THE REALM OF MORALITY AND THE REALM OF FREEDOM

Concept of Morality

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the systematic questioning and critical
examination of the underlying principles of morality. Ethics comes from the root word ethos
which refers to the character of a culture. The ethos includes the attitude of approval or
disapproval in a particular culture at a given time and place. The subject matter being
studied in ethics is morality. Morality comes from the root word mores. Mores are the
customs including the customary behavior of a particular group of people. This constitutes
the core of attitudes and beliefs of a particular group of people. Therefore, mores (in Latin)
and ethos (in Greek), both refer to customary behavior. Ethics has been associated with two
general approaches, normative and metaethics. Normative ethics is meant to give an
answer to the question, 'What is good?' It pertains
to certain norms or standards for goodness and badness, rightness or wrongness of an act.
A comprehensive normative ethical system tries to give a moral framework, where its
standards of morality are based. A very good example is Christian ethics with its well-
defined and clear parameters and definition of what is good and bad based on its
comprehensive framework. Metaethics, on the other hand, tries to go beyond the concepts
and parameters set by normative ethics by trying to question the basis of the assumptions
proposed in a framework of norms and standards by normative ethics. Metaethics, as an
ethical approach, examines the presuppositions, meanings, and justifications of ethical
concepts and principles. For example, instead of assuming that there is an objective moral
truth, metaethics will question the basis for this by asking whether or not morality is
objective or subjective or maybe questions about an assumption of a moral theory like
"What is your justification for claiming in your theory that pleasure is good?"
It has to be emphasized that a study of ethics and morality would have to entail an analysis
of both the human person as an individual and society together with its social rules that
sets limitations on the behavior of the individual. Individual behavior is closely related to a
sense of what is the right thing to do, from the customs or mores of a particular society. For
example, the way that parents should raise their children in a particular society is governed
by the mores of the time and place.

Concept of Freedom

The concept of freedom has been widely used and applied in the analysis of Philippine
society as a whole, as well as the application of freedom to individual rights. A very
important question that must be brought to light is: "What is freedom and how is it being
exercised in the realm of morals?" Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, assumes
the idea of radical freedom, by

claiming that man is condemned to be free. Man is an unconstrained free moral agent in
the sense that he always has a choice in every aspect of his life. Even if somebody points a
gun at his head, he still has a choice whether to follow or refuse the wishes of his captors.
There are no exemptions even when faced with such situation; the consequences will not
save him. Accordingly, Sartre claims that "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of
himself." Thus, man is never compelled or determined, he is totally free and therefore,
totally responsible for all the things that he does. When we are exercising freedom in
making choices, we are taking control and assuming full responsibility for the choices that
we are making. There is one important caveat: you are free but this freedom is not
absolute. You could not do anything that you please without taking into consideration the
norms of your society. You are governed at the same time, by the mores of your society. The
mores are there to serve as a form of social control to limit, govern, or regulate your
behavior in order to uphold and maintain order in your society. For example, you cannot
just go about killing people you consider as obnoxious. Within the given parameters of our
environment, including the economic, political, and social environment and the structures
that go with them, we are still assuming freedom. You are perhaps familiar with the saying
'your freedom ends where my freedom begins.' Our discussion will come to nothing if we
are going to assume otherwise, that man is not free and his choices are always determined
by factors or forces in his environs. This deterministic view of man will be tantamount to
saving that human beings are like robots or machines whose actions and functions could
be predicted like cause and effect given the parameters of the variables in his environment.
Nor can we embrace fully the extreme view of radical freedom without taking into
consideration the norms of our society. Freedom of the human person from the moral sense
of the word assumes that one is a free moral agent. Moral in this sense is when one is free
to make his choice in accordance with his own moral discernment of what is good and bad
— as the agent taking full responsibility for his own actions using his rational and
emphatic capacity as a moral being. The assumption of freedom entails another
assumption which is obligation. In its moral sense, obligation is construed as one's duty to
himself to exercise this freedom as a
rational moral being. In other words, it is seen as his duty to himself to do this budgeting
and planning for the future because the future is yet to be and the only way to make it
better is by being obliged to do so. In other words, you are not free to be unfree. In making
moral decisions and choices, it is within the capacity of the human person as an active and
free moral agent to exercise his freedom of choice as his obligation to himself. Freedom in
making choices entails the process of reflection and deliberation on the consequences that
our actions might entail. It is one's obligation to oneself to exercise one's rationality to the
fullest without forgetting one's humanity and his capacity for empathy.

MORALITY AND FREEDOM

 comes from the root word mores, which refer to the customs or customary behavior
of a particular group of people
 concerns ethics, which is a branch of philosophy that deals with the systematic
questioning and critical examination of the underlying principles of morality
 has two approaches: normative and metaethics
 normative ethics pertains to certain norms or standards for goodness and badness,
rightness or wrongness of an act
 metaethics tries to go beyond the concepts and parameters set by normative ethics
by trying to question the basis of the assumptions proposed in a framework of norms
and standards by normative ethics
 Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher, assumes the idea of radical freedom,
by claiming that man is condemned to be free. Man is an unconstrained free moral
agent in the sense that he always has a choice in every aspect of his life
 when we are exercising freedom in making choices, we are taking control and
assuming full responsibility for the choices that we are making
 you could not do anything that you please without taking into consideration the
norms of your society
 assumption of freedom entails another assumption which is obligation. In its moral
sense, obligation is construed as one's duty to himself to exercise this freedom as a
rational moral being
 freedom in making choices entails the process of reflection and deliberation on the
consequences that our actions might entail

HUMANS AND MORALITY

Deliberation is an act pertaining to humans alone. This act requires reflection and an
exercise of one's rational capacity to the fullest without sacrificing his ability to empathize
with other human beings. From your teachers since grade school, you have been taught
subjects relating to good manners and right conduct. These manners and conduct pertain
only to mankind. Thus, according to John L. Mothershead Jr., conduct refers to deliberate
human action. This is a result of the process of reflection where the human person is
endowed with the capacity to think using his rationality and to weigh the consequences of
his actions in order to plan his own life. This would also include his plans and how he
envisions himself to be according to what he would like to become in the future.

Value Experience

In the process of going through our everyday lives, we could not help but choose and
consider options available to us. The range of this process of making choices is wide and
varied. It ranges from the most trivial to the most difficult choices and decisions that we
have to make in our lives. When we are in the process of choosing among the alternatives
in a given situation, even the most trivial things like the outfit that you would like to wear,
the viand that you would be choosing for lunch, or even the haircut that you would get, the
process of value experience comes into play. Moreover, Mothershead added that this is the
side-taking part of our experience. This valuation process happens when we make choices
and indicate our preferences, for example,
when we like or dislike, approve or disapprove, favor or disfavor. Values are the result of
this process of value experience where you are setting which are your priorities that you
have chosen to pursue. They may also be considered as imperatives that you have set your
mind to do.

Value and Moral Values

Now, when does a value become a moral value? The priorities that we attach to these
values are limited in its scope of importance or significance in our life. For example, money
is a value and as a student you are saving money in order to buy something that you value
more, like you are saving up to buy yourself a new cellphone. Once you have that new
cellphone, you will be fulfilled until the next object of value catches your attention that you
would consider as worth saving up for. In other words, money is a value because it is a
means to an end, which could be another value more important than money and for which
you are willing to give up your money for. Your textbooks are a value throughout the school
year that you are using them. But once the school year is over, you would normally discard
them to make way for a new set of textbooks in your shelf for the next school year. The
value of looking at a beautiful face is often appreciated by many. When a beautiful person
passes by, everybody would look at that person and perhaps appreciate beauty when they
see it. But that is all there is to it. This is because beauty is just a value.
Can beauty become a moral value? Can money become a moral value? Can chastity and
purity become a moral value? The point that these questions are trying to emphasize is:
when does a value become a moral value? Mothershead argues that a value can become a
moral value if they become unlimited priorities in their scope of relevance in our life. This is
to say that one is willing to give up other values in order to promote what he considers as a
moral value. Thus, a moral value takes precedence and priority over other values. In other
words, you are willing to give up other values just to promote this moral value.

Moral Judgments and Moral Decisions

According to Mothershead, "Making moral judgments is budgeting actions.' Furthermore,

for him, "A moral decision is the most important class of moral judgments," because it "'has
reference to the judger's own future action." Thus, this happens when one is exercising his
full capacity as a free moral agent. One's moral decision reflects his own choices as to what
should be included or excluded in one's life insofar as he is in control. This is what freedom
entails, to make these choices and, in effect, to plan and budget our life including mapping
out plans for the future. Furthermore, Mothershead claims that "not all moral judgments
are decisions," thus, "many of our moral judgments have reference to other people or
groups of people." Many of these moral judgments do not involve our own moral decisions.
We often render moral judgments on what others should or ought to do. Here, we are like
spectators, where the process of budgeting or planning extends to other people or groups
and goes beyond our personal life and endeavors. This activity could extend outside of our
personal space, to our neighbors, to celebrities we barely know personally, to other ethnic
groups, and even to people outside our country of origin. This is when we are rendering our
moral judgments on how people should behave or
what they should have done, and so on and so forth.
There has been an impression about many of us Filipinos on our inclination to make moral
judgments on people we barely even know. Perhaps, this could also be true of people in
other countries. In general, people have this propensity to make moral judgments on other
people. In fact, it could sometimes become a pastime or a habit for some. In other words,
we may sometimes have the propensity to give our unsolicited advice on what others
should have done in order to make their lives and their actions worthy of moral emulation
and admiration. These judgments could have a wide range of application and could extend
into the indeterminable future. When we claim for
example, as a moral judgment, that no one should be allowed to punish an innocent
person, this judgment has a wide and far reaching application beyond our lifetime.

APPROACHES TO MORAL REASONING

Moral reasoning is a process of examining moral arguments. An argument is defined as the

search for a statement or a set of statements that can be made to yield a new statement
which is its conclusion. The result of the process of reasoning or inference is an argument.
Thus, a moral argument has to contain an analysis of what is considered as good or bad,
right or wrong, correct or incorrect in the moral realm. Moral reasoning is also known as
evaluative reasoning since one is trying to evaluate the soundness of the argument from the
moral point of view. For example, you may examine the argument and the strength
provided by its premises as against the conclusion being
claimed by questioning the assumption of a certain moral theory.

