Topic: Man As Some Western Philosophers See Him

The study of man himself is called philosophical anthropology. Martin Buber says this study is unique in the
sense that man is the subject as well as the object of knowledge.

To him ...the philosophical anthropologist must stake nothing less than his real wholeness, his concrete self.
And more: it is not enough for him to stake his self as an object of knowledge. He can know the wholeness of
the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does
not remain as untouched observer. He must enter, completely and in reality, into the act of self-reflection, in
order to become aware of human wholeness.

The ancient philosophers perhaps were not aware of such sophistication when they pioneered into
expressing their ideas and feelings at the contemplation of their world.

Anaximander, like THALES a philosopher from Ionia, the cradle of Greek civilization, claims man was born
from animals of another species, for while other animals quickly find nourishment for themselves, man alone
needs a lengthy period of suckling, so that had he been originally as he is now, he could never have
survived.

Socrates toys with the idea that mans body comes from this world of matter but that his reason comes from
the Universal Reason or Mind of the World. However, Socrates is more concerned with man as a moral being.

Plato has shown his interest in man as knower and as possessor of an immortal soul.

It remains for Aristotle, however, to defined man as a rational animal. His ideas on almost everything that
concerns man have influenced Aquinas as well as philosophers beyond the middle Ages. To him, man is not
the center of the universe. Man is only a part of it; it is the cosmos that is the focal point. This is Aristotles so-
called geocentric spherical system.

Augustine, the fifth century Bishop of Hippo, is the first big name of the Christian era. He calls man the great
mystery. He wonders at that in man which cannot be understood as a part of the world as a thing among
things.

Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, expounds on the Christian belief in man as a creature of God, as a
composite of body and soul, the soul having the elements or reason and will.

Pico Della Mirandola, He was an intellectual who boasted of having studied all schools of philosophy. His
best known work is On the Dignity of Man, the thesis of which is that man may make of himself what he wishes
to be. Man is a three chief zones of the created universe: the immaterial angels, the material but
incorruptible heavenly bodies, and corruptible earthly bodies.

Niccolo Machiavelli was a Florentine politician of the sixteenth century. But his famous work, The Prince, has
become a handbook on power and its dynamics. Its widely held theme is the end justifies the means. This is
evident from his aphorisms on the nature of man which come from this book and from another work,
Discourses on Livy: Some of those aphorisms are:

1. All men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for
it.
2. Men act right only under compulsion.
3. The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities, and are
often even more influence by the things that seem than by those that are.
4. Men change master willingly, hoping to better themselves.

Marcus Aurelius To him, man does not do evil willingly.

Epictetus To him, men must find happiness in himself, not in outside circumstances he cannot control. He
must fear of all the God within him. His favourite maxim is bear and forbear.
Boethius To him man is an individual substance of a rational nature.

Rene Descartes Father of Modern Philosophy Distinguish between spirit and matter, between thinking and
extending substance.

Thomas Hobbles As a philosopher he considered knowledge empirical in origin and results. He is best
remembered for his Leviathan a treatise on theory of government, as well as a philosophy of naturalism.
Leviathan is in fact an artificial man with sovereignty as an artificial soul, and the pats and covenants as parts
of man when God said Let us make man.

Benedict Spinoza A Dutch philosopher. For him God or nature is only substance. Though and matter are
Gods infinite attributes and all finite thing (such as human minds and bodies) are only modes or states of the
attributes of God.

John Locke He was sometimes referred to as the intellectual ruler of the 18 th century because of the
theories of knowledge and political life.

David Hume Hume is one of those persons disappointed in their life ambitions. He wanted literacy fame, but
it eluded him all his life. For him, all knowledge comes from experience.

Jeremy Bentham His chief distinction is his being the founder of the school of philosophy known as Utilitarian.
Briefly this means that the value of every act (a) derived from usefulness and (b) is for the greatest happiness
for the greatest number of people.

John Stuart Mill He become a believer in Utilitarianism. Here, he admits there might be some pleasures that
are intrinsically higher than others; he hints the virtue may have a value apart from the good consequences
of virtuous action, and finally, he gives conscience as a basic position in foundation of ethics.

Arthur Schopenhauer The world as will and Idea is his masterpiece. His theme here is that though the world
seems a vast collection of diverse objects spread out in space, it is really only a blind, struggling will. This, to
him, can be known by intuitions, and is the basis for his ethics.

