Prepared by: John Rick B. Ballesteros & Rudolph B.

Pantalla
Subject: Philosophy of Man
By understanding the being of beings, the reality
of man is bought to light. Man, in this sense, puts
his very existence at the core of this questioning
since he himself, as being, is at issue.

-Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
Ontological:

Is dealing with the Nature of being.

Relating to or based upon being or Existence.
(Merriam Dictionary)
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) He was a German
Philosopher and the successor of Edmund Husserl (1859-
1938) at Freiburg, sought to explain the meaning of man
through the reality of “Dasien” or “there-being”.
For Heidegger, the reality of man, of his being, is a
“being-in –the-world.” This means that the world is the
place where reality or being presents itself to man.
Ontology, or the science of being, is an elaboration of the
relation of man to being, a relation that reveals the
primordial meaning of human existence.
Heidegger’s exposition of the being of man as
Dasien or there-being reveals the basic question
that man has – the meaning of his existence.
The world is hypothetical in nature.

Before we can trust anything, it must be doubted,

for the senses deceive, the real criterion for truth
should be that which is indubitable.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

What can be doubted is the fact that there is a person
who doubts, for in the act of doubting, the existence of
the one who doubts is always presupposed.

He says, “I discover that thought is an attribute that

really does belong to me. This alone cannot be detached
from me. I am; I exist; this is certain”.

-Rene Descartes
 But Heidegger says that man, as Dasein, belongs
to the world. Man, he says, has the fundamental
character of being always already thrown. By
being thrown into the world, it is through man
whereby the very meaning of human existence
becomes manifest.
 Man has the power to be in the world.” this
“Power to be” means that man realizes who he is
by being in the world.
 The world exists as man’s horizon of
possibilities and meaning
 Being is Aletheia
 Man’s primordial experience of the reality of
being is that he stands in the front of being of
beings.
 Aletheia thus can be summed up as the lighting
up process where the meaning of man’s being-
in –the- world is revealed to man himself.
 The task of man is the realization of his being,
and this happensin the world which serves as
the field for the fulfillment of his existential
possibilities.
 Being therefore reveals the truth of beings to
human consciousness through language.
 Without language, nothing would express the
truth of being to man, for there would be
nothing that will reveal that being is and is
not nothing.
 Language presents the reality of beings, that
beings are or that being exist.
 Aristotle understands being as “ousia” which refers to
the active concrete and changing substance,
actualized by form.
 Aristotle rejects the abstract world of forms of Plato
and considered the particular entities in the world as
the really real.
 For Heidegger that language, as “the house of being” is
the dwelling place of man.
 Human existence means standing in the lighting of
being.
 Man, by being -in -the – world, lives in the
house. Dwelling in the house of being enables
man to speak of a world.
 It is language that makes the world a world for
man, a world where his possibilities are
realized .
 To speak of the world, then, means to speak of
being. Man, by being-in-the-world, stands in the
front of being.
 The nothing opens up the possibilities of being
human. The nothing reveals what it means for man
to exist .
 As the source of meaning, the nothing brings forth
the different possibilities of man’s being –in-the-
world.
 The origin or source of being is the nothing. The
nothing as source of being serves as veil of being.
 Ancient metaphysics, according to Heidegger,
conceives the nothing in the sense of non-
informed being.
 Nihilo nihil fit –” from the nothing, nothing
comes to be. But for Heidegger, being and
nothingness belong together.
 The nothing is an abyss, the groundless source
of meaning where the reality of being human is
made manifest.
 If man is to find himself again into the nearness
of being, he must first learn to exist in the
nameless.
 The nameless is the silence in human speech.
 Silence is not all silence. Silence opens up the
possibilities of saying something.
 The truth of being human dwells in nothing for being is
encountered in this silence. If truth dwells in silence,
we must actually experience it.

 According to Heidegger the nothing makes itself

manifest, makes itself known, in anxiety.