Deontological Ethics

Deontological ethics or deontological reasoning is an ethics based on duty. It came from the
Greek word dein, meaning duty. Deontological ethics recognizes that there are moral
principles that we follow which we consider as universally correct and should be applicable
to all of humanity. This fundamental moral principle is known as the categorical imperative
or the law of morality. This is something that we are unconditionally obliged to do, without
regard to the consequences. Moreover, this could be described as doing something from
duty or for duty's sake alone, without regard to feelings, emotions, or inclinations. When
you do something that is correct, you do this without conditions attached and without
counting the effects or beneficial consequences of doing an action. Immanuel Kant was a
German philosopher from Konigsberg, who made an exhaustive elaboration of deontological
ethics in his article entitled, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Here, Kant
made distinctions and examined technical terms underlying his ethical assumptions of a
duty-based ethics. According to Kant, as human beings, we perceive the world as
phenomena. These phenomena is our reality, the knowledge of reality that our mind is
capable of interpreting and understanding. The human mind, Kant would claim, had to
impose certain structures on the content or materials coming from sense perception or
experience. The mind is, thus, endowed with two faculties, the faculty of pure reason and
the faculty of pure intuition of space and time. Pure reason provides the a priori (or prior to
experience) source of knowledge which contains the structure of our mind as human beings
providing form and order to the data or content or material coming from experience referred
to by Kant as pure intuition of space and time, which is the posteriori (from experience)
source. The merging or working together between these two faculties will pave the way for
the emergence of practical reason. It is practical reason that makes it possible for us to
have knowledge of phenomena. This includes knowledge of the objective foundation of
morality, the categorical imperative. We also realize that this act of doing something even if
we do not want to is based on duty. We are duty-bound to follow them even if we are not
inclined to do them because they are correct. Thus, you, as a student, for example, would
recognize that you have the duty to study, even if you do not want to. Your recognition of
duty is based on the objective principle of the practical law. From this recognition from
duty, we could now trace the subjective principle of your willingness to do it, or the maxim
of your action. You would realize that as a student, your act of studying even though you
do not want to, is in accordance with the universalizabilitv principle. What would happen to
our society if every student will not study his or her lessons? Kant would insist that you are
doing something from duty, which has moral worth as against doing something according
to duty, which has no moral worth.

Teleological Ethics

Teleology came from the root word telos, meaning end, goal, or purpose. Thus, a teleologist
believes that the end, goal, or purpose of an action must be based on its consequences. The
most common though extreme form of consequentialism is the use of the dictum, "the end
justifies the means." As against deontological ethics which looks at the nature or intrinsic
value of the act itself, teleological or consequentialist ethics aims to examine the
instrumental value of the act for the attainment of the desired consequences or purpose.
According to Dupre, "In choosing between various available courses of action,
consequentialism will merely weigh up the good and bad consequences in each case and
make their decisions on that basis." There would come a point where you would have to
choose the least evil or bad option to bring about the
greatest good. The most popular form of teleological reasoning is based on utilitarian ethics.
Utilitarianism is construed as the maximization of pleasure and the avoidance of pain in
order to promote happiness. Happiness, becomes the summum bonum or the ultimate goal
for utilitarian morality. To quote from Mill's famous dictum, "Actions are right in proportion
as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain." Thus, the concept of utility is
equated with happiness, while the concept of general happiness
comes with the notion of the see king of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
This is the Principle of Utility or the Greatest Happiness Principle. An English philosopher
and a child genius named John Stuart Mill made a very profound contribution to the
development of teleological ethics through his major article entitled Utilitarianism (1861)
where he made an important distinction from prevailing versions of utilitarian thought
during that period. The original version of utilitarianism before Mill came into the picture
was from Jeremy Bentham's assumption that pleasure is quantifiable. That is, what is good
in any situation can be demonstrated and quantified in terms of the amount of pleasure
that it could bring about. Between two pleasures, according to Bentham, the amount of
pleasure could easily be measured and demonstrated or quantified using Bentham's
hedonic calculus, in terms of intensity (the more intense it is, the better), duration (the
longer it lasts, the better), certainty (how certain its occurrence will be), propinquity (how
near at hand it is), fecundity (how likely it will be followed by other pleasures), purity (how
likely it will not be followed by pain), and extent (the number of people affected by it). Mill
made a different distinction and refused to agree with Bentham's calcUlUS. Mill proposed
that there must be a difference not just in its quantity, but what is more important to
consider is the quality of pleasure. He, therefore, distinguished between two kinds of
pleasure, intellectual or mental pleasure and bodily or physiological pleasure. He
pronounced that intellectual or mental pleasures must be superior than bodily pleasures.
Thus, he claims, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to
be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics was brought about by the discontentment with both deontological and
teleological approaches. Virtue ethics is aimed at providing an alternative way of analyzing
ethics and morality as its subject matter beyond those provided by deontological approach
or teleological approach. The two previous approaches on moral reasoning provide
normative analysis on the basis of the nature of the action, that is, by looking at its
consequence (teleological) or by looking at the nature of the act itself (deontological) if it
could be considered universalizable. In contrast, virtue ethics looks at the character that a
person should possess for him or her to be considered 'dirtuous. This would help a person
analyze himself or herself through questions such as: How should I live? What kind of
person am l? What kind of person do I want to become? What virtues could I emulate or
practice in order to become that kind of person? Virtue ethics has three types.

 Eudaimonist — Aristotle, in his book Nicomachean Ethics, made a more systematic

analysis by elaborating on the nature of virtue (aréte, or excellence) as a condition for
achieving happiness or eudaemonia as the only self-sufficient and final end that
every rational being must strive for in order to fulfill his telos or purpose. Thus, each
individual has his own entelecheia or having one's own purpose, perfection or
potential from within, wherein he compared it to an acorn having the potential of
becoming a full grown tree. Aristotle believed that each one of us possess his or her
own telos or purpose and potential of becoming virtuous. Here, he defined virtue or
arate in Greek as "a settled disposition of the mind as regards to the choice of actions
and emotions consisting in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being
determined byprinciple." He has made a profound analysis of how it is to live a life of
virtue by observing both moral and intellectual virtue. This can be done through the
observance of the golden mean or midpoint between the two vices of excess and
 deficiency, which is relative to every individual. In other words, the intellectual virtue
will tell you what to do while the moral virtue will tell you how to do it, in observing
your mean. He further states that this is an activity that requires a complete lifetime
to fulfill because every day of your life, you should be observing the mean for your
feelings and actions. "...to feel these feelings at the right time, on the right occasion,
towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the
best amount of them, which is the mean amount.' Furthermore, Aristotle gave some
examples of virtues that we should always uphold: between cowardice and
foolhardiness is the mean of courage, between illiberality and prodigality is liberality,
between vanity and excessive humility is pride, while temperance is the mean for
profligacy in the context of pleasures. This eudaemonist ethics could be summarized
with a quote from Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not
an act, but a habit."

 Agent-Based — In contrast, an agent-based ethics has to do with the kind of virtue

exemplified by those we consider as role models or exemplars of character which we
would like to emulate and become. This is where we look upon persons who are
moral exemplars and who we perceive as possessing the character that a good person
must have. This is so that their actions would serve as our guide should we be faced
with a certain moral situation that demands us to act 'dirtuously or to act as a good
person would. In other words, he or she becomes a moral exemplar because he or she
is the ideal person to handle that certain situation smoothly or in a way that yields
positive results. For example, there are traits that we admire and would like to
become, like being kind, benevolent, and compassionate. Perhaps for Catholics, Pope
Francis, Saint John Paul Il, or Mother Teresa would be among the personalities they
may find worth emulating.

 Ethics of Care — The ethics of care, on the other hand, would like to consider not
only the dominant male-oriented virtues such as justice, courage, or temperance but
also feminine virtues like nurturing and caring. This is the feminine side of the
human character feminist philosophers have emphasized that we take seriously and
without our male-dominated bias. The nurturing and caring character of a person
allows him or her to look at virtue at a different angle from the usual analysis of how
it is to become virtuous. The ethics of care puts forward the idea that feminine
characteristics such as taking care of others, patience, self-sacrifice, and the like are
worth emulating. For example, consider your mother or your grandmother who were
closest to you when you were growing up. They may serve as a good example of this
caring and nurturing individual who would selflessly and unconditionally love and
provide you with comfort and care until you become a self-sufficient and independent
person. They will be there to support you, keep you from harm's way, and equip you
with the much-needed life skills that you will need in order to survive. To date, ethics
of care has been expanded to apply to health care, animals, bioethics, environment,
and public policy as it applies to a variety of caregiving endeavors.
A WAY AT LOOK THINGS
Descartes

The dualism of Descartes created a lot of difficulties in

philosophy. The distinction— and eventually the
separation—of the mind and the body resulted to the
formation of an internal and an external world.
Descartes' desire to rid himself of all errors and
establish something which he cannot doubt made him
consider everything that is delivered by his senses as
false. Thus, everything that his senses perceive—the
mountains, trees, skies, heavenly bodies, and even his
own body—must be regarded as not real. This led him
to his conclusion that the only thing certain is that he is existing because he is thinking: "l
think, therefore, I am." As the thinking thing established its existence, the question
concerning its outside world becomes more pronounced. The thinking thing has trapped
itself into its inner world that it appears hopeless for it to recover the reality of its outside
world. How can the thinking thing establish that the world is real if the senses are the only
way by which he can relate to it? Descartes eventually settled for an argument that will
prove the existence of a good God who will not allow His creatures to be deceived. And since
a good God, whose nature will be contradicted if He practices deception, exists then
Descartes becomes confident that what he perceives as his external world is also real.
Moreover, the difficulty given by the possibility of merely dreaming while perceiving
something may easily be resolved by looking at the continuity of experiences. Descartes
argued that there is no temporal continuity of experience in dreams (e.g., I am in the
classroom talking to my classmates about our final exams, and suddenly I find myself in
the middle of the forest running away from snakes) while there is temporal continuity in my
waking state. Thus, we are capable of determining whether what we are experiencing is real
or just a dream simply by observing the continuity of our experiences. With these
arguments, Descartes was able to recover his external world, which he initially regarded as
false due to the frailty
of his senses. Whether Descartes had successfully argued for proving the existence of an
external world outside the thinking l, or not, will be insignificant at this point because his
dualistic consideration of the human person—primarily the separation of the I from its
body—has already engendered a new problem. It is no longer just the relation of the body
and the soul which is problematized, because the relationship between the I and its world
has become more prominent. The problem now is how the thinking I is related to its world.
How does the subject relate to its objective world? And
more importantly for our purposes, "How does a thinking I relate to other thinking I's? It is
one thing to claim that the things I perceive are actually existing outside my mind. It is
another thing however to claim that what I perceive is not only an object, but a conscious
being like me—another subject. If I am conscious that I am existing and the world outside
me is also existing, can I simply conclude that other persons are conscious as well? Do
other people possess the same kind of awareness and consciousness that I now experience?
I see the bodily expressions of other people, but can I be certain that these bodies with
expressions also possess consciousness? And if so, how can I prove this? This problem is
known as the problem of other minds. This
problem asks whether what we encounter are actual conscious subjects and not just bodies
or automatons. What if you are actually alone in the world and everyone around you is just
a puppet of a great puppeteer? Have you not considered this situation? For some
philosophers, the question whether there are other minds is a significant question because
the answer to this question will have grave consequences on the different aspects of our
lives: how we establish truths; how we set ethical guidelines; how we arrive at a set of
practices, beliefs, standards, values, and ideals that we call culture; and many more.

