The Philosophy of the Human Person (original) (raw)

Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

ALETHEIA Printing and Publishing House, 2020

There are eight chapters in this book. The first chapter highlights how various philosophical traditions do philosophy, integrating western and eastern thoughts. The second chapter selects major methods of philosophy and focuses on how to use the methods. The third chapter investigates the mystery of the embodied spirit, the non-material element of the human person. The fourth chapter explains the relationship between the human person and the environment while highlighting the responsibility of the person towards environmental issues. The fifth chapter explores the freedom of the human person in the hope of becoming a responsible and authentic person. The sixth chapter underscores the person who, while recognizes oneself, in turn, recognizes the other as having a self. The seventh chapter discusses the social aspect of the person and illuminates it in a local Filipino community. Finally, the eighth chapter highlights the meaning of life while reflecting on the person’s impending death.

Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophy of the Human Person and the Filipino Contemporary Societal Issues

Philosophia-international Journal of Philosophy, 2020

The contemporary Philippine society is flooded with various concerns and issues such as drug abuse, extrajudicial killings of the War on Drugs, HIV and AIDS, fake news, and human-induced climate change, among others. This predicament can be attributed not only to the degradation of ethics and values but basically to the deterioration of the philosophy of the human person; that is, the lack if not a distortion of the Filipino’s understanding of what man truly is. By using content analysis, this paper delves into Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophy of the Human Person as a means to help address and rectify the said distorted outlook of the human person as the root cause of the many issues of contemporary Philippine society. It allows the Filipino to understand himself and others as a human person who, according to Wojtyla, is created in God’s image and likeness, a subject and not an object, a substantial amalgamation of body and soul, endowed with the faculties of intellect and will, a conscio...

The Person: Readings in Human Nature - Preface with overview

The Person: Readings in Human Nature, 2006

What is a person? The history of this concept (πρόσωπον = prosōpon in Greek, persona in Latin, Person in German, personne in French) is intertwined with the histories of such concepts as human being, individual, soul, subject, self, ego, and mind. But while these comprise a constellation of interconnected and sometimes overlapping ideas, each has its own conceptual history, its own distinct evolution. Consequently, person does not admit of a clumsy, ham-handed semantic reduction to more basic concepts. This selection of readings is an attempt to trace in outline one trajectory in the philosophical history of the idea of the person. It is of course not intended even to approach a comprehensive study. While not disguising preferences, I tried to avoid indulging in idiosyncrasy. My goal is to offer a group of stimulating readings that revolve around a single rich, widely debated, and seemingly indefeasible concept. My hope is that this book will prove useful to students and teachers of philosophy in a variety of courses in which the concept of the person figures, including courses on the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophical Anthropology, and Personal Identity. The reader will judge the extent to which I have succeeded in weaving together these diverse selections with continuous thematic threads. If the net result is closer to a coherent whole than a hodgepodge, I will be satisfied. To allow flexibility in course design, two tables of contents are provided-one chronological, one topical. Topics are grouped under seven headings: A) conceptual history, B) personology (account of the person), C) identity of persons, D) divine persons in the Christian tradition, E) nonhuman persons and human non-persons, and F) persons viewed from outside Christian, Euro-American culture. Some readings appear under more than one heading. Instructors are encouraged to experiment with grouping the readings to serve their particular needs. For ease of reference, the readings are arranged chronologically. They begin with the prehistory of the concept in Plato and Aristotle. The inception of the concept in ancient Stoicism (Cicero and Epictetus) is followed by the development of the concept through medieval discussions of the divine persons of the Trinity. Key texts on the concept in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and 19 th century European philosophy show an increasing emphasis on theories of personal identity. Selections from 20 th century Anglo-American males are balanced with contributions by women philosophers (Weil, Warren, Rorty, Midgley). Some religious pluralism is gained with the perspectives of Taoism (Smullyan), Buddhism (R. Taylor, Parfit), and Islam (Legenhausen) alongside the texts in Christian theology.

Humanising Humanity: A Prologue

Mencari Indonesia 4, 2021

This is my Prologue for the collection of essays entitled 'Mencari Indonesia 4: Dari Raden Saleh sampai Ayu Utami'[In Search of Indonesia 4: From Raden Saleh to Ayu Utami]' (Jakarta, LIPI Press, December 2021) written by Dr Riwanto Tirtosudarmo. A social demographer by training, Pak Ri, as his friends and students affectionately call him, has spent most of his life as a researcher at the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (LIPI). But now in his retirement he has become a public intellectual. His writings on academic freedom with their consistent insight, humanity and willingness to speak ‘truth to power’— have made him—for the humanities at least—the ‘conscience of the nation’. Here he has not acted alone. Through his establishment of the the Indonesian Caucus for Academic Freedom (Kaukus Indonesia untuk Kebebasan Akademik or KIKA), founded on 7 December 2016, a truly homegrown Indonesian NGO, he has served as the lodestar—a rallying point and an inspirer—for a younger generation of like-minded Indonesian scholars and intellectuals who confront an Indonesian academic world corrupted by political interests, time-serving bureaucrats and proyek-proyek (research projects) of dubious academic value.