PHILO 101 FINAL EXAM REVIEWER
CHAPTER 5 (HUMAN FREEDOM)
TOTAL DETERMINISM (B.F. Skinner)
- B.F. Skinner is known for his defense of behaviorism,
a view claiming that human behavior is conditioned
- Man does not exist as an immaterial conscious
controller but merely a physical being determined by
the physical laws of nature
- Freedom is an Illusion
- Human Freedom as ignorance of the basic laws of
nature
- Behavior is shaped by external conditions
(environment)
- Behavior can be controlled by positive and negative
reinforcement (Reward & Punishment)
- STIMULUS-RESPONSE THEORY: Cause and Effect
Relation
- Man is determined by his historicity
- Man is not free because all present behavior is
controlled by previous behavior
- All behavior has motivational causes which are
necessitating causes
- Genetic, biological, and physical structures influence
my behavior
ABSOLUTE FREEDOM (Jean-Paul Sartre)
- Jean-Paul Sartre, a French Philosopher whose
purpose is to understand human existence rather
than the world as such
- Man is nothing else but that which he makes of
himself
- EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE: man is responsible
for what he is
- Freedom is one’s very identity and the only thing
that man has upon existence
- Freedom is man’s capacity for self-determination
- Man is free and indeterminate
- Man is a structureless phenomenon of
consciousness
- Man does not possess a predefined essence upon
existence
- Man is self-determined by his facticity
(situatedness)
- Man becomes his own king and lawgiver
- Man is the only creator of what is good for him and
his fellowmen
- Existence: a totality of how a person lived his/her
life
- Essence: the nature or whatness of a human person
- Man is free not only in the sense of having the
capacity to decide and choose, but also in the sense
of creating and recreating himself.
- Man should dismiss the reality that we have a past
that may control our behavior
- Man is undefined because he is always in the
process of becoming.
- Freedom is both a gift and a curse because it is
inescapable for it is given upon existence. To be free
is an inevitable condition of human existence .
III. STRUCTURED FREEDOM (John Kavanaugh)
- The point of human reality is that integral human
existence includes both structures and freedom
- Absolute Determinism either omits transcendence
and questioning or tries to reduce it to external
forces
- Absolute Indeterminism ignores man’s history and
structure or tries to wish it out of existence
- The self brings with him a perspective and finds
social structures
- Both structures and freedom exist in our existence
- According to Abraham Maslow, man can form his
own life project, and yet he cannot deny the
importance of the environment in helping these
potentialities become actualized
- For John Kavanaugh, Human freedom and
structures are not contradictories but are
complementary
- Structures determine for us the meaning of our acts
and identity
- Freedom is always contextualized in the social realm
- Structures will make freedom possible and enhance
it
- Freedom is attained by means of praxis
- To be free means to be fully responsible of his life
CHAPTER 6 (INTERSUBJECTIVITY)
The Interhuman Relations: I-Thou & I-It (Martin
Buber)
- Martin Buber is known for his book Ich und Du (I and
Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-
It” modes of existence
- Interhuman: An event that happens between two
persons. Each one recognizes the other as a person
- Intersubjectivity: Refers to two human beings in an
interhuman relations. The awareness of the other’s
capacity to unfold
- Interhuman relation requires acceptance
regardless of differences and not imposing on
others.
- I-Thou Relationship: Philosophy of personal
dialogue
- Human existence may be defined by the way in
which we engage in dialogue with each other, with
the world, and with God
- The “I-Thou” relation is the pure encounter of one
whole unique entity
- The “I” of the “I-It” relation is a self-enclosed,
solitary individual that takes itself as the subject of
experience
- I-It: The I is detached or separated from the It
- The “I” of the “I-Thou” relation is a whole, focused,
single person that knows itself as the subject
a. I-Thou Relationship:
- The I is unified with the Thou.
- Subjective relationship
- A life fully realizing the meaning of being with
someone, to make someone complete
- It is the person himself that one gives importance
and value, not the attributes and qualities
- Unity of being
 PHILO 101 FINAL EXAM REVIEWER
- Engaging in dialogue involving each other’s whole
being
- Relationship of Mutuality and Reciprocity
- The being of a subject is a unity that cannot be
analyzed as an object
- An ultimate relation involving the whole being of
each subject
b. I-It Relationship:
- Things are of value because of the purpose that we
put into them
- Objective relationship
- Functionality
- We perceive each other as consisting of specific,
isolated qualities and view ourselves as part of a
world which consists of things
- Inescapable relation
- The world is analyzed and described
c. The Reality of human existence:
- BEING: Showing what one really is.
- SEEMING: Presenting a projected image of oneself
- Man struggles to be true to the other because he is
afraid of rejection and denial
d. Love:
- Man is the possessor of value
- Love presupposes self-love
- Love is the disinterested giving of oneself to the
other
- As one enriches and enhances the value of the
other, one enriches and enhances his own value
- The love for the other makes the self-complete
- Relation between I and Thou
- Subjects share the unity of each other’s being
INFINITE RESPONSIBILITY (Emmanuel Levinas)
- Levinas claimed that he was developing a “first
philosophy” called Ethics
- Ethics comes first before any other branches of
Philosophy because it is concrete
- Ethics is the foundation of all beings, the awareness
of man’s moral responsibility towards the other
- Ethics leads to the relation of infinite responsibility
for the other person
- The western philosophy is in the form of egology,
but for Levinas, philosophy should be in the form of
totality
- The “I” Encounters an immanent responsibility
through the face of the other
- The “I” becomes responsible to the other without
pre-conceived categories or knowledge
- Responsibility for the other is inescapable
a. The Face:
- The source of responsibility
- The extreme straightforwardness, poverty,
nakedness, precariousness and defenselessness of
the face of the other demands an immediate moral
responsibility
CHAPTER 7 (DEATH)
- Has a language and grammar
- The Face has a demand, begging command, and
plea
- Ultimate Mandate of the face: “THOU SHALL NOT
KILL”
b. Infinite Responsibility:
- An ethical relationship that knows no boundaries
or rules
- Rejection is the initial reaction, but obligation is a
moral necessity, irreducible and complete
- One must be sensitive to the reality of the face
- becomes concrete because the face is concrete
- Responsibility is prior to freedom
- All relationship originates from the encounter of the
face
- Asymmetrical, one is not demanding the other’s
responsibility for him. Responsibility is not necessarily
reciprocal
- Justice is the first virtue of institutions
LOVE AS PRESENCE
- Feelings and Emotions
a. Feeling:
- An impulsive reaction to contingent or transitory
moments
- Do not have lasting and concrete value - One has
for the other is an emotion, not feeling-state - Love
and hatred are emotions, not feelings.
