SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Introduction to the
Philosophy of the
Human Person
Module 3- Quarter 2 – Week 7
Meaning of Life

Department of Education ● Republic of the Philippines

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Lesson 1: What is Death?
Traditional definition:
Death- was a simply equated to the stopping of heartbeat and breathing.
Legal definition:
- Section 2, paragraph (j) of the Organ Donation Act of 1991 (Republic Act 7170):
“Death”- the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or the irreversible
cessation of all the functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem. A person shall be
medically and legally dead if either:
1) In the opinion of the attending physician, based on the acceptable standards of medical
practice, there is an absence of natural respiratory and cardiac functions and, attempts at
resuscitation would not be successful in restoring those functions. In this case, death shall be
deemed to have occurred at the time these functions ceased; or
2) In the opinion of the consulting physician, concurred in by the attending physician, that on
the basis of acceptable standards of medical practice, there is an irreversible cessation of all
brain functions; and considering the absence of such functions, further attempts at
resuscitation or continued supportive maintenance would not be successful in restoring such
natural functions. In the case, death shall be deemed to have occurred at the time when
these conditions first appeared.
What happens to the human person after death?
Concepts of life after death in Christianity
The Christian end-time expectation is directed not only at the future of the church but also
at the future of the individual believer. It includes definite conceptions of the personal continuance
of life after death. Many baptized early Christians were convinced they would not die at all but
would still experience the advent of Christ in their lifetimes and would go directly into the Kingdom
of God without death. Others were convinced they would go through the air to meet Christ
returning upon the clouds of the sky: “Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the
Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). In the early imminent expectation, the period between death and the
coming of the Kingdom still constituted no object of concern. An expectation that one enters into
bliss or perdition immediately after death is also found in the words of Jesus on the cross: “Today
you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In the Nicene Creed the life of the Christian is
characterized as “eternal life.” In the Gospels and in the apostolic letters, “eternal” is first of all a
temporal designation: in contrast to life of this world, eternal life has a deathless duration. In its
essence, however, it is life according to God’s kind of eternity—i.e., perfect, sharing in his glory and
bliss (Romans 2:7, 10). “Eternal life” in the Christian sense is thus not identical with “immortality of
the soul”; rather, it is only to be understood in connection with the expectation of the resurrection.
“Continuance” is neutral vis-à-vis the opposition of salvation and disaster, but the raising from the
dead leads to judgment, and its decision can also mean eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46). The
antithesis to eternal life is not earthly life but eternal death.
Eternal life is personal life, and precisely therein is fulfilled the essence of humanity created
according to the image of God. Within eternal life there are differences. In the present life there are
variations in talent, duty, responsibility, and breadth and height of life, just as there are also
distinctions in “wages” according to the measure of the occupation, the sacrifice of suffering, and
the trial (1 Corinthians 3:8). Correspondingly, the resurrected are also distinguished in eternal life
according to their “glory”.
Other beliefs:
Reincarnation – It is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a
new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death.
How can we know for certain?
“No man knows whether death may not even turn out be the greatest blessing for a human
being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evil” –Socrates
Socrates on Death
Death is either:
- Possibility #1- dreamless sleep
- Possibility #2-Passage to another life
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Therefore, either way, death is nothing to fear.
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” -Albus Dumbledore,
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
But what if there is no afterlife?
Would you still fear death?
Maybe what we actually fear is the process of dying.
How does death feel?
Epicurus on death
- All sensation and consciousness ends with death.
- When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he is no longer is and
therefore feels nothing.
- Fearing nonexistence gets in the way of enjoying life
Who am I? What is the meaning of life?
A. Socrates
Socrates, a great teacher in Athens around 469 BC, believes that knowing oneself is
a condition to solve the present problem (Berversluis 2000).
Socrates in Clouds is the head of the school; the work of the school comprises
research and teaching. Socrates has two different ways of teaching. His expository method
answers the student’s direct or implied questions, fills the void ignorance with information,
proceeds by analogy and illustration, or clears the ground for exposition by demonstrating
that some of the beliefs hitherto held by the student are irreconcilable with other beliefs or
assumptions. His “tutorial” or well-known Socratic method is: (1) to assess by questions the
character of the student; and (2) to set him problems, exhort him to reduce each problem to
its constituent elements, and criticize the solution that he offers.
The first process is also called ironic process, a process that serves the learner to
seek for knowledge by ridding the mind of prejudices and then be humbly accepting his
ignorance. The second process has cleared the mind of the learner of the ignorance, and
then draws truth out of the learner’s mind. This can be done by means of a dialog or a
conversation. This method considers, examines, compares, and studies the similarities and
dissimilarities of the idea being discussed, so that the clear and precise notion of the idea is
achieved.
Happiness