 Anxiety makes man silent, so that because of anxiety

what humans have to say falls silent, making the
reality of being slip away.
 Death is man’s ultimate possibility. It is the fruition of
man’s being-in-the-world. As long as man is in the
world, he is a “not-yet”. He is not complete. He is not
whole. Man continually realizes himself in the world in
terms of his possibilities. To be in the world therefore
means to be an unfinished project.
 The meaning of human existence, in this regard, lies in
man’s power to realize his potentiality for being.
 Man as being, is therefore at the same time a being
dwelling in the not-yet of his being.
 As long as man is alive, he is not yet finished . His
finality, his completion, only comes to him in death,
where man will no longer be.
 Death, if seen from the context of a whole, is the
fulfillment of the being of man.
 In death, man loses his power to be, and such as, he is
no longer is.
 Death is a possibility for man is revealed in anxiety.
 Man alone confronts the reality of life as a being-
towards-an-end.
Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)
 The question of subjectivity is at the core of the
philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). His
intellectual journey has essentially responded
to the problem and mystery of human. As
persons, we re conscious beings who struggle
through life because there seems to be
disjoining between human and consciousness
and our incarnate existence making our effort to
live well difficult.
 Ricoeur uses phenomenological method of reduction to
understand who man is. This method called epoche. It refers to
the suspension of our natural attitude in order to see the
meaning of human experience as it unfolds before us.

 Through epoche, we does have to suspend our judgments . This

means to look at human experience away from the biases bought
forth by science and the prejudices that we have from our
natural attitude towards things.

 in this regard, the object of consciousness is experienced “in

itself”
 To be conscious is to be conscious of a real
world.
 Consciousness only becomes real by being
immersed in the world.
 In Husserl’s pure philosophy, the ego is always
rooted in the subject. This ego is sole origin of
meaning.
 The ego is therefore the source of the world.
 The world is outside, separate from the ego. The
world is thus a mere object for the ego.
 The of the will are the body and the world.
 To will is something is to do something in view of
project man intends to do in the world.
 In contrast, Husserl’s phenomenology dwells on the
level of perception. It is a subject that looks at the
world.
 In this sense, the meaning of human existence does not
reside on the level of seeing, and so we must
contemplate on the level of action.
 Gabriel Mercel (1889-1973) rejects the Cartesian
cogito which he regards as the mere abstraction
of the human subject. “my existence finds itself
as being-with-others, and not as mere abstract
thought.

 Being in a situation means one is able to

respond to the demands of an event through the
conscious act of willing and doing.
 In Leo Garcia’s creative repetition of the Philosophy of the
Will, it is pointed out that the reciprocity of the body and
consciousness can be summed up in the movement of the
will towards deciding, acting, and consenting.
 Deciding means attending to the things that man has to do.
 The project Pragma, refers to what man intended to
accomplish that needs his conscious act of doing
something in a view of a concrete goal.
 Man decides in a view of the possibilities that the world
offers him.
 Human action is always related to the project it
intends to do. And this project is realized in the
world, for the world exist as a playing field for
the unfolding of man’s actions.
 The body acts as man’s perspective where all
understanding and acting begin. Man is
incarnate being, an embodied soul.
 Charity is the consummation of the will’s desire
to help others. Charity is characterized as such
by its good intentions.
-Since man’s body is his openness to the world, it
brings him to whatever possible and not possible.
-The possibility of evil then is there because of
the limits of human nature. human nature
implies the limits of what man can and cannot
do.
-Exhaustion implies the limits of human power.
Man can only be one person and not everybody.
 But the necessity of man’s bodily existence
does not mean he is essentially bound to be
sinful.
 Necessity implies that man is finite and so his
possibilities are finite. He can fail, he can be
sinful.
 There is always hope, if man is committed to the
world, then the world will always be there for
him as a real source of his being.
 The wholeness of one’s subjectivity then finds
its realization in human responsibility.
 Human incarnate existence is essentially lived.
Man’s body is not an object. Thus, it cannot be
subjected to any form of exploitation because it
bears the mark of his being human.
 Respect for the human body therefore respect
for the reciprocity of body and consciousness.
 Man exist in the reality of being and not just on the level of
having.

 Transcendence means that “I am my body but at the same time I

am more than my body.

 The meaning of human existence, man’s being in the world is

most felt in man’s direct involvement in the world. It is not
abstract, it is not ideal.

 As a person man is out in the world in search for the authentic

meaning of what it means to be.
Reference:

Book: Philosophy of Man: The Existential Drama

(Fundamental topics and thinkers)
Author: Maboloc, Christopher Ryan B. ,M. A., M.A.E.