COR 015

MODULE 02
Philosophy - came from the words “philos” which means “love” and “sophia” which means “wisdom.”
philosophy means “love of wisdom.”

Philosopher - individual who engages in philosophy; a lover of wisdom. A philosopher is someone who is
attempting to find wisdom.

Philosophy as man’s life-long search for his own meaning, value, and purpose.
 Man has knowledge of himself. He has immediate response to questions thrown at him.
o Ask him who he is and immediately he has a reply.
o Ask him whether he is free or not and within a second, he can utter something
in answer to the question.

 This manifests that he knows who he is. He does not ask himself what he is made of.
o You will not encounter someone asking about his name, where he lives, and
why he exists.

 This manifests that he knows who he is. He does not ask himself what he is made of.
o You will not encounter someone asking about his name, where he lives, and
why he exists.

 The knowledge that man has about himself comes from the society where he is born and
reared. He inherits it from society through the family, the school, the church, his peers, and
other groups.

 Man’s knowledge, therefore, is inherited knowledge or acquired knowledge.

 Furthermore, man acquires his knowledge blindly, that is, without question or thinking.

 Consequently, he believes and follows it rather blindly or maybe fearfully.

MODULE 03
The Pre-Socratic Philosophers
 defined as the Greek thinkers who developed independent
 Presocratics were interested in a wide variety of topics
 These early thinkers often sought naturalistic explanations and causes for physical phenomena.

Socrates - Socrates turned his inquiry on the human person and human living.
- In his mind, knowledge is a virtue.

The Three Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Thales (c. 624-546 BCE)
 considered the father of western philosophy
 claimed that there is one single substance that comprises everything and that substance is
water.

Pythagoras (570-495 BCE)

  Treated philosophy as a way of life
 Believed in reincarnation
 made important contributions to the field of Mathematics, Pythagorean theorem.

Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE)

 claimed that everything is changing and believed that the only permanent thing in this world is
change.
 used fire to emphasize this idea of change.

MODULE 04
Two Main Branches of Philosophy:

1. Theoretical Philosophy – studies the principles of human knowledge, thought, argumentation

and communication, the nature of language, consciousness, and metaphysics.
o more concerned on the origin/theory of knowledge.

The following specific branches:

 Ontology - study of being
 Epistemology - study of knowledge
 Metaphysics - study of reality and existence
 Theodicy - study of God on logical abstraction

2. Practical Philosophy – uses philosophical methods and insights to explore how people can lead
wiser and more reflective lives.
o It focuses more on living a good life and concerns well-being, human excellence, wisdom, love
and personal relationships, ethics, the meaning of life, and how to develop enlightened values.

The following specific branches:

 Logic - study of correcting thinking and valid reasoning
 Ethics - study of morality and right living
 Axiology - study of values

MODULE 05
Analytic Approach
 All fundamental assumptions for all the sciences are analyzed.
 emphasizes logic, language, and aligns itself with the empirical sciences.
 Inquires into the meaning of the concepts used and tries to avoid using vague terms that do not
fit into the logical, linguistic, and empirical methods.

Speculative Approach
 tends to use terms that do not fit with simple experiences of the world. It uses abstract words
 it contains things that cannot be seen by anyone like the claim that the soul is immortal.
 It talks about beliefs.

MODULE 07
PLATO – claimed that man is a soul. He defined the soul as the self-initiating motion or the source of
motion
  He said that the soul has three parts:
1. Rational Element – is responsible for reason and language.

2. Spirited Element – is responsible for emotion such as hate, anger, love, and others.

3. Bodily Element – is responsible for bodily hunger and appetite.

ARISTOTLE – claimed that man is not solely a soul but a body endowed with life. He called the principle
of life the soul. This means that the giver of life of the body is the soul. Without the soul, the body has
no life.
 He said that the soul has three kinds:
1. Vegetative Soul – is the soul of plants and trees and it has the powers of reproduction
and assimilation.

2. Locomotive Soul – is the soul of animals and it has the powers of reproduction,
assimilation, locomotion, and sensation

3. Rational Soul – is the soul of man and it has powers of reproduction, assimilation,
locomotion, sensation, and reason.

MODULE 08
Rene Descartes – everything that we know is made of possible because of our senses. This entails that
without our senses, we will not know everything. We know something because we have our senses.
o Rene Descartes said that we must doubt everything. This is the methodic doubt of Rene
Descartes.
o Doubt what we know. Doubt that you exist. Doubt that you are breathing. Doubt that
you are a man or a woman. Doubt that you have a soul.