For Socrates, for a person to be happy, he has to live a virtuous life. Virtue is not
something to be taught or acquired through education, but rather it is merely an awakening
of the seeds of good deeds that lay dormant in the mind and heart of a person. Knowing
what is in the mind and heart of a human being is achieved through self-knowledge. Thus,
knowledge does not mean only theoretical or speculative, but a practical one. Practical
knowledge means one does not only know the rules of right living, but one lives them.
Hence, for Socrates, true knowledge means wisdom, which in turn, means virtue.
Socrates’ major ethical claims were: (1) happiness is impossible without moral
virtue; and (2) unethical actions harm person who performs them more than the people
they victimize. Although it is not totally clear what Socrates meant by these notions, he
seems to have believed that an unethical person is weak, even psychologically unhealthy. He
apparently thought that we, today, would call that cognitive and non-cognitive capacities are
harmed as the unethical person gives into his or her desires and ultimately becomes
enslaved by them.
Someone in the grip of corruption can no longer be satisfied and endlessly seeks
new pleasures. In addition, the individual’s intellect and moral sense are impaired. Socrates,
thus, saw someone steeped in vice as lacking the freedom, self-control, and intellect clarity
that are needed to live happily. The immoral person literally become a slave to his desires.
B. Plato
Contemplation in the mind of Plato means that the mind is in communion with the
universal and eternal ideas. Contemplation is very important in life of humanity because this
is the only available means for mortal human being to free himself from his space-time
confinement to ascend to the heaven of ideas and there commune with the immoral,
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 eternal, and the infinite, and divine truths. This contemplation does not mean passive
thinking or speculation, or knowing and appreciating what is good; rather, it is doing well in
life. Human beings, therefore, are in constant contemplation of the truth, since the things
we see here on earth are merely shadows (one appearance) of the real truth (reality) in the
world of ideas; the good, since here on earth, the body is inclined to evil things; the beauty,
since the things we see here on earth are not fair or foul to others. Hence, humanity should
contemplate beauty that is absolute, simple, and everlasting.
Plato’s Theory of Immortality
According to Plato, the body is the source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere
requirement of food, and is liable also to disease, which overtake and impede us in the search after
true being; it fills us full of love, lusts and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolishness. For
example, when war comes, money has to be acquired by and for the sake of the body. The body, for
Plato, causes us turmoil and confusion in our inquiries. Thus, to see the truth, we must quit the
body- the soul cannot have pure knowledge.
C. Aristotle
Realizing Your Potential
Aristotle’s account for change calls upon actuality and potentially (Hare et al. 1991).
For Aristotle, everything in nature seeks to realize itself- to develop its potentialities and
finally realize its actualities.
All things have strived toward their “end”. A child strives to be an adult; a seed
strives to be a tree. It is the potentiality to be changing. Aristotle called the process
entelechy, a Greek word for “to become its essence”. Aristotle has much more to say about
change. Change takes place in time and space. Since space and time are infinitely indivisible,
Aristotle analyzed the notion of infinity.
Entelechy means that nothing happens by chance. Nature not only has a built-in
pattern, but also different levels of being. Some creatures, such as humans, have more
actuality than potentiality and some, such as bees, have more potentiality than actuality.
However, for the world of potential things to exist at all, there must first be something
actual (form) at a level above potential or perishing things (matter).
Aristotle divided everything in the natural world into to two main categories;
nonliving things and living things (Price 2000). Nonliving things such as rock, water, and
earth have no potentiality for change. They can change only by some external influence.
Water changes into ice, for instance, when the external temperature reaches freezing.
However, living things do have the potentiality for change.
At the top of the scale is the Unmoved Mover (God); pure actuality without any
potentiality. All things in the world are potentially in motion and continuously changing.
Therefore, said Aristotle, there must be something that is actual motion and which is moved
by nothing external. He called this entity the Unmoved Mover.
For Aristotle, all things are destructible but the Unmovable Mover is eternal,
immaterial, with pure actuality or perfection, and with no potentiality. Being eternal, it is the
reason for and the principle of motion to everything else. Because motion is eternal, there
never was a time when the world was not. The Unmoved Mover has neither physical body
nor emotional desires. Its main activity consists of pure thought can only be itself.
Striving to realize themselves, objects and human beings move toward their divine
origin and perfection. Our highest faculty is the reason, which finds its perfection in
contemplating the Unmoved Mover. Aristotle explained how an Unmoved Mover cause
motion of the world and everything in it by comparing it to a beloved who “moves” its lover
by the power of attraction. The object of love is the cause of a change in the lover, without
itself being changed. Similarly, God is the object of the aspirations of other substances but is
not Himself susceptible to change or motion (Here et al.1991)
As the “form” adult is in the child directing it toward its natural end, the Unmoved
Mover is the form of the world moving it toward its divine end. The highest human activity
resembles the activity of the Unmoved Mover. Just as the Unmoved Mover think about
perfection itself. According to Aristotle, the most pleasant activity for any living creature is

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 realizing its nature; therefore, the happiest life for humans is thinking about the Unmoved
Mover (Price 2000).

