INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY

FREEDOM

(1) UNDERSTANDING HUMAN FREEDOM

PAN-DETERMINISM
● Pan-Determinism is "the view which disregards his human capacity to take a stand toward any
conditions ."
● Specifically, it states that a human person i s not free because his or her decisions , actions , and
behavior are determined by his or her biological, psychological, and sociological conditions .
● Biological Determinism - For Pan-Determinism, human genetic make-up plays a big role in
human behavior, attitude, and personality. What humans are and what they will be determined by
their genetic make-up.
● Psychological Determinism - According to Freud, human actions may appear free, but they are
● nothing but a manifestation of various mental states , which humans are not aware and have no
control over.
- Conscious Mind: person's current awareness
- Preconscious mind: pertains to the memories and stored knowledge
- Unconscious mind: pertains to those fears, motives, sexual desires, wishes, urges, needs,
and past experiences that a person is not currently aware of and can't be easily brought to
a conscious level.
● Freedom is an Illusion - Your choice is predetermined because your choice is a product of your
values, preferences, wishes, and hopes, and past experience that continue to determine your
present decision, action, and behavior.
● Sociological Determinism - According to B.F. Skinner, human behavior is shaped by external
conditions and not by so-called inner self.
● Actions: that produce good consequences are reinforced; conversely, actions that yield negative
effects have the tendency not to be repeated.
● Human Actions: Depend on their consequences and not on deliberate choices
● “The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again.” -
B.F. Skinner
● If human behavior is environmentally determined, then it makes no sense to claim that a human
person is free.

(2) HUMAN PERSON AS A SELF-DETERMINING BEING

● While the pan-determinists are correct in pointing this out, according to Victor Frankl, they are
wrong in claiming that human behavior is nothing except what is predetermined by these factors.
● To be free means to be free from. Freedom always presupposes a condition or a restriction.
● Human Freedom is Destined Freedom - Freedom i s destined because the conditions of freedom
are not chosen by the person but pre-given.
● “A human person is self-determining.” - Viktor Frankl
● For Frankl, all these conditions - biological, psychological, and social - serve as the springboards
of human freedom.
● Biological destiny is the material which must be shaped by the human spirit. - Physically
challenged individuals can go far before what their biological conditions permit them to do.
● Reason has the power to govern both our appetite and emotion. - Plato
● Humans may act according to the dictation of their desires but they have the capacity to choose
what is right. - Kant
● Psychological states are real but humans have the power to be aware, to process, and to use them
to their advantage rather than being driven by them.
● A human person is not a mere object in the world.
● What becomes of a person is a product of his or her decisions and creations.
● Man is not fully conditioned and determined; he determines himself whether to give into
conditions or stand up to them.
● Man is ultimately self-determining - Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his
existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
● A person may be found or thrown into a certain situation, but it does not follow that he or she will
not be able to free himself or herself from it.

(3) PERSONS CONDEMNED TO BE FREE

● Existence precedes essence - Jean Paul Sartre (1975)

- Existence refers to the totality of how a person has lived his or her life from the day he or
she was born to the day he or she died.
- Essence refers to the nature or the whatness of a human person.
- a. human person does not have pre-given nature, meaning, purpose, and value
- b. there is no universal human nature, meaning, purpose, and value
- c. individual human nature, meaning, purpose, and value are created by each and every
person depending on how he or she lives his or her life
- Life is what each and every person makes of it. Everyone is free to create his or her own
life, meaning, purpose, and value.
- A human person can create and recreate himself or herself. A human person is undefined
because he or she is always in the process of becoming.

● Abandoned to be Free
- Others can comfort and give you advice but ultimately in the end, it is you, and you
alone, who have to face your own problem.
- "You are abandoned to be free." -Jean Paul Sartre. You are abandoned in the sense that
you did not choose to be free.
- You have to create them yourself. You may choose to stay where you are or you may
continue the journey. “You are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul”
- The price of freedom is abandonment: the existential condition of being thrown into one's
existence with nothing to cling to as guide.
- The path of life is not ready-made; it is for each of us to create.
● Freedom in Despair
- While we are free to create our own individual lives, our lives do not always turn out to
be what we want them to be. We are free, but we exercise this freedom in despair -Jean
Paul Sartre
- We have control over our will but we do not have control over things beyond our will

● Life in Action
- We may fail things we are committed to, but this is not the end of everything. It is in
- our ability to create and to recreate ourselves where our worth lies.