Husserl

The German philosopher Edmund Husserl was influenced by the Cartesian dualism in the
formulation of his own philosophical method known as phenomenology. Phenomenology
comes from two Greek words pha,'nömenon and /ögos which mean that which appears and
study respectively. Thus, literally phenomenology means a study of that which appears.
Husserl wanted an approach to the world that will focus simply on that which appears
because the philosophical approaches during his time were going beyond that which
appears. Even when we look at our own approach to reality, we will realize that we
generally go beyond that which appears to our consciousness because this is apparently
our natural attitude. It means that the way we treat our experiences will generally involve
presuppositions. For example, when we walk down a street and see the fronts of houses—
the gates, windows, roofs, and others—we assume that what we see are actual houses, with
rooms and perhaps some furniture inside. It would rarely occur to us that what appears to
us as the fronts of houses are just as they appear to us, that is, as fronts of houses—as in
the case of a street set up for a movie. Thus, what happens is that we already add
something to our experiences and we move beyond the things as they appear to us. Husserl
claims that even if we consider our experiences as an illusion and that those experiences do
not refer to any reality outside our own consciousness, the truth still remains that we are
experiencing something in our consciousness; the doubting of Descartes cannot change
anything in this conscious experience. Say for example that I
am now seeing a burning car in the street. Since I cannot be sure whether this is real, an
illusion, or a dream, I doubt whether such reality is existing outside my mind. This
doubting will not make any changes to my conscious experience of a burning car. And even
if I eventually realize that it was just a dream, it still remains that I had a conscious
experience of a burning car. If we continue to experience a world of objects even if we are
not sure if those objects actually correspond to a reality outside us, then Husserl claimed
that the world is nothing but the world of our conscious experience. We cannot really know
if there is a world beyond our conscious experience—and if there is such a world, then we
can never know what that world is like. Moreover, Husserl added that if this is the case
then we have to realize that our consciousness cannot be empty. It is the nature of
consciousness to be conscious of something. In more technical terms, Husserl asserts that
consciousness is intentional.

Solipsism

Husserl's transcendental idealism creates a difficulty which is known as solipsism.

Solipsism is from the Latin solus, which means alone and ipse, which means self. Thus it is
a philosophical perspective that considers the self alone as the only thing certain, and the
only basis of reality. Solipsism has different forms in the history of philosophy. For our
purposes, we consider the resulting solipsism of Husserl's transcendental idealism as the
reduction of experience and consciousness to the consciousness of the transcendental ego;
or simply put, to my experience, my consciousness. Consequently, everything is reduced to
one's own experiences. This leads to the problem not only of reducing the objects of
experiences to my experiences of the objects, but more importantly of reducing other
conscious subjects to my consciousness of them. Husserl was aware of the possible
solipsistic criticism to his transcendental philosophy and attempted to provide an argument
that will free him of this charge, especially that of reducing other conscious subjects to the
transcendental ego's perception of them. This is where the discussion of intersubjectivity
comes in. Husserl argued that his phenomenology does not reduce the other as mere
reductions of the transcendental ego's perception and that intersubjective relations are very
important as exhibited on three levels: ethical, epistemological, and social. Solipsism is not
a tenable position as we deal with others in the realm of ethics. If I consider other subjects
as mere ideas I have of them, then there is no point of establishing an ethical agreement
with other people—because strictly speaking, there is no one to make this agreement with if
everything is reduced to my perception of them. From experience, we recognize that when
we do things that offend and harm others, we encounter oppositions. When, for example, I
make fun of a classmate because I perceive that classmate as someone to be ridiculed—I
am reprimanded. This means that I cannot and I can never reduce others to my perception
of them. In the same manner, I would not like to be reduced to someone else's perception of
myself. I eventually realize that others are also independent conscious subjects like me
whom I need to consider whenever I make decisions for my actions.

Self-Consciousness

Self-consciousness can never be achieved in isolation; rather, it is a product of our

interaction with our world. This is one of the main claims made by the German philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel explains that we achieve self- consciousness on
different levels as we encounter the many things present in our world. A child, for example,
can be attracted to the spinning blade of a fan. The child's consciousness is directed to the
fan, and if he touches its blade he will experience pain; and his consciousness is no longer
directed to the fan but to himself—his pain. Or consider this: when you are playing a game
in your computer, you become absorbed into your experience of the computer game that
your consciousness is not about yourself but just about the game. Then suddenly you feel
hungry, and this brings you back to the consciousness of yourself.
These are examples by which being conscious about ourselves is shown by a movement of
directing our consciousness to an object and then directing the
consciousness back to the self. Hegel claims that there are also many instances when we
are so absorbed with our experience of the objects in our world that we never recover our
consciousness from its being absorbed into other things, thus failing to achieve self-
consciousness. Hegel further claims that it is through an experience of lack that we partly
become aware of ourselves: the lack of food in the subject of our computer game example,
and the lack of comfort in the subject of our fan example. It is through the experience of
lack that we desire something; this desire brings our consciousness back to ourselves.
However, the experience of lack and the experience of desire is also shared by animals.
Hegel claims that the achievement of full self-consciousness can never be explained by the
desire for just anything because all animals desire, but not all of them achieve self-
consciousness. Human beings are the only ones capable of attaining full self-
consciousness. This can be achieved not just by any kind of desire, but by a desire that is
uniquely human—the desire to be desired. The desire to be desired is the human desire to
be recognized as conscious subjects, that is, as a person and not as a mere object. To
attain full self-consciousness, one must be recognized as a conscious subject —a person. It
is here that we see the importance of other persons in achieving self- consciousness. The
self-consciousness brought about by relating to an object, like a fan, or a game, is not
enough for achieving full self-consciousness. For Hegel, it is only through being recognized
by other self-conscious subjects that we can attain full self- consciousness. Self-
consciousness, therefore, is a product of intersubjective relations that involves mutual
recognition among the conscious subjects. It is from being recognized as a person by other
persons that we establish our consciousness of who we are: of our worth, dignity, self-
esteem, pride, and self-respect.
However, Hegel claims that recognition from other consciousness is not readily given. One
must struggle for self-recognition. And it is in this struggle that one fights for his life
and/or freedom. The desire to be recognized is so powerful that one is prepared to put one's
life and freedom at stake. At this point, Hegel looks at the relationship between the two
sides of the struggle for self-recognition: the prevailing side, which is represented by the
master and the submitting side, which is represented by the slave.

Master and Slave

One of the oldest relationships that exist in the history of humanity is that of a master and
of a slave. From the ancient times to the present age, we see people dominating other
people in different forms. Some forms of slavery in different periods and places are accepted
and protected by the laws of society, while other forms of slavery in different periods and
places are considered illegal and unacceptable. Slavery is considered acceptable by many
societies due to the recognition that people have the right to possess private property; a
slave is considered a property that can be owned, sold, transferred, and disposed. Slaves
then are just like any property which can be used by their owners, their masters. Hence, a
slave is not considered a citizen of a state, for citizenship entails freedom and rights which
only the masters enjoy. It is in the citizenship of a state that one is recognized as an
autonomous individual and it becomes the concrete manifestation of recognition as self-
consciousness. Moreover, the slaves must subject themselves to the will of the master, and
the master having won the battle for self-recognition, wills that he be freed from labor. The
slave, then, must perform the labor that would have been done by the master. It is the
slave who will prepare the food of the master, who will till the soil, who will transform
nature into products that his master shall enjoy. Hegel argues that these apparent
supremacy of the master over the slave prove to be deficient as we take into account two
important aspects in their relationship: equality and work.

 Equality — we may initially see the suffering of the slave as a clear manifestation of
the better position of the master. But, it is not only the slave who suffers in the
master- slave relationship. The master is also suffering from a lack of recognition in
his relationship with the slave. For the slave is not even a citizen of the state who
enjoys freedom and rights, the master is not receiving recognition from an equal.
Hegel claims that true recognition can only come from another self-conscious subject
—an equal consciousness. The master had initially exerted efforts to win the battle
for recognition and made the slave submit to his will, only to end up not being truly
recognized. He wanted to be a master and engaged into a fight for self-recognition
with another self- consciousness. But at the end of the fight, the other consciousness
is turned into a slave and stripped off of its independence and the right to be an
equal. The master's desire for recognition made him consider the consciousness of
another simply as a means to attain his self-consciousness. The master then suffers
from the whole process because winning the battle for self-recognition, he ended up
not being truly recognized.
  Work — aside from the inequality that prevents the master from receiving true
recognition—and therefore full self-consciousness—the master also suffers another
form of absence of self-recognition as he distances himself from work. The slave
performs the work for the master, and the master fails to experience the
transformative effect of work. The slave then, is a master over nature even if he is a
slave to his human master. However, the master remains a master only to his slave
and not to nature. He becomes dependent upon the slave and his body becomes
detached from nature. In the absence of the slave, the master becomes lost when
confronted with nature. He is not used to work. He does not know how to use his
body in transforming the materials of nature. He is then, not truly free. Moreover, the
products of our work become the manifestation of our self-consciousness—of who we
are. (Think of paintings, for example, of the artists who take pride in the products of
their labor for it represents their spirit, that is, of who they are as individual artists.)
Thus, the product of labor serves as a mirror from which self-recognition may be
attained. But the master does not have any product from which he can achieve self-
recognition. Once again, the master who seems to have won recognition by
subordinating the slave, finds himself lacking recognition as a result of evading work.

TRUE RECOGNITION — AGAINST DOMINATION AND POSSESSION

We now have an idea of Hegel's notion of self-recognition as coming from our

intersubjective relationship with others. We eventually gain an understanding of who we
are as persons as we relate with others, treated as persons and not as mere means or
objects. Hegel influenced many thinkers after him to consider different types of
relationships that still bear the character of the master-slave relationship. We shall then
consider newer versions of this relationship that are more subtle and therefore more
difficult to identify. We will do this by looking at the essential characteristics that exist
between a master and a slave: the desire to be recognized achieved through domination and
subjugation. The master has the character of being dominant in the relationship as it
expresses its power, control, and supremacy over the slave. Because of this domination, the
master feels superior because he has freedom to do whatever he wants to the slave. The
slave on the other hand is characterized by subjugation. The slave is under the control of
the master and there is the absence of freedom due to the chains that his master tied to
him. In considering the newer forms of master-slave relationships, we shall look for
domination, subjugation, freedom, and the restriction of freedom in relationships.

 Relationships of Domination — a relationship characterized by domination may be

found in the different areas of our society. It can be within the family, communities,
educational institutions, church, workplace, and practically everywhere.
Relationships of domination, just like that of the master and a slave, may have an
appearance that the one dominating is the one enjoying power and freedom over the
dominated. But, we must look at this relationship closely to reveal the real condition
in a relationship of domination. Let us provide the concrete example of bullying.
Bullying is a relationship of domination and may be expressed in different forms
such as intimidation, harassment, discrimination, mistreatment, persecution,
oppression, and many more. The bully seeks self-recognition and thinks that he can
achieve it by means of dominating others. He terrorizes others so that he wins the
battle for recognition and gain the upper hand of a relationship. Every time the bully
encounters the bullied, he has the feeling of superiority because he can intimidate
and oppress the other just as the master can oppress his slave. The bully can do this
because he is stronger and more powerful. The power of the bully is not limited to
physical power. Strength and power may come in the form of wealth, social rank,
sociopolitical affiliation, good looks, and many more. Thus, in a basketball game for
example, the physically stronger player can harass the physically weaker player. In
government offices, for instance, a higher ranking official can intimidate a lower
ranking official. In schools, for example, the more good looking students can
discriminate against the less attractive students. We, then, see that the bully's
domination springs from some form of strength and power. However, just like the
master-slave relationship in Hegel, the bully does not gain true and full recognition
because the bully has reduced the bullied into the rank of a slave—that is, someone
 who is not his equal. That is why most of the bullied silently wish that the bully will
find his match—his katapat, an equal. The recognition that the bully gets does not
come from an equal and it is not really acquired, but forced. And so the bullied does
not really recognize the bully as a person, but simply as an oppressive power.
Bullying is just one form of relationship based on domination. There are still more
forms of this type of relationship which are guised in many forms, such as the
relationships of student- teacher, parent-children, of siblings, of lovers, of
classmates, of friends, and many other forms. We may have different names for
different relationships. But as long as one party uses domination to achieve self-
recognition, the relationship ends up being a master-slave relationship.

