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The Concept of Human Being

The document discusses different philosophers' concepts of human beings, including Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. For Plato, a human being has both a body and an immortal soul, with the soul being the essential part. He divided the soul into reasoning, spiritedness, and appetites. Aristotle viewed humans as composed of matter and form, with form actualizing the potential in matter. For Descartes, the mind and body are distinctly separate, with the thinking self being the only undoubtable existence.

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980 views

The Concept of Human Being

The document discusses different philosophers' concepts of human beings, including Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. For Plato, a human being has both a body and an immortal soul, with the soul being the essential part. He divided the soul into reasoning, spiritedness, and appetites. Aristotle viewed humans as composed of matter and form, with form actualizing the potential in matter. For Descartes, the mind and body are distinctly separate, with the thinking self being the only undoubtable existence.

Uploaded by

Cas Loyde
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Concept

of Human
Being
Activity!
Go to your respective group
and create a chart about the
ideas of different philosophers
from different periods
regarding the concept of
human person.
Answer the following questions:
1. What is the concept of Plato about the
human person?
2. How we are going to simplify
Aristotle’s matter and form as a concept of
human person.
3. In holistic view, how does Descartes
explain the human person?
ANALYZE THIS
State ANALOGY
Individual Function Virtue

Rulers Head Rational Wisdom

Soldiers Chest Spirited Courage

Workers Stomach Appetitive Moderation/te


mperance
Activity!
Describe the taste of
water
Activity!
Describe the color
blue to the blind
person.
Activity!
Ask your students if the
tip of their elbow can
reach their chin.
Human Being
Plato
Human Being
- seemed to be natural
direction of inquiry of an
ancient Greek thinkers as
Western philosophy started.
The ancient Greeks,
particularly the pre-
Socratics, were concerned
about the origins of the
cosmos.
Cosmos – an orderly
harmonious systematic
universe.
Cosmos – an orderly
harmonious systematic
universe.
- they were looking for the
foundational element that
makes our world what it is.
Cosmos – they were looking
for the essential what-ness of
the entire universe.
- look for the essential
characters of things which
make those things what they
are.
Earliest theories regarding
human nature came from the
Greek philosopher PLATO.
Plato’s Division of worlds
a. the worlds of ideas;
b. the worlds of senses
To understand the concept of
human being.
Plato considers the world of
ideas as the worlds of
perfection.
In this world of ideas were
eternal truths reside.
The things in our physical
world (the world of senses),
on the other hand, are not real.
Our idea about the dog is thus
far superior in reality than the
dog that we see in the streets.
The real dog is in Plato’s
world of idea – idea of dog.
For Plato, a human being is
composed of body and soul,
but he argues that the human
is essentially his soul.
Another important idea in Plato’s
concept of human being is soul’s
division into three parts.
REASONING

SPIRITEDNESS
APPETITES
The division was a result of a
conversation in Plato’s The Republic
, where the characters that the ideal
society is made up of three types of
citizens.
The three types of citizens:
workers
soldiers

rulers
The idea here is that the
society is simply an
enlarged person
The rulers’
counterpart in the
human body is the
head, which
symbolizes the
reasoning part.
The soldiers’
counterpart is the
chest, which
symbolizes the
spirited part.
The workers’
counterpart is the
stomach, which
symbolizes the
appetitive part.
These parts and their functions
have their corresponding
virtues:
wisdom for reasoning, courage
for spiritedness, and moderation
for appetites.
ARISTOTLE
ARISTOTLE
- Plato’s most famous
student.
There are lot of differences in
their philosophies, one which is
how they looked at human
beings.
Its how the soul is related to the
body that Aristotle differs from
Plato. Aristotle considers things
as composed of two co-
principles.
Two co-principles

MATTER FORM
Is the principle
which actualizes FORM
a thing and
makes a thing
what it is.
It is viewed as
the potentiality Matter
to receive the
form.
In short, FORM
is viewed as Matter &
FORM
ACT while
matter is viewed
as POTENCY.
Example:
a piece of paper has matter
and form.
If we burn the paper, it
will turn into a ash
because the actual paper
has the potency to become
ashes.
There will never be a moment
when matter or form will exist
independently of each other
because they are only principles
and do not possess existence in
their own.
There will never be a moment
when matter or form will exist
independently of each other
because they are only principles
and do not possess existence in
their own.
This body no longer holds the
form of man, just like the ashes
which formerly hold the form a
paper.
Now we say that the body holds
a new form, that CADAVER.
Cadaver – a dead body: one
intended for dissection
Aristotle then, a human being is
always composite of body and
soul.
DESCARTES
Rene Descartes
- French philosopher
- widened the gap between the body
and soul even more as he sets out to
prove that the only thing in this world
which cannot be doubted is the
existence of the thinking self.
Rene Descartes
- he argues for the real distinction
between the body and soul.
- he began with doubting everything
that had previously been considered as
knowledge.
Claiming that the senses are the
sources of previously established
knowledge, and that senses are not
reliable, Descartes argued that we
should doubt everything that is
delivered to us by our senses.
He may doubt his bodily existence
because he can deceived by his
senses. But he cannot doubt his
thinking because his thinking
requires a subject – the thinker.
He establishes his own reality with
the famous line
“I think, therefore, I am”
the subject “I” however, of this
claim does not refer to man or to
rational animal.

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