Understanding the Philosophy of the Human Person by F.P.A. Demeterio III

UNDERSTANDING THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

F.P.A. Demeterio III

THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY

Each person, of any race, of any place, of any time in history, is driven by basic and fundamental urge to know and understand things that surrounds him. When a prehistoric nomad tries to observe the seasons for hunting and fruit gathering, or when a young girl grapples with the complex rules and procedures in running a household, or when a young brave masters the skills of combat, or when an apprentice approximates the strokes of the craftsman, or when a college student works through the intricacies of a mathematical lesson, they all are simply displaying their share of this basic and fundamental drive. It is in this sense that knowledge can be seen as intimately part of humanity, to the point of asserting that there is no human being without knowledge, just as there is no knowledge without human beings. Man creates knowledge, just as in return knowledge creates man.

Let as first take a closer look at knowledge. Knowledge can either be simple (that is, knowledge about isolated facts, for instance that the sky is blue, or that the grass is green) or complex (that is, aggregate of more than one simple knowledge organized into a system, for instance an ideology, or a discipline). For humanity, simple knowledge is less important than complex ones. And it follows that the more complex the knowledge is, the more important it becomes for the human group where it emerged. For example, the knowledge about the name of a god (simple knowledge) is less important than an epic about the same god (complex knowledge), and certainly much less than a the theological discourse about the same god (more complex knowledge); or the knowledge about the fact that steam has pressure (simple knowledge), is less important than the knowledge about waterwheels (complex knowledge), and certainly much less than the knowledge about hydraulics (more complex knowledge).

Complex knowledge emerges from a number of ways. It can emerge from tradition, where simple knowledge accumulates to form complex knowledge that may be handed down from one generation to the next. It can also emerge from the artistic creativity of individuals, such as in the cases of the literary works. It may also from the rational and logical systematization of thought, such as what happens in philosophy. It may also emerge form the painstaking observation, and experimentation of science. Complex knowledge can indeed come from a variety of ways, and each complex knowledge can be valid and reliable in its own right.

However, for us persons of the 21st century, we have that almost inescapable tendency to equate knowledge and understanding with the complex knowledge generated by science. We tend to say that it is scientific knowledge and understanding which are the valid, or at least the more reliable, system of information. We tend to downgrade, if not totally ignore, the other systems of complex knowledge. In the Philippines, for instance, many people still believe in our traditional medical lore, but such a persistent belief is already tinged with conditionality. The traditional medical lore is good as long as the concerned ailment is minor, because the serious and severe ones are best treated with the established procedures of western medicine. Thus, though we do not entirely ignore the traditional non-scientific complex knowledge, we nonetheless downgrade it by conceptually placing it below the scientific complex knowledge.

There is actually nothing wrong in believing in science. In fact, we have stated above that each complex knowledge can be valid and reliable in its own right. What is wrong, then, is not our belief in science but our concurring disregard for all other systems of complex knowledge. When this happens, we loose many valuable aspects of knowledge.

Science, as we know it, primarily deals with the canonical procedures of observation, quantification and experimentation. It is on such procedures where the power of science lies. Its conspicuous obsession for precision and accuracy is made possible because of such procedures. Yet flipping the coin to the other side, it is also on such procedures where the limitations of science lay. There are simply things that cannot be empirically observed, nor quantified, and much less experimented on. That is to say, there are things that are simply beyond the range of science. But, in life there are fundamental and important questions that cannot be answered by science (questions such as those concerning goodness and evil, values and meaning of one's existence, and love). How can one scientifically investigate the problems of goodness or evil, when good and evil do not yield to quantification? How can one scientifically investigate the very human phenomenon of love, when love is something that cannot be experimented on? These two questions, and many other similar questions, obviously cannot be tackled by science. Yet, if we are to live as authentic human beings, these are questions that we have to answer at one moment or another in our life. We have to know the good from the evil, we have to understand the values that surround us, we have to grasp the meaning of life for us to draw our own bearings and direction, and we have to grasp the meaning of love for us to love better. If science cannot shed light on these matters, we just can neither let them go unanswered.

There is another way of knowing and understanding that is both older and runs deeper than science. This other way is philosophy. Historically, science was born from the bosom of philosophy. Hence, many centuries before Galileo formulated the canons of modern science, people in Greece, as well as in China and India, were already trying to know and understand the world and their lives through philosophy. Unlike science, philosophy does not depend on experimentation and quantification. Rather, it investigates realities and problems through the analytic and synthetic powers of the human mind. It would be crazy to say that philosophy is better than science, for that is not just the case. Philosophy simply tackles realities that are beyond the scope of science, just as science tackles realities that are beyond the scope of philosophy.