TIMELINE

Socrates (470 399 BC) Thomas Hobbes (1588-1675)

Plato (428/7 348 BC) Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)

Aristotle (384 322 BC) John Locke (1632-1704)

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) David Hume (1711-1776)

Epictetus (50-138 AD) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Boethius (480-524 AD) Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Augustine (354-430 AD) Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1419) Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Martin Buber (1878-1965)

Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)


Topic: Phenomenon of Man
In The Shoes of the Fisherman, Jean
Telemond, who is thinly-disguised portrait of
Theilhard de Chardin, says, Man is the only
significant link between the physical order and
the spiritual one. Without man the universe is a
howling wasteland contemplated by unseen
Deity
Again: Man is a very special phenomenon. He is
a being who knows, he is also a being who
knows that he knows . . .
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in
France in 1881 and died in the United States in
1995. He was a Jesuit priest and a paleontologist,
one of those involved in the discovery of the
Peking Man in 1929. His masterpiece is The
Phenomenon of Man. Here he tries to reconcile
Christian theology with the scientific theory of
evolution. His writings were suppressed during
his lifetime. He was really a man ahead of his
time.
Teilhard state the book must not taken as
metaphysics, nor as theology, nut only as
science. He says the book is about man solely as
a phenomenon, but covers the whole
phenomenon of man. Here he reminds us of two
things:
1. that nothing exist in pure isolation,
2. and science, philosophy, and
theology tend to converge the
nearer they try to explain the whole
man.
Teilhard point out two basic assumptions in the
development of his theme
1. the pre-eminent significance of man in
nature,
2. and the organic nature of mankind.
The book reflects clearly the authors
evolutionary approach. It has four main parts:
1. Pre-Life which covers the stuff of the
universe (principally energy and matter)
and the within of things (existence and
spiritual energy, and juvenile earth.)
2. Life which covers the advent life, its
expansion, its complexity.
3. Thought - which discusses the birth of
thought and the different stages toward
homo sapiens and modern earth.
4. Super Life which talks of the spirit of the
earth, the convergence of the person
and the Omega Point, and man and the
Ultimate Earth.
To Huxley, Teilhard has affected a three-
fold synthesis, namely:
1. Of the material and physical world, of the
world mind and spirit;
2. Of the past with the future; and
3. Of variety with unity, of many, with the
one.
Huxley asserts Teilhards two positions:
1. that mankind is its totality is a
phenomenon to be described and
analyzed like any other phenomenon,
and all its manifestations, including
human history and human values, are
proper objects for scientific study.
2. His second, and perhaps most
fundamental point is the absolute
necessity of adopting an evolutionary
point of view.
Huxley concludes:
We, mankind, contain the possibilities of
the earths immense future, and can realize
more and more of them on condition that
we increase our knowledge and our love.
That, it seems to me, is the distillation of The
Phenomenon of Man.
I would like to point put certain terms
used by Teilhard, as explained by Huxley:
1. Noogenesis: gradual evolution of the
mind.
2. Cosmogenesis: gradual evolution of the
cosmos.
3. Hominization: denotes the process by
which the original proto-human stock
becomes (and is still becoming more truly
human.)
4. Noosphere: sphere of the mind and is
opposed to biosphere which is the
sphere of life.
5. Convergence: denotes the tendency of
mankind, during its evolution, to
superpose centripetal on centrifugal
trends, so as to prevent centrifugal
 differentiation from leading to words, a single and continuing trajectory, the
fragmentation. curve of the phenomenon of man.
6. Complexification: this concept includes
the genesis of increasingly elaborate
organization during cosmogenesis, as
manifested in the passage:

from subatomic units to atoms,

from atoms to inorganic and later to organic
molecules;
thence to first subcellular living units
to cells
to multicellular individuals
to cephalized metazoan with brains
to primitive men
to civilized societies.

He suggests: For man to discover man and take

his measure, a whole series of sense have been
necessary These sense are:

A sense of depth, pushing back laboriously

through endless series and measureless distances
of time, which a sort of sluggishness of mind
tends continually to condense for us in a thin
layer of the past;

A senses of number, discovering and grasping

unflinchingly the bewildering multitude of
material or living elements involved in the
slightest change in the universe;

A sense of proportion, realizing as best we can

the difference and dimension, the atom from the
nebula, the infinitesimal from the immense;

A sense of quality, or of novelty, enabling us to

distinguish in nature certain absolute stages of
perfection and growth, without upsetting the
physical unity of the world;

A sense of movement, capable of perceiving

the irresistible development hidden in extreme
slowness extreme agitation concealed
beneath a veil of immobility the entirely new
insinuating itself into the heart of the
monotonous repetition of the same things;

A sense, lastly, of the organic, discovering

physical links and structural unity under the
superficial juxtaposition of succession and
collectiveness.

Keeping these sense in mind will serve to have

a unified vision of man and an understanding of
the main outline of this work: Pre-Life: Life:
Thought, all leading to the Super-Life, in his