Activity 1: Define Death

Directions: Write an Acronym meaning about death. You can put words or phrase\s based on what
you have learned from lesson 1 or based from your own definition of death.
D-____________________________________

E- ____________________________________

A- ____________________________________

T- ____________________________________

H- ____________________________________

Performance Task
Activity 1: My Legacy
Direction: Write a simple poem or draw a picture showing the legacy do you want to leave behind
after your death. Use BOND PAPER on this activity.

Lesson 2: Finding One’s Purpose

Meaning of Life (Where Will This Lead To?)
 Tragedy, according to Nietzsche, grew from his unflinching recognition and the
beautification, even the idealization, of the inevitability of human suffering (Johnston 2010)
 Our true existence is not our individual lives but our participation in the drama of life and
history
 Realizing ones "higher self” means fulfilling ones loftiest vision, noblest ideal. On his way to
the goal of self-fulfillment
A. Friedrich Nietzsche
- The individual has to liberate himself from environmental influences that are false to one's
essential beings, for the "unfree man" is "a disgrace to nature'.'
The free human being still has to draw a sharp conflict between the higher self and the
lower self, between the ideal aspired to and the contemptibly imperfect present.
- Unless we do "become ourselves," life is meaningless.
- total reality = phenomenal realm (highly differentiated world of material objects in space
and time) + noumenal realm (single, undifferentiated something that is space less, timeless,
non-material, beyond the reach of causality) which is inaccessible to experience
B. Arthur Schopenhauer
- The noumenon cannot cause the phenomenon –– so Schopenhauer concludes: the
noumenon and phenomenon are the same reality apprehended in two different ways: the
noumenon is the inner significance, the true but hidden and inaccessible being, of what we
perceive outwardly as the phenomenal world.
- Schopenhauer's ethics: humans are separate physical objects in space and time, temporary
manifestations in the phenomenal world, of something noumenal –– this implies that in the
ultimate ground of our being we are the same something –– so the wrongdoer and the
wronged are in the last analysis the same –– this explains compassion.

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 - Schopenhauer contends that all of life is suffering caused by desire. Our desires lead us to
harm each other ultimately, amounting harm to ourselves.
- The person who wickedly exerts his will against others suffers too (Solomon & Higgins 1996)
- Schopenhauer's ethics: humans are separate physical objects in space and time, temporary
manifestations in the phenomenal world, of something noumenal –– this implies that in the
ultimate ground of our being we are the same something –– so the wrongdoer and the
wronged are in the last analysis the same –– this explains compassion.
- Human existence is exhibited in care
- Care is understood in terms of finite temporality, which reaches with death.
- Death is a possibility that happens
C. Martin Heidegger
Threefold structure of care:
 Possibility. Humanity gets projected ahead of itself. Entities that are encountered are
transformed merely as ready-to-hand for serviceability and out of them. Humanity
constructs the instrumental world on the basis of the persons' concerns.
 Facticity. A person is not pure possibility but tactical possibility: possibilities open to him at
any time conditioned and limited by circumstances. A person's situation as a finite entity is
thrown into a world where he/she must project his/her possibilities not disclosed by
theoretical understanding but by moods.
 Fallenness. Humanity flees from the disclosure of anxiety to lose oneself in absorption with
the instrumental world, or to bury oneself in the anonymous impersonal existence of the
mass, where no one is responsible. Humanity has fallen away from one's authentic
possibility into an authentic existence of irresponsibility and illusory security. Inauthentic
existence, thus, is scattered and fragmented.
D. Jean-Paul-Sartre
- For Sartre, the human person desires be God; the desire to exist as a being that has its
sufficient ground in itself (en sui causa).
- For an atheist, since God does not exist, the human person must face the consequences of
this.
- The human person is entirely responsible for his/her own existence.
Sartre’s dualism
 En-soi (in itself) — signifies the permeable and dense, silent and dead. From them comes no
meaning, they only are. The en-soi is absurd, it only finds meaning only' through the human
person, the one and only pour-soi. the world only has meaning according to.
 Pour-soi (for-itself) the world only has meaning according to what the person gives to it.
Compared with' the en-soi, a person has no fixed nature. To put it in a paradox: the human
person is not what he/she is.
 For Sartre, there is no way of coming to terms with the other that does not end in
frustration. This explains why we experience failure to resolve social problems from hatred,
conflict and strife
E. Karl Jaspers
- Freedom reveals itself as a gift from somewhere beyond itself.
- Freedom without God only leads to a person’s searching for a substitute to God closer to
oneself, usually, he himself tries to be God.
- Jaspers asked that human beings be loyal to their own faiths without impugning the faith of
others.
F. Gabriel Marcel
- Philosophy's starting point is a metaphysical "disease.
- secondary reflection – process in which the search for a home in the wilderness, a harmony
in disharmony, takes place
Marcel's Phenomenological Method
 Primary Reflection – this method looks at the world or at any object as a problem, detached
from the self and fragment. This is the foundation of scientific knowledge. Subject does not
enter into the object investigated. The data of primary reflection lie in the public domain and
are equally available to any qualified observer
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  Secondary Reflection – Secondary reflection is concrete, individual, heuristic, and open. This
reflection is concerned not with object but with presences. It recaptures the unity of original
experience. It does not go against the date of primary reflection but goes beyond it by
refusing to accept the data of primary reflection as final
This reflection is the area of the mysterious because we enter into the realm of the personal. What is
needed in secondary reflection is an ingathering, a recollection, a pulling together of the scattered
fragments of our experience.