(4) FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

● Freedom implies responsibility

- Because a human person is free, he or she is responsible not only for himself or herself,
but also for others and ultimately for humanity.
- The world is full of uncertainties and insecurities and the person has to deal with them
alone and without substitute for the rest of his or her life.
- A person is free but freedom does not mean a license to do anything he or she wants.
- A person coexists with others and his or her actions surely affect others.
- To be free is to be responsible not only for yourself, but for others
- The person's awareness of this responsibility gives him or her so much anguish, the
feeling of being burdened by his or her own awareness of his or her total responsibility.

● Freedom is Doing What is Good as a Matter of Duty

- Freedom is not an act of doing anything one wants. Doing what one wants is not
freedom; it is slavery to one's appetite or emotion. -Immanuel Kant
- A person acts freely only if he or she acts for the sake of duty, which he or she imposes
upon himself or herself as an autonomous rational being in accordance with moral laws.
- If a person does something because he or she is commanded to do it, then he or she is not
doing it as an autonomous being but as someone who is governed by authority.
- A human person has two obligations:
1. to obey the dictates of his or her reason
2. To obey the decrees of moral law
- But what if moral law and the will desire of a human are not aligned? In performing an
act, therefore, he or she should see to it that the maxim of his actions is in accordance
with the principles of moral law.
- Hypothetical Imperative - It is a principle of action which states that an act ought to be
performed if it produces a desired result.
- Categorical Imperative - It is a principle of action which states that an act ought to be
performed as a matter of duty.
- Formulation 1: The Universalizability Principle - Act only on that maxim (a rule or
principle of action) whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law (must always be done in similar ways)
 - Formulation 2: The Formula of Humanity - Act so that you treat humanity, whether in
your own person or in that of another, always as an end, and never as a mere means. (to
use it only for your own benefit, with no thought to the interests or benefit of the thing
you're using.)
- We're not mere objects that exist to be used by others. We're our own ends. We're rational
and autonomous. We have the ability to set our own goals, and work toward them.
- End-in-herself - It means to recognize the humanity of the person you're encountering, to
realize that she has goals, values, and interests of her own, and you must, morally keep
that in mind in your encounters with her.
- We use other people as a means for something, but not as mere means.
- This imbues us with an absolute moral worth, which means that we shouldn't be
manipulated, or manipulate other autonomous agents for our own benefit.
- When you're lying, you've treated the person as a mere means to accomplish your goals,
with no thought to his own goals and interests. This is a violation of Kant's second
categorical imperative.

● Freedom and Responsibility in Concrete Solutions

- The Concept of Responsibility:
- To be responsible in the first sense is to be guilty or to be at fault for an act committed,
making the agent of an act deserving of blame and/or punishment.
- To be responsible in the second sense is to carry out a task morally or legally required of
a person by virtue of his or her position, authority, or power.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY

(1) HUMANS AS POLITICAL BEINGS

● Political Society - The state is formed out of the natural evolution of communities, not a product
of human conventions (Camiloza et al., 2016).
● Humans as political beings by nature
1. Political Society is the completion of the natural development of human communities.
2. Only humans have the capacity for speech.
3. The political society comes before the individuals.
● First Argument - "Men and women have both the natural desires to propagate their species for
they have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves.”
● Second Argument - "Humans have the capacity for speech.”
● Third Argument - "The state is by nature clearly prior to the existence of the family of the
individual…”
● They are political beings because the realization of their nature is found in the state.
● Rational Beings - Rationality implies responsibility.

(2) PLATO’S IDEA OF THE JUST SOCIETY

● Soul
- Appetitive → Nourishment and Reproduction → Desire-driven
 - Rational → Person’s Thinking → Wise People
- Spirited → Emotion, Passion, Will, etc. → Power-driven

● Different People = Chaotic Interactions

● The three kinds of people are indispensable to the health of the society. No one should be thrown
away; everyone should be placed where he or she is best fit.
- Classify
- Determine Position
- Determine How they should live

● Education
- There is no better way to classify people and determine social position except through
education.
- All will undergo education.
- This mode of classification is democratic in the sense that everyone is given equal
opportunity to hold a social position.
- Social positions are merited and not inherited.
- But, it's also aristocratic because only the few who turn out academically successful will
have the chance to hold the highest positions in society.
- The rest will become a worker or a soldier depending on his or her level of education.

