine our age from the time we
were born into this world. Our age count began as
soon as our embodied existence not imagined
existence began.
A large part of who we are and how we
define ourselves is determined by our
bodies. The details we write in our bio
data are not things we can simply
choose or change.
As, limitations, the body related aspects
about our selves are not products of our
first choice. They have, in a sense, been
given to us on a permanent basis.
 The Body as Transcendence
While we mostly complain about how
there are so many things that we can’t
change about our lives because of our
bodies, we hardly see that the body also
opens possibilities.
 The Body as Transcendence
There is an important paradox about the body
that we need to understand. While the body limits
us, the very same limitation create opportunities for
us.

CLASSROOM- Sleeping (x)

CLASSROOM- Learning (/)