Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person

SHS 2114

An initiation to the activity and process of Philosophical reflection as a search for a synoptic vision of life. Topics to
be discussed include the human experiences of embodiment, being in the world with others and the environment,
freedom, intersubjectivity, sociality, being unto death).

At the end of the semester, the students are expected to:

✓ Reflect on their daily experiences from holistic point of view

✓ Acquire Critical and Analytical Thinking Skills
✓ Apply their Critical and Analytical Thinking Skills to the affairs of daily life ✓ Become Truthful, Environment – Friendly
and Service – Oriented
✓ Actively commit to the development of a more human society
COURSE PLAN

First Grading period: The Meaning of Philosophy in relation to the Human Person as an embodied being
in the world from the perspective of a holistic profound vision of life

Learning Outcomes:
✓  The student should be able to show an understanding of the activity of doing philosophy of the human
person as an embodied being in the world and the environment.
✓  Understanding the meaning and process of doing philosophy of the human person as an embodied
being in the world and the environment as a means towards a holistic understanding of life
Second Grading Period: Human Living

Learning Outcomes:

•✓  The learner is able to show an understanding of philosophy within the context of the human person as free,
intersubjective, immersed in society and oriented towards death.
•✓  The learner is able to understand that doing philosophy within the context of the human person as free,
intersubjective, immersed in society, and oriented towards their impending death will lead to a deeper
understanding of the human person

* Refer to Instructional Material (IM)

** This Course Outline adheres to the Curriculum Guide set by the Department of Education. Contents
and topics are added by the course instructors / teachers.
SELF-ASSESSMENT RUBRIC Type of Assessment: Essay
Criterion Poor (55) Average (92) Good (100)

The content is not comprehensive. The

The content is incomplete, the insight is Information from other sources did not The content is comprehensive and used
Content and Development 50 pts not clear. The content is from other sources support the argument. Inconsistent in terms proper citation. The content is clear. (49-
that are not properly cited. (1-30pts) of purpose and clarity of the content (31 - 50)
48)

The structure detracts from the message of It is not easy to follow the organization of The structure / organization of thought is
Organization / Structure 30pts the writer – poor transition or flow of ideas thoughts. The transition of ideas needs clear and easy to read
(1-15) improvement (16 – 28) (19-20)

The student did not follow the prescribed The paper follows most of the guidelines,
The paper follows the prescribed format
Format 10pts format but forgot the number of pages
and number of pages (9-10)
(1-5) (6-8)

Minimal grammatical errors, but the

The paper contains numerous grammatical, Rules of grammar are followed. Language
Grammar / Syntax 10pts language still lacks clarity
punctuation and spelling errors. (1-5) is clear and precise (9-10)
(6-8)
COURSE OUTLINE:

I. INTRODUCTION
  Welcoming the Students/Gathering information about the student
  Orient Students about the following:
The school’s profile, teachers and
management
School rules and regulations
Course requirements
Grading System
·  Diagnostic Test, Checking and Item Analysis

II. DOING PHILOSOPHY

1. Distinguish a holistic perspective from a partial point of view
2. Recognize human activities that emanated from deliberate reflection
3. Realize the value of Doing philosophy in obtaining a broad perspective in life
4. Doing a philosophical reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective
III. METHODS OF PHILOSOPHIZING
1. Distinguish opinion from truth
2. Analyze situations that show the difference between opinion and truth
3. Realize the methods of philosophy lead to wisdom and truth

IV. THE HUMAN PERSON AS AN EMBODIED SPIRIT

1. Recognize one’s limitations and possibilities
2. Evaluate one’s limitations and the possibilities for their transcendence
3. Recognize how the human body imposes limits and possibilities for transcendence
4. Distinguish the limitations and possibilities for transcendence.

V. THE HUMAN PERSON IN THEIR ENVIRONMENT

1. Take note of environmental disorders
2. Determine things that are improperly placed and organize them in an aesthetic way
3. Show care for the environment contributes to health, well-being and sustainable development
4. Demonstrate the virtues of prudence and frugality towards environments
V. FREEDOM OF THE HUMAN PERSON
1. Realize that “all actions have consequences.”
2. Evaluate and exercising prudence in choices
3. Rationalize that:
a. Choices have consequences
b. Some things are given up while others are obtained in making choices
4. Show situations that demonstrate freedom of choice and the consequences of choices

VI. INTERSUBJECTIVITY
1. Realize intersubjectivity requires accepting differences and not to imposing others
2. Appreciate the talents of persons with disabilities and those from the underprivileged sectors of society
3. Explain that authentic dialogue means accepting others even if they are different from themselves
4. Perform activities that demonstrate the talents of persons with disabilities and those from the
underprivileged sectors of society

VII. THE HUMAN PERSON IN SOCIETY

1. Recognize how individuals form societies and how individuals are transformed by societies
2. Compare and contrast different forms of societies and individualities (e.g. Agrarian, industrial and
virtual)
3. Explain how human relations are transformed by social systems
4. Evaluate the transformation of human relationships by social systems and how societies transform
individual human beings
VIII. HUMAN PERSONS AS ORIENTED TOWARDS THEIR IMPENDING DEATH
1. Recognize the meaning of life
2. Enumerate the things that one wants to achieve in life and define projects that one intends to pursue
3. Explain the meaning of life
4. Reflect on the meaning of life

ACTIVITY 1
Look at the pictures below. What can you say about them? Describe their similarities and differences.
Write your answer in your notebook.
 DOING PHILOSOPHY
(PHILOSOPHY AND ITS BRANCHES)

OVERVIEW:

Philosophy is said to be a critical study of fundamental questions to arise in everyday life, questions
such as nature of reality, the possibility of other world, the existence of God, the purpose of life,
freedom, society etc. This unit explores the different perspectives of what philosophy is and doing
philosophy, from the West and the East. This unit also aims to discuss the distinctive qualities of a
human person, which make him/her different from other beings.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

The student must be able to

✓ Discuss philosophy and its branches
✓ Distinguish holistic perspective from a partial point of view
✓ Realize the value of doing philosophy in obtaining a broad perspective on life ✓ Do a philosophical
reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

LEXICAL / ETYMOLOGICAL DEFINITION (FOR PYTHAGORAS)

Philosophy came from the Greek word Philia which means Love and Sophia which means Wisdom. Thus,
Philosophy is Love of Wisdom
Philosophy starts through doubt and wonder.” -Socrates
“Philosophy is the study of the ultimate reality, causes and principles underlying being acquired
through the use of human reason alone”.

To understand clearly, we will have to clarify these important terms:

1. “being”,
2. “ultimate reality”,
3. “causes and principles”,
4. “human reasons”.

Perhaps G.E. Moore (1873-1958) can help us a bit more. When he was, too, asked what philosophy is, he
gestured and pointed towards his books and the bookshelves and said,
“This is what philosophy is. It is what all these books are about”.
 G. E. Moore was a highly influential British philosopher of the early twentieth
century. His career was spent mainly at Cambridge University, where he taught
alongside Bertrand Russell and, later, Ludwig Wittgenstein. The period of their
overlap there has been called the “golden age” of Cambridge philosophy. Moore’s
main contributions to philosophy were in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, and philosophical methodology. In Epistemology, Moore is remembered as a
stalwart defender of commonsense realism. Rejecting skepticism on the one hand,
and, on the other, metaphysical theories that would invalidate the commonsense
beliefs of “ordinary people” (non-philosophers), Moore articulated three different
George Edward Moore versions of a commonsense-realist epistemology over the course of his career.
(1873—1958)

Moore’s epistemological interests also motivated much of his metaphysical work, which to a large
extent was focused on the ontology of cognition. In this regard, Moore was an important voice in the
discussion about sense-data that dominated Anglo-American epistemology in the early twentieth
century.

In ethics, Moore is famous for driving home the difference between moral and non-moral
properties, which he cashed-out in terms of the non-natural and the natural. Moore’s classification of the
moral as non-natural was to be one of the hinges upon which moral philosophy in the Anglo-American
academy turned until roughly 1960.
 Moore’s approach to philosophizing involved focusing on narrow problems and avoiding grand
synthesis. His method was to scrutinize the meanings of the key terms in which philosophers
expressed themselves while maintaining an implicit commitment to the ideals of clarity, rigor, and
argumentation. This aspect of his philosophical style was sufficiently novel and conspicuous that many
saw it as an innovation in philosophical methodology. In virtue of this, Moore, along with Bertrand
Russell, is widely acknowledged as a founder of analytic philosophy, the kind of philosophy that has
dominated the academy in Britain and the United States since roughly the 1930s.

Moore also had a significant influence outside of academic philosophy, through his contacts in the
Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury group. In both academic and non-academic spheres, Moore’s
influence was due in no small part to his exceptional personality and moral character.

George Edward Moore was born on November 4, 1873, one of seven children of Daniel and
Henrietta Moore. There were eight Moore children in all, as Daniel had a daughter from his first wife. G.
E. Moore was raised in the Upper Norwood district of South London. His early education came at the
hands of his parents: his father taught him reading, writing, and music; and his mother taught him
French. Moore was a more-than-competent pianist and composer. At eight he was enrolled at Dulwich
College, where he studied mainly Greek and Latin, but also French, German, and mathematics. At
eighteen he entered Cambridge University, where he began as a student in Classics.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/moore/
ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION

According to Aristotle, in his book Metaphysics, Philosophy is a science which inquires into the ultimate causes,
reasons and principles of all things in the light of Reason alone.

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all

time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his
peer: Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity
through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with
keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle
left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred
treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive.[1] His extant writings
span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy
of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into
such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he
excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and description. In all
these areas, Aristotle’s theories have provided illumination, met with
resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained
interest of an abiding readership.
1. There are scholarly disputes about the number of works he produced and also about the authenticity of some of the works
coming down to us under his name.
 Because of its wide range and its remoteness in time, Aristotle’s philosophy defies easy
encapsulation. The long history of interpretation and appropriation of Aristotelian texts and themes—
spanning over two millennia and comprising philosophers working within a variety of religious and
secular traditions—has rendered even basic points of interpretation controversial. The set of entries on
Aristotle in this site addresses this situation by proceeding in three tiers. First, the present, general entry
offers a brief account of Aristotle’s life and characterizes his central philosophical commitments,
highlighting his most distinctive methods and most influential achievements.[2] Second are General
Topics, which offer detailed introductions to the main areas of Aristotle’s philosophical activity. Finally,
there follow Special Topics, which investigate in greater detail more narrowly focused issues, especially
those of central concern in recent Aristotelian scholarship.