● Plato’s Experiment
- All children will be taken in custody by the state from birth. This is to protect them from
the bad habits of their parents. All will receive the same care and education from the
state. All will have equal opportunities for education. There will be universal education in
which children of the same age
- For the first ten years, their education shall be physical education focusing on play and
sports. This is aimed at building children's physiques because a strong republic cannot
afford to have sickly citizens.
- The next five years, therefore, will be devoted to music education. This is to promote
balanced and a harmonious personality among the children so that society will not only
produce wrestlers and boxers but also artists with well-balanced personalities.
- The next five years will be devoted to religious education aimed at developing the moral
dimensions of the citizens. The concept of God will be introduced only when children
have developed their capacities for thinking. It does not matter whether God exists or not;
what matters is that people believe in God since the concept of God will provide the
moral foundation of the society.
- After 20 years of studying, there will be great elimination. Those who fail in the
examination will become members of the working class. Those who pass the examination
will be given 10 more years to train in body and mind, and character, after which they
will take the second elimination.
- Those who fail will become soldiers, executive aides, and auxiliaries. Those who pass
will be given 5 more years to study philosophy.
 - After 35 years of theoretical pursuit, the successful candidate will be sent out of the
academy to test their theoretical knowledge in real-life situations.
- After 15 years of practical education and after a total of 50 years of education, they will
now be proclaimed philosopher-kings.
- As philosopher-kings, their job is to govern society. A just society cannot afford less than
the caliber of the philosopher-kings.

● Plato’s Ideal Society

- It is a society wherein different kinds of people are positioned differently depending on
their abilities and their job. An educated society in varying degrees by which they occupy
social positions: the wise men govern; the soldiers protect; and the workers provide the
economic needs of the society.
- Only when people are positioned in this way, society can become harmonious, well-
coordinated, and just.

(3) THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES

● Justification of Totalitarianism (Thomas Hobbes)

- Humans are equal by nature
→ Physical
→ Mental
- Equal - in a sense that no one can be spared from harm by anyone no matter how strong
or wise he is.
- Equality - This equality of power enables humans to desire for the same things,
which usually results in competitions, distrusts, and pursuit of glory. → War
- War - The state of nature is at war with everyone. Nothing can be said just or
unjustly, good or evil. → Government
- Government - ...if there is no common power, there is no law, and if there is no standard
of what is just and unjust, of what is right or wrong. Humans cannot continue to endure
this condition of war. Both their reason and passion dictate that they leave that condition
and establish a political society in which they would agree to surrender their natural
rights. They start to abide by the will of the sovereign for the sake of peace and order and
preservation of everyone. To command absolute obedience from the people, it should
possess all powers of the government. The political society cannot afford to have a weak
sovereign.
→ Legislative
→ Executive
→ Judicial
- Liberty - It is the main cause of the miserable human condition in the state of nature, a
condition that humans try to escape by establishing a political society. The Liberty of
thought, expression, religion, and the like has no place in Hobbe's theory. People may use
these liberties to criticize, disobey, and attack the sovereign which may lead to
revolution, which may lead to a state of war.
 - Totalitarian - The lifestyle of people is controlled by the government. The government
has an encompassing power to direct the economic, cultural, social, political, and
religious lives of the people.

● The natural law governs the actions of the people (rational, free, and equal). As free human
beings, they can do anything in accordance with natural law. (John Locke)
- The state of nature is short of being perfect. Three things are lacking in the state of
nature:
1. There is no written law in the state of nature.
2. There is no impartial judge who is empowered to decide on controversies.
3. There is no common power to execute the articles of the natural law.
- Because of these inconveniences, the state needs to enter a state of political society.
- Free - It is only through people's consent that he or she can be obligated to enter into a
political society.
- First Contract
- The people agree to obey the government on the condition that it protects their
right to life, liberty, and property. The government agrees to protect people's
right to life,
- liberty, and property on the condition that people abide by its commands.