 Relationships of Possession — the relationship of possession is a specific kind of

relationship of domination. Just like the relationship of domination, this relationship
is also present in many different forms and in many different areas in our society.
The essential element of this relationship is in the possession of another. Remember
that the original sense of being a slave is based on the idea of a property of the
master. Thus, modern forms of the master-slave relationship can be found in any
type of relationships where we find one party treating the other party as a property
possessed. The master once again uses his strength to either possess someone or
keep his possessions. Consider these examples of modern master slave relationship
in the form of possession: a rich man ordering his bride online, an employer rejecting
the resignation of an outstanding employee using blackmail, a boyfriend forbidding
his girlfriend to have conversations with the male species (with the exception of her
immediate family members), parents preventing their children to have conversations
with other children of different social status, a coach prohibiting his players to have
interactions with players from other teams. The one who possesses once again may
think that he gets an upper hand in their relationship and that he gets recognition
from their possessions. But just like any relationships based on domination, the
other, from which recognition is forced, is reduced into a status of an unequal thus
rendering pseudo-recognition. The relationship of possession then falls into the
paradoxical character of a relationship of domination where the master who desires
to be recognized ends up not being recognized.

 Mediated Recognition — we can enumerate a lot of desires that do not involve the
desire to be desired. Some of our desires are simply desire for things and not for
recognition, just like our desire for food, comfort, and other desires that we share
with other animals. However, some desires may initially appear to be desires for
objects and not for being desired by other persons; but on closer inspection, a reveal
that the desire for some objects is ultimately a desire to be desired. There are quite a
number of instances where the desire for objects are considered redirected desires to
be recognized. The desire for recognition may not necessarily be directed immediately
to another person, but mediated by objects—thus, a mediated recognition. The desire
to obtain objects and symbols are beyond animal desires and it is peculiarly human:
the desire to acquire the flag of the opponent during war, the desire for gold in a
sporting event or in school, the desire to get a big house, the desire to own a car, the
desire to obtain a smartphone, the desire to obtain a star (for general) in the military
service, the desire for a bigger office, and others. All of these are desires for objects
and symbols that mediate the desire to be desired. For sure, it is not the gold medal
itself for example that we desire, but the recognition that we get from getting the gold
medal. Thus, what we really desire are objects that will make us desirable to others.
What makes the mediated desire for objects more interesting is how the symbols and
objects are weaved together, creating a more powerful device to superficially impose
recognition. When people then desire objects, it is not simply the objects that they
desire, but the objects with the best symbols—resulting to double mediation. We are
then invited to reflect if our desire for certain things is the desire for what the things
will immediately bring (like comfort and warmth for clothing, mode of transportation
for a car, mode of communication for a phone, and others) or is it simply a desire to
mediate our desire to be recognized?

RECOGNIZING OTHERS
Relating to Others

The idea of a self is a product of our relationship with others. Prior to the notion of the self,
the other comes first. The direction of our consciousness is always primarily outward, i.e.
directed towards others, and there are only very few moments when our consciousness is
directed to ourselves. We are then aware of others first before being aware of ourselves.
How we relate to others is a topic which is of great interest to the Jewish philosopher
Martin Buber. Buber claims that the I can only realize itself in the face of the other.
Without the encounter with another, the I will not be aware of its uniqueness. Thus, to say
I is already to acknowledge the other. However, there are several ways by which we relate to
others. When Buber speaks of the I realizing his uniqueness through the other, he is not
referring to our simple meeting with others. We have different modes of relating to others
and not every mode will allow us to discover the I in its uniqueness. There are several ways
by which the I may relate itself to others, but let us look at three different means by which
an I usually relates itself to others. These categories are by no means exhaustive, but this
is enough to give us a picture of how people generally interact with others. First, there is
the I-I type of relationship. There are people whose worlds revolve around their own selves.
They have no real interest in other people and things. They have material possessions and
are involved in social activities, but they are never really committed to these things. They
may talk to other people but they never develop interest in them. They cannot simply find
anything
appealing in others. And if ever they talk to other people, it is always them—their own I's,
who are the protagonists of the story. They do not really listen to what others are saying.
They already have fixed ideas and they only enter into conversations either to let others
know how good they are, or to convince others that their ideas are better and must
therefore be adopted. The aim is for the other to be transformed into his likeness —the
reduction of the other to an l. Thus, we may call this relation as I-I relationship. Second,
there is the I-It type of relationship. There are people who develop interest in others. They
will never attempt to reduce the other into their own likeness—into another l. In some
instances, they are more concerned about the other than themselves. However, the
treatment to the other is reduced into the status of an object —an lt. There are many
different existing relationships which reduce the other into the status of an object, and
perhaps this type of relationship is the most prevalent type in our society. The I who relates
to an It is not necessarily an evil person in the sense that he has bad intentions in treating
the other. Think for example of scholars, who study indigenous tribes. They are very prone
to reducing the other into mere It, i.e. as mere objects of investigation. This is also true in
the medical field when medical practitioners look at their patients as objects of
investigation. Again, these people do not really have bad intentions. They may actually have
good intentions most of the times when they treat others (as objects). Perhaps it is just
simpler and easier if they treat others as objects. However, there are also I-It relations
where the I clearly has bad intent on the other, treating the other as mere It; examples of
which are abundant when we look at how many oppressive employers treat their employees
like machines or robots who are immune to physical, verbal, psychological, and emotional
abuse; or any relationship which has one party reducing the other to a status of an object—
a bully who treats a disabled person as an object of his amusement, a liquor company
using sexy women in their advertisement to improve sales, partners treating each other as
objects and means to satisfy their desires in so-called "friends with benefits" type of
relationships, and many other similar reductions of the other into an lt. Lastly, there is the
I-Thou type of relationships. There are people who treat other people genuinely as persons.
They do not and will not reduce the other into either their own self or into the status of an
object. It is in this type of relationship that the other is treated as distinctly other. The I
treats the person as a Thou—as another person who
is different from the l; one who may possess a different set of interests, visions, beliefs,
value system, and characteristics. This is the type of relationship which Buber considers as
that which allows us to discover the l. However, this relationship is quite difficult because it
entails effort. The treatment of the other as another requires more from the l. The I has to
take a stance of openness and sincerity. There is a need for patience, understanding,
humility, compassion, and a lot more; these may become tedious on the part of the l. That
is why the I-Thou type of relationship is a special relationship which we can never apply to
everyone we encounter. It is in this kind of human relations that genuine sharing of one
another takes place. The foundation of this relationship is a genuine form of conversation:
a dialogue.

Discussion

Talking to other persons does not immediately qualify as a dialogue. In fact, in many
conversations among people, what really transpire are mere monologues. Consider the I-I
type of relationship. From the categories involved, it obviously cannot be classified as a
dialogue. The I-I relation is basically a speech. It does not require another for it to proceed.
The I never really hears what the other is saving because it never wants to listen. For the l,
the words of the other are simply sounds that they hear, which are devoid of content,
meaning, and value. They only want to hear themselves talk and they want others to see
the world in their own perspective. Thus, what results is a monologue. The I-It relationship
does not also bear the character of a dialogue. The I treats the other as an object and
therefore sets himself in a distance from the lt. Unlike the I-I relationship, the I-It
relationship is open to listening. The I listens to the other, but precisely as an It, an object
that needs to be addressed and understood as a thing and not as a person. Our example of
a scholar studying an indigenous tribe for instance is prepared to listen to the tribesmen.
However, the listening is simply part of trying to understand the object of study, which is
similar to the case of the medical practitioner listening to the history and complaints of the
patient. However, some I-It relations totally negate the voice of the other, just like the case
of abusive employers. The I in
this I-It relations is the only legitimate voice, and the other is literally reduced into a thing
which cannot speak. The variations of the I-It relationships ultimately fail to have a
dialogical relationship. For Buber, it is only through the I-Thou relationships that dialogues
take place. In a dialogue, the I recognizes the other as a distinct person—as Thou. It does
not reduce the other to the status of an I or lt. Accepting the otherness of the other allows
us to enter into a dialogue—into an exchange. Because the other presents itself as a free
individual with its own independent consciousness, we await for it to reveal itself. We do
not control and manipulate the revelation of the other, just as what happens in I-It
relationships. And to achieve this, we enter into a dialogue. When Buber speaks about a
dialogue, he stresses the importance of silence, of listening, of sensitivity. A dialogue does
not always have to be an exchange of words. Dialogical relations are expressed in ways
more than the use of words: the exchange of glances, the appropriate pauses, the stroking
of hair, the powerful silence, and others. In some cases, the nonverbal dialogical relations
are not only the more appropriate means of conversation, but also the more profound form
of conversation. In the I-Thou relationship, the other is not considered according to our
thoughts. We do not experience the other as abstracted, but as a concrete embodied
subject. But, this experience of the embodied subject of the other is not just some physical
presence. Being with others in an elevator, for instance, does not fall under I-Thou
relationship. My encounter with the other in the I-Thou relationship is personal and I
experience the other's presence as a communion. So, the main difference between the I-It
and the I Thou relationship is based on this experience of communion with the other. The I-
It relationship constitute the other as an object to be experienced, while the I-Thou
relationship constitute the other as a subject who is in communion with us. The difference
does not really rest on the idea that I-It is concerned with objects and the l- Thou is
concerned with persons. For Buber, the I-Thou relationship is the experience of being in
communion with the other through dialogue; and here, the other may not necessarily be a
human being. It could be your dog, or a tree, or God. Having said this, we have to realize
that the I-Thou relationship is a privileged type of relationship. We cannot consider every
person we encounter to be related to us in an I-Thou manner. This relationship requires
effort and the aim is never to transform the other into something we want them to be, but
to preserve the otherness of the other and accept them as they are. Having a dialogical
relationship with someone does not mean that we have to accept everything that the other
claims, or vice-versa. There will always be disagreements and there will be differences of
perspectives and judgments. However, the point is to understand the other and
understanding is not equivalent to agreement. Genuine conversation requires genuine
listening. The I must necessarily listen and hear what the other is saying and must really
be open to the difference of the other. Only then can we have a true I-Thou relationship
with someone. Buber claims that he is not demanding that everyone must have a dialogical
relationship with everyone. That would be impossible. He claims not that we are to consider
others as Thou; but that we are able to consider others as Thou. Thus, the I-Thou
relationship is a question of who is willing to give themselves, and who are not; for the I-
Thou relation is truly a giving of the self, opening up to the other, and letting the Thou be
immersed with the l.