2. The general entry strives for such neutrality as may be possible. Notes along the way: (i) indicate controversial contentions; (ii)
provide links to passages in the other entries where the relevant issues are taken up in greater detail; and (iii) cite relevant
scholarship for further study.
Aristotle’s Life

Born in 384 B.C.E. in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece in the small city of Stagira
(whence the moniker ‘the Stagirite’, which one still occasionally encounters in Aristotelian scholarship),
Aristotle was sent to Athens at about the age of seventeen to study in Plato’s Academy, then a pre-
eminent place of learning in the Greek world.

Once in Athens, Aristotle remained associated with the Academy until Plato’s death in 347, at which
time he left for Assos, in Asia Minor, on the northwest coast of present-day Turkey. There he continued
the philosophical activity he had begun in the Academy, but in all likelihood also began to expand his
researches into marine biology. He remained at Assos for approximately three years, when, evidently
upon the death of his host Hermeias, a friend and former Academic who had been the ruler of Assos,
Aristotle moved to the nearby coastal island of Lesbos. There he continued his philosophical and
empirical researches for an additional two years, working in conjunction with Theophrastus, a native of
Lesbos who was also reported in antiquity to have been associated with Plato’s Academy.

While in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias, with whom he had a daughter,
also named Pythias.
 In 343, upon the request of Philip, the king of Macedon, Aristotle left Lesbos for Pella, the
Macedonian capital, in order to tutor the king’s thirteen-year-old son, Alexander—the boy who was
eventually to become Alexander the Great.

Although speculation concerning Aristotle’s influence upon the developing Alexander has proven
irresistible to historians, in fact little concrete is known about their interaction. On the balance, it seems
reasonable to conclude that some tuition took place, but that it lasted only two or three years, when
Alexander was aged from thirteen to fifteen.

By fifteen, Alexander was apparently already serving as a deputy military commander for his father,
a circumstance undermining, if inconclusively, the judgment of those historians who conjecture a longer
period of tuition. Be that as it may, some suppose that their association lasted as long as eight years.
 It is difficult to rule out that possibility decisively, since little is known about the period of Aristotle’s
life from 341–335. He evidently remained a further five years in Stagira or Macedon before returning to
Athens for the second and final time, in 335.

In Athens, Aristotle set up his own school in a public exercise area dedicated to the god Apollo
Lykeios, whence its name, the Lyceum. Those affiliated with Aristotle’s school later came to be
called Peripatetics, probably because of the existence of an ambulatory (peripatos) on the school’s
property adjacent to the exercise ground.

Members of the Lyceum conducted research into a wide range of subjects, all of which were of
interest to Aristotle himself: botany, biology, logic, music, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, cosmology,
physics, the history of philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, ethics, theology, rhetoric, political history,
government and political theory, and the arts. In all these areas, the Lyceum collected manuscripts,
thereby, according to some ancient accounts, assembling the first great library of antiquity.

During this period, Aristotle’s wife, Pythias, died and he developed a new relationship with
Herpyllis, perhaps like him a native of Stagira, though her origins are disputed, as is the question of her
exact relationship to Aristotle. Some suppose that she was merely his slave; others infer from the
provisions of Aristotle’s will that she was a freed woman and likely his wife at the time of his death. In
any event, they had children together, including a son, Nicomachus, named for Aristotle’s father and
after whom his Nicomachean Ethics is presumably named.
 After thirteen years in Athens, Aristotle once again found cause to retire from the city, in 323.
Probably his departure was occasioned by a resurgence of the always-simmering anti-Macedonian
sentiment in Athens, which was free to come to the boil after Alexander succumbed to disease in
Babylon during that same year.

Because of his connections to Macedon, Aristotle reasonably feared for his safety and left Athens,
remarking, as an oft-repeated ancient tale would tell it, that he saw no reason to permit Athens to sin
twice against philosophy. He withdrew directly to Chalcis, on Euboea, an island off the Attic coast, and
died there of natural causes the following year, in 322.[3]

3. The best general account of Aristotle’s life is Natali (2013). Any biography must come to terms with the fact that reports of
many of the details of Aristotle’s life are speculative. Unfortunately, biographers need to rely on insecure, mainly late sources,
with the result that sometimes thinly attested conclusions gain credence only by dint of repetition. For a brief overview of the
historiography of Aristotle, see Grote (1880), who also provides an interesting glimpse into Aristotle’s life as viewed from the
vantage point of the late nineteenth century. For a brief and judicious late twentieth century perspective, see Pellegrin (1996). As
regards Aristotle’s character, two radically opposing traditions extend all the way back to antiquity. The first paints him as snide
and arrogant, an ingrate who never appreciated the education gifted him by Plato; the second portrays him as an exuberant
researcher, passionately devoted to his friends and fellow seekers, tirelessly interested in expanding the frontiers of human
knowledge. Neither portrait is likely to be wholly correct, and in fact we have little basis for adjudicating between them. It is,
however, noteworthy that these traditions intersect at one point: each in its own way regards Aristotle as formidable. For a brief
recapitulation and assessment of this situation, see Shields (2014, 15‐17)

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/notes.html#note-3
KARL JASPER’S DEFINITION
Philosophy is a discipline in which questions are more important than answers and which every answer paves the way
for another questions.

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) began his academic career working as a

psychiatrist and, after a period of transition, he converted to philosophy in
the early 1920s. Throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century
he exercised considerable influence on a number of areas of philosophical
inquiry: especially on epistemology, the philosophy of religion, and political
theory.
The influence of Kant over Jaspers is widely acknowledged in the
literature, to the extent that he has been depicted as “The first and the last
Kantian” (Heinrich Barth, quoted in Ehrlich 1975, 211). Usually this
evaluation is based on his reliance on the subjective-experiential
transformation of Kantian philosophy, which reconstructs Kantian
transcendentalism as a doctrine of particular experience and spontaneous
freedom, and emphasizes the constitutive importance of lived existence for
authentic knowledge.

However, current commentators of his philosophy have started questioning this view. Jaspers obtained
his widest influence, not through his philosophy, but through his writings on governmental conditions in
Germany, and after the collapse of National Socialist regime he emerged as a powerful spokesperson for
moral-democratic education and reorientation in the Federal Republic of Germany.
 Karl Theodor Jaspers was born on 23rd February 1883 in the North German town of Oldenburg near
the North Sea, where his ancestors had lived for generations. He was the son of a banker and a
representative of the parliament (Landtagesabgeordneten), Carl Wilhelm Jaspers (1850–1940) and
Henriette Tantzen (1862–1941), who also came from a family that was involved in local parliament.
Jaspers’s family milieu was strongly influenced by the political culture of North German liberalism, and he
often referred to the climate of early liberal democratic thought as a formative aspect of his education.

Moreover, although he claimed not to have been influenced by any specifically ecclesiastical faith, his
thought was also formed by the spirit of North German Protestantism, and his philosophical outlook can in
many respects be placed in the religiously inflected tradition of Kant and Kierkegaard.
Jaspers was a pupil at the Altes Gymnasium in Oldenburg. Since his early childhood, Jaspers suffered
from chronic bronchiectasis that impaired his physical capabilities and awareness of his physical
disabilities shaped his routine throughout his adult life and formed his sensitivity to psychological issues,
including human suffering. Jaspers attributed his ability to conduct a normative routine and to devote his
life to his creative work to his strict discipline regarding his health.

In 1910 he married Gertrud Mayer (1879–1974), who came from a pious German-Jewish merchant
family. At the time, she was working as an assistant in the sanatorium of the neurologist and psychiatrist
Oskar Kohnstamms (1871–1917) and was the sister of his close friends Gustav Mayer and the
philosopher Ernest Mayer. Only thanks to her marriage to the already known philosopher Karl Jaspers
was Gertrud Mayer able to stay in Germany during the Nazi period.
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jaspers/
Pythagoras of Samos
A mystic during the 6th century BC, who invented the word
“philosophy”, is a combination of two Greek Words, “philo” meaning love,
and “Sophia” meaning wisdom. “Philosophia,” therefore, is the love of
wisdom and philosophers are lovers of wisdom.

Pythagoras of Samos is often described as the first pure mathematician.

He is an extremely important figure in the development of mathematics yet we
know relatively little about his mathematical achievements. Unlike many later
Greek mathematicians, where at least we have some of the books which they
wrote, we have nothing of Pythagoras's writings. The society which he led, half
religious and half scientific, followed a code of secrecy which certainly means
that today Pythagoras is a mysterious figure. 

We do have details of Pythagoras's life from early biographies which use important original sources
yet are written by authors who attribute divine powers to him, and whose aim was to present him as a
god-like figure. What we present below is an attempt to collect together the most reliable sources to
reconstruct an account of Pythagoras's life. There is fairly good agreement on the main events of his life
but most of the dates are disputed with different scholars giving dates which differ by 20 years. Some
historians treat all this information as merely legends but, even if the reader treats it in this way, being
such an early record it is of historical importance. 
 Philosophy is the main subject of most writings of Plato or Aristotle’s Metaphysics and
Nicomachean Ethics; of large parts of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and William
of Ockham; of the Meditations of Rene Descartes; of Ethics of Spinoza; of the Monadology of
Leibniz; of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Knowledge; of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; and
finally, in the present century, of Moore’s own Principia Ethica; of Russel’s Our Knowledge of the
External World; of Heidegger’s Being and Time, of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and of
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

However, it is only after we have become acquainted with several specimen problems, with some
distinctly philosophical approaches to these problems, that the whole picture becomes clear. Philosophy
is not a shorthand term; it is a kind of activity with which the questioner is most likely to be completely
unfamiliar.

So the best response to the beginner’s question, “what is philosophy?” is not to labor to formulate a
neat dictionary definition but instead to offer a few typical philosophical problems as specimens and
illustrations, further examples for themselves. And this is precisely what we will do in this course.
 More than just a subject, philosophy is an activity. There is nothing new about the idea that the
activity of philosophizing is more important than the subject, philosophy. German philosopher,
Immanuel Kant, told his pupils:

“You will not learn from me philosophy, but how to philosophize, not thoughts to repeat, but how to think. Stand
on your own feet. Dare to think, no matter where it might lead you. Just dare to think.”
Generally, philosophers are interested in questions like:
1. Is there a God? What reasons are there to believe in God? Can we prove or disprove God’s
existence? (philosophy of religion)

2. What is knowledge? Can we know? What is it to know? How can we know? (epistemology or theory of
knowledge)

3. What is man? Who is man? Is man only his body or is man his soul? (philosophical psychology)

4. Are we free? Are our actions already determined? Do we have a free will? (metaphysics and ethics)

5. What is right? What is wrong? (ethics or moral philosophy)

6. What is beauty? (aesthetics or philosophy of art)

7. What is the good life? What is happiness?

8. Does life make sense? What is the meaning of life?

CLASSICAL BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY (Areas of Philosophy)

✓ METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics, the first branch of Philosophy, is the “science” that studies “being as such” or “the first causes of
things” or “things that do not change”. It studies the essence of a thing and ask the fundamental questions in relation to
being, becoming, existence and reality (Greek word: Meta – beyond, phusika – Physics). Metaphysics encompasses
the study of what is sometimes termed ―ultimate reality. As such, metaphysics raises questions about reality
that go beyond sense experience, beyond ordinary science. Metaphysical questions involve free will, the
mind–body relationship, supernatural existence, personal immortality, and the nature of being.
Question:
What do you think is your Telos (purpose)?
Why do you exist?

