LESSON 3: HUMAN PERSON AS AN EMBODIED SPIRIT

by: group 2

the human person as an embodied spirit

5. Historicity and Historical Action

4. The Question of Being

3. Human Subjectivity

2. Experience of My Body

1. Introduction

outline

- The experience of embodiment is different.- Seeing ourselves objectively.- According to Eduardo Calasanz, “your body”, becomes a body”.

WHAT IS EMBODIMENT?

a note on embodiment

introduction

- “The awareness of the experience of our bodies.”- “The experience of our body is the first datum of we have of ourselves”

EXPERIENCE OF MY BODY

- The human body cannot only be viewed from an objective point of view.- We have to see our experience of human embodiment from within.

ACCORDING TO PAUL RICOEUR

The Body – Is not the object of action but the organ which human action if fulfilled.The actuations of our bodily existence reminded us of who we really are to someone. Thus, you are what you do, as you are who you are, always to someone.You are not just a body but you are your body. The person and his body in this sense are one.

PAUL RICOEUR

“Do not really mean the world of things but the network of meanings in which and on which around which a man organizes his life”. The world exist as a question that the person must himself respond to.

says that when we speak of the world from a phenomenological point of view, we ...

fr. JOSE cruz

fr. michael moga

He writes that it is wrong to begin with dualism between mind and body.This is because being human means to live as an embodied existence.

Acting points to the reality of our situatedness.The reality of the human person is contextual.This means that the person can only act in view of his situation. This can be his struggles, his joys, or his sufferings.Acting characterizes the responsible person that one can be.

acting

SUBJECTIVITY

- Is the ability of the human person to transcend and realize his potentials. - The sense of subjectivity means that we possess the capacity to decide

- Points to the incarnate reality of man.

HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY

According to Ricoeur...

My human body is not just my means of doing things. It is my body that actually allows me to do something for someone.

"It is through my body that I sometimes hurt others, or feel some regret, transform or destroy my world."

To consent means to understand my finite horizon and to be able to joyfully accept whatever possibilities life accords me.

"The body is not the object of action but its organ."

Ricouer beautifully illustrates the answer to our inquiry in his analysis of consent.

what is being ?

Martin Heidegger elucidates in his influential book, Being and Time, what he calls the formal structure of the ontological question of being: What is being?

The question of being is about the way reality discloses itself into the world of man.

In order to understand this question, one needs to know who is making this inquiry.

In questioning the “being of beings”, it is man himself who is questioned.

The question of being

For Heidegger, it can only be man, form man stands in front of the light of being.

The power to be in the world consists of:

By being in the world, this means that man has the power to be in the world.

The Being of Man, According Heidegger, is a being-in-the-world.

Ready-to-hand (concern)

Man’s being with things

His being with others (solicitude)

The present-at-hand

The being of beings is aletheia. What is aletheia? Process of revealing and concealing or what we call the lightning up process where beings or things emerge into consciousness.

- “Destiny that sends truth, being remains conealed.”- Reality assumes an ontological structure which is called care. - “World does not at all signify beings or any realm of beings but the openness of being.”

ACCORDING TO HEIDEGGER

For Heidegger…- Western metaphysics views nothing as the equivalent of non-being.- Nothing comes as the veil of being.- The nothing is the silence in speech that makes possible for someone to say something.

- Is the sole witness to the reality of being.- The one who stands up in the self-revelation of being.- For Heidegger, man as “there-being” or Da-sein, according to W.J. Richardson, is there-being among beings.

NOTHING

MAN

Reyes adds that… “Insofar as you are a point of intersection of an ideal and yourself as a person, you find yourself as already there.” Man, in this sense, is a historical being. Reyes says that because of history, one emerges at a certain period that is not within your control. He opines that as “Historical products… we cannot deny the facts of our past.”

According to Filipino Philosopher Ramon Reyes, the human self is “an individual unique person” and a certain “form of an ideal.”

According to Eduardo Calasanz,In the experience of embodiment, “My body is not only intermediary between me and the world but also between me and others. Persons can look into the historical dimension of human existence, in which the human being is “a point of intersection.”

HISTORICITY AND HISTORICAL ACTION

For Dondeyne, historicity is characterized by turning points. Historical action is about our power to control our destiny. This destiny is a matter of responsibility.

The historical development of societies accelerated with the advent of the Modern Period. Man’s life no longer depended on God. Man has now become the free thinking being who has become conscious of his history-making-existence. For Dondeyne, human freedom means that we make our own destiny.

Albert Dondeyne writes that the human being is not a raw datum of nature. Man is a “history-making existence.”He mentions that the very first inhabitants of the planet were influenced by the all-pervading idea of fate. The idea of fate has thought man that what is done cannot be undone. For Dondeyne, man was under the dominion of his irrational belief. In this view, man is still some powerless soul, unable to chart the course of his own destiny.

historicity

ALBERT DONDAYNE

thank you for listening!