By : Mohammed Yassine Labib

Dr. Christopher Evan Longhurst

PHI 2301

The Philosophical Aspects of Human Being

Kant considered the question What is a Human being? In his book the Logic as a
central question around which all the philosophy turns about, and in which the answer to it may
be too hard to find. Hence, in this philosophical introduction, I am going to answer this question
from different levels. Lets start by examining the human being from an physical or organismic
level. Once we inspect human being at the organismic perspective, we notice the process of
regulations based on the self-regulation of procedures in the creature as a steady essential
structure. As we move "up" in the human body, we meet the world of the intellect, of
personality. By the side of the organismic level, the human being is portion of the natural inter-
relation of phenomena and follows its need, but at the personal level the nature of the human
being makes him a part of the whole. In other words, the human being cannot live solely but in
groups.
Now, by decomposing the Aquinass mathematical equation Man=Soul+Body we
derive that a human being is a human body, specifically, a sensitive, rational , living body, and
that a human being contains of a soul which make the equation balanced. In order to answer the
question of the relationship between body and soul, we need first to compare and contrast them.
There are particularly two major concepts concerning the connection of these two. The first one
is mainly claimed by Aristotle. He said that the soul as the shape of the body is engaged with the
body itself. In addition to that, he said that the aim of the soul is to make the body able to move
and to distinguish sensible matters. It makes the body as a part from the whole, which is in other
words, a unified part. Thus, we can conclude from the Aristotle perception that it is impossible to
separate the body and the soul since they are correlated as a matter and shape. Also, we can say
that the soul is incapable of having more existence after the bodily death. The insinuation of this
is that the soul is earthly or mortal.
On the other hand, the second major conception is the one that emphasizes about the fact
that soul can be separated from the body. This idea takes into consideration a living thing as
being structured of two major principles, which are the body and soul. The foremost proponents
of this perspective are Plato and Pythagoras. Pythagoras was taught the rebirth of the soul. He
claimed that once a person died, he believed that the soul chose another body and it transformed
into some other sorts of living things. Which means that any sort of thing comes into existence is
automatically born again in the life cycles and that nothing is being completely new. Therefore,
the embodied soul abandons the dying bodies and embraces others that are new. Furthermore, the
Platos theory which is mainly about the fact that the soul is a prisoner of the body , and that the
goal of the philosophy is to make the soul free from the intricacy of the body, that is, to facilitate
the road for soul to reach its highest perfection (Lisska 1977, 102). Therefore, this conception
indicates that the soul can be separated from the body. Moreover, according to George Galloway,
By : Mohammed Yassine Labib
Dr. Christopher Evan Longhurst
PHI 2301
some cultures greatly pledge to this theory and even detained that the soul could detach itself
from the body to roam at large in the world, and hence one would wake up where he lay down
but in the interval his/her soul would have been abroad on strange adventures (1960, p93). This
claim insists also on the idea that the immortality of the soul and the likelihood of its existing as
a spirit since its providence would most possibly be intended to the ontological sort of spirits.

However, the soul links two major faculties or as it is known in philosophy the Higher
Faculties in this part of my essay I am going to talk about the two important faculties which are
the human intellect and the human will, or more specifically their object .The intellect is ability
for distinguishing things in an immaterial and general way. It is the ability for distinguishing
essences and cores. Further, it is the power and ability to think reason, and judge. And,
subsequently, the extrinsic necessity of the intellect against the senses it exists we say that the
main-object of the intellect in this lifetime of a being is the cores of material things, the cores
which can be detected and sensed which is Truth. The will is the strong wish ability of the
human being soul. It is the ability of intellectual strong desire. It is the ability for going away, or
after. Will hence is exactly termed by St. T Aquinas as Rational Appetency. And so as a result
the will is the ability for tempting to Understood Good. Therefore, the main object of the will is
Good.

Since the beginning of the world, since Eve and Adam were created, Cain committed the
first crime by killing his brother Abel. Thus, Cain is symbolizes as the kind human being, while
Abel symbolizes the bad human being. Thus, we can say that the human nature consists of two
sides: the good and the bad side. However, if we move backward to Cain and Abel story, we see
that Abel regretted the fact of killing his brother. Hence, the truth beyond the human nature is as
a good one because every one of us regrets anything bad he or she has ever done. Furthermore,
the history shows that the nature of the human being has another side which is living with the
others. The human being cannot live only by him/herself and need to be with somebody else
because of so many things such as the natural disasters, diseases, danger and so on. Having a
social life, not necessary knowing thousands of people, makes the person feel secure and safe
which is considered as an advantage of course. Because when you know that you are not alone,
you know that once something bad happen to you, you will not go through all of it alone;
someone is going to be right there for you to help you. The last side of the human nature is
freedom. All human beings are born free and equal in pride and rights, and this consists freedom
of movement, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Freedom of movement means the
fact that everyone has the right to move and resides wherever but within the borders of the
country. While freedom of thought means that everyone has the right to change believes either in
public or alone without being punished to doing so. However, freedom of expression means that
everyone has the right to express his opinion freely. Also, everyone has the right to hold an
opinion without meddling and to receive and impart an idea via any sort of media regardless of
the boarders.
However, in this last part of my essay a will discuss freedom and its relation with
equality. Freedom, this word seems obvious and can be defined as the ability to live freely and to
do whatever we want to do while equality is when all people regardless the social classes has the
same amount of rights and treatments. To me freedom and equality are not comparable but one
completes the other. Personally, I view fairness, equality, and freedom to exist on a triangle; the
angles of the triangle must always add to 180 degrees. To have a greater amount of freedom, you
By : Mohammed Yassine Labib
Dr. Christopher Evan Longhurst
PHI 2301
must have less fairness and equality. To have a greater amount of fairness, you must have less
freedom and equality. To have a greater amount of equality, you must have less freedom and
fairness.

References:

- Lisska, J.A. 1977. Philosophy Matters. Columbia: Charles E. Merril Publishing

Company.

- Galloway, G. 1960. The Philosophy of Religion. Edinburgh: T & T. Clark.