✓ THEODICY

Theodicy is a classical branch of Philosophy which attempts to answer the fundamental question in relation to God
and the problem of evil. According to Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy is an attempt to justify God’s existence in light of the
apparent imperfections of the world. (Greek word: Theo – God)
Question:
Does God exist?
✓ COSMOLOGY

Cosmology is a classical branch of philosophy which attempts to answer the fundamental questions in
relation to universe, creation, origins and evolution. It is a discipline directed to the philosophical contemplation
of the universe as a totality, and to its conceptual foundations.
Question:
What do you think is the ultimate stuff in which the universe was created?

✓ EPISTEMOLOGY

Epistemology is the study of the nature of human knowledge, justification and the rationality of belief.
(Greek word: Episteme – knowledge. It analyses the nature of knowledge (how do we know and to what extent?).
It is the branch of philosophy that asks questions about knowledge, its nature and origins, and whether
or not it is even possible. Epistemological questions involve standards of evidence, truth, belief, sources
of knowledge, gradations of knowledge, memory, and perception.

Question:
How can you say that you know something?
Where does our knowledge come from – mind or senses?
✓ LOGIC

Logic is the art of reasoning. It is primarily concerned with the principles and criteria of valid inference and
demonstration. Logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of
formal systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural language. (Greek word: Logos –
knowledge)
Question:
Is my belief / argument valid or not?

✓ ETHICS

It is a branch of Philosophy that focuses on human action. Ethics seeks to resolve questions of morality by
defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime (Greek word Ethos –
character). Ethics encompasses the study of moral problems, practical reasoning, right and wrong, good
and bad, virtues and vices, character, moral duty, and related issues involving the nature, origins, and
scope of moral values.
Question:
What is good and evil?
How can I say that an action is bad or evil?
OTHER AREAS OF PHILOSOPHY

Social and political philosophy are concerned with the nature and origins of the state (government),
sovereignty, the exercise of power, the effects of social institutions on individuals, ethnicity, gender, social
status, and the strengths and weaknesses of different types of societies.

Axiology, the study of values.

Aesthetics, the study of perceptions, feelings, judgments, and ideas associated with the appreciation of
beauty, art, and objects in general.

Ontology, the study of being and what it means to ―Exist.

THE HUMAN PERSON

According to Aristotle, what makes a human person different from other beings is that human person is
rational. Human person has reason, morals, and consciousness which other beings do not have. We are
continuously wondering, curious about different things in life, such as our essence or purpose. Aside from being
rational, we are also social beings for we cannot live alone. We must satisfy certain natural basic necessities in
order to live.

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either
beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual.”
-Aristotle

SOURCES
Abulad. Romualdo E. and Ceniza, Claro R. Introduction to Philosophy (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2001).
Porras, Joec C. Philosophy of Man, https://www.slideshare.net/AlaizzaAjihil/philosophy- ofthehuman-person. (accessed,
January 04, 2018).
Stumpf, Enoch and Fieser, James. Socrates to Sartre and Beyond, A history of Philosophy (Eight Edition) (Philippiines: McGraw-
Hill Publishing House Inc, 2008).
Tuibeo, Amable G. Introduction to a Philosophy of the Human Person (Manila: Learning Tree Publishing House Inc, 2016).
William Turner, History of Philosophy, (Boston: The Athenean Press, 1903).
Encyclopedia Britanica, www. https://www.britannica.com. (accessed, January 04, 2018.)
Ethics, http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/socrates.html (accessed, January 04, 2018
Philosophy of the Human Person

- Man, for a scientist, is only a psycho-physico-chemical organic substance, an organization of

systems.

- Further, man operates under the same laws of nature as other animals. Thus, under this view, man can
be studied and known by medicine, anatomy and other physical sciences and his behavior likewise can
be looking at man. And this is through PHILOSOPHY.

- Philosophy of Man is a philosophical approach to man. It attempts to describe and interpret human
existence in relation with other beings.

- Compared with the scientific approach which is too limited, narrow and defective, Philosophy of Man is
a total approach to integral man.

- To understand man as a person is no easy task. It means penetrating into the central mystery of our
own being.

- We cannot but become personal about this endeavor, for when we study man, we are in effect, studying
ourselves: what we are and who we are.
- We shall understand the human person better by considering all the important and significant aspects
related to him. We shall be treating each aspect one at a time so that, ultimately, we can see MAN,
totally and comprehensively.

- No man is an object among other objects but man as a person, an individual, as a being-in-the-world.

- And as a being-in the-world, he is:

- A subject;
- An embodied subject;
- A subject among other subject;
- Free to choose;
- A knowing subject;
- A being who stand before God;
- One who searches for life’s meaning and his END.
 In order to come closer to an understanding of the totality of all that is man, we have to go back and
root our reflection on the concrete experience of man himself. We cannot tear man apart in clear
and fixed ideas.

We have to describe and bring to light man’s whole uniqueness in our concrete experience.

And therefore, we cannot fully understand this subject unless we completely understand ourselves

Philosophy of Man seeks to undertake this venture of becoming aware of ourselves and to discover the
source of inner strength and security which are the rewards such venture.
For the Students:

•Too often, Philosophy of Man tends to be regarded as a remote and abstruse subject who can only be
profitable studied by the brilliant few. It seems to me that this is unfortunate and that philosophical
matters are often less difficult and more important than is generally supposed.

•To benefit greatly in your philosophical studies, one must always approach the subject with an open,
critical and inquisitive mind.

•To realize that philosophy, unlike the sciences, does not offer definite answers. The activity of
philosophizing is not going to produce a set of cut-and-dried answers to clearly stated problems.
•We shall be moving in a world where “one cannot tell”, “I don’t know”, and “it all depends”, “it’s a matter
of opinion” will be essential and frequently recurring phrases. We shall hope to sort out and tidy up some
problems and discover the kind of question that it makes sense to ask and the kind of answer that we can
expect to get; we shall hope to end up with more knowledge, more wisdom and a clearer understanding.

•But if the ardent seeker of truth is not content with that, if he is only interested in answers that are right
or wrong, if he wants final, conclusive certainty he must go elsewhere — to the study, for example of
pure mathematics. As he does so, he will be a shutting with a clang the door that leads to the world of “it
all depends”. And this will be a pity for it is the world in which we live.

•And therefore, that way, he will become a critical thinker and probably will become logically correct in
every reasoning that he’ll be uttered.
 DOING PHILOSOPHY
(AN OVERVIEW OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY)

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
The student must be able to
✓  Explain the very importance of the philosophies of Ancient Greeks
✓  Determine the historical development of philosophy of the West
✓  Explain the philosophical views of different schools of thought of the West and the East
✓  Compare and contrast the philosophical views of the West and the East
✓  Relate the current issues and scenarios with various philosophies
✓  Write an analysis on the given topic
PERIODS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
THE PRESOCRATICS

Pre-Socratic philosophers were concerned with the cosmos and the nature of things (Greek – Phusis).
Some thinkers were driven by very specific puzzles, and fundamental questions such as “What is the
fundamental stuff that creates the things around them?” What are things really like?” and “how can we
explain the process of Change?”

It has said to be the Milesians (from Miletus which was located at the Aegean sea from Athens) began their
systematic inquiry around 585 BCE. There was no distinction before between natural science and natural
philosophy, as their focus is the nature and how it changes. Milesians, aside from being a philosopher, were also
primitive scientists.
THE SOPHISTS

The Sophists were paid teachers and intellectuals who taught the oligarchs of Athens and other Greek cities
during the half od 5th BCE. The sophists received payments for educating the oligarchs. Some oligarchs believed
that they could achieve Arete (Virtue and Excellence) studying under the Sophistry. The sophists attained wealth
and fame while also arousing significant antipathy.
Some of the well-known sophists emerged in Athens were:
(1) Protagoras,
(2) Gorgias,
(3) Thrasymachus.

For Thrasymachus:

✓ An unjust person is a superior man

✓ Justice is only the advantage of the few
✓ Laws are made by the ruling class / party for its own interest

Thrasymachus (fl. 427 B.C.E.)
Thrasymachus of Chalcedon is one of several “older sophist” (including
Antiphon, Critias, Hippias, Gorgias, and Protagoras) who became famous in
Athens during the fifth century B.C.E. We know that Thrasymachus was born in
Chalcedon, a colony of Megara in Bithynia, and that he had distinguished himself
as a teacher of rhetoric and speechwriter in Athens by the year 427. Beyond this,
relatively little is known about his life and works. Thrasymachus’ lasting
importance is due to his memorable place in the first book of Plato‘s Republic.
Although it is not quite clear whether the views Plato attributes to Thrasymachus
are indeed the views the historical person held, Thrasymachus’ critique of justice
has been of considerable importance, and seems to represent moral and political
views that are representative of the Sophistic Enlightenment in late fifth century
Athens.

In ethics, Thrasymachus’ ideas have often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral values.
Thrasymachus’ insistence that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger seems to support the
view that moral values are socially constructed and are nothing but the reflection of the interests of
particular political communities. Thrasymachus can thus be read as a foreshadowing of Nietzsche, who
argues as well that moral values need to be understood as socially constructed entities. In political theory,
Thrasymachus has often been seen as a spokesperson for a cynical realism that contends that might
makes right.