MODULE 09
Gabriel Marcel (PART 1)
- Gabriel Honoré Marcel was a French philosopher, playwright, music critic and leading Christian
existentialist. The author of over a dozen books and at least thirty plays.
Era: 20th-century philosophy
Born: December 7, 1889, Paris, France
Died: October 8, 1973, Paris, France

 wherever he goes there is his body.

 no gap between man and his body
 whatever he does, his body is with him.

Man’s Experience of Himself as an Owner of the Body

 Man’s experience also shows that he is not simply a body, that is, he is mind and will too.

Man’s Ownership of His Body

  Man’s ownership of his body is, in a way, the same with his ownership of his dog. Marcel said
that both imply owning.

 Since he owns his body and his dog, then he can command them.

 He does not treat his body as object among many objects in the world. Rather, he treats his body
as a part of himself, as a subject.

MODULE 10
Gabriel Marcel (PART 2)
Man as an Embodied-Spirit
 Gabriel Marcel said: “I am my body insofar as I succeed in recognizing that this body of mine
cannot, in the last analysis, be brought down to the level of being this object, an object, a
something, or other.”

The Life of an Embodied-Spirit

 As an embodied-spirit, man experiences himself as a being-in-the-world. His body acts as an
intermediary between himself and the world. Because of his body, he experiences that he is in
the world.
 He experiences that the chair he is sitting on is hard, that the sunset is as red as a rose, and that
the effects of liquor in an empty stomach is strong. More so, he has experiences of “near” and
“far”, “up” and “down”, “hot” and “cold”.

 He understands that he is, figuratively speaking, a being outside of the world – that he is not a
being of the world.

 Furthermore, as an embodied-spirit, he realizes that he is with other men. His body in this case
acts as his intermediary between others and himself. He shows himself to others through his
body and the latter also show themselves to him through their bodies. Because of his body, an
interaction and interrelation happen between others and himself.

MODULE 11
On Freedom
Freedom may be defined in three ways:
 First, it is the power or right to act, speak, and think as one wants without hindrance or restraint
as when we say that we have the freedom to speak

 Second, it is the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved as when one say, “Finally, after three
years of my imprisonment, I had tasted freedom again.”

 Third, it is the unrestricted use of something as when we say, “We had more or less complete
freedom of using our laptop whenever and whenever we wanted.”
Jean-Paul Sarte in Freedom
 According to Jean-Paul Sarte, freedom is to be seen in relation to man’s defining himself (Means
that freedom is no other than man’s power to be what he wants to be such as being a lawyer, a
politician, an engineer, or a teacher.)
 Man is responsible as to what happens to himself. No excuses, he cannot blame others as to
what happens to him. He can only blame himself.
 Man is condemned to freedom which implies that man cannot escape freedom. Man is forever
free.
 Freedom for Sartre is a freedom of synthesis which entails that when man makes a choice, he is
not only making a choice for himself, but for all mankind.

Immanuel Kant of Freedom

 According to Immanuel Kant, freedom is to be seen in relation to the autonomy of the will. (This
will is a kind of casualty belonging to living beings in so far as they are rational.)
 Freedom is caused by reason. Without reason, freedom does not exist.
 In terms of action. “One’s choice of action is a result of one’s reason.”

MODULE 12
Freedom and Morality
 Act must be a human act to be determinable.
 It must be done knowledge, freedom, and voluntariness. Without any of these three elements,
the act is simply an act of man.

Freedom and Democracy

 In democratic society, citizens are afforded with freedoms and rights, such as freedom of
expression, liberty of abode, right to education, right to work, and others.
 If the society is not democratic, freedoms and rights are curtailed or are limited, or they may be
eliminated totally.
 Freedom and democracy go hand in hand together, without one, the other cannot exist.

Freedom and Religion

 One of the fundamental freedoms that man has is religion, that is freedom of religion.
 If man is free, then he has the right to choose his own religion.
 According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience, and religion; the right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and
freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his
religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

MODULE 13
On Individual Differences

According to Emmanuel Levinas

 there is someone who exists aside from me and that is no other than the other – the other
person.
  Otherness means anything that is not me. Otherness entails differences. In recognizing that the
other is different from, I am seeing the other as truly another.
 In looking at the others as someone different, I have to understand that his views, opinions,
beliefs, ways of believing, ways of talking, ways of eating and others are different from me. The
same holds true with his intelligence.

According to Dr. Howard Gardner

 the traditional notion of intelligence, based on. I.Q. testing, is far too limited because humans
being have different intelligences.

There are 8 different intelligences:

1. Linguistics Intelligence – word smart.
2. Logical-Mathematical Intelligence – number/reasoning smart.
3. Spatial Intelligence – picture/image smart.
4. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence – body smart.
5. Musical Intelligence – music smart.
6. Interpersonal Intelligence – people smart.
7. Intrapersonal Intelligence – self-smart.
8. Naturalist Intelligence – nature smart.