Empathy

Recognizing the other as another is something that many thinkers support for it is an
indication that we acknowledge the distinction of the other as another consciousness. This
implies that there will be no attempts to reduce the other into an l, or into an lt. However,
there is an experience of the other which directs us not to our otherness but to our
similarities to the other. This is the experience of empathy. In addressing the problem of
other minds, Edmund Husserl applied his phenomenological method to his encounter with
others. Upon reduction, he concludes that we do have access to the consciousness of the
other through our own consciousness. We see other beings like us and they have bodily
expressions and dispositions just like ours; thus, we can imagine what the other is
experiencing if we put ourselves into their own place. The consciousness then of the other
is imaginatively transferred into our own consciousness. We have to be careful though not
to interpret this as a reduction of the other to an l. In empathy, we still recognize the other
as another, but we try to understand the other by assuming that we are partly the same as
we share similar bodily responses to particular experiences. The imaginative transfer of a
subject's consciousness is available for any conscious subject, making empathy an
intersubjective experience. Consequently, the objectivity of experience is based on its
intersubjective nature, i.e., the availability of an experience to every conscious subject. Let
us give examples that will clarify this. For instance, we were able to watch a documentary
about the lives of survivors after a calamity. We have seen and heard the heartbreaking
story of the subjects in the documentary. Through their bodily movements, facial
expressions, tone of voice, and words, we are able to imagine being in their situation, and
we somehow feel what they are feeling. The grief of a child losing his parents brought us
fear, anxiety, sadness, and eventually the grief itself of the victim as we imagine losing our
own parents in a tragic manner. And this grief of the child, which I now feel, is also
available to any conscious subject who encounters it. The imaginative transferring of
consciousness does not only pertain to highly emotional states like what is presented in our
example. Our ability to imagine one's situation by putting ourselves into the shoes of
someone can be almost about anything. It could be as simple as feeling the fatigue of a
sweating traffic enforcer standing in the middle of an intersection or recognizing the
boredom of a child waiting for his mother to finish shopping for a dress. It may be objected
that we can never truly feel or even understand what the person is really going through by
simply imaginatively transferring the situation into our own consciousness; this is most
probably true. However, empathy proves a point that the consciousness of the other is not
totally sealed off to us. Empathy allows us to recognize the other and recognize what the
other might have been going through. The practice of imaginatively transferring the
conscious states of another to our consciousness may not always be accurate for we are
limited in this imaginative process. However, it can also be a very Useful device in making
decisions, especially if we are to execute actions that will involve other subjects. Imagining
ourselves in the position of the other persons receiving our act before acting out can make
a big difference in our relationship with others. If, for example, I am planning a prank on a
new student because I think it is funny having a hearing impairment at a young age; the
imaginative transfer of one's situation can help us a lot in the assessment of the value of
our actions. I shall ask myself: what will I feel if my hearing is impaired? How will I feel if
someone designed a prank on me that highlights my disability? Placing oneself into the
situation of another before an act helps us to be moral because it subjects us to the golden
rule principle— "Treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." This simple exercise
of imaginative transfer before an act can make a very big difference in how we treat others
and eventually in how we establish relationship with others.

Responsibility

Empathy allows us to experience what another consciousness is experiencing. This allows

us to recognize the existence of the other together with her conscious states. However, as
we encounter the other face-to-face, we do not feel at ease with simply knowing and feeling
what the other person is experiencing. We are driven to act and do something for the other.
We feel that we are responsible for the other. This is the claim of the French philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas argues that the face of the other compels us to respond to its
needs. When Levinas talks about the face, he does not refer to the simple perception of the
face. When we look at the face of the other, we
see its vulnerability, we see it exposed, and we recognize what it needs; the face
speaks to us and it obliges us to answer its call. We have this experience not because we
can imaginatively transfer the consciousness of the other into our consciousness— which is
what empathy does. We are being called to be responsible in the face of the other because
we substitute ourselves for the other. Substitution is not just another word which Levinas
used to describe the act of putting ourselves in the place of others. Substitution does more
than that: it is to bear the weight of what the other is experiencing and finding comfort in
addressing the weaknesses and difficulties of the other. The main distinction then of
empathy from the substitution of Levinas is this:
Empathy starts from the l, places the I into the situation of the other, goes back to the I to
imaginatively transfer the other, then understands what the other is experiencing. So the
movement of empathy is from the l, to the other, then back to the l. Substitution on the
other hand adds another element in this movement: it does not stop in the l. The I will go
back to the other to address its needs, and there is no longer a movement back to the l.
This means that when we respond to the call of the face, we respond without expecting
anything in return from the other or from anyone. Our responsibility is simply for the other,
and if the other does not respond to us, then that is no longer our responsibility.
Reciprocity is not our responsibility. We do not require the other to reciprocate when we
act. We are responsible to the other even if we do not know the other personally; like the
beggar outside the church, the child reaching for a bag of chips in the grocery, the old
woman crossing the street, the teacher carrying a lot of classroom materials. We provide
help and assistance to the other not because of moral laws and commands that were given
to us by our parents or church, or the moral rules that we studied and memorized in our
school. Levinas claims that the source of our responsibility to the other is not based on
moral rules, but simply on the encounter with the face of the other; and we cannot not
respond to the face. Levinas always quotes Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazovto stress our
responsibility to others: "We are all responsible for everyone else — but I am more
responsible than all the others."
The Social Nature of the Human Person
One of the most often quoted lines of Aristotle refers to his idea of the social or political
nature of human beings, when he declared in the first book of his Politics that: "Man by
nature is a political animal." By this statement, he means that human beings are naturally
directed into forming groups primarily because of their basic needs for subsistence. People
initially establish groups to help one another survive by providing food and shelter, and by
protecting themselves from predators and other dangers. It is within the context of the
society that one is able to receive and achieve the actualization of human potentials.
Society allows individual members to flourish and live a good life not only by helping them
acquire certain goods and services, but also by giving them the appropriate venue to
practice their goodness and satisfy other needs beyond the physical. These will include our
need and want to establish knowledge, to communicate with others, to be recognized, to
have friends, to love someone, and others. The society also allows human persons to be
moral and practice human virtue; for how can someone practice humility, courage,
generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and justice if one is living alone? The human person
as an embodied subject is born in a preexisting social condition. Thus, one's being-in-the-
world consists in having a social background. This will include one's familial, economic,
political, and religious background, one's culture (and subcultures), one's language, one's
temporal situation (or era/period), one's geographical location, and others. All the things
which are present during the birth of the human person shall be part of the person's social
context. Being part of a society, the human person is inevitably shaped and influenced by
his social conditions. Thus, when one claims that human persons are by nature social, it is
not limited to the idea that we naturally tend to form groups to survive, thrive, and live a
good life. The social nature of the human person also means that who we are cannot be
detached from our social conditions. Our society influences the definition of who we are
and how we relate to other human persons. Consequently, if we look at the different types
of societies in the history of humanity, we also see different kinds of people, with different
aims and goals, with different lifestyles, with different perceptions and understandings of
the world, and with different ways of relating themselves to other human persons. As we
look at the different types of societies in the chronology of human societies, we shall see
how social contexts shape people's consciousness and how it prescribes the type of
relations they will have in relation to their fellow human persons. The different types of
societies are a result of the continuous evolution of man brought about by several factors,
but more evidently, of information and technology.

Preindustrial Societies
The name preindustrial societies refer to the different types of societies that existed before
the 18th century, or before the Industrial Revolution. The preindustrial societies are
characterized as having limited forms of production, with limited division of labor and
social stratification. Communication is also limited due to the restrictions imposed by
distance, and interaction is limited to the members of the same social group. The
preindustrial societies consist of the following: hunting and gathering, pastoral,
horticultural, and agrarian.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

The hunter-gatherers are the simplest type of society. It is the longest running type of
society, occupying about go percent of human history—that is approximately the period
since the beginning of human history up to about 1 2,000 years ago. As the name reveals,
this society survives by hunting and gathering their food. Men are usually the hunters,
while women are the gatherers. The hunter-gatherers do not establish permanent houses or
villages because they have to constantly move as they consume the resources of their
current environment. Consequently, this type of society consists of few members, perhaps
around 30 or less. However, in cases where the environment being occupied is bigger and
having more resources, the members may be more; but it will most probably not reach a
hundred. They are very dependent on the natural resources and features of their
environment. They usually live in caves, but they also built shelters made out of rocks,
branches, and leaves. Their clothing are from materials made of animal skin and plants.
The social structure of the hunter-gatherers is generally egalitarian, and decisions are
arrived at by consensus.

Pastoral Societies
The pastoral type of society resulted as some hunter-gatherers discovered that the animals
they have hunted could be tamed and bred. They started pasturing the animals they have
domesticated. Men are assigned to herd the larger stocks, like cattle; while women took
care of smaller stocks, like goat. Women are also responsible for food production and
processing, making handicrafts, and the milking of livestock. Pastoral societies still
constantly moue because they need to find new areas where the animals can get their food.
The pastures provided the members of the society with sufficient food supply. This enabled
the pastoral societies to have more members than the hunting and gathering type—around
50 to 200. Moreover, it has allowed the other members of the society to turn their attention
into other matters aside from securing food. There were those who were able to focus on
craftworks and produced tools, weapons, and jewelries. The production of different goods
paved the way for trading.

Horticultural Societies
Some hunting and gathering societies also discovered that there are plants which they can
cultivate and nurture. As a result, the horticultural societies were established. Although
this type of society cultivated plants, it is far from an agrarian or agricultural type primarily
because of the difference in technology and land area. The horticultural means of
cultivating plants is limited to simple tools like digging sticks or hoes in a relatively small
land area or gardens which they have to abandon after a couple of years. Men are usually
involved in clearing the land to be tilled, while women are responsible for taking care of the
fruits and vegetables—from planting to tending to harvesting. Because of the longer period
of time that the society can depend on the products of their lands, the horticultural
societies were able to establish semi-permanent to permanent houses. Horticultural
societies share many similarities with the pastoral society in terms of its development.

Agrarian Societies
The invention of new materials and methods for cultivating plants and animals gave rise to
agrarian societies. The most important innovation related to the development of agricultural
lands is the invention of the plow. The plow allowed better planting, weeding, and
harvesting. Aside from cultivating lands, people started raising farm animals. The agrarian
society has several innovations that increased the production of goods, such as the
invention of the wheel. The wheel was used for wagons and for manufacturing pottery. It
was also used in the military for carts and chariots. Another great advance of the agrarian
societies is the use of animals for different purposes. Some farm animals served as food
supply, but some served as manpower for farming. Animals were used to pull wagons and
plows, increasing power and speed of labor and production. Some animals were also used
as pack animals which became very helpful in traveling and trading. Other innovations
include the use of wind power for sailboats, the invention of writing and numerical
notation, and the invention of the calendar. The advanced agrarian societies benefited from
other technological innovations ranging from metallurgy and weaving, to marine vessels
and military equipment.