Source: https://iep.utm.edu/thrasymachus/

Socrates, ancient Greek
philosopher whose way of life,
character, and thought exerted a
profound influence on Western
philosophy.
SOCRATES
✓  The great mentor of Plato.
✓  He was born around 470 BCE and died on 399 BCE. He strongly
criticized the twisted teachings of the sophists especially their view of
justice.
✓  He was putted into trial and found guilty of impiety and corrupting the
youth. The verdict of the Athenians for Socrates was death penalty by
drinking a poison.
✓  For Socrates, the true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
✓  The Unexamined Life is not Worth Living. Socrates asserts that one
must seek knowledge and wisdom rather than material and worldly things.
One must also examine his/her own belief and action.
✓  Human person has a rational soul. One should live in accordance
to reason.
✓  True happiness is promoted by doing what is right.
✓  We should seek for what is good. However, we fail because of lack of
knowledge as to how to obtain the good. Knowledge is virtue.
✓  Man will obtain wisdom if he is rational, having enough knowledge to
understand the world.
PLATO
✓  Plato was born in Athens, Greece around 428 BCE (c.
427–348 B.C.E)

✓  He established his first school outside Athens which he

named Akadameia or the Academy (named after
Akademos / Hecademus – a local hero). The meeting
location of Plato’s Academy was originally a public grove
near the ancient city of Athens. The garden had historically
been home to many other groups and activities.

✓ Plato is actually the nickname of Aristocles, the son of one

of the oldest and most
elite Athenian families... Aristocles, meant ―best, most
renowned.‖

✓ Plato was a member of the Athenian aristocracy and

Socrates most famous and important pupil and mentor of
Aristotle. Socrates’ trial and death convinced Plato that
Athenian democracy was irrational mob rule.
✓ founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.
 Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not
have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were
due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which
were Justice, Beauty, and Equality. Whereas other thinkers—and Plato himself in certain passages—used
the term without any precise technical force, Plato in the course of his career came to devote specialized
attention to these entities.

As he conceived them, they were accessible not to the senses but to the mind alone, and they were
the most important constituents of reality, underlying the existence of the sensible world and giving it what
intelligibility it has. In metaphysics Plato envisioned a systematic, rational treatment of the forms and their
interrelations, starting with the most fundamental among them (the Good, or the One); in ethics and moral
psychology developed the view that the good life requires not just a certain kind of knowledge (as Socrates
had suggested) but also habituation to healthy emotional responses and therefore harmony between the
three parts of the soul (according to Plato, reason, spirit, and appetite). His works also contain discussions
in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. His
school fostered research not just in philosophy narrowly conceived but in a wide range of endeavors that
today would be called mathematical or scientific.
✓  Reality does not really exist in the sensible world, in the world where we live (World of senses) because
things in the sensible world are continuously changing and temporal.

✓  Plato suggest that there are three levels of reality, let say for instance, a table. There are three kinds of table:
(1) the idea of a table in the world being which makes up its reality known by rational man,
(2) the sensible and physical chair in this world constructed by a carpenter and
(3) the drawing or painting of a chair produced by an artist, or a painter in the world of art.
THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA

One of the dialogues of Plato that deals with the notion of pious / holiness (Socrates asked Euthyphro to define pious).
Despite the fact that the story was applied to the Greek polytheistic belief, the dilemma (of the story) has significant
implications in the modern monotheistic religions. Still, the story is worthy to be an object of discourse not only in
philosophy but also in theology.
REFLECTIONS ON EUTHYPHRO

✓  Is universal moral truth possible even without the existence of God?
✓  Is someone/something pious because God wills it to be pious? Are moral standards dependent on God?
✓  Can human person really know God’s purpose?

PLATO’S CARDINAL VIRTUES

✓  For Plato, the human person has a human soul. The Soul has three components namely:
Reason, Spirit and Appetite.

✓  He based on this three-part conception of the soul on the common experience of internal
confusion and conflict that all humans share

There is awareness of a goal or value – Reason

There is a drive towards action – the Spirit
There is a desire for the things of the body - Appetite
Book IV of the Republic

✓  Cardinal Virtues can be thought only through proper education.

✓  The said Cardinal virtues will guide the people in order to have Justice – in which all citizens act in
accordance to their duty, creating a perfect society - Utopia
✓  The Philosopher King (The ruler must have and be guided with the cardinal virtues of Wisdom, Courage
and Temperance
PLATO’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
ARISTOTLE

✓  Aristotle was born in Chaldice around 384 BCE, a son of

physician to the king of Macedonia. He was also a student of Plato
in the Akademia

✓  He established his schooly Lycaeum in 335 BCE, dedicated

to Appolo Lyceus (the wolf-god). The students of Lyceum is called
as peripatetics (peripatos), name of the cloister in which they
walked and held their discussions. The lyceum was not a private
group, unlike Plato’s academy. The lectures were always open to
the public and delivered free.

✓  The primary focus of Aristotle’s education was cooperative

education and research. As it has mentioned, the peripatetics
walked and observed around their environment.

✓  One of his notable students was Alexander the Great, who

helped him to establish the first zoo and botanical garden.
THE TELOS ARGUMENT

✓  The word Telos (in ancient Greek) refers to the ultimate end, purpose or function of a substance.

✓  Everything that exist is substance. To be (being) means a substance as a product of dynamic process.
Thus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics is concerned with Being (that which exists) and its causes (process in which
substances come into being).

✓  Every substance has its Telos – End.

✓ TO BE means a SUBTANCE, as a product of a dynamic process. Thus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics in

concerned with Being, (that which exists) and its causes (process in which substances come into being).
ARISTOTLE’S HYLOMORPHISM:

Hylomorphism, (from Greek hylē, “matter”; morphē, “form”), in philosophy, metaphysical view

according to which every natural body consists of two intrinsic principles, one potential, namely, primary
matter, and one actual, namely, substantial form. It was the central doctrine of Aristotle’s philosophy of
nature. Before Aristotle, the Ionian philosophers had sought the basic constituents of bodies; but Aristotle
observed that it was necessary to distinguish two types of principles.

On the one hand, one must look for the primordial elements—i.e., for bodies that are not derived from
others and of which all other bodies are composed. He found his solution to this question in Empedocles’
doctrine of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. On the other hand, one must look for the intrinsic
conditions whereby a body is or comes to be what it is understood to be, and to answer this question he
proposed his hylomorphic doctrine.

The primordial elements correspond in a sense to those of modern physics insofar as the single
elements can have independent existence or activity of their own and can therefore be known directly by
way of experiment. Matter and form, however, are not bodies or physical entities that can exist or act
independently: they exist and act only within and by the composite. Thus, they can be known only indirectly,
by intellectual analysis, as the metaphysical principles of bodies.
 Aristotle based his argument chiefly on the analysis of “becoming,” or substantial change. If a being
changes into another being, something permanent must exist that is common to the two terms; otherwise
there would be no transformation but merely a succession by the annihilation of the first term and the
creation of the second.

This permanent and common something cannot itself be strictly a being because a being already is and
does not become, and because a being “in act” cannot be an intrinsic part of a being possessing a unity of
its own; it must therefore be a being “in potency,” a potential principle, passive and indeterminate.

At the same time, in the two terms of the change, there must also be an actual, active, determining
principle. The potential principle is matter, the actual principle, form. Phenomenological arguments for
hylomorphism have also been proposed.

The hylomorphic doctrine was received and variously interpreted by the Greek and Arab commentators
of Aristotle and by the Scholastic philosophers. Thomas Aquinas gave a full account of hylomorphism in his
commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics and in his De ente et essentia (“Of Being and
Essence”). Many medieval scholars, Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) and Bonaventure among them, extended
hylomorphism to all beings in creation—even to angels.
 Opposed to hylomorphism are atomism, mechanism, and dynamism, all of which deny the
intrinsic composition of metaphysical principles in bodies and recognize only physical principles, such as
corpuscles, pure mathematical extension, or forces and energies. These theories agree also in denying
the hylomorphist’s claim that intrinsic change can occur in the ultimate realities of which the physical
world is composed and, further, in reducing the phenomenon of becoming to a simple local movement or
to purely accidental changes of a single selfsame reality.

A hylomorphic framework has been employed in theology in explaining the Eucharist and the relation
of soul and body in man.

The science of physics, after having been dominated for 300 years by mechanism, atomism, and
dynamism, has returned in the 20th century to a more naturalistic conception allowing the intrinsic
transmutability of the physical elements—protons, neutrons, electrons, mesons, and other elementary
particles—the transformation of mass into energy and vice versa, and the non-conservation of
elementary particles. Physics thus poses again the problem that Aristotle’s hylomorphism was designed
to solve. Nevertheless, because for Aristotle matter and form were metaphysical principles, they must not
be equated with any physical concept or entity.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hylomorphism
ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS:

The first major work in the history of philosophy to bear the title “Metaphysics” was the treatise by
Aristotle that we have come to know by that name. But Aristotle himself did not use that title or even
describe his field of study as ‘metaphysics’; the name was evidently coined by the first century C.E.
editor who assembled the treatise we know as Aristotle’s Metaphysics out of various smaller selections
of Aristotle’s works. The title ‘metaphysics’—literally, ‘after the Physics’—very likely indicated the place
the topics discussed therein were intended to occupy in the philosophical curriculum. They were to be
studied after the treatises dealing with nature (ta phusika). In this entry, we discuss the ideas that are
developed in Aristotle’s treatise.

1. The Subject Matter of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Aristotle himself described his subject matter in a variety of ways: as ‘first philosophy’, or ‘the study
of being qua being’, or ‘wisdom’, or ‘theology’. A comment on these descriptions will help to clarify
Aristotle’s topic.

In Metaphysics, Aristotle says that “everyone takes what is called ‘wisdom’ (sophia) to be
concerned with the primary causes (aitia) and the starting-points (or principles, archai),” and it is these
causes and principles that he proposes to study in this work. It is his customary practice to begin an
inquiry by reviewing the opinions previously held by others, and that is what he does here, as Book Α
continues with a history of the thought of his predecessors about causes and principles.
 These causes and principles are clearly the subject matter of what he calls ‘first philosophy’. But
this does not mean the branch of philosophy that should be studied first. Rather, it concerns issues that
are in some sense the most fundamental or at the highest level of generality. Aristotle distinguished
between things that are “better known to us” and things that are “better known in themselves,”[1] and
maintained that we should begin our study of a given topic with things better known to us and arrive
ultimately at an understanding of things better known in themselves.

The principles studied by ‘first philosophy’ may seem very general and abstract, but they are,
according to Aristotle, better known in themselves, however remote they may seem from the world of
ordinary experience. Still, since they are to be studied only by one who has already studied nature
(which is the subject matter of the Physics), they are quite appropriately described as coming “after
the Physics.”

Aristotle’s description ‘the study of being qua being’ is frequently and easily misunderstood, for it
seems to suggest that there is a single (albeit special) subject matter—being qua being—that is under
investigation. But Aristotle’s description does not involve two things—(1) a study and (2) a subject
matter (being qua being)—for he did not think that there is any such subject matter as ‘being qua being’.
Rather, his description involves three things: (1) a study, (2) a subject matter (being), and (3) a manner
in which the subject matter is studied (qua being).
 Aristotle’s Greek word that has been Latinized as ‘qua’ means roughly ‘in so far as’ or ‘under the
aspect’. A study of x qua y, then, is a study of x that concerns itself solely with the y aspect of x. So
Aristotle’s study does not concern some recondite subject matter known as ‘being qua being’. Rather it
is a study of being, or better, of beings—of things that can be said to be—that studies them in a
particular way: as beings, in so far as they are beings.

