Who Is The Human Person

Who is the
Human Person
The Oxford Dictionary defines
human being as…
“a man, woman, or child of the species Homo
sapiens, distinguished from other animals by
superior mental development, power of
articulate speech, and upright stance.”
Three Aspects of Human
Nature
A. Somatic – refers to the body, material,
composition, or substance of a human person.
a. B. Behavioral – refers to the human person’s
mode of acting
b. C. Attitudinal aspect – refers to the human
person’s inclinations, feelings, ideas,
convictions, and prejudices or biases.
Theories on Human Nature
1. The human person as an Immortal
Soul
2. The Human Person as a
Composite of Body and Soul
3. The Human Person as a Thinking
Thing
The Human Person as an
One important theorySoul
Immortal on human nature
is the claim that the human person has a
soul.
But the nature and function of the soul
has been a concern for philosophers since
the time of ancient Greeks.
In “Phaedrus
Socrates asserts that “Every soul is immortal, for
that which moves itself is immortal, while what
moves, and is moved by something else stops
living when it stops moving… this is the very
essence and principle of a soul, for every bodily
object that is moved from outside has no soul,
while body whose motion comes from within,
from itself does have soul.
Thus, the human person, in the Platonic
account, has an immortal soul which is the
source of movement. Therefore, you, as a
human person, have a soul because you are
moved from within. No outside force
compels you to have life or to have motion.
Moreover, the soul is deemed immortal.
This implies that the soul, since it is the
source of movement, is something that is, in
itself, necessarily uncreated and immortal,
because if the soul is itself created, then it
could not have been the source of
movement.
The Human Person as a Composite of
Bodyleading
Aristotle, another and Soul
philosopher in the
analysis of the human person, explained in his work,
De Anima (1968), all the capacities possessed by all
living things. His theory is directed toward providing
an account of these capacities which naturally include
human persons. This work is generally called
Aristotle’s Psychology, it involves the relation
between the psyche (soul) and the body.
Aristotle further claimed that the soul is another
kind of substance. It is not a body but the form of
natural body that has life potentially within it. For
Aristotle, life, or having a soul, is the source of a
human person’s being alive which enables him or
her to do actions or activities that are suited to
being a human person. The human being is an
organism composed of organs engaged in the
activities which constitute its being the sort of
thing it is.
The Human Person as a
“Thinking Thing”
While Plato believed that the human person is
an immortal soul and Aristotle claimed that the
human person is a contemplate of a body and
soul, Rene Descartes asserted that the human
person is a thinking thing.
Descartes’s assertation is a philosophical
perspective which believes that the nature
of man is pure mind. This perspective states
that there is a clear and distinct idea of
consciousness that through the mind, one
thinks of the self-existing without
extensions.
However, even though Descartes stated that
there is a distinct idea of the body, he
asserted that he can exist without this
simple non-thinking thing—that human
nature is pure mind and having a body is an
accident.
Human
Condition
Human conditioned is defined as the inevitable
positive or negative events of existence as a human
being through human condition, a person relies how it
is to be human. While he three aspects of the human
nature (i.e., somatic, behavioral, and attitudinal)
defined or characterized the human person, one will
understand how to live according to this nature
through human condition.
Man as
Freedom
In 1943, Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, published Being
and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology—one
of the best books known on existentialism.
Existentialis
mis a philosophical tradition that focuses on the centrality of
the human person’s existence. Existentialist advance
philosophical ideas that as said to be directed toward the
goal of understanding the human condition through these
themes: existence, authenticity, anxiety, freedom, life’s
absurdity, and man situatedness.
Sartre characterized the dimension of being as having
consciousness. He stated that consciousness is the
knowing being in his capacity as being.
Furthermore, he recalled from the philosophy of Edmund
Husserl, a German philosopher who formalized
phenomenology as philosophical tradition, the conception
of consciousness as a consciousness of something.
Two Types of
Being
1. The being-in-itself – is completely constituted. It
is dissolved in identity—a “what is.”
2. The being-for-itself – it is the decompression of
being.
Nothingne
ss
Another concept of
existentialism.
Limits and
Possibilities
Human Nature as
Freedom
The concept of bad faith and its reality in the philosophy of
Sartre suggests that it is a difficult task to live in an
authentic life requires one transcend (to go beyond) the
nothingness (to create a perpetual free for-itself which is
haunted b the nothingness itself is both challenge and a
revelation of how man can become).

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