Industrial Societies
The accumulation of information and the continuing innovations and technological
development of the agrarian societies paved the way to industrial societies. There were
several factors involved that led to this transition, and perhaps we can focus on three.
First, the advancement in water transportation allowed people to discover many places and
things, and conduct trade with more people. Water transport navigation was improved with
the invention of the stern rudder and the acquisition of the compass. The creation of larger
ships also allowed people to have extended periods of travel. Second, further advancement
in agricultural techniques and practices led to more

profit-oriented agricultural practices. Some of these techniques include crop rotation and
selective breeding. Furthermore, technical information about farming were disseminated.
And third, the establishment of the printing press allowed faster and easier spreading of
information. What really separates the agrarian societies from the industrial societies is the
production and consumption of energy. The industrial society developed technologies that
harnessed new forms of energy. The agrarian society's source of energy were limited to
human and animal energy, while the industrial society's source of energy came from several
inanimate alternative sources like coal, petroleum, natural gas, and electricity. The advent
of the steam engine marked the arrival of the industrial societies. From this, other
innovations followed—the establishment of railroads, steam ships replaced sail ships, mass
production of steel, production of automobiles, and the establishment of electrical,
telephone, and petroleum industries. In the advanced stages of the industrial societies,
developments in more technical fields such as aviation, nuclear power, electronics, and
computers took place.

The consequences of all these developments have tremendous impact in the way human
beings live. The increasing mechanization in farming boosted efficiency of production and
decreased the need for human workers. People eventually moved from agricultural lands to
the cities for work and opportunity. The arrival of new machineries led the manufacturing
and production sectors to overcome the agricultural sector. Factories became the central
working place of most people. The influx of people to urban areas looking for work caused a
surplus of labor force; because of this, the owners of production and the manufacturers
were able to get laborers for a very minimal cost. Wealth and power were controlled by even
fewer people—the capitalists, while the masses belonged to the working class. The
capitalists took advantage of the abundance of available labor and became oppressive to
the working class, where people are asked to work for many hours while being paid a very
low wage. The worker were generally forced to accept their working condition because they
will easily be replaced by other workers if they refuse to agree. However, this oppression
eventually weakened in the latter part of the industrial society as labor unions were formed
and began fighting for the workers' welfare. Technology swiftly evolved in industrial
societies resulting to even more efficiency in production. This eventually led to a problem of
overproduction—a situation where there were too many goods produced with very little
demand, causing the prices of products to drop, factories to close, and consequently
workers to lose their jobs.

Postindustrial Societies
The term postindustrial society was made popular by the American sociologist Daniel Bell,
who characterized today's emerging type of society as knowledge and service- oriented. The
manufacturing sector is the protagonist of the industrial societies. However, this has
changed as the service sector started to yield more wealth and profit. The service sector is
primarily a knowledge-based sector where people provide their specialized knowledge that
aids in developing productivity, sustainability, and performance. What the service sector
provides are intangible goods which may be in a form of advice, experience, or discussion.
The service sector ranges from entertainment to education, healthcare to information
technology, and banking to telecommunications. In industrial societies, capital refers to the
machines—the means of production; but in the postindustrial society, knowledge is the
capital. The means of production is still a capital, and it is still necessary; but to really
increase one's wealth and profit, one must have possession of or access to information that
will be the source of wealth. Innovations through knowledge then is the key to success, and
not just mere production. The ideas dictate what shall be produced and manufactured.
This puts stress over the importance of education and technology. Education provides
people with the needed knowledge for the service sector, while technology greatly aids the
facilitation and the implementation of the acquired knowledge.

CREATING THE CULTURE OF CONSUMPTION

The early 20th century had created a new type of person and a new culture: the consumer
and the consumer culture, respectively. As a result of the efficiency of production brought
about by the technological advancements in the industrial age, the supply of goods far
exceeds the existing demands of the early industrial societies. Thus, a culture that
promotes consumption was eventually established. Briefly expressed, the creation of a
consumer society goes on like this: (1) The birth of print media has already aided inferior
and new products to the market but it has not vet fully induced people to consume; (2) The
coming of the Industrial Revolution drove people to towns and cities away from the agrarian
areas causing a surplus of labor. The capitalists took advantage of this surplus and
provided workers with oppressive and impoverished conditions; (B) Advertising was
formally established to encourage people to consume. These three events or stages that
created the consumer society spanned for hundreds of years.
Through the industrial age, the culture of consumption slowly creeped into the different
societies across the world. By the early 20th century, the consumer society had already
been solidified. Advertising was already present even before the invention of print media.
However, it was in the 18th century when advertising in printed form started to become
part of the social setting. Through newspapers or posters, advertisements for products
started to promote consumption. In the gradual movement to the establishment of the
consumer society, the oppression, alienation, and impoverishment of the workers in the
production period played a very significant role. Before the arrival of the worker-as-
consumer, workers generally did not have enough purchasing power. Their wage was just
enough for subsistence. For a capitalist, the ideal situation is to pay the workers the lowest
wage possible to cut the cost of production and increase profit. And the surplus of labor in
the industrial societies allowed the capitalist to pay their workers the lowest possible wage.
However, workers eventually established groups and unions that will challenge the
oppression of the capitalists. The intellectuals of the working class started to spread
awareness of the power of their labor—that without them production will be impaired. The
capitalists, on the other hand, started to realize and feel the ineffective oppressive labor
conditions brought about by low wages and long working hours. Henry Ford, the founder of
the Ford Motor Company, was one of the pioneers in providing workers with better working
conditions and wages. During the early phase of Ford's assembly line, there was an
increase in absenteeism and turnover due to the mechanical nature of work for a long
period of time. When Ford increased the wage of the workers and reduced their working
hours, labor turnover and absenteeism fell. He also started mass producing cars that were
not expensive. Consequently, production costs fell, and the final product costs were also
reduced. The technique of Henry Ford to create a way by which he can mass produce
affordable cars (or products in general) through standardization, and the establishment of
better working conditions and compensation for laborers is now known as the
manufacturing technique or system of Fordism. The increase of the worker's wage and the
reduction of the price of Ford's products gave way to the workers' capacity to purchase
their own products. This was the formalization of the consumer culture: workers were
turned into consumers. Workers are no longer forced to work for mere subsistence. They
are now motivated to work so that they can earn and enjoy the fruits of their labor. With
the purchasing power in the hands of the workers, advertising started to become aggressive
and manufacturers used mass media to further promote consumption. The practice has
now shifted from a focus in production to that of consumption. Through advertisements,
manufacturers then started putting their capital on creating a culture that induced people
to consume their products. As a result, the consumer society was established.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
The creation of the Internet has dramatically changed the ways human beings interact with
one another. The Internet collapsed the distance created by space as it allows people from
different parts of the world to communicate at the same time in the comforts of their
homes, offices, coffee shops, and practically anywhere. It has also collapsed the distance of
time as it allows people using it to access information concerning things in the past to be
available within a few seconds. The Internet has created a new society that is not based on
geography, culture, or religion; but based solely on accessibility to it. Anyone with access to
the Internet can be a part of this society—the virtual society. Members or citizens of this
society are also known as netizens or cyber citizens. The disembodied and faceless human
interaction among human persons is the first of its kind in the virtual worlds, and it has
been running for only about a quarter of a century now. Many of the human activities,
transactions, and relations have been absorbed by the Internet. And its potential to
dominate even more realms of human activities is still unpredictable. For now, let us focus
on the more popular services that the virtual society has to offer: chat rooms and message
boards, social networking, and virtual worlds.
Chat rooms and message boards allow discussions about any topic among cyber citizens.
Joining or starting a discussion is very easy and participants are from all over the world. If
someone has a question about anything, or someone needs an opinion or perspective about
a topic, the person can just start a thread and leave it to the other members for comments
and suggestions. Just like in any other group discussion, members have the option to
actually participate by posting and commenting, or they can just read and follow the
discussion. It is interesting how people who do not know one another can converse
instantly, argue and agree with one another, and laugh and curse at one another. You will
also find people who sincerely assist others by giving advice or offering information. And all
these do not really happen often in face-to-face interactions. It would be unusual for us to
walk straight to a stranger and ask for an advice. And it would also be unusual if a
stranger asks us for our opinion and we will readily offer our thoughts. In other words,
message boards and chat rooms have successfully shattered the barriers of personal space.
The anonymity and the absence of physical contact largely contribute to the openness we
find in message boards and chat rooms. Removing dangers and inhibitions that are usually
attributed to face-to face encounter allows the participants to freely express their thoughts
about certain issues and statements. The absence of dangers and inhibitions sometimes
become too much that etiquette is lost. There are many effects and implications that may
be derived out of chat rooms and message boards, but for our purposes we can limit it to
the following observations: that in this virtual society, (a) any member can participate
and has equal footing; (b) finding people with the same interests and inclinations has
become easier; (c) nonphysical interaction makes the participants more relaxed and
confident; and (d) leaving a conversation or discussion is just a matter of clicking.

Social networking is also a very popular virtual society. Many people today stay in contact
with their family and friends through social networking sites. This virtual society helps
family and friends connect with each other every day, even if they are separated by great
distances. It has also given long-time friends who have lost contact to be reconnected.
Through social networks, we are updated with what is happening
with our family and friends. We can also show them what we have been up to and how we
are doing. Unlike chat rooms and message boards, however, social networks are more
personal because contact with other people is a decision which the user makes. It is up to
the user what amount of information he or she is willing to reveal and to whom it will be
revealed. And it is up to the user to choose the participants of his or her virtual society.
Because of social networking sites, people are given the chance to achieve the following: (a)
be connected with family and friends all the time—be able to contact them, and be updated
with what is happening with them; (b) allow your virtual society to know what you are
doing, or planning to do, or what you are feeling or thinking; and (c) limit your contact only
to selected individuals. Many people are obsessed with virtual worlds. Perhaps a large
percentage of its appeal comes from its feature of giving everyone the chance to recreate
oneself in another world—the virtual or online world. Most virtual worlds are in the context
of games where one can choose an avatar, an online representation of the self. Virtual
worlds exist like parallel universes where every person lives another life simultaneously
with this life. One can do practically anything in virtual worlds: raise a family or take care
of a business, go on dates, fly an aircraft, be a marksman, lead a military assault, assess
people's health, feed animals, govern a city, and others. The effects of virtual worlds to
people are still a rich source of study. However, one thing is certain about virtual world that
most people who participate and live in it spend a lot of their waking hours there.
Virtual societies have a huge impact on the lives of people in the technological society.
Just by looking at the amount of time people spend in virtual worlds is already telling of its
massive appeal and influence. According to a research by professor Jeremy Bailenson,
founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, half a billion
people spend about 20 hours a week wearing avatars. What could be the reason why people
are so hooked into virtual realities? One possible answer from the perspective of philosophy
comes from our concept of the human person as an embodied subject. Notice that virtual
societies try to transcend the limitations imposed by the human person's embodied nature.
Having a body limits our interactions with people. It is difficult to find a society where
everyone can physically participate in a discussion about anything; and it would be difficult
as well to physically locate people with the same interest. When we talk to someone face-to-
face, we become conscious of our bodies. We think of how we look, how we dress, how we
speak, how we react, and how our bodily and facial expressions respond to the other. And
in a face-to-face encounter, exiting in a discussion when one is not interested in the other
can be very challenging. With the arrival of the virtual society, these bodily limitations are
addressed. In the virtual world, we are given the chance to recreate ourselves. We can
physically represent ourselves the way we want to be seen. In social networking sites, we
can post the photos that we think will best represent who we are. We can edit or even
dispose of photos that reveal our imperfections and weaknesses. In chat rooms and
message boards, we can choose to remain invisible and anonymous while we discuss or
argue with other people. We are free from the stress and pressure of being seen—of being
seen angry, or affected, or intimidated, or scared. These are all factors that tell us that
human face-to-face encounters are not easy undertakings. That is why most people prefer
to relate with others in virtual societies. Consequently, actual embodied human relations
are also starting to wither. This leads us to the next section that talks about the effects of
virtual societies and the other elements of the technological society: the disembodiment of
the subject.

