Philosophical Anthropology

COURSE OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION

1. Nature, Object and Methodology of Philosophical Anthropology

    • Genesis and development of Philosophical Anthropology
    • Sciences that study man: Psychology, Sociology, Neuropsychology, Scientific-Positivist Anthropologies
    • Focus of Philosophical Anthropology: metaphysical, phenomenological, cultural
    • The light of Christian faith and view of man
    • Relationship between Philosophical Anthropology and the Human Sciences
    • Complementary study to other philosophical disciplines about man: Gnoseology, Ethics, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Social Philosophy

2. Introduction to the Study of Man

    • The dynamic aspects of human existence and its radical distinction from irrational animals
    • General outline of our study:
        1. human acts of knowing and willing and their principles;
        2. the person and inter-subjectivity;
        3. different aspects of human life: morality, religion, science, technology, art, civilization, culture and history

PART I

COGNITIVE AND VOLITIVE HUMAN ACTIVITY

II. THE SENSIBLE DIMENSION OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

3. Characteristics of Sensitive Life

    • Overall view of organic life and the specific nature of animal life
    • Psychic acts and sensation: general characteristics, nature and kinds
    • Insufficiency of behaviourism
    • Sensitive life in the irrational animal and in man
    • Multiplicity of sensations and unity of perception: the I

4. External and Internal Senses

    • General characteristics of the external and internal senses and their unity in an animal and in man
    • Neuropsychological aspects of sense activity
    • External sense activity and its objects
    • Its role in human life
    • One’s own body as object of sense activity
    • Internal sense activity and its levels: Aristotelian common sense and the imagination
    • The memory and perception of time
    • St. Thomas’ doctrine on the estimativa and cogitativa
    • Anthropological and gnoseological roles of internal sense activity

5. Sensitive Functional Tendencies

    • The appetites: nature and kinds (concupiscible and aggressive or irascible)
    • Relation to behaviour
    • Physical pleasure and pain
    • Basic animal instincts and the dynamics of sensitive tendencies
    • Phenomenological study of the tendencies of man
    • Desire, impulse and adaptability of human tendencies
    • Behaviourism: animal and human behavior; behaviorism and sociology; aspects of ethology and habits of man

III. THE HUMAN INTELLECT

6. Nature and Object of the Intellect

    • Transcendental openness of the intellect towards being: man as a metaphysical animal
    • The act of knowledge
    • Intellective abstraction from higher sensitivity
    • Genesis of the mental word (concept and judgment) and its link to experience: knowledge of the singular
    • Immaterial nature of the intellect’s operation: spiritual character of the act of knowledge; operation of the brain in the basic experience of the intellect’s activity
    • Distinction between intellectus and ratio
    • Contemplation and human praxis
    • The intellect’s operations and habits: preservation and use of what has been learned
    • Development of intellectual knowledge: operative and habitual levels

7. Consciousness and Unconsciousness

    • Reflexive capacity of the intellect and the notion of the self-conscious I
    • Psychoanalysis: the study of the unconscious and self-consciousness; urges and morality; critical evaluation
    • Rationalism as the rejection of the non-rational

8. Language as Expression of Thought

    • Bio-morphological conditions of language
    • Language and intelligent behaviour
    • Need for language and symbolism
    • Language and its functions (expressive, communicative, affirmative, etc)
    • Mechanization of thought in computer language
    • Gnoseological and anthropological problems of artificial intelligence
    • The view of man in modern sciences of knowledge

IV. THE WILL AND HUMAN FREEDOM [Appendix 1]

9. Object and Nature of the Will

    • The experience of the will in man
    • Transcendental openness of the will to the absolute good
    • Man and the transcendentals
    • Inclination to the known good; voluntas ut natura and voluntas ut ratio
    • Activity of the voluntary act: volition, decision, external action
    • Spirituality of the will
    • Relationship between will and intellect
    • Man’s dominion over his own behavior
    • Love as the radical act of the will
    • The personal and dialogic character of love
    • Love of concupiscence and friendship
    • Love of God and men
    • Self-love
    • Unity of life in man: harmony among the different aspects of nature and human existence

10. Human Affectivity

    • The will and the appetites
    • The psychology of the sentiments and human affectivity
    • Value of affectivity in man
    • The role of affectivity in free choice and human behavior
    • Education in affectivity and maturity of character
    • Habits and virtues in the sphere of the appetites

11. The Notion of Freedom

    • The subjective experience of freedom
    • Physical indetermination, chance, vital spontaneity: aspects of nature that are not identical to the freedom of the person
    • Freedom and its intellective-volitional roots
    • Freedom as self-determination with respect to the end
    • Freedom as the core of a personal being
    • Limits to human freedom: its non-absolute and theocentric character
    • Freedom in modern anthropocentrism
    • Freedom and personal salvation: theological aspect

12. Freedom and Determinism

    • Natural and social factors that condition human freedom: their positive or negative contribution to the exercise of freedom
    • “Mechanicist” principles in the fields of genetics, neurology, psychology, sociology, etc.

