PERSONS ARE

ORIENTED
TOWARD
IMPENDING
DEATH
CHAPTER 8
2

THE HUMAN PERSON AND DEATH: What makes life meaningful? What is death?
What has death got to do with the meaning of life? Why and how death corresponds with
this question of meaning of life?

MEANING OF LIFE: HISTORICAL, CONTEXTUAL,

AND EXISTENTIAL EXPERIENCE

HISTORICAL - The meaning of life is always specific to a historical milieu (a person’s

social environment). It has a historical character. That is, life situation is time bound. It’s
features and elements are specific to a particular period.
3

CONTEXTUAL - The respective life context is different from each other.

- An example of this is that the meaning of life for an African American
living in New York City is different from Filipino living Dumaguete City. The former is
defined by the American history and cosmopolitan lifestyle; while the latter is shaped by
Philippine culture and history and the laidback provincial lifestyle. In short, they differ in
many other things that makes their respective life distinct from each other.

EXISTENTIAL EXPERIENCE - Each person has her way of thinking, valuing, viewing,
and interpreting what constitutes a meaningful life.
- For instance, for an artist, to produce a masterpiece is her
single passion, whether this is an art piece, or a musical core, or a performance; while a
scholar on academician dreams of writing and publishing book, or formulating a theory
is what defines the meaning of her life. In other words, each person has a different
aspiration of what her life means or is meant to be.
 RECOGNIZING THE
MEANING OF ONE’S LIFE
5
RECOGNIZING THE MEANING OF
ONE’S LIFE

“Life’s meaning depends on the one who is managing his own life . If you start
finding the meaning so deep for life you will not be able to live or lead a happy
life . The purpose of life should be achieving something by focusing on
something . Life is a mixture of many things like happiness , sadness , laugh ,
cry , feelings , emotions , fights , stress etc., the thing is how he/she handles
and tackles everything will be a great successor in life.” - Terry Joshua
6
PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR MEANING OF ONE’S LIFE:

A. SOCRATES MEANING OF ONE’S

LIFE
"The unexamined life is not worth
living"
HAPPINESS:
According to him in order for a person to be
happy, he has to live a virtuous life. Virtue is
not something to be taught or acquired through
education, but rather it is merely an awakening
of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in
the mind and heart of a person.
7
PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR MEANING OF ONE’S
LIFE:
C. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE MEANING OF
ONE’S LIFE
“Existence precedes essence”
the (essence) of one's life arises only
after one comes to existence
❖ Meaning, human beings have no essence before
their existence because there is no Creator.This
forms the basis for his assertion that because one
cannot explain one's own actions and behavior
by referring to any specific human nature, they
are necessarily fully responsible for those
actions.
8
PHILOSOPHERS AND THEIR MEANING OF
ONE’S LIFE:

B. ARISTOTLE MEANING OF
ONE’S LIFE
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all
wisdom”
❏ Ways to evaluate yourself without any bias:

1. Never Fear 5. See yourself as others see you

2. Never Compare
6. Get feedback about yourself
3. Be honest from others
4. Ask questions to
yourself
Enumerating the
goals one really
wants to achieve
And projects one wants to do in life
10

Things you’ll need to know

Goal Project
an idea of the future a person
or a group of people envision,
plan and commit to achieve
Objective defined as a set of inputs and
outputs required to achieve a
particular goal
actions or activities involved
in achieving a goal.
11

Three Kinds of Goals

Short Term Goals Long Term Goals Lifetime Goals

goals you set to goals that take goals you want to

accomplish in longer time to achieve within
the immediate achieve. your lifetime.
or near future.
12
Types of Goals

1. Health and Fitness Goals 2.) Career Goals

- Goals focused on physical and mental - Goals focused on a productive and
health. professional life.

3.) Financial Goals 4.) Business Goals

- Goals focused on monetary - Goals focused on one’s business.
saving/spending.

5.) Personal Goals 6.) Family Goals

- Goals focused on self improvement. - Goals focused on family.

7.) Social Goals

- Goals focused on developing
relationships.
“A goal without time is just a thought,
without effort it’s just a chore, and
without determination will never be
achieved”
~
Anonymous~
THE MEANING OF LIFE
(where will this lead to?)
15

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche’s first book “THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY”
analyzed the art of Athenian tragedy as the product
of the Greeks’ deep and non-evasive thinking about
the meaning of life in the face of extreme
vulnerability.

The brilliance of Athenian tragedy, according to

Nietzsche, was its simultaneous awakening of both
perspective in the observer. Referring to the Greek,
Nietzsche fantasized, “They knew how to live!”
Insofar as “morality,” it was based on healthy self-
assertion, not self-abasement and the renunciation
of the instincts.
16

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The essay of Schopenhauer begins with the predicament of
the self with its struggles and its destiny: What am I? What
shall I do with my life? We have to be responsible for our
own existence. Each of us knows that each is an unique
person, but few of us have the energy, courage, or insight to
throw off the husks of convention and achieve a sincere
realization of their potentialities, and no one can do that for
us. However, unless we do “become ourselves,” life is
meaningless.