The term philosophy comes from two Greek words filos (philos), meaning 'love', and sofia (sophia), meaning 'wisdom'. Hence philosophy is ordinarily and literally understood as "the love for wisdom." But there is a little problem with this etymological definition, because wisdom here invariably connotes "wisdom of the ages past." This in turn implies that if one has to love wisdom, then he has to plow through the hoary maxims and aphorisms left behind by a horde of famous dead mean! This paints a rather dreary picture of philosophy that makes it unappealing to many students. Yet if we dig deeper into the more originary meanings of the Greek words filos and sofia, we can have a more specific idea of what philosophy really is. Homer in his Iliad calls the skill of carpenter sofia, and Herodotus used the verb filosofein (philosophein) in a context in which it would mean nothing more than "the desire to find out." Philosophy can, then, be more appropriately understood as "the love of exercising one's curiosity and intelligence." This new understanding stresses the fact that philosophy is an attitude of life, and not a set of well-defined doctrines of the ages past. More basically, philosophy is an attitude and the desire to ask questions in order to find out some important things. Thus, it begins not with ancient doctrines, but with current questions that are relevant to the person who raises them. This makes philosophy not a thing or a finished text, but the process of asking questions and finding answers no matter how tentative these answers may turn out to be.

THE MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY OF MAN

The philosophy of the human person started when the methods of philosophy were applied to find answers regarding the questions and mysteries of human existence. The human person who is formerly and presently the inquiring subject, become simultaneously the inquired object. More specifically, what is the object inquired or studied by the philosophy of the human person? The British philosopher Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) theorized that man concurrently exists in three distinct worlds: namely, 1) the physical world of nature, 2) the internal world of ideas, thoughts and emotions, and 3) the social world of inter-subjectivity. The physical world of nature more properly belongs to the natural sciences, but the internal worlds of ideas, thoughts and emotions, as well as the social world of inter-subjectivity belongs to the jurisdiction of philosophy. Hence, the philosophy of the human person does not study only the human person, but also includes the investigations into such person's internal worlds of ideas, thoughts and emotions, as well as such person's social world of inter-subjectivity.

However, there is general type of science that is similar to the philosophy of the human person in the sense that it also has the human person as well as his internal and social worlds as its inquired object. The Germans call this general type of science the Geisteswissenschaften (Geist, meaning 'spirit', and wissenschaften meaning 'sciences'), or the human sciences which include among others psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science and history. Since philosophy of the human person and the Geisteswisssenschaften have the same object to be studied, would this mean that they are just one and the same thing? In order to highlight more clearly the meaning of the philosophy of the human person it would be worthwhile to understand this against the backdrop of its similarities and differences with the Geisteswisssenschaften. This can be done through a comparative study of their basic structures as systems of knowledge.

The basic structures of any systems of knowledge can be conceptualized as composites of three things: 1) first, the object studied, 2) second, the procedure, or the approach, in studying the object, and 3) third, the output, or the knowledge produced. The schema can be graphically presented as:

Figure 1: The General Structure of a System of Knowledge

The Geisteswissenschaften, as mentioned earlier, have the human person as well as his internal and social worlds as their object of inquiry. Their procedure rests primarily on observation-experimentation, quantification of data, and analysis. Their output is predominantly descriptive, telling us what the human person is and how he normally behaves in his internal and social worlds.

Figure 2: The Structure of the Geisteswissenschaften

On the other hand the philosophy of the human person takes the same object of investigation, the human person as well as his internal and social worlds. Yet its procedure is quite different from that of the Geisteswissenschaften, for it follows the general methods of philosophy: namely, the examination, analysis and classification of ideas, deductive reasoning, reductio ad absurdum, reflection, and insight. Furthermore, the output of the philosophy of the human person is different from that of the Geisteswissenschaften, in the sense that it is predominantly interpretive, telling us why the human person is like this or like that, and prescriptive, telling us how the human person should behave in his internal and social worlds.

Figure 3: The Structure of the Philosophy of the Human Person

Whereas the philosophy of the human person and the Geisteswissenschaften are similar in one fundamental aspect, that is in their having an identical object of inquiry; they differ in two other fundamental aspects, namely in their procedures and output. Whereas the Geisteswissenschaften use empirical and quantitative approach in studying their object of inquiry and are aimed at the acquisition of descriptive knowledge, the philosophy of the human person uses the theoretical and reflective approach, and is aimed at the acquisition interpretive and prescriptive knowledge. These two differences are the factors that in the end make the philosophy of the human person distinct from the Geisteswissenschaften.

After such an extended consideration, we may now formulate a working definition of the philosophy of the human person as the theoretical and reflective study of the human being, aimed at the acquisition of interpretive and prescriptive knowledge regarding the meaning and value of human existence.