Who is the Human Person?

Metaphysical Existential

Phenomenology as a method
of inquiry
Modern Period

Nicolaus
Copernicus
 Rene Descartes

Res Cogitans- Thinking thing (or the part of man which thinks—or his consciousness)

Res Extensa – That which is situated in a particular time and place (or his body)

Cogito ergo sum= I think, therefore I am

 Driven by an
Nasty, insatiable desire for
Brutish and Driven by sexual
material wealth
and aggressive
Savage Like desires

Thomas Hobbes John Locke Adam Smith Charles Darwin Sigmund Freud

Tabula Rasa A product of

natural selection
 Study of the Phenomena

 systematic reflection on the

structures of consciousness and direct
experience
Edmund Husserl

EPOCHE
(BRACKETTING OF
Objects of our ASSUMPTION)
consciousness
Heidegger’s Understanding of Man
DASEIN

 A being who has the understanding of being a matter for its

own being

Martin Heidegger
Heidegger’s Consideration of Man
1. Dasein is a being in the world

The world
as a context

But being-in-
the-world also
implies
involvement
 2. Dasein as a being-with-others

Being-
alongside-
Entails treating his surroundings as
mere “tools” or equipment Usefulness
with

Recognition of the other as a

Being-with
Dasein Forbearance
 Dasein is living in anticipation of the
things to come

Dasein as a
being always
ahead of
himself Dasein as a being-towards-death

Non- Not to be
Ownmost
relational outstripped
 Philippe de Champaigne’s
Vanitas

Basis of inauthentic and

authentic existence
Memento Mori
 Facticity vs Existentiality
Everything that has been given to the
Facticity person without his consultation

Existentiality All the possibilities that a human person has

and can choose to have.
 How should we treat other persons?
INTERSUBJECTIVITY

The emphasis is on treating

the human person as a
subject
Martin Buber

I-IT

I-THOU
 What does treating the human person as
a subject entail?

Jean Paul Sartre

A being who is unconscious and unfree and

Being-in-itself
whose identity or essence is already complete

A being who is conscious and free and whose

identity and essence is incomplete Being-for-itself
 Totalization

A violence which involves seeing the other

person only in terms of our concepts

Emmanuel Levinas No meaningful dialogue or

intersubjective relationship is
formed

Immanuel Kant
As a means to an end One’s happiness
“An action is morally good if it
does not use persons merely as
means but also as ends at the As ends in
same time.” themselves
Their happiness