- Second Contract
- The people and the government are placed on an equal footing.
- Breach of the second contract means deprivation of their life, liberty, and
property.
- Breach of the second contract on the part of the government will mean removal
from positions of its officials or removal of the government itself.

- Democracy
- It is a form of society in which sovereignty resides in the people and all
government authority emanates from them.
- People have the power to define the economic, cultural, social, and political
landscapes of the society.
- The government therefore should embody the ideals and aspirations of the people
and should not govern against their will.
- A government that rules against the will of the people can always be changed or
even destroyed by the people themselves.

- Democratic Society
- It abides by the rule of law.
"Ours is a government of laws and not of men"
It means that although sovereignty resides in the people, it does not mean that
the people and their representatives can govern arbitrarily.
- It is a society of free people.
It is the primary obligation of the government to protect these liberties and
 "no person shall deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”

- Due Process of Law - It is the process that presumes the accused to be innocent until
proven otherwise.

● "Man was born free, and everywhere he is chains." This statement talks about two human
conditions.
1. the human condition in the state of nature (humans are free)
2. the human condition in the corrupt society (humans are deprived of freedom)

- Humans as Ape-like savage

- no ability for rational thinking
- not moral but harmless and compassionate
- asocial but not selfish
- incapable of war and peace
- can do anything they want
- no power above them to demand obedience from them

- But such freedom was deprived by illegitimate institutions (When humans started to claim private
properties, they needed to protect them by establishing a political society.) established by those
who had vested interests in the society.
- Private properties and personal riches were institutionalized and all sorts of rules were created
to legitimize this set-up. → This resulted in social inequalities that turned into deprivation of
human freedom.
- No turning back - The task is to establish a political society that recognizes human freedom. (To
realize this, each person must be united to all.)
- Unity - This unity must be an absolute unity, a unity of individual wills or what Rousseau called
the general will
- The General Will - It is the will of the collective body of people that intends the common good.
Must always consider:
1. Can my decision be universalized?
2. Will my decision promote the common good?
- Why? In acting according to the general will that the person is acting freely.

DEATH
(1) THE PARADOX OF DEATH

The Certainty of Death

● We are certain about our death because history attests that no one who had lived in the far past
still exists today.
● We are also certain about death because science tells us that anything that comes also goes.
● Law of Entropy - nothing remains the same forever
● Death is uncertain as to its time, place, and the way it happens; and
 ● We do not know whether life continues after death.

“To philosophize is to learn how to die” (One who is wise is always ready to die) - Socrates

Two General views on Death

1. Materialists
● Believes that a human person is nothing but a material entity.
● Believes that a human person does not have a spirit or soul.
● Believes that everything in life ends in death
● Buddhists
- Believes that when a person dies, there is no permanent self that endures.
- People should understand that nothing is permanent, including human life
- Believes that the way out of suffering is to stop expecting
- Believes that without expectations, there will be no sufferings and frustrations.

2. Spiritualists
● Believe that a human person is composed of a body and soul
● Believes that when a body dies, the soul continues to live
● Christians
- Also believes that a human person is composed of a body and a soul
- Believes that death ushers the journey of the soul to its creator
- Believes that to die is to be home in heaven with God

● Hindus
- believe that when a human person dies, the "atman" (human soul) is either
reincarnated to another being or is united to Brahman (the supreme being).
- believe that if a human person had been enlightened before his or her death, he or
she will be directly reunited with Brahman.
- but if he or she was deluded at the time of his or her death he or she will be
reincarnated into other beings until he or she finds enlightenment.
- believe that reincarnation is both imprisonment and an opportunity for
enlightenment.

(2) THE ABSURDITY AND MEANING OF DEATH

The Absurdity of Death

● People do not want to lose a life. People hold into them despite all the challenges. But all of this
ceases as death takes life away from them. This is an absurd condition according to French
Philosopher Albert Camus.
● Death is the contradiction of life.
● Human freedom and death seem to be incompatible.

The meaning of Death

 ● According to Victor Frankl, death does not render life meaningless. On the contrary, life becomes
meaningful because of death.
● A life without end is a life without meaning, devoid of sense, and lacking in accomplishment.
● “Since we have all the time during which to accomplish a task, we do not have to accomplish it
now or tomorrow.”
● Death is a boundary situation that imposes upon tasks to be accomplished.
● It is our awareness of our impending death that we tend to value our lives and the people and
things we love.