Of course, first philosophy is not the only field of inquiry to study beings. Natural science and
mathematics also study beings, but in different ways, under different aspects. The natural scientist
studies them as things that are subject to the laws of nature, as things that move and undergo change.
That is, the natural scientist studies things qua movable (i.e., in so far as they are subject to change).
The mathematician studies things qua countable and measurable.

The metaphysician, on the other hand, studies them in a more general and abstract way—qua
beings. So first philosophy studies the causes and principles of beings qua beings. In Γ.2, Aristotle adds
that for this reason it studies the causes and principles of substances (ousiai). We will explain this
connection in Section 3 in the following slides.
 In Book Ε, Aristotle adds another description to the study of the causes and principles of beings qua
beings. Whereas natural science studies objects that are material and subject to change, and mathematics
studies objects that although not subject to change are nevertheless not separate from (i.e., independent
of) matter, there is still room for a science that studies things (if indeed there are any) that are eternal, not
subject to change, and independent of matter. Such a science, he says, is theology, and this is the “first”
and “highest” science. Aristotle’s identification of theology, so conceived, with the study of being qua being
has proved challenging to his interpreters.

Finally, we may note that in Book Β, Aristotle delineates his subject matter in a different way, by listing
the problems or perplexities (aporiai) he hopes to deal with. Characteristic of these perplexities, he says, is
that they tie our thinking up in knots. They include the following, among others: Are sensible substances
the only ones that exist, or are there others besides them? Is it kinds or individuals that are the elements
and principles of things? And if it is kinds, which ones: the most generic or the most specific? Is there a
cause apart from matter? Is there anything apart from material compounds? Are the principles limited,
either in number or in kind? Are the principles of perishable things themselves perishable? Are the
principles universal or particular, and do they exist potentially or actually? Are mathematical objects
(numbers, lines, figures, points) substances? If they are, are they separate from or do they always belong
to sensible things? And (“the hardest and most perplexing of all,” Aristotle says) are unity and being the
substance of things, or are they attributes of some other subject? In the remainder of Book Β, Aristotle
presents arguments on both sides of each of these issues, and in subsequent books he takes up many of
them again. But it is not always clear precisely how he resolves them, and it is possible that Aristotle did
not think that the Metaphysics contains definitive solutions to all of these perplexities.
2. The Categories

To understand the problems and project of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it is best to begin with one of his
earlier works, the Categories. Although placed by long tradition among his logical works (see the
discussion in the entry on Aristotle’s Logic), due to its analysis of the terms that make up the propositions
out of which deductive inferences are constructed, the Categories begins with a strikingly general and
exhaustive account of the things there are (ta onta)—beings. According to this account, beings can be
divided into ten distinct categories. (Although

Aristotle never says so, it is tempting to suppose that these categories are mutually exclusive and
jointly exhaustive of the things there are.) They include substance, quality, quantity, and relation, among
others. Of these categories of beings, it is the first, substance (ousia), to which Aristotle gives a
privileged position.

Substances are unique in being independent things; the items in the other categories all depend
somehow on substances. That is, qualities are the qualities of substances; quantities are the amounts
and sizes that substances come in; relations are the way substances stand to one another. These
various non-substances all owe their existence to substances—each of them, as Aristotle puts it, exists
only ‘in’ a subject. That is, each non-substance “is in something, not as a part, and cannot exist
separately from what it is in” (Cat. 1a25). Indeed, it becomes clear that substances are the subjects that
these ontologically dependent non-substances are ‘in’.
 In addition to this fundamental inherence relation across categories, Aristotle also points out another
fundamental relation that obtains between items within a single category. He describes this as the relation
of “being said of a subject,” and his examples make clear that it is the relation of a more general to a less
general thing within a single category.

Thus, man is ‘said of’ a particular man, and animal is ‘said of’ man, and therefore, as Aristotle points
out, animal is ‘said of’ the particular man also. The ‘said of’ relation, that is to say, is transitive (cf. 1b10).
So the genus (e.g., animal) is ‘said of’ the species (e.g., man) and both genus and species are ‘said of’ the
particular. The same holds in non-substance categories. In the category of quality, for example, the genus
(color) is ‘said of’ the species (white) and both genus and species are ‘said of’ the particular white.

There has been considerable scholarly dispute about these particulars in nonsubstance categories.
 The language of this contrast (‘in’ a subject vs. ‘said of’ a subject) is peculiar to the Categories, but the
idea seems to recur in other works as the distinction between accidental vs. essential predication. Similarly,
in works other than the Categories, Aristotle uses the label ‘universals’ (ta katholou) for the things that are
“said of many;” things that are not universal he calls ‘particulars’ (ta kath’ hekasta).

Although he does not use these labels in the Categories, it is not misleading to say that the doctrine of
the Categories is that each category contains a hierarchy of universals and particulars, with each universal
being ‘said of’ the lower-level universals and particulars that fall beneath it. Each category thus has the
structure of an upside-down tree.[2] At the top (or trunk) of the tree are the most generic items in that
category[3] (e.g., in the case of the category of substance, the genus plant and the genus animal); branching
below them are universals at the next highest level, and branching below these are found lower levels of
universals, and so on, down to the lowest level universals (e.g., such infimae species as man and horse); at
the lowest level—the leaves of the tree—are found the individual substances, e.g., this man, that horse, etc.

2. This inverse tree-like structure was first noticed in the 3rd century C.E. by Porphyry: “Substance is itself a genus, under this is body, and under body is
living body, under which is animal. Under animal is rational animal, under which is man. Under man are Socrates and Plato and individual (kata meros)
men” (Isagoge 4, 21–25). This so-called “tree of Porphyry” later found its way, with illustrations, into medieval discussions of Aristotle.

3. Although Aristotle himself never puts it this way, one might think of each category itself as a genus. This is certainly what Porphyry thought (see note
2). See also Owen 1965b. Note, however, that if a category is a genus, it is a maximally general one—it cannot be a species of some higher genus. For
the union of all the categories contains everything that there is—i.e., all of the beings—and Aristotle insists that being is not a genus (Posterior
Analytics 92b14, Metaphysics Β.3, 998b22).
 The individuals in the category of substance play a special role in this scheme. Aristotle calls them
“primary substances” (prôtai ousiai) for without them, as he says, nothing else would exist. Indeed,
Aristotle offers an argument (2a35–2b7) to establish the primary substances as the fundamental entities in
this ontology. Everything that is not a primary substance, he points out, stands in one of the two relations
(inhering ‘in’, or being ‘said of’) to primary substances. A genus, such as animal, is ‘said of’ the species
below it and, since they are ‘said of’ primary substances, so is the genus (recall the transitivity of the ‘said
of’ relation).

Thus, everything in the category of substance that is not itself a primary substance is, ultimately, ‘said
of’ primary substances. And if there were no primary substances, there would be no “secondary”
substances (species and genera), either. For these secondary substances are just the ways in which the
primary substances are fundamentally classified within the category of substance. As for the members of
non-substance categories, they too depend for their existence on primary substances. A universal in a
non-substance category, e.g., color, in the category of quality, is ‘in’ body, Aristotle tells us, and therefore in
individual bodies. For color could not be ‘in’ body, in general, unless it were ‘in’ at least some particular
bodies. Similarly, particulars in non-substance categories (although there is not general agreement among
scholars about what such particulars might be) cannot exist on their own. E.g., a determinate shade of
color, or a particular and non-shareable bit of that shade, is not capable of existing on its own—if it were
not ‘in’ at least some primary substance, it would not exist. So primary substances are the basic entities—
the basic “things that there are”—in the world of the Categories.
3. The Role of Substance in the Study of Being Qua Being

The Categories leads us to expect that the study of being in general (being qua being) will
crucially involve the study of substance, and when we turn to the Metaphysics we are not disappointed.
First, in Metaphysics Γ Aristotle argues in a new way for the ontological priority of substance; and then,
in Books Ζ, Η, and Θ, he wrestles with the problem of what it is to be a substance. We will begin with
Γ’s account of the central place of substance in the study of being qua being.

As we noted above, metaphysics (or, first philosophy) is the science which studies being qua
being. In this respect it is unlike the specialized or departmental sciences, which study only part of
being (only some of the things that exist) or study beings only in a specialized way (e.g., only in so far
as they are changeable, rather than in so far as they are beings).

But ‘being’, as Aristotle tells us in Γ.2, is “said in many ways”. That is, the verb ‘to be’ (einai) has
different senses, as do its cognates ‘being’ (on) and ‘entities’ (onta). So the universal science of being
qua being appears to founder on an equivocation: how can there be a single science of being when the
very term ‘being’ is ambiguous?
 Consider an analogy. There are dining tables, and there are tide tables. A dining table is a table in
the sense of a smooth flat slab fixed on legs; a tide table is a table in the sense of a systematic
arrangement of data in rows and columns. But there is not a single sense of ‘table’ which applies to both
the piece of furniture at which I am writing these words and to the small booklet that lies upon it. Hence
it would be foolish to expect that there is a single science of tables, in general, that would include
among its objects both dining tables and tide tables.
Tables, that is to say, do not constitute a single kind with a single definition, so no single science, or field
of knowledge, can encompass precisely those things that are correctly called ‘tables’.

If the term ‘being’ were ambiguous in the way that ‘table’ is, Aristotle’s science of being qua being
would be as impossible as a science of tables qua tables. But, Aristotle argues in Γ.2, ‘being’ is not
ambiguous in this way. ‘Being’, he tells us, is ‘said in many ways’ but it is not merely (what he calls)
‘homonymous’, i.e., sheerly ambiguous. Rather, the various senses of ‘being’ have what he calls a ‘pros
hen’ ambiguity—they are all related to a single central sense. (The Greek phrase ‘pros hen’ means “in
relation to one.”)

Aristotle explains his point by means of some examples that he takes to be analogous to ‘being’.
Consider the terms ‘healthy’ and ‘medical’. Neither of these has a single definition that applies uniformly
to all cases: not every healthy (or medical) thing is healthy (medical) in the same sense of ‘healthy’
(‘medical’). There is a range of things that can be called ‘healthy’: people, diets, exercise, complexions,
etc. Not all of these are healthy in the same sense. Exercise is healthy in the sense of being productive
of health; a clear complexion is healthy in the sense of being symptomatic of health; a person is healthy
in the sense of having good health.
 But notice that these various senses have something in common: a reference to one central thing,
health, which is actually possessed by only some of the things that are spoken of as ‘healthy’, namely,
healthy organisms, and these are said to be healthy in the primary sense of the term. Other things are
considered healthy only in so far as they are appropriately related to things that are healthy in this
primary sense.