The Disembodied Subject

The dissatisfaction and frustrations of the human person with bodily limitations drive
the person to prefer a disembodied human relation. At the outset, it has to be clarified that
the term disembodied subject does not mean that in the technological society, human
persons are no longer living with bodies. However, in a manner of speaking, people are
slowly putting aside their bodies in relating with others because the technological society
offers an alternative which apparently resolves the limitations of an embodied subject.
Face-to-face interaction is too stressful and difficult while virtual interactions are
easier. Consequently, we find many cases where people prefer communicating using the
virtual world, even if the person involved is someone seen on a regular basis. Moreover, the
disembodied interaction among people is aggravated by modern technological devices. The
different gadgets that are produced today support disembodied human relations. The scene
which the technological society creates is very familiar to us: we see a family, or friends,
gathered around a table or gathered in a room, but with very minimal (or even total
absence of) actual embodied human interaction. Everyone is glued to their own devices—
cellphones, tablets, laptops, or any device; and they are all probably interacting with their
virtual societies. One is busy with other things other than the persons within the room or
in the closest proximity. The kind of human interaction which was still present just two
decades ago, is obviously altered now. And however much we try and remind ourselves to
refrain from being alone with our devices while being with others, we always fall back into
interacting with our gadgets. We now prefer to interact with our phones, with the
unfinished game that we are playing, with the new music and movies we downloaded, or
with our friends who are probably in the same situation—that is, with other people as well,
but alone with their devices too. Interacting with actual embodied subjects, face-to-face, is
becoming more and more difficult today. It is indeed more difficult to relate to other
embodied subjects than to relate with things.
The practice of selfie is another move towards disembodied human relations. People used to
approach other people to take their photos. But the regained popularity of selfie gave people
the idea that they do not need the other to take their photos. And the invention of the
monopod aggravates the condition. The monopod allows us to take group selfies without
missing a member of our group. It has solidified the escape from asking other subjects to
do us a favor. Again, it is challenging to bother someone and ask the person to take our
photos. Maybe we will just disturb the person by asking him to take our photo. But maybe
we are more afraid of being rejected than by the idea of bothering the other. The virtual
society and the technological devices today are starting to reshape the human person and
human interactions and relationships. More and more interactions are done in the virtual
world than in the actual world. People are more thrilled to see their virtual selves than their
actual selves. They are more themselves online than offline. And this leads one to ask,
"Who am l?" in a more complex manner. People seem to start having multiple personalities
as they exhibit different behaviors in different worlds. More and more communications are
also done without face-to-face embodied interaction. People fall in love in virtual worlds.
Someone breaks up with a partner through a text message. Human relations seem to start
losing an important element in living: commitment. Virtual worlds and disembodied
relations lack commitment. We can always step back and retreat in a virtual world. We can
always create a new self when our avatars die or when it has become undesirable. We can
always ignore a message. Virtual realities remove risks; and because we do not want to
risk, we patronize the virtual world. Commitment is hard. To commit is to risk. In the
virtual world, one's anonymity lessens, if not completely removes, risks. When we are
confronted with real social problems like war, discrimination, harassment, and corruption;
we let the world know that we condemn these evils and express our participation in the
abolition of these problems. How? By a futile click to Like. People in the modern
technological society ultimately make no real commitments.

Definitions of Death
Legal-Medical Definition
The constant technological advancements in the field of medicine make the concept of
death difficult to define. There was a time when death was simply equated to the stopping
of heartbeat and breathing. However, two things made the medical experts reconsider this
cardiopulmonary-based (heartbeat and breathing) definition of death: (1) the advent of life
extending machines and (2) the practice of organ transplant. Because of these two, the
medical experts in Harvard Medical School were prompted to release a new definition of
death that will cater to the changes in life-support and organ replacement practices. On
August 1968, The Journal of the American Medical Association released "A Definition of
Irreversible Coma," the report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to
Examine the Definition of Brain Death, where death is redefined from its traditional
cardiopulmonary bases to a neurological (brain) based definition. Death is no longer just
the absence of heartbeat and breathing. A patient who is breathing and whose heart is
functioning through medical machines may no longer have any brain activity, which
according to the new definition, is already dead. The Harvard report opens with a statement
to justify this redefinition. It states:
"Our purpose is to define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death There are two reasons
why there is a need for a definition• improvements in resuscitative and supportive measures
have led to increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured Sometimes these
efforts have a partial success so that the result is an individually whose heart continues to
beat but whose brain is irreversibly/v damaged The burden is great on patients who suffer
permanent loss of consciousness on their families, on the hospitals, and on those in need of
hospital beds already occupied b/ these comatose patients (2' Obsolete criteria for the
definition of death can lead to controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation."
The shift from cardiopulmonary to neurological definitions of death creates more issues
because it is now more difficult to see who is really dead. From a traditional standpoint, as
long as someone is breathing and has a heartbeat, that person is alive. So it is hard to
accept that someone breathing is already dead, even if we see that the person is attached to
a life-support machine. Moreover, the diagnosis for determining brain death is questioned.
Both the machines and the personnel who make the diagnosis are put into question. For
sure, doctors and medical technicians may commit mistakes in their diagnosis and
decisions. However, what is more unsettling is that they can also abuse their authority.
This leads us to the legal side of the definition of death. Providing a definition of death in
the time of life-extending machines and organ transplants is very important among medical
and legal practitioners because of the possible criminal and civil liability of medical
authorities. These may range from prematurely declaring the death of someone so that the
functional organs may be harvested for transplant, to refusing the removal of life-support to
a patient who is brain dead for a long period of time. Legal practitioners want a clear
guideline concerning death to determine possible exploitation of human rights. The law has
many provisions about death because death indicates the end of a civil personality. Thus,
laws about taxation, family relations, obligations and contracts, and several other laws
inevitably contain provisions about death to determine the proper way to proceed once
someone dies. However, the clarity of definition concerning death is most important in one
particular law: criminal law. This is because someone's freedom, autonomy, and,
ultimately, life may be violated as a result of negligence or abuse by medical professionals.
Without a clear definition of death, legal accountability concerning death as a result of
negligence or abuse will be hard to pursue. Medical practitioners on the other hand also
want a clear definition and guideline concerning
death to determine the boundaries of their authority and prevent themselves from being
involved in a lawsuit. Without a clear definition of death, physicians will be afraid to
conduct organ harvesting and transplant because of the possible lawsuit from the relatives
of the dead. This will deprive the candidate recipient of the organ the possibility of an
extended quality life. Thus, both legal and medical professionals wish to have a clear
definition of death.

Religious Definition
Some objections to the legal-medical definition of death that focuses on the functions of the
brain are coming from religious perspectives which criticized the very rational-based
foundation of human life. They reject the medical-scientific criteria of death and base their
concept instead on their own sacred texts. Not every religion though rejects the medical
definition of death that is based on brain activity. Some religious perspectives recognize the
authority and independence of medical authorities concerning the criteria for death. Pope
John Paul Il, for example states that: "With regard to the parameters used today for
ascertaining death—whether the encephalic signs or the more traditional cardiorespiratory
signs—the Church does not make technical decisions." And he further agreed with the
scientific community that "the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity (in
the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem) if rigorously applied, does not seem to conflict
with the essential elements of anthropology." This was expressed by the late Pope in a
speech to the 18th International Congress on Organ Transplantation Society in August
2000. However, there are still Catholic scholars who disagree with the neurological criteria
of death. We have to note that even within religions, there will always be differences of
views and opinions concerning specific issues. Thus, to provide an all-encompassing
religious definition of death will be impossible. The differences of perspectives, beliefs, and
practices among religions are extensive that it prevents us from establishing a single
definition of death. However, we can also point out recognizable similarities among them,
and this is where we shall focus our attention. Death for most, if not all, religions is not
simply a biological and medical incident where the brain or the vital organs stop
functioning. All the medical and scientific explanations about death are considered trivial in
comparison to the real meaning of death. This religious meaning of death, which is
considered widespread among religions is based on the concept of an afterlife. The belief in
an afterlife changes the way people see death. Because of an afterlife, the belief in an
afterlife changes the way people see death. Because of an afterlife, death is now defined as
a transition—a shift from the earthly life to the life after (earthly) death. It is now the
elements and characteristics of the life beyond the earthly life that becomes the point of
contention among religions.

Existential Definition
The religious definition of death that focused on the afterlife was criticized by many
thinkers in the philosophical tradition called existentialism. Let us not deal (for now) with
the technical definition of existentialism but focus instead on its thrust in relation to death,
which is to focus on concrete and actual human existence. The existentialists are against
the idea of the afterlife as the central aspect of death primarily because it takes away the
focus of the person to what is actual and concrete—to human existence. The attention
being given by the living to the afterlife tries to rob the actual world of its meaning and
value. Since the afterlife is based on punishment and reward of what was done in the
earthly life, people tend to ignore the present and always do things in reference to the
future—the afterlife. Our existence is a question of "to be, or not to be." Either you are, or
you are not: either being or nonbeing. And death, as defined by the existentialist, is the
transition from being to nonbeing. This means the termination of all the possibilities that
we have as temporal beings. "To be—to exist" means to have possibilities; while "not to be—
not to exist" means to lose all the possibilities. As long as a person is alive, he is a temporal
being with possibilities. These possibilities may pertain to the simplest sorts of possibilities
—like the possibility of eating ice cream after dinner tonight; to the most anxious sorts of
possibility—like the possibility of shaping the future of our lives, and eventually the
possibility of death. The afterlife is not a concern for an existentialist because its existence
is not concrete. It is based on faith. We cannot empirically validate the existence of heaven
or hell, or of the reincarnating soul. We do not know what really happens after death—
which is why death makes us uneasy. It brings us anxiety. Anxiety brought by death is not
simple fear of dying. This type of anxiety comes from the awareness that our being already
includes our nonbeing. The religious definition of death is also a common way of evading
death by bringing up the idea of the soul’s immortality, the hope of resurrection, and the
belief in reincarnation. All of these religious beliefs comfort people with the idea that
nonbeing is not a possibility for us. The challenge of the existentialist is to face the real
possibility of nonbeing—the possibility that when we die, everything is over, that is, that we
simply cease to be; that we are no longer. This is the real source of death's anxiety, and not
the simple fear of dying, especially the fear concerning the manner by which death comes
to us. Knowing and facing the possibility of our nonbeing redirects us to being. This means
that if we accept death as the possibility of our nonexistence, then we are inevitably led
back to what is actual, concrete, and present—the here and the now.

