THE STORY OF

PHILOSOPHY
THE GREEKS AND THEIR
WORLD
The Beginning of Philosophy
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy begins when human beings start
trying to understand the world, not through
religion or by accepting authority but through the
use of reason.
SOCRATES PHILOSOPHY

May 20, 2011

What we needed to know was how to conduct our
lives and ourselves.

Philosophy of Man
Thus, the more urgent questions are not
something like what the world is made of? but
rather what is good?, what is right?. what is
just?
Socrates believed that mans soul pre-existed his

body. In his original ideal existence as a soul or

pure mind in the realm of ideas, man knew all
things by direct intuition, and had all this
knowledge stored in his mind.
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PLATO: DUALISTIC NATURE OF MAN

May 20, 2011

He thinks that there two sorts of stuff that make
up he world, two sorts of things that especially
come together in human beings

Philosophy of Man
A human being is composed of body and soul.

BODY material, mutable, mortal

SOUL spiritual, immutable, immortal
Following Socrates, Plato thought of human
beings as essentially their souls.
While we have bodies, we are souls.

5
ARISTOTLE: THE COMPOSITE
NATURE OF MAN

May 20, 2011

Man is not pure mind or spirit as Plato thought
man to be.

Philosophy of Man
Man, in his present earthly existence, is a
composite nature of body and soul, mind and
matter, sense and intellect, passion and reason.
Philosophy, therefore, aims at the development of
the WHOLE MAN, the full realization and
actualization of all mans power and
potentialities primarily of his rational
prerogatives and secondarily of the emotional,
social, political, esthetic and economic aspects of
his composite being. 6
 June 01, 2011
Philosophy of Man
MEDIEVAL
PHILOSOPHY
Christianity and Philosophy
7
THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN
PHILOSOPHY

June 01, 2011

After the ascension of Jesus Christ into Heaven,
the catechesis of Christian doctrine was based on
the oral preaching of the witnesses of His life.

Philosophy of Man
By the middle of the second century, Christians
felt the need to have to recourse to theological
speculation in order to:
1. Express more precisely the dogmatic formulas
contained in the symbols of faith.
2. To tear down heretical arguments.

3. To defend themselves from the calumnies

coming from the Roman authorities. 8
AUGUSTINES VIEW OF HUMAN
NATURE

June 01, 2011

For Augustine, as for Plato, there are two main divisions
of reality, the physical and the non-physical. In the non-
physical world are souls, spiritual substances, God and

Philosophy of Man
Forms in the Mind of God. In the physical world are
images, material objects, space and time.

Dualistic view of man

- human beings are composed of two substances, bodies
and souls.
- our souls are most important to us. They are not
something that we have, they are something that we are.
- we are spiritual beings at the core of our nature
9
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS PHILOSOPHY

June 01, 2011

As did all medieval theologians, Aquinas
accepted the Christian worldview as a given.

Philosophy of Man
Everything important about life has been
revealed in the scriptures The Old and The
New Testaments.
While faith in the revealed word of God required
to know what is true, we must also have reason
(philosophy) to help us to understand what we
believe.
Aquinas was not afraid that reason might lead
people astray from Gods truth, but rather
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welcomed it as another avenue to God
 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
11
The Revival of Reason
THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERNITY

June 8, 2011
During the middle ages, the Catholic Church
incorporated the Ptolemaic system into the
Christian view of the world. On this view, God made

Philosophy of Man
the world to be the center of everything. Psalm 93
(addressing God) also claims: Thou hast fixed the
earth immovable and firm.
In the 16th century, a Polish churchman called

Copernicus pointed out that many of our fearsome

mathematical problems would melt away if we
treated the sun as the center of the solar system.
When he did this, he showed that the planetary

movements that were becoming increasingly 12

difficult to explain suddenly made good, clear sense.
DESCARTES PHILOSOPHY OF MAN:
I THINK THEREFORE I AM

June 8, 2011
For Descartes, his self is his nonphysical mind, or soul:
1. If I exist and my body may not exist, then I am not
my body.

Philosophy of Man
2. I exist.

3. My body may not exist.

4. Therefore, I am not my body.

. For Descartes, human beings are very different from
animals and everything else in nature. We can do lots
of things in a mechanistic way, such as refuse to act
on a strong desire, plan future events, make
decisions, and so on. We can do all these things
because we are not entirely physical things; we are 13
also nonphysical things; we have minds.
DESCARTES PHILOSOPHY OF MAN:
I THINK THEREFORE I AM

June 8, 2011
So, we are bodies and minds
It is the job of science to study bodies along with

Philosophy of Man
the rest of nature; and its the job of philosophy to
study the mind.
Although he recognizes the importance of the
body, Descartes, like Plato before him, believes
that what is essential to being a self is the
nonphysical mind, not the body.

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 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
15 The 19th Century and Beyond
CONTEMPORARY
PHILOSOPHY
THE 19TH CENTURY

June 8, 2011
It was a time of greatly increased activity in the
sciences of man and correspondingly rapid
development of various disciplines.

Philosophy of Man
Perhaps the most significant theme , common to
all branches of science, was the declining
influence of religion.
Theological discourse was thus only human
discourse.
Herder: It is necessary to read the Bible in a
human manner, for it is a book written by men
for men.
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 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
INTELLECTUAL
BACKGROUND OF
CONTEMPORARY
PHILOSOPHY:
17
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855)

June 8, 2011
Rejected the intellectualization of God. He believes
that reason plays no role in religion.
He believed that we desire more than anything else

Philosophy of Man
is a close personal relationship with God.
If we never fulfill this desire, we will never be happy.

To have a personal relationship with God is to have

absolute faith in Him, a belief that is not to be

proven by evidence that He exists.
However, a fulfilling relationship with God can be

freely chosen by us or not.

Mans existence can only become significant when

one realizes his own freedom. 18

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)

June 8, 2011
God is dead and we have killed Him.
This meant that the essence of God in modern

Philosophy of Man
man was dead.
Also dead was the part of a person that
recognized universal God-given ideals of reason
and truth, goodness and beauty.
He rejected reason as the core of human nature.

Knowledge is not mans strongest desire but

rather the desire for power.
There is no pre-established human nature, only
the freedom to be whatever we choose to be. 19
 June 8, 2011
Philosophy of Man
JEAN PAUL SARTRE
Existentialism
20
WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM?

June 8, 2011
Derived from the word Existence which comes
from the Latin word Existere which means to
stand out, to emerge or to come out

Philosophy of Man
from

Stresses the difference between existing and

living

21
SOME THEMES OF EXISTENTIALISM

June 8, 2011
Rejection of reason and of the idea that man is,
by nature, a rational being.

Philosophy of Man
Existentialism takes man as the center of
attention. The focus is on the individual and
more importantly, the uniqueness of each
individual.

Existentialist focus on freedom as the chief

aspects of ourselves. We are free to choose our
lives, even our selves. 22
SARTRES PHILOSOPHY OF MAN

June 8, 2011
Life is an empty bubble

Philosophy of Man
in the sea of nothingness.
Man comes from nothingness
Life is meaning-less

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SARTRES PHILOSOPHY OF MAN

June 8, 2011
Existence precedes
essence.

Philosophy of Man
Human beings have no fixed nature or essence.
We are not born into this world with a certain
way to be. Instead we are pure potential for
becoming whatever we choose to become.

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ASSIGNMENT:
Read The Phenomenological Method by Manuel
B. Dy.
Bring your fillers, some art materials, a
magazine that can be recycled.