The situation is the same, Aristotle claims, with the term ‘being’. It, too, has a primary sense as
well as related senses in which it applies to other things because they are appropriately related to
things that are called ‘beings’ in the primary sense. The beings in the primary sense are substances;
the beings in other senses are the qualities, quantities, etc., that belong to substances. An animal, e.g.,
a horse, is a being, and so is a color, e.g, white, a being. But a horse is a being in the primary sense—
it is a substance—whereas the color white (a quality) is a being only because it qualifies some
substance. An account of the being of anything that is, therefore, will ultimately have to make some
reference to substance. Hence, the science of being qua being will involve an account of the central
case of beings—substances.

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
ARISTOTLE’S NOTION OF CAUSES
THE TELOS ARGUMENT

✓ All objects have a telos.

✓ An object is good when it properly secures its telos.

Given the above, hopefully these steps of the argument are clear so far. At this point, Aristotle directs his thinking
towards human beings specifically.
✓ The telos of a human being is to reason.
✓ The good for a human being is to act in accordance with reason, since he is rational

EUDAEMONIA
(Welfare, Flourishing, Genuine Happiness)

✓  It is a state that all humans should aim for as it is the aim and the very end of human existence.
✓  Eudaemonia can be achieve through the attainment of a good life.
✓  Eudaemonia is not a psychological state of being happy. It is a genuine state, a
fulfillment.
✓  It is state of flourishing and acting in accordance to one’s true function
THE VIRTUE CONTINUUM
SOURCES:

- Abulad. Romualdo E. and Ceniza, Claro R. Introduction to Philosophy (Manila: UST Publishing House 2001).

- Ramos, Christine Carmela R. Introduction to Philosophy (Manila: Rex Publishing House, 2016).
Stumpf, Samuel Enoch and Fieser, James. Socrates to Sartre and Beyond.
(Philippines: McGraw-Hill Publishing House Inc., 2008).

- Tuibeo, Amable G. Introduction to a Philosophy of the Human Person (Manila: Learning Tree Publishing
House Inc., 2017).

ACTIVITY:

Write a brief insight on the following:

1. Socrates and the Sophist
2. Thrasymachus view of Justice in relation to current socio-political condition
3. Is universal moral truth possible even without the existence of God?
4. What makes a human person different from other beings?
5. What is Eudaemonia? How do we achieve it?
UNIT I: DOING PHILOSOPHY: AN OVERVIEW OF EASTERN PHILOSOPHY

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

The students must be able to

✓  Discuss the main philosophical views of the East – Indian and Chinese
✓  Compare and contrast the philosophical vies of the West and the East
✓  Explain the philosophical views of different schools of thought of the West and the East
✓  Determine the historical development of philosophy of the East
✓  Write an analysis on the given topic
INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

It has said to be that the Hindus started to /philosophize earlier than the Greeks. The close counterpart of the
word “philosophy” in Hindu is Darsana, a Sanskrit word which means world vision.

Compare to the Ancient Greek Philosophy, which is rational, Indian philosophy has its emphasis on the
intuitive / spiritual aspect of human person. Vedas, a voluminous collection of Hindu religious text, is the main
focus of inquiry. Indian thought has been concerned with various philosophical problems, such as the nature of
the world (cosmology), the nature of reality (metaphysics), Logic, the nature of knowledge (Epistemology), ethics
and Philosophy of Religion

It is a systems of thought and reflection that were developed by the civilizations of the Indian
subcontinent. They include both orthodox (astika) systems, namely,
the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva-Mimamsa (or Mimansa), and Vedanta schools
of philosophy, and unorthodox (nastika) systems, such as Buddhism and Jainism. Indian thought has
been concerned with various philosophical problems, significant among which are the nature of the
world (cosmology), the nature of reality (metaphysics), logic, the nature of knowledge
(epistemology), ethics, and the philosophy of religion.
VEDA

Veda, (Sanskrit: “Knowledge”) a collection of poems or hymns composed in archaic Sanskrit by Indo-
European-speaking peoples who lived in northwest India during the 2nd millennium BCE. No definite date
can be ascribed to the composition of the Vedas, but the period of about 1500–1200 BCE is acceptable to
most scholars. The hymns formed a liturgical body that in part grew up around the soma ritual and sacrifice
and were recited or chanted during rituals. They praised a wide pantheon of gods, some of whom
personified natural and cosmic phenomena, such as fire (Agni), the Sun (Surya and Savitri), dawn (Ushas,
a goddess), storms (the Rudras), and rain (Indra), while others represented abstract qualities such as
friendship (Mitra), moral authority (Varuna), kingship (Indra), and speech (Vach, a goddess).

The foremost collection, or Samhita, of such poems, from which the hotri (“reciter”) drew the material for his
recitations, is the Rigveda (“Knowledge of the Verses”). Sacred formulas known as mantras were recited by
the adhvaryu, the priest responsible for the sacrificial fire and for carrying out the ceremony.
Those mantras and verses were drawn into the Samhita known as the Yajurveda (“Knowledge of the
Sacrifice”). A third group of priests, headed by the udgatri (“chanter”), performed melodic recitations linked
to verses that were drawn almost entirely from the Rigveda but were arranged as a separate Samhita,
the Samaveda (“Knowledge of the Chants”). Those three Vedas—Rig, Yajur, and Sama—were known as
the trayi-vidya (“threefold knowledge”). A fourth collection of hymns, magic spells, and incantations is known
as the Atharvaveda (“Knowledge of the Fire Priest”), which includes various local traditions and remains
partly outside the Vedic sacrifice. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Veda
VEDAS

Vedas, a Sanskrit word which means knowledge. are a large collection of Hindu religious texts. It is said to
be the oldest Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism. Vedas were written between 1500 to 500 BCE and were first being
transmitted orally from one generation to another before having it written.

Vedic hymns, Hindu scriptures dating from the 2nd millennium BCE, are the oldest extant record
from India of the process by which the human mind makes its gods and of the deep psychological
processes of mythmaking leading to profound cosmological concepts. 

Vedas consists of mythological accounts, poems, hymns, and prayers. It is divided into 4 parts – Rig Veda,
Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda.

1. Rig Veda – collection of hymns, and mythology

2. Sama Veda – contains hymns about religious rituals

3. Yajur Veda – contains instructions for religious rituals

4. Atharva Veda – consists of spells against diseases, enemies etc.

Rig Veda

-- The Rig Veda is the earliest of the four Vedas and one of the most important texts of the Hindu
tradition. It is a large collection of hymns in praise of the gods, which are chanted in various rituals. They
were composed in an archaic language named Vedic that gradually evolved into classical Sanskrit. 

-- The Rig Veda consists of 1028 hymns, organised into ten books known as maṇḍalas. 

-- Each maṇḍala has sūktas (hymns) formed by individual strophes called ṛc (ric) from which the

name Rig Veda. The philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rig Veda is one of the oldest
existing texts in any Indo-European language and that probably originated from the region of present day
Pakistan, between 1500 and 1200 BCE. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/rig-veda
Sama Veda

"Sama Veda" is an ancient Hindu scripture and one of the four main Vedas of Hinduism. It is a
collection of melodies and chants, and is also called the "Book of Song," "Veda of Chants" or even "Yoga
of Song." It is basically the words of the "Rig Veda" put to music.
https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/8041/sama-veda

Geography of the Early Vedic period. Samaveda recensions from the Kauthuma (north India)
and Jaiminiya (central India) regions are among those that have survived, and their
manuscripts have been found in different parts of India.
Yajur Veda

The Yajur Veda is an ancient collection of Sanskrit mantras and verses, used in Hindu worship and
rituals. It is one of the four primary scriptures of Hinduism known collectively as the Vedas,
alongside Rig Veda, Atharva Veda and Sama Veda.

The name is derived from the Sanskrit roots, yajus, meaning "worship" or "sacrifice"’ and veda,
meaning "knowledge." Yajur Veda is sometimes translated as "Knowledge of the Sacrifice." 

The text describes the way in which religious rituals and sacred ceremonies should be performed,
and it is therefore primarily intended for Hindu priests. 

The mantras within Yajur Veda are used during religious rituals such as those before the yajna fire,
and they are most commonly recited by the adhvaryu who preside over the physical details of a
sacrifice.

Source: https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/8040/yajur-veda
Atharva Veda

The "Atharva Veda" is an ancient Hindu scripture and is one of the four Vedas commonly known as
the fourth Veda.

Sometimes it is called the "Veda of Magical Formulas," although this name is not approved by
scholars.

It is a collection of 20 books containing hymns, chants, spells and prayers; and involves issues such
as healing of illnesses, prolonging life, black magic and rituals for removing maladies and anxieties.

Unlike the other three Vedas, the "Atharva Veda" is not as concerned with sacred rituals, but
addresses the daily problems of Vedic people.

The hymns in the "Atharva Veda" are dedicated to prolonging life and healing illnesses, seeking
cures from herbs, gaining a lover or partner, or world peace and the nature of good and evil.

Originally, only the first three Vedas were recognized and accepted, with the "Atharva Veda"
eventually being accepted later on. Some sources state that this Veda is the origin of medicine, Tantra
and yoga, containing one of the earliest references to breathing techniques and the practice of yoga.
https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/6655/atharva-veda
UPANISHAD
✓  Upanishad is a large collection of Hindu religious texts, said to be the synthesis and interpretation of Vedas.
✓  Upanishad is derived from the Sanskrit term Upa which means near and Shad which means to sit, meaning
something like sitting down near.
✓  The name is inspired by the action of sitting at the feet of an enlightened teacher to engage in a session of
spiritual instructions

Upanishad, also spelled Upanisad, Sanskrit Upaniṣad (“Connection”), one of four genres of texts

that together constitute each of the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of most Hindu traditions. Each of the
four Vedas—the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, and Atharvaveda—consists of a Samhita (a
“collection” of hymns or sacred formulas); a liturgical prose exposition called a Brahmana; and two
appendices to the Brahmana—an Aranyaka (“Book of the Wilderness”), which
contains esoteric doctrines meant to be studied by the initiated in the forest or some other remote
place, and an Upanishad, which speculates about the ontological connection between humanity and
the cosmos. Because the Upanishads constitute the concluding portions of the Vedas, they are
called Vedanta (“the conclusion of the Vedas”), and they serve as the foundational texts in the
theological discourses of many Hindu traditions that are also known as Vedanta. The Upanishads’
impact on later theological and religious expression and the abiding interest they have attracted are
greater than that of any of the other Vedic texts.
 The Upanishads became the subject of many commentaries and sub-commentaries, and texts
modeled after them and bearing the name “Upanishad” were composed through the centuries up to
about 1400 CE to support a variety of theological positions. The earliest extant Upanishads date
roughly from the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. Western scholars have called them the first
“philosophical treatises” of India, though they neither contain any systematic philosophical reflections
nor present a unified doctrine. Indeed, the material they contain would not be considered
philosophical in the modern, academic sense. For example, the Upanishads describe rites or
performances designed to grant power or to obtain a particular kind of son or daughter.