Death as an Ethical Issue

Suicide
Suicide is an alarmingly increasing phenomenon in the Philippines. It is slowly becoming
one of the regular incidents we see in the news. And some are concerned that people who
consider suicide are not really familiar with the moral weight of their actions. Suicide is
generally considered a morally impermissible act. Let us then consider why suicide is
considered wrong. First, let us define suicide as the intentional termination of one's life. The
word intentional is very important because some may argue that if suicide is simply defined
as killing oneself, then those who regularly smoke cigarettes, for instance, are slowly killing
themselves—thus, committing suicide. Smokers smoke not with the intent of dying, but
with the intent of enjoying whatever pleasure they derive from smoking. The basic question
then is this: why is it wrong to intentionally terminate one's life? Let us consider some
arguments on why suicide is wrong. We shall name three types. The first set of arguments
may be classified as theological arguments. These arguments are God-centered arguments.
The most popular among the theological arguments was made by St. Augustine in his book
The City of God, where he claimed that suicide is prohibited according to the Sixth
Commandment. This commandment, which states "Thou shalt not kill" is interpreted by
Augustine (and other proponents of this argument) as a command which does not only
prohibit killing others, but also prohibit killing oneself. Other versions of the theological
argument take this sort of formulation: "God gave us life and He intends it to be preserved.
We must therefore not rebel against God and take away something He bestowed on us. We
are like soldiers of God who are entrusted with life, assigned on earth, and we shall not
leave our posts until we are properly relieved." The second set of arguments may be
classified as arguments from natural law. This argument states that everything naturally
loves itself. As human beings we are not born with an inclination to terminate our lives, but
an inclination to preserve. Our natural disposition is self-preservation. Therefore, suicide is
against the law of nature, and it is therefore wrong. St. Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel
Kant are two of the main proponents of this argument from natural law.

Euthanasia
The practice of killing someone who is very sick
or very badly injured to prevent further
suffering is known as euthanasia. The purpose
of euthanasia is to make the very ill or severely
injured person take the easier course of death
than to suffer for a longer period. Euthanasia
is from the Greek word euthanatos, which
means easy death. You are probably more
familiar with the type of euthanasia which
involves pulling the plug. This is a passive type
of euthanasia that is usually done by
withdrawing life-support treatment. This could
mean turning off the life-supporting machines
attached to the patient, a patient who is not competent in expressing his or her wish for
euthanasia. The different types of euthanasia also yield different arguments. Consequently,
some will accept one form, say the passive type, and reject the active form. Some will
support the non-voluntary type but not the voluntary type. We shall not consider the
specific distinctive arguments for each, but shall instead try to present the arguments
against euthanasia that will, as much as possible, cover all its types. And so we ask: what
makes euthanasia wrong? The first set of arguments may be classified as the medical-legal
argument. This argument has many different aspects, and we shall try to limit it to the
most popular ones. One aspect of the argument claims that euthanasia contradicts the role
of physicians. To initiate the termination of life will be against any physician's fundamental
moral and professional commitment, which is to take care of patients and to protect their
lives. Moreover, if physicians are given license to terminate life, their profession will never
be worthy of trust, and patients will fear their doctors instead of feel safe in their care. This
also leads to some legal difficulty because allowing euthanasia will weaken the prohibition
of homicide. If there are already cases where courts permit the withdrawal of life support,
then in effect, those courts already permitted killings. This may then result into a slippery
slope case where euthanasia will no longer be restricted to the voluntary type, but to non-
voluntary and even involuntary. And finally, another perspective of this argument refers to
the possibility of decrease in the commitment to give dying patients optimal care. If
euthanasia is allowed, then it will be seen as a cheaper and easier alternative than taking
care of the dying for a prolonged period. The second argument is the theological argument
that basically claims euthanasia is administered killing, and God does not allow killing. It is
God who gave us life, and it is only God who can take it away. Permitting euthanasia
devalues God's gift of life together with the dignity of human life. Let us cite the official
statement of the Vatican regarding euthanasia. The Vatican declares: "It is necessary to
state firmly once more that nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an
innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person,
or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one
is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person
entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly;
nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action." The third set of
arguments may be classified as psychological arguments. This argument explains that if
euthanasia is permitted, the dying person may feel pressured to opt for euthanasia because
the patient may feel guilty in considering himself a burden to his family and to the medical
personnel taking care of him. This also applies to patients who are already abandoned by
their family. They will look at euthanasia as the only way out.
The third set of arguments may be classified as sociopolitical arguments. This argument
hinges on the idea that as part of a family, community, and a state, suicide inflicts harm to
other persons especially if we still have obligations to other persons. Suicide here is taken
as a selfish act which gives no regard to what one's family, community, or country will
experience once the person kills himself. Taking away one's life therefore is wrong because
it is injurious to one's family, community, and society. This argument against suicide is one
of the oldest arguments which can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle. Meanwhile, the Vatican declares: "Intentionally causing one's own death, or
suicide, is therefore equally as wrong as murder; such an action on the part of a person is
to be considered as a rejection of God's sovereignty and loving plan. Furthermore, suicide is
also often a refusal of love for self, the denial of a natural instinct to live, a flight from the
duties of justice and charity owed to one's neighbor, to various communities, or to the
whole of society..."

Abortion
Let us define abortion as an act which intends to bring about the death of a fetus for the
sake of the woman who carries it. The main argument against abortion is based on the
right to life. There are different ways of defending the life of the unborn—from an appeal to
a divine author of life to an appeal to the most basic human right to live. Abortion is
considered as plain murder of an innocent being; and for that it deserves the gravest
condemnation. Because of the unborn status of the subject of abortion, the controversy
usually revolves around the debate whether the subject in the womb is already a person, or
not; or to put it in another perspective, whether the subject inside the woman has life
already, or not. Most pro-abortion arguments will argue for the acceptability of abortion
because they do not recognize the fetus, or the embryo, as constituting a human person
who deserves the right to life. The basic argument thus runs: Every person has a right to
life. The fetus is not yet a person. Therefore, the fetus does not have the right to life yet. An
analogy may perhaps simplify this. A presidential candidate is a potential president; but he
or she does not deserve the rights and privileges of an actual president until he or she wins
the election. Similarly, a fetus who is a potential person, does not possess the right to life
because it is not yet a person. We have to see the important aspect of this pro-abortion
argument—that is, killing a person is wrong. They only argue for the permissibility of
abortion because they do not consider fetuses or embryos as persons. That is why most of
the arguments are directed to the issue of determining when life is produced. As for the
Vatican, abortion is a termination of life, and it is therefore wrong. The right to life must not
be discriminating. The Vatican declares: "The right to life is no less to be respected in the
small infant just born than in the mature person." In reality, respect for human life is
called for from the time that the process of generation begins.

Death as an Existential Issue

Existentialism
We live in a world where we are immersed with actual concrete realities: our own bodies,
other human bodies, mountains, trees, oceans, and everything actual. The meaning then of
all these things should not be placed outside the concreteness of our experiences. There are
no essences in some world of ideas apart from what is actually existing. Second, the
concern for human finitude and temporality is intensified. Since the significance of the
otherworldly, which hosts the unchanging and the eternal, is challenged, the concern is
now moved to the world of the finite. We are now driven to focus on the possibilities of a
finite and temporal being. Eliminating the afterlife and any form of the otherworld—which
is where we are supposed to find real happiness, peace, and contentment—challenges us to
look for the meaning of life within the limits of our temporality. And finally, addressing
anxiety becomes one of the main concerns of any human person. Since the otherworldly
realm is relinquished, we face anxiety on at least two levels: (1) we become anxious over the
idea of our nonexistence. The afterlife comforts us with the idea that when we die, we still
continue to exist in a different form, and we will see our dead friends and relatives; or we
are consoled that we shall come back in this world with a different body. But what if there
is no afterlife? This is a source of great anxiety. Our anxiety may also come from (2) the
realization that we are free to define who we are. There are no preexisting essences of who
we are and we are therefore free to create or define who we are. To bear this responsibility
due to our freedom results to anxiety. Now, there are basically two alternatives in facing
this anxiety: either we face it, or we run away from it. Most existentialists agree that people
generally hide or run away from this anxiety. Running away from this type of anxiety
makes us very prone to live inauthentic lives.
Otherworld
The German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche for example, was one of those who
passionately persuaded people to abandon any idea of a world which is not this world. Any
form of otherworldly realm is nothing but a fiction and a distraction from human affairs.
Nietzsche complains about the otherworld: "But that world is well concealed from humans
—that dehumanized inhuman world which is a heavenly nothing." He cannot accept that
people are willing to trade this world for a world which is a product of human imagination
and suffering. Nietzsche, who is also one of the notorious critics of Christianity, claims that
the concept of an afterlife in the otherworld serves to comfort those who are weak and
suffering in this world. The otherworld makes them accept their lowly condition here on
earth and gives them hope that they will have a better life after death—in the afterlife.
Nietzsche is against the otherworld because this leads those who experience difficulties in
this life to give up and hope for a better life in another world instead.

Anxiety
Many existential thinkers consider death as the root of anxiety. The Christian existential
thinker Paul Tillich, for example, claims that: "Anxiety is the existential awareness of
nonbeing. Existential in this sentence means that it is not the abstract knowledge of
nonbeing which produces anxiety but the awareness that nonbeing is a part of one's own
being." Martin Heidegger on the other hand claims that: "Being-toward-death is essentially
anxiety." These two philosophers clarify that the anxiety that death brings is not equated to
our fear of dying. Although anxiety and fear may be coming from the
same roots, they are different. Tillich explains that usual distinction given between fear and
anxiety is this: fear has a specific object, while anxiety does not have a specific object. The
fear of dying then has an object, and that may refer to the manner by which one dies—
perhaps one is afraid of dying by drowning or by a particular painful disease. However, the
anxiety brought by death has no specific object. This anxiety comes from the awareness of
my own nonbeing; and nonbeing cannot be an object of fear because it is nothing. Fear may
be addressed, because there is a determinate object. Think of your fears—of heights, of
spiders, of aging, of diseases, and others. There is an object of fear. Think of your own
death—the possibility of my being reduced into nonbeing. We do not know what nonbeing
means because it has no content—it is the unknown. The anxiety of death is in relation to
being's own possibility of nonbeing, that is, as soon as we come to be, it is already possible
for us not to be. As Heidegger puts it: "As soon as a human being comes into life, he is old
enough to die." There are two ways of facing the anxiety brought about by death: either one
faces it and accepts it, or one escapes from it. The escape from the anxiety of death is a
result of what Heidegger calls idle talk: this is the kind of talk which the herd or masses
conduct and it has a character of triviality. Idle talk takes us away from reflecting on our
own concerns because we get immersed into their concerns. Death is present in everyday
idle talk. We see death in the news. We hear of a death of someone we know. We consider
death only as the death of someone. Consequently, the possibility of death is not really
recognized as our own death. This does not mean that we see ourselves as
immune from dying; instead, it means that we never really recognize the possibility of
our own death.

Meaning of Life in Death

The recognition of death as our own possibility can help us realize the importance and
value of our life. But now that we already know why you are afraid to die, we can do
something about this. Act on those plans and dreams now. It is true that there are things
that you cannot really do right now, like being a doctor or a lawyer for example. But there
are also plans and goals that you can act on easily. Perhaps you want to learn how to surf,
or you want to climb a mountain, or you want to go somewhere. The thing is, we take more
time to plan than what is needed. We always find an excuse and say that we are not ready.
"When will we be ever ready?" Perhaps when it is too late. This is also true for the people we
love. Let them know, and constantly remind them of how important they are to us.
Identifying the objects of our fear of dying can help us do something about it while we can.
Death reminds us to live. It invites us to see the value of what we have and of what we are.
For as they say—you only live once.