Consciousness and Responsibility

● Frankl conceives a human person as a conscious and responsible human being.
● To be conscious means to be aware of the meanings that concrete and singular situations bring us.
● To be responsible is to seize the opportunity to experience or to create a meaning offered by the
situation.
● According to Frankl, people have two related existential tasks: the first is to be conscious of
● the meanings of life and the second is to be responsible for them.
● People have the responsibility to experience or create meanings not in the future but at the time it
is presented to them.

Death Actualizes Man’s Potential

● Frankl replies that our death does not render the meanings we have fulfilled meaningless.
Meanings are not lost with our death.
● Life is like the wax of a candle that loses itself by giving out light. The wax is lost but a light is
created.
● Similarly, a human person may have gone but the meanings he or she created stay forever; they
are not lost but they are stored in eternity.
● According to Aristotle, life is a potency that has to be actualized. It is by living our lives that this
potency is converted into an act.
● From becoming, life becomes a being ; Life is a process of becoming, and attaining being in
death - Aristotle

(3) THE PHENOMENON OF DEATH

Human Being as Dasein

For Martin Heidegger:
✔️Death as an objective natural phenomenon
✖️Death as an existential human condition

Dasein → human person

Das → there
Sein → being
● Heidegger is concerned about how a human person exists in the world.
● Dasein - a human person is a being-in-the-world
● Example:
- It means that a cup of ice cream is contained in the freezer (No interaction, no
engagement).
- By "being-in, "he does not mean "spatially contained in"
- It signifies an involvement, engagement, or preoccupation with entities in the world
- A human person as Dasein, therefore, is an active and interactive being.

● World
- It does not refer to a place nor does it refer to the totality of entities in the physical world.
- Rather, it is that which makes the encountering of entities possible.
- It means a system of references.
- In short, your engagement or involvement in what you do right now is made possible
through that "web of significance from which entities show themselves or are
encountered."
- In the Heideggerian sense, therefore, there is no world without Dasein and there is no
world without entities in the world.

● What is implied in the conceptualization of Dasein as a "being-in-the-world?"

● "Dasein does not exist in a vacuum for there is always a context, a context world, in which it
exists."
● "Man is a being who is set towards the realization of his possibilities."

● The human person is also a being situated in time

- It means that he or she has a past characterized as facticity, a present described as
fallenness, and a future as existentiality.
● A human person's facticity refers to the givens of his or her existence.
● A human person's present as fallenness is to be trapped into the world of "they."
● The world of "they" is the world of crowd, which is the world of convention, tradition, doctrine,
and conformity.
● To fall into the world of "they" means to live not according to one's volition but according to the
wishes of the crowd.
● A person’s fallenness has two stages:
- In the earlier stage, a person has fallen into "they" because of society and the people
around him or her.
- In the later stage, a human person is already aware of his or her "fallenness" but he or she
still fails to assert his or her individuality because he or she finds the world of the "they"
comfortable.

● A human person should not remain in the world of the "they."

● He or she should live an authentic life, a life that he or she chooses.
 ● Living an authentic life means standing out of the "they" by asserting oneself through a human
person's thoughts and actions.
● A human person's "existentiality" includes all the projects and possibilities that he or she wants to
accomplish in life.
● A human person has to create his or her plans with the awareness of his or her own impending
death.

Human Person as a being toward Death

● We unconsciously believe that death belongs only to the old; and We unconsciously believe that
death belongs to others and not to us.
● While we know we are going to die, we do not give any attention to our death is not our own
death but the death of others.
● Our notions of death are not our own; they are impersonal and cultural.
● This inauthentic attitude towards death manifests in three ways: idle talk, curiosity, and
ambiguity.
- Idle talk - we talk about death for the sake of talking about it without understanding it.
- Curiosity - we talk about death superficially with no desire to uncover what lies beneath
the surface of death.
- Ambiguity - because there is doubt in the sincerity of our intention in talking about death.

● Heidegger said that a human person's death has five characteristics: one's ownmost, non-
● relational, cannot be outstripped, certain, and indefinite.
● Awareness of death may lead people to live an authentic life.
● It will lead people to the realization that a person owns his death and hence, his existence.