One Upanishadic concept had tremendous impact on subsequent Indian thought. Contrary to the
assertion of early Western scholars, the Sanskrit term Upanishad did not originally mean “sitting
around” or a “session” of students assembled around a teacher. Rather, it meant “connection” or
“equivalence” and was used in reference to the homology between aspects of the human individual
and celestial entities or forces that increasingly became primary features of Indian cosmology.
Because this homology was considered at the time to be an esoteric doctrine, the title “Upanishad”
also became associated during the middle of the 1st millennium BCE with a genre of textual works
claiming to reveal hidden teachings.
The Upanishads present a vision of an interconnected universe with a single, unifying principle behind
the apparent diversity in the cosmos, any articulation of which is called brahman. Within this context,
the Upanishads teach that brahman resides in the atman, the unchanging core of the human
individual. Many later Indian theologies viewed the equation of brahman with atman as the
Upanishads’ core teaching.

Thirteen known Upanishads were composed from the middle of the 5th century through the 2nd
century BCE.

The first five of these—Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, and Kaushitaki—were

composed in prose interspersed with verse.

The middle five—Kena, Katha, Isa, Svetasvatara, and Mundaka—were composed primarily in verse.

The last three—Prasna, Mandukya, and Maitri—were composed in prose.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Upanishad
CHARVAKA

✓  A radical materialist philosophy that claims that matter is the only reality
✓  Matter consists of 4 elements – Fire, Water, Earth and Air
✓  It strongly rejects the notion of an afterworld, karma and liberation, the authority of the sacred
scriptures and the immortality of the self.
✓  Charvaka recognized only the human person’s direct perception (anubhava) as the foundation of
knowledge (pramana).

Charvaka, also called Lokayata (Sanskrit: “Worldly Ones”), a philosophical Indian school of

materialists who rejected the notion of an afterworld, karma, liberation (moksha), the authority of the
sacred scriptures, the Vedas, and the immortality of the self. Of the recognized means of knowledge
(pramana), the Charvaka recognized only direct perception (anubhava). Sources critical of the school
depict its followers as hedonists advocating a policy of total opportunism; they are often described as
addressing princes, whom they urged to act exclusively in their own self-interest, thus providing
the Intellectul climate in which a text such as Kautilva’s  Arthashasta (“The Science of Material Gain”)
could be written.

Although Charvaka doctrine had disappeared by the end of the medieval period, its onetime
importance is confirmed by the lengthy attempts to refute it found in both Buddhist and
orthodox Hindu philosophical texts, which also constitute the main sources for knowledge of the
doctrine.
JAINISM

✓  An ethical philosophy that emphasizes

liberation and enlightenment through denouncing
human bodily pleasures and desires.
✓  It emphasizes the purity of the soul as of the
main goal of a human person
✓  It is also concerned with the welfare of every
being in the universe.
✓  According to Jainism, every being / thing that
exists has soul. Each soul is considered equal and
should be treated with respect and compassion
✓  Jains believed in reincarnation and seek to
attain an ultimate liberation – which means escaping
the continuous cycle of birth, death, and rebirth so
that the immortal soul lives ever in a state of bliss.
✓  Liberation is achieved by eliminating all Karma
from the soul.
Mahavira
A hand carved statue of Mahavira made from marble, inside a Jain
temple in Jaisalmer Fort, Rajasthan, India. Also known as Vardhamana,
Mahavira was a tirthankara or a teacher of the dharma.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/jainism
Jainism, Indian religion teaching a path to spiritual purity and enlightenment
through disciplined nonviolence (ahimsa, literally “non-injury”) to all living creatures.

Overview

Along with Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism is one of the three most ancient Indian religious traditions still
in existence and an integral part of South Asian religious belief and practice. While often employing
concepts shared with Hinduism and Buddhism, the result of a common cultural and linguistic background,
the Jain tradition must be regarded as an independent phenomenon rather than as a Hindu sect or a
Buddhist heresy, as some earlier Western scholars believed.

The name Jainism derives from the Sanskrit verb ji, “to conquer.” It refers to the Ascetic battle that, it is

believed, Jain renunciants (monks and nuns) must fight against the passions and bodily senses to gain
enlightenment, or omniscience and purity of soul. The most illustrious of those few individuals who have
achieved enlightenment are called Jina (literally, “Conqueror”), and the tradition’s monastic and lay
adherents are called Jain (“Follower of the Conquerors”), or Jaina. This term came to replace a more
ancient designation, Nirgrantha (“Bondless”), originally applied to renunciants only.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jainism
BUDDHISM - Buddhism is one of the world’s largest religions and originated 2,500 years ago in India.
Buddhists believe that the human life is one of suffering, and that meditation, spiritual and physical labor,
and good behavior are the ways to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana.

✓  A Philosophy and religion developed from the teachings of Buddha (Sanskrit – Enlightened One).
✓  The teachings of Buddha were orally transmitted by his disciples, prefaced by the phrase “evam me sutam”
(Thus, I have heard).
✓  It emphasizes human suffering, impermanence and the notion of no-self.
✓  Human desires are the cause of all sufferings,
✓  Abstinence is the key to prevent these sufferings.
✓  The practice of Eight-fold path to achieve liberation

Buddhism is one of the world’s major religions. It originated in India in 563–483 B.C.E. with Siddhartha
Gautama, and over the next millennia it spread across Asia and the rest of the world. Buddhists believe
that human life is a cycle of suffering and rebirth, but that if one achieves a state of enlightenment
(nirvana), it is possible to escape this cycle forever. Siddhartha Gautama was the first person to reach
this state of enlightenment and was, and is still today, known as the Buddha. Buddhists do not believe in
any kind of deity or god, although there are supernatural figures who can help or hinder people on the
path towards enlightenment.
Siddhartha Gautama was an Indian prince in the fifth century B.C.E.
who, upon seeing people poor and dying, realized that human life is
suffering. He renounced his wealth and spent time as a poor beggar,
meditating and travelling but ultimately, remaining unsatisfied,
settling on something called “the Middle Way.” This idea meant that
neither extreme asceticism or extreme wealth were the path to
enlightenment, but rather, a way of life between the two extremes.
Eventually, in a state of deep meditation, he achieved enlightenment,
or nirvanaunderneath the Bodhi tree (the tree of awakening). The
Mahabodhi Temple in Bihar, India—the site of his enlightenment—is
now a major Buddhist pilgrimage site.

The Buddha taught about Four Noble Truths. The first truth is called
“Suffering (dukkha),” which teaches that everyone in life is suffering
in some way. The second truth is “Origin of suffering (samudāya).”
This states that all suffering comes from desire (tanhā). The third
truth is “Cessation of suffering (nirodha),” and it says that it is
possible to stop suffering and achieve enlightenment. The fourth https://cdn.britannica.com/64/58864-
truth, “Path to the cessation of suffering (magga)” is about the Middle 050-F0D354C3/Head-Buddha-schist-ce-
Way, which are the steps to achieve enlightenment. Hellenistic-Gandhara-influences.jpg
Buddhists believe in a wheel of rebirth, where souls are born again into different bodies depending on
how they conducted themselves in their previous lives. This is connected to “karma,” which refers to how
a person’s good or bad actions in the past or in their past lives can impact them in the future.

There are two main groups of Buddhism: Mahayana Buddhism and Theravada Buddhism.

Mahayana Buddhism is common in Tibet, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. It emphasizes
the role models of bodhisattvas (beings that have achieved enlightenment but return to teach humans).

Theravada Buddhism is common in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma (Myanmar). It
emphasizes a monastic lifestyle and meditation as the way to enlightenment.

Buddhism has been a controversial religion. The head of the Tibetan school of Buddhism and traditional
leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, fled from China-controlled Tibet in 1959 to India in fear of his life.

Many Tibetan Buddhists actively resist Chinese control of the region. Recently, the current Dalai Lama,
who is understood to be the fourteenth reincarnation of the first Dalai Lama, has raised questions over
whether and where he will choose to reincarnate.

Source: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/buddhism

THE NOBLE EIGHT-FOLD PATH
1.Right understanding (Samma ditthi)
2.Right thought (Samma sankappa)
3.Right speech (Samma vaca)
4.Right action (Samma kammanta)
5.Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)
6.Right effort (Samma vayama)
7.Right mindfulness (Samma sati)
8.Right concentration (Samma samadhi)
Practically the whole teaching of the Buddha, to which he
devoted himself during 45 years, deals in some way or other with
this path. He explained it in different ways and in different words
to different people, according to the stage of their development
and their capacity to understand and follow him. But the essence
of those many thousand discourses scattered in the Buddhist
scriptures is found in the noble eightfold path.
It should not be thought that the eight categories or divisions
of the path should be followed and practiced one after the other
in the numerical order as given in the usual list above. But they
are to be developed more or less simultaneously, as far as
possible according to the capacity of each individual. They are all
linked together and each helps the cultivation of the others.

These eight factors aim at promoting and perfecting the three essentials of Buddhist training and
discipline: namely: (a) ethical conduct (sila), (b) mental discipline (samadhi) and (c) wisdom (panna). It will
therefore be more helpful for a coherent and better understanding of the eight divisions of the path if we
group them and explain them according to these three heads.
Source: https://tricycle.org/magazine/noble-eightfold-path/
Source: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/the-mindfulness-of-the-buddha/
ORTHODOX SCHOOLS (BUDDHISM)

I. NYAYA

✓  A Sanskrit word which means rules, method or judgement.

✓ One of the six systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy, important for its analysis
of logic and epistemology. 

✓. The major contribution of the Nyaya system is its working out in profound detail the means of
knowledge known as inference.

✓  An orthodox (astika) school of Hinduism the focuses on Logic and Epistemology –
the nature of human knowledge.

✓ Like the other systems, Nyaya is both philosophical and religious. Its ultimate concern is to bring an
end to human suffering, which results from ignorance of reality.