- Commitment transcends feeling-state
b. Emotions:
- The transcendence of feeling-state
- willingness to commit oneself
- Authentic commitment can only be grounded in
one’s honesty
- The value of life is realized in the value of sincerity
- Sincerity defies the reality of man’s momentary life
and struggle
- Man’s struggle should be met with real concern,
manifested by way of one’s presence
c. Presence:
- The act of being for someone
- Presence is not limited to communication and
physical presence, but communion between two
beings
- Oneness that is beyond constancy and compromise
- Constancy is a matter of maintaining an image
- Compromise is grounded in temporariness, fear,
and the uncertainty of things which make the idea
of love conditional
d. Love:
- Ultimate act of freedom, unconditional
- Presence goes beyond physical existence
- Love is Eternal, death destroys only the physical
state of one’s being
Insofar as two beings are one, true love defies
death - Requires courage and acceptance of human
finitude
BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH (Martin Heidegger)
 PHILO 101 FINAL EXAM REVIEWER
- Martin Heidegger’s concern is to describe the
condition of a being that faces its own impending
death
- Death is a mystery that one cannot fully grasp
- Mortality is a condition for personhood
- An ultimate possibility that ends all other
possibilities
- A mirror of life, to look at death is to see life itself
- Certain and Uncertain
- Death is inevitable, no one can postpone and
escape the reality of death
- One’s knowledge of death is a result of our being
immersed in a crowd
- We are immersed in the crowd, the “they-self”
(uncaring self and superficial)
- The crowd leads us to an inauthentic life
a. Inauthentic Life:
- A life lived in its momentary or lousy states
- Life not lived in a holistic way.
-Linear and purposeless
- Lived in the everydayness of existence without
meaning
b. Authentic Life:
- Man must face the possibility of death as his own
possibility
- Anticipation of the possibility of death
- Man must realize that death is his own-most
possibility
- As own-most, Death individualizes man because it
does not belong to everybody
- Authentic man does not outstrip death
- In accepting death as the possibility, man frees
himself
- Man is a being-ahead-of-itself
- Anticipation reveals to death its lostness in the
theyself
c. Dasein:
- Term used to refer to a human person
- A person existing in the world, not an abstract
concept
- Heidegger is interested with the existence of the
human person in the world
- The human person is a being-in-the-world
- Man realizes that he is a “not-yet”
- Death as an ultimate test is the fruition of man’s
being in the world
d. Man as a Not-yet:
- As long as the person is, he is a ‘not-yet’
- Man’s existence is a process of completing one’s
being
- Man is not yet complete, not yet whole
- To be in the world is to be an unfinished project
- Man is a process that culminates toward an end
- Nothing is final in man as long as one is alive
- Finality comes to us in death where we can no
longer be
- Death is the fulfillment of the being of man
6 Characteristics of Death
1. one’s ownmost
2. Non-relational
3. Cannot be outstripped
4. Certain
5. Indefinite
6. Non-surpassable
e. Death as a Possibility:
- death closes man’s possibility for being
- In death, the entirety of every human being
becomes complete
- Revealed in anxiety
- What we feel about death is not fear, but ANXIETY
- Man is anxious about the reality of death
- Man dreads his being-in-the-world and anxious
about the possibilities that will be lost forever
- Our greatest fear is being separated from the ones
we love
MORTALITY AND FREEDOM
- Death when accepted as a possibility is an
experience of freedom
- Man can be free and can waste life away, that there
is endless joy and pleasure
- In a crowd, death is Seen as something that one can
avoid
- This evasiveness is an illusion of mortality where
man is held captive by his illusory self, by the crowd
- One is imprisoned in desires that gives inauthentic
meaning to life
- Man with vices will lose grip of the true purpose of
his existence
- Man becomes detached and insensitive to the
authentic meaning of existence
- When he dies, it’s as if he did not live at all
-Through freedom, man can realize the true meaning
of his moral existence
- An acceptance of mortality is giving true value to life
- Man should refuse to be dictated by the crowd
- Man makes choices by himself on the basis of what
really matters to him
- We should see life as a meaningful whole
- By seeing life this way, we will no longer fear death
since our lives has been lived meaningful
- The sense of freedom can take place by accepting
that there is one life to live, a life with commitment
for others
- The loss of meaning is the absence of goal or purpose
in life where one ceases to be and simply lives like
some biological species
- For Elie Wiesel, “Our lives no longer belong to us
alone; they belong to all those who need us
desperately.”
- For Viktor Frankl, “There are situations in which one
is cut off from the opportunity to do one’s work or to
enjoy one’s life; but what can never be ruled out is the
unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge
to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last
moment.”
“A boundary is not that at which something stops
but, the boundary is that from which something
begins” – Martin Heidegger