We consider ourselves part of the world, we ignore

profound reality that underlies it, the noumenal reality, the
thing-in-itself. In other words, the reality we see in our
eyes is not true reality, rather, a deep reality exists which is
the true form, nature, and meaning of everything in the
world.
17

MARTIN HEIDEGGER

In Heidegger’s analysis, human existence

is exhibited in care. Care is understood in
terms of finite temporality, which ends to
death.death is a possibility that happens;
all possibilities are evaluated in this light,
when ones lives with a resoluteness, which
brings unity and wholeness to the
scattered self. Eternity does not enter the
picture, for wholeness is attainable within
humanity’s finite temporality.
18
CARE HAS A THREEFOLD STRUCTURE:

❖ POSSIBILITY
➢ Humanity gets projected ahead of itself. Humanity constructs the instrumental world on
the basis of the persons’ concerns. Reality is viewed on what can happen.
❖ FACTICITY
➢ A person is not pure possibility but one who has a limited possibility; possibilities open
to him at any time conditioned and limited by circumstances. Man and reality are
understood in terms of the historical times the person lives in.
❖ FALLENNESS
➢ Humanity flees from the disclosure of anxiety to lose oneself in absorption with the
instrumental world, or to bury oneself in anonymous impersonal existence of the mass,
where no one is responsible. Humanity has fallen away from from one’s authentic
possibility into an authentic existence of irresponsibility and illusory security. In other
words, man withdraws from taking responsibility of himself and the world around him.

Death is non transferable. An individual must die himself alone. Heidegger believed that death is
not accidental, nor should it be analyzed. It belongs to humanity’s facticity.
19
JEAN PAUL SARTRE
He disagreed with Heidegger. For him, death is not a possibility
but the cancellation of possibility. Sartre’s philosophy is
considered to be a representative of existentialism. For him the
human person desires to be God; the desire to exist as a being
that has its sufficient ground in itself (en sui causa). This
means that for an atheist, since God does not exist, the human
person must face the consequences of this. The human person
is entirely responsible for his/her own existence.

SARTRE IS FAMOUS FOR DUALISM:

❖ En-soi (in-itself)
➢ Signifies the permeable and dense, silent and dead.
The en-soi is absurd; it only finds meaning through
the human person, the one and only pour-soi.
❖ Pour-soi (for-itself)
➢ The world only has meaning according to what the
person gives to it. Compared with the en-soi, a
person has no fixed nature. To put it in a paradox:
the human person is not what he/she is.
20

Sartre’s existentialism stems from this principle: existence precedes

essence. Since a person exists, that is the meaning of a person’s life.
Freedom is therefore the very core and the door to authentic
existence. Authentic existence is realized only in deeds that are
committed alone, in absolute freedom and responsibility, and
which therefore is the character of true creation. On the other hand,
the human person who tries to escape obligation and strives to be
en-soi (e.g., excuses such as “I was born this way”) is acting on bad
faith (mauvaise foi). For Sartre, there is no way of coming to terms
with other that does not end in frustrations. This explains why we
experience failure to resolve social problems arising from hatred,
conflict, and strife.
21

KARL JASPERS
Jaspers resolutely opposed Nazism. He was the first
German to address the question of guilt: oF Germans and
of humanity, implicated by the cruelty of the Holocaust.

Jaspers’s philosophy places the person’s temporal

existence in the face of the transcendent God, an absolute
imperative. Transcendence relates to us through limit-
situation (Grenzsituation).

To lived an authentic existence always requires a leap of

faith. Authentic existence is freedom and God. freedom
alone opens the door to humanity’s being; what he
decided to be rather than being what circumstances
choose to make him. Jaspers asked that human beings
be loyal to their own faiths without impugning the faith of
others.
 MARCEL’S
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
METHOD
23

GABRIEL MARCEL
(Dec 7, 1889-Oct 8, 1973)
- French philosopher
- Christian Existentialist (First french existentialist)
- Playwright ( wrote 30 plays)
- He prefers the term “Philosophy of Existence” to
define his own thought
- He was also a music critic
- He was an atheist until his conversion to
catholicism in 1929
- His father is an atheist and his mother is jewish
24

PRIMARY REFLECTION
-This method looks at the world or at any object as a problem, detached from the self
and fragment. This is the foundation of scientific knowledge. Subject does not enter
into the object investigated. The data of primary reflection lie in the public domain and
are equally available to any qualified observer

-Recounts past events

-Selfish Thinking

-Ability to think logically

25

SECONDARY REFLECTION
-Secondary Reflection is concrete, individual, heuristic, and open. This reflection is
concerned not with object but with presences. It recaptures the unity of original
experience. It does not go against the date of primary reflection but goes beyond it by
refusing to accept the data primary reflection as final

-Allows us to think holistically

-Unselfish/genuine thinking

-PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION=SECONDARY REFLECTION

26

SEATWORK:

What are the 7 types of goals and explain it.

Write your answer on any kind of paper.
Thankyou
27

ACTIVITY

Enumerate the three kinds of goals and

explain it on your own words.Write your
answer on any kind of paper. Thankyou
28
References:
● https://courses.lumenlearning.com/austincc-learningframeworks/chapter/discover-yo
ur-values-and-goals/
● https://www.lifehack.org/864425/types-of-goals

● https://philonotes.com/index.php/the-human-person-and-death/?
fbclid=IwAR0AmWNu5NM4OgA-HaQoDRz8OVL77KUBfM-
QItcebJFAFLh2bY10UWWhByk#:~:text=In%20his%20famous%20philosophical
%20phrase,the%20horizon%20of%20our%20existence.&text=Unlike%20Heidegger
%2C%20however%2C%20he%20considers,It%20makes%20human%20life
%20mortal