✓  Liberation is brought about through right knowledge. Nyaya is thus concerned with the means of right
knowledge.
✓ In its metaphysics, Nyaya is allied to the Vaisheshika system, and the two schools were often combined from
about the 10th century. Its principal text is the Nyaya- sutras, ascribed to Gautama (c. 2nd century BCE).

✓ The Nyaya system—from Gautama through his important early commentator Vatsyayana
(c. 450 CE) until Udayanacharva (Udayana; 10th century)—became qualified as the Old Nyaya
(Prachina-Nyaya) in the 11th century when a new school of Nyaya (Navya-Nyaya, or “New Nyaya”) arose
in Bengal. The best-known philosopher of the Navya-Nyaya, and the founder of the modern school of
Indian logic, was Gangesha (13th century).

✓ The Nyaya school holds that there are four valid means of knowledge: perception
(pratyaksha), inference(anumana), comparison (upamana), and sound, or testimony (shabda). Invalid
knowledge involves memory, doubt, error, and hypothetical argument.

✓ The Nyaya theory of causation defines a cause as an unconditional and invariable antecedent of an

effect. In its emphasis on sequence—an effect does not preexist in its cause—the Nyaya theory is at
variance with the Samkhya-Yoga and Vedantist views, but it is not unlike modern Western inductive logic
in this respect.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nyaya
II. VAISHESIKA

✓  Derived from the Sanskrit word which means Particular

✓  The Vaisheshika school attempts to identify, inventory, and classify the entities and their relations
that present themselves to human perceptions.

✓ One of the six systems (darshans) of Indian Philosophy, significant for its naturalism, a feature that
is not characteristic of most Indian thought. The Sanskrit philosopher Kanada Kashyapa (2nd–3rd
century CE?) expounded its theories and is credited with founding the school. Important later
commentaries were written by Prashastapada, Udayanacharva, and Shridhara.

✓ After a period of independence, the Vaisheshika school fused entirely with the Nyaya school, a
process that was completed in the 11th century. Thereafter the combined school was referred to
as Nyaya-Vaisheshika.

✓ The Vaisheshika school attempts to identify, inventory, and classify the entities and their relations
that present themselves to human perceptions. It lists six categories of being (padarthas), to which
was later added a seventh. These are:
1. Dravya, or substance, the substratum that exists independently of all other categories, and the
material cause of all compound things produced from it. Dravyas are nine in number: earth, water, fire,
air, ether, time, space, spirit, and mind.

2. Guna, or quality, which in turn is subdivided into 24 species.

3. Karma, or action. Both guna and karma inhere within dravya and cannot exist independently of it.

4. Samanya, or genus, which denotes characteristic similarities that allow two or more objects to be
classed together.

5. Vishesha, or specific difference, which singles out an individual of that class.

6. Samavaya, or inherence, which indicates things inseparably connected.

To these six was later added abhava, nonexistence or absence. Though negative in content, the
impression it makes is positive; one has a perception of an absence where one misses something. Four
such absences are recognized: previous absence, as of a new product; later absence, as of a destroyed
object; total absence, as of colour in the wind; and reciprocal absence, as of a jar and a cloth, neither of
which is the other.
 The Vaisheshika system holds that the smallest, indivisible, indestructible part of the world is
an atom (anu). All physical things are a combination of the atoms of earth, water, fire, and air. Inactive
and motionless in themselves, the atoms are put into motion by God’s will, through the unseen forces
of moral merit and demerit.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vaisheshika
III. SAMKHYA

✓  Derived from the Sanskrit word which means Enumeration or number

✓ One of the six systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy.

✓  Samkhya asserts that there is a dualism of matter and eternal spirits, which are originally separated, but
in the course of evolution, the eternal spirits identifies itself with aspects of matter.

✓  Right knowledge consists of the ability of eternal spirits to distinguish itself from matter.

✓  It has a belief of the existence of a temporal body and a soul, a soul which can migrate in other
temporal body when the original temporal body has perished.

✓ When the former body has perished, the latter migrates to another temporal body. The body of
subtle matter consists of the higher functions of buhhdi (“consciousness”), ahamkara (“I-
consciousness”), manas (“mind as coordinator of sense impressions”), and prana (“breath,” the
principle of vitality).

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samkhya
IV. YOGA

✓ Derived from the Sanskrit word Yokta which means to join or union

✓ One of the six systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy. Its influence has been widespread among
many other schools of Indian thought. 

✓ Its basic text is the Yoga-sutras by Patanjali (c. 2nd century BCE or 5th century CE).

✓ Yoga holds with Samkhya that the achievement of spiritual liberation (moksha) occurs when the spirit
(purusha) is freed from the bondage of matter (prakriti) that has resulted from ignorance and illusion.

✓ The practical aspects of Yoga play a more important part than does its intellectual content, which is
largely based on the philosophy of Samkhya, with the exception that Yoga assumes the existence of God,
who is the model for the aspirant who seeks spiritual release.

✓ Yoga holds with Samkhya that the achievement of spiritual liberation (moksha) occurs when the spirit
(purusha) is freed from the bondage of matter (prakriti) that has resulted from ignorance and illusion.
✓ The Samkhya view of the evolution of the world through identifiable stages leads Yoga to attempt to
reverse this order, as it were, so that a person can increasingly dephenomenalize the self until it reenters
its original state of purity and consciousness. 

✓ An aspirant who has learned to control and suppress the obscuring activities of the mind and has
succeeded in ending attachment to material objects will be able to enter samadhi—i.e., a state of deep
concentration that results in a blissful ecstatic union with the ultimate reality.

✓ Generally, the Yoga process is described in eight stages (ashtanga-yoga, “eight-membered Yoga”).
The first two stages are ethical preparations. They are yama (“restraint”), which denotes abstinence from
injury (see ahimsa), falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice; and niyama (“discipline”), which denotes
cleanliness of body, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.

✓ The next two stages are physical preparations. Asana (“seat”), a series of exercises in physical
posture, is intended to condition the aspirant’s body and make it supple, flexible, and healthy. Mastery of
the asanas is reckoned by one’s ability to hold one of the prescribed postures for an extended period of
time without involuntary movement or physical distractions. Prayanama (“breath control”) is a series of
exercises intended to stabilize the rhythm of breathing in order to encourage complete respiratory
relaxation.
✓ The fifth stage, pratyahara (“withdrawal of the senses”), involves control of the senses, or the ability
to withdraw the attention of the senses from outward objects.

✓ Whereas the first five stages are external aids to Yoga, the remaining three are purely mental or
internal aids. 

✓ Dharana (“holding on”) is the ability to hold and confine awareness of externals to one object for a
long period of time (a common exercise is fixing the mind on an object of meditation, such as the tip of
the nose or an image of the deity). 

✓ Dhyana (“concentrated meditation”) is the uninterrupted contemplation of the object of meditation,

beyond any memory of ego. 

✓ Samadhi (“total self-collectedness”) is the final stage and is a precondition of attaining release
from samsara, or the cycle of rebirth. In this stage the meditator perceives or experiences the object of
his meditation and himself as one.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yoga-philosophy
V. MIMAMSA

✓ Sanskrit word which means Reflection or Critical Investigation.

✓ One of the six fundamental systems of Indian philosophy.. Mimamsa, probably the earliest of the six, is
fundamental to Vedanta, another of the six systems, and has deeply influenced the formulation of Hindu
law

✓ The aim of Mimamsa is to give rules for the interpretation of the Vedas, and to provide a philosophical
justification for observance of Vedic rituals.

✓ Because Mimamsa is concerned with the earlier parts of the Vedas (called the Karmakanda), it is
also referred to as Purva-Mimamsa (“Prior Study”) or Karma-Mimamsa (“Study of Actions”). Vedanta,
which deals with the later portion of Vedic literature called the Upanishad, is called Uttara-Mimamsa
(“Posterior Study”) or Jnana-Mimamsa (“Study of Knowledge”).

✓ The goal of Mimamsa is to provide enlightenment on dharma, which in this school is understood as
the set of ritual obligations and prerogatives that, if properly performed, maintains the harmony of the
world and furthers the personal goals of the performer. Since dharma cannot be known through either
perception or reasoning, one must depend on revelation in the Vedas, which are considered eternal,
authorless, and absolutely infallible.
✓ To find out what one’s dharma is on specific occasions, one must rely upon examples of direct
or implicit command in the Vedic text. If the command is implicit, one must judge from parallels; if a text
fails to detail how a priest proceeds with an action, this detail must be provided from other texts. This
concern with precise statement necessitates meticulous examination of the structure of a sentence
conveying a command.

✓ Although it was purely practical in origin, Mimamsa became a powerful intellectual force. Mimamsa,
in the person of Kumarila, is traditionally credited with the defeat of Buddhism in India. It has also
contributed to the direction, method, and content of Hindu erudition.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mimamsa
VI. VEDANTA

✓  Sanskrit word which means Conclusion. One of the six systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy.

✓  Vedanta applies to the Upanishads, which were elaborations / philosophical explanation of the Vedas.

✓  Both Mimamsa and Vedanta are inquiry between the self (atman) and the absolute/ultimate reality
(Brahman).

✓ Thus, Vedanta is also referred to as Vedanta Mimamsa (“Reflection on Vedanta”), Uttara

Mimamsa (“Reflection on the Latter Part of the Vedas”), and Brahma Mimamsa (“Reflection on
Brahman”).

✓ The three fundamental Vedanta texts are: the Upanishads (the most favoured being the longer
and older ones such as the Brihadaranyaka, the Chandogya, the Taittiriya, and the Katha);
the Brahma-sutras (also called Vedanta-sutras), which are very brief, even one-word interpretations of
the doctrine of the Upanishads; and the Bhagavadgita (“Song of the Lord”), which, because of its
immense popularity, was drawn upon for support of the doctrines found in the Upanishads.
✓ The Vedanta schools do, however, hold in common a number of beliefs: the trasmigration of the self
(samsara) and the desirability of release from the cycle of rebirths; the authority of the Veda on the
means of release; that brahman is both the material (upadana) and the instrumental (nimitta) cause of
the world; and that the self (atman) is the agent of its own acts (karma) and therefore the recipient of the
fruits (phala), or consequences, of action.

✓ All the Vedanta schools unanimously reject both the non-Vedic, “nay-saying” (nastika) philosophies
of Buddhism and Jainism and the conclusions of the other Vedic, “yea-saying” (astika) schools
(Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, and, to some extent, the Purva Mimamsa).

✓ The influence of Vedanta on Indian thought has been profound. Although the preponderance of texts
by Advaita scholars has in the West given rise to the erroneous impression that Vedanta means Advaita,
the non-dualistic Advaita is but one of many Vedanta schools.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vedanta