Activity 2: What I want in life

Direction: List at least 10 goals you wants to accomplish in life. It can be long term or short term
goals.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Performance Task
Activity 2: Reflect on the meaning of your own life.
Direction: After learning from the views of the philosophers, write down your own short reflection
regarding the meaning of life. There should only be 3-5 sentences. Use COUPON BOND for your
answers.
Reflect: Sino ako?
“You only live once – but if you work it right, once is enough.” –Joe E. Lewis

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones
you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your
sails. Explore. Dream. Discover” –Mark Twain

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” –
Ronald E. Osborn

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“We are not a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents,
direction, missions, and callings.” –Abraham H. Maslow

ASSESSMENT
MULTIPLE CHOICE: Read and understand each question. Select and write the CAPITAL letter of your
answer on the space provided before the number.
__________1. Death was a simply equated to the stopping of heartbeat and breathing. This meaning is ______
meaning of death.
A. Dictionary B. Legal C. Traditional D. Webster
__________ 2. Based on Section 2, paragraph (j) of the Organ Donation Act of 1991 (Republic Act 7170) a
person is considered dead, if?
A. The attending physician declared the person death based on the acceptable standards of medical
practice.
B. The nurses or any of the medical practitioners give resuscitation to the patient and the patient is still
unconscious.
C. The attending physician finds out that the person has no pulses.
D. The patient looks pale.
_________ 3. A lady after suffering from 5 years of fighting for her life because leukemia, meets the creator on
her 35th birthday. This lady is a Christin believer, what do you think is she expecting on her afterlife?
A. To be reincarnated C. To be another person
B. To have an eternal life D. To be born again
__________ 4. This pertains to the personal life, and precisely therein is fulfilled the essence of humanity
created according to the image of God.
A. Eternal life C. Death
B. Reincarnation D. Transcendence
__________ 5. According to Aristotle everything strives towards the end, what Greek word did he use to
describe the process which means “to become its essence?
A. Entelechy C. Enthelenchy
B. Entilenchy D. Entelency
_________ 6. This reflection is concerned not with object but with presences. It recaptures the unity of original
experience. It does not go against the date of primary reflection but goes beyond it by refusing to accept the
data of primary reflection as final.
A. First Reflection C. Primary Reflection
B. Second Reflection D. Secondary Reflection
_________7. This method looks at the world or at any object as a problem, detached from the self and
fragment. This is the foundation of scientific knowledge. Subject does not enter into the object investigated.
The data of primary reflection lie in the public domain and are equally available to any qualified observer
A. First Reflection C. Primary Reflection
B. Second Reflection D. Secondary Reflection
_________8. Signifies the permeable and dense, silent and dead. From them comes no meaning, they only are.
The en-soi is absurd, it only finds meaning only' through the human person, the one and only pour-soi. The
world only has meaning according to.
A. Self-Care C. En-soi
B. Careful D. Pour-soi
_________9. The world only has meaning according to what the person gives to it. Compared with' the en-soi,
a person has no fixed nature. To put it in a paradox: the human person is not what he/she is.
A. Self-Care C. En-soi
B. Careful D. Pour-soi
_________10. A person is not pure possibility but tactical possibility:
possibilities open to him at any time conditioned and limited by circumstances. A person's situation as a finite
entity is thrown into a world where he/she must project his/her possibilities not disclosed by theoretical
understanding but by moods.
A. False C. Fallenness
B. Facticity D. True