13. Freedom in its Existential Development

    • Freedom and necessity in human life
    • Diverse levels of human freedom: moral, social, political, religious, etc.
    • The truth and the good as foundations of the exercise of freedom
    • Freedom as ordered to a purpose (what for): life project and vocation
    • Freedom and love
    • Freedom, availability of self, service and self-giving
    • Social aspects: different meanings of the concept of liberation

14. Freedom and Evil

    • The conflict of the will between good and evil
    • Goodness of human nature and habitual disorders (disordered tendencies and original sin)
    • The meaning of pain and the experience of individual limitations
    • Finding oneself in the giving of one’s self

PART TWO

THE PERSON AND INTER-SUBJECTIVITY

V. THE HUMAN PERSON [Appendix 1][Appendix 2][Appendix 3]

15. Historical Background of the Concept of Person

    • Some historical aspects regarding the notion of person
    • Pagan naturalism and the notion of freedom as “self-sufficiency”
    • Christianity and the human person
    • Man created to the image and likeness of God
    • The value of freedom as service
    • Freedom as “indifference”: rationalist view
    • Modern personalism

16. Phenomenological Aspects of the Person

    • Self-determination, freedom, intimacy, capacity to give and commit himself, dialogue
    • Person and personality
    • The person and his acts

17. Metaphysical Aspect: nature and person

    • The notion of personal subsistence
    • Concept of personal identity: the I
    • Person and self-transcendence
    • The person and the world
    • Inter-subjectivity
    • The human person and God
    • The community of persons
    • Value and dignity of each person
    • The notion of rights of a person
    • Inadequacy of reducing the human person to his acts or conscious life

VI. THE PSYCHOSOMATIC UNITY OF MAN AS A PERSON [Appendix 1] [Appendix 2]

18. The Soul

    • The human soul and its natural faculties or potencies
    • Soul, nature and human person
    • The concept of spirit
    • Other forms of spiritual life: pure spirits
    • The uniqueness of the human soul
    • The spiritual nature of the human soul and its immortality
    • Human nature and its manifestation in personal and temporal existence
    • Problems regarding the human embryo: conception, divine infusion of the spiritual soul or animation
    • Questions regarding the personal identity of the embryo

19. The animated body

    • The substantial union between body and soul and their dynamic harmony
    • The personal and positive value of corporeity
    • The human body imbued with spiritual activity (cognitive, expressive, symbolic levels, etc.)
    • Monism, dualism (materialism, rationalism) and duality in the study of man
    • Platonic dualism: the body as jail of the soul
    • Cartesian dualism
    • Psychic-physical parallelism and Spinozian monism
    • Biological materialism: man reduced to only one aspect
    • Re-statement of the problem of body and soul in analytical philosophy (the mind-body problem)

20. The origin of man

    • The origin of man in the history of nature and life
    • Evolution theories and discoveries of paleontology
    • Biologism, geneticism and philosophical darwinianism
    • Genetic development of man and personal identity
    • The human spirit cannot proceed from material processes
    • Data of revelation: divine intervention and original sin

21. Human sexuality

    • The human species, individuality and differences
    • The being of man and woman; sexual attraction and its integration into the human reality of love; value and aspects of man’s sexuality
    • Education in sexuality: its ordering to love through the profound dimension of the person (intellect and will)
    • Sex life as part of conjugal love between husband and wife
    • Training in virtues related to sexuality

22. Transcendence and finite character of the human person

    • Human existence and its limits in this life
    • The period of human life and its deep meaning
    • Man in the face of sickness: health as harmony and fulfilled life; humanism of medicine
    • Value of the person and pain or physical disability
    • Man in the face of death and the existential problem of the afterlife

VII. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE HUMAN PERSON

23. The Social Nature of the Person

    • The altruistic behavior characteristic to man and his inter-subjectivity
    • Characteristics of human society and animal groups: groupings (where individuals are merely means) and social communities (where men share ends)
    • Dialogue and communication between humans: different levels (material, spiritual, reciprocal help and interaction, etc.)
    • Language and symbol
    • Forms of social relations
    • Friendship and its characteristics
    • The family and other communities (peoples, international community)
    • Unity and love among men goes beyond social differences

24. Individualisms and Collectivisms

    • Individualist doctrine regarding life in society: man as being self-sufficient; separation between private and public life
    • Collectivist doctrines: individuals as instruments of authority and the state

SPHERES OF HUMAN ACTIVITY

VIII. CULTURE AND HUMAN PRAXIS

25. Person, Nature and Culture

    • Spheres of human activity (praxis) and the roots of their ethical orientation
    • Manifestations of human nature in culture
    • Links between nature and culture
    • Objective and subjective meanings of the term “culture”
    • Cultural relativism and evaluation of cultures
    • Values as ends of human behavior; their hierarchy and transmission
    • Subjectivism and the transcendental foundations of values
    • The problem of the inculturation of the faith

26. Elements of Human Culture

    • The transmission of culture: language and tradition
    • The creation of institutions
    • Different aspects and contents of culture
    • Customs and fashion
    • Religion, arts, laws

27. The Process of Developing a Person

    • The formation of the human person in time
    • Concept of education
    • Educational ends, means and agents
    • Personal culture, as habitual enrichment of the individual, and social culture

IX. WORK AND TECHNOLOGY

28. Work

    • The notion of work
    • Subjective and objective meanings of work
    • Marxist reduction of homo faber
    • The transformation of the world
    • Technology and the natural world
    • The problems of technocracy and ecology
    • Human work and the creation of God

29. Entertainment

    • The meaning of rest and entertainment
    • The notion of games and its interpretation by the human sciences
    • The meaning and elements of celebrations

X. MAN AND HISTORY

30. The Temporal Characteristic of the Individual

    • Biological and biographical temporality
    • Immutability of human nature and its habitual perfection on the individual and historical levels
    • Past, present, and future of the person
    • Memory and hope
    • The relationship of man to eternity and its characteristic openness to God
    • The role of religion

31. History

    • Anthropological categories and contemporary hermeneutics: opposition to the empirical sciences and historicity of man
    • The notion of progress and utopias
    • The Enlightenment: unlimited trust in progress
    • The meaning of history and eschatology