LESSON I

Philosophy comes from the Greek word (philein/philo) which means to love; and (Sophia) which means
wisdom. Therefore, The definition of philosophy in its etymological meaning is “love of wisdom”
- The science of beings in their ultimate reasons, causes and principles, acquired by the aid of human
reason alone
-According to Aristotle the natural desire for knowledge is innate to man.
-Aristotle argued that nature has built into us the desire to be virtuous.
- Humans have a fixed nature – an essence – and that’s the way we flourish is by adhering to that nature,
says Aristotle

Branches of Philosophy
1. Metaphysics- Comes the Greek word “metafuisca” means something that goes beyond. It is the study
of reality.
--The study of reality and existence.
2. Theology/Theodicy- It is the philosophical study of God or BEING in its highest form.
3. Philosophy of Man/Human person- It is the philosophical study of the nature of man as person,
origin and destiny.
--The philosophical study of the mysteries of the human person
4. Cosmology- It is the philosophical study of the physical world in its final analysis.
5. Political Philosophy- It is the philosophical study of the state, the ideal form of government and its
basic power.
-The study of governments, justice, and the rights and obligations of every citizen
6. Aesthetics- A philosophical inquiry on beauty and of the beautiful.
- It is the philosophical study of beauty.
7. Epistemology- It is the philosophical study on the principles of human knowledge with regard to value
of human thought.
-It is the study of knowledge and how to know.
8. Social Philosophy- It is philosophical study between man and society.
9. Philosophy of Education- It is a philosophical and methodological study of teaching and procedural
process.
10. Ethics/Moral Philosophy- It is philosophical study of the morality of human act that distinguishes
from what is good from evil and right and wrong.
11. Logic-The study of principles and methods in attaining correct and valid reasoning.

Meaning of Ethics
-Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” meaning custom or behavior. Ethics is the
fundamental character and spirit of a culture and custom.
- Ethics is a branch of philosophy. It is also called moral philosophy dealing with actions
- “Ethicus”- -Conduct or Behavior
- Ethics means right living and good moral character; and it is in good moral character that man
finds his true worth and perfection.
- According to Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living for man.” Now ethics is the very
investigation of the meaning of life.

Branches of Ethics

Metaethics- Refers to the nature of ethics, study of characteristics and moral reasoning.
- it often attempts to identify the best moral values. An example within metaethics is: "How can
we know what is right and wrong?"
Normative ethics- Is concerned in determining the content of our moral behavior
- Normative ethical theories seek to provide action-guides; procedures for answering the question
such as “what ought I to do?”.
-Examples of behaviors that are judged as right or wrong in Normative Ethics are honesty, lying,
and stealing
Applied Ethics- Is a field of ethics that deals with ethical questions specific to a professional,
disciplinary, or practical field.
- Subsets of applied ethics include medical ethics, bioethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and
others.
- It also attempts to deal with specific realms of human action and to craft criteria for discussing
issues that might arise within those realms

Relation of Ethics with Other Science

1. Ethics and Logic- Logic is a science of right thinking. Ethics is the science of right living. But right
living presupposes right thinking. Doing follows thinking. To think right often means to do right, as
knowledge of right leads to the doing of right. Both ethics and logic aim to rectitude: the former aims at
right doing; the latter, at right thinking.
2. Ethics and Psychology- –Both deal with the study of man, human nature, and human behavior.
- basic difference;
* Psychology is not interested in the morality of human behavior, unlike ethics.
Psychology studies how man behaves
* Ethics studies how man ought to behave.
3. Ethics is related to Sociology- Ethics deal with the moral order which includes the social order
- Sociology deals with human relation in a society, but human relations are based on proper order
and proper order comes only with the proper observance of morals laws and principles which regulate the
actions of men in a community.
[Link] and Economics - Man is also an economic being because he has to support himself by earning a
living. He has to live by bread (though he does not live by bread alone).
- Economics and Morality are two aspects of one and the same human nature.
- In order that peace and happiness will prevail in a community, the action of man must be
governed by the invariable principles of morality.
5. Ethics and Education- Education develops the whole man: his moral, intellectual and physical
capacities.
- the primary objective of education should be the developments of these power in man, which
consists his true perfection.
- “All schools should develop good moral character, personal discipline, civic conciousness, etc.”
6. Morality and Law- Morality and Law are intimately related. Right and wrong, good and bad in human
actions presuppose a law or rule of conduct.
7. Ethics and Politics- Man owes allegiance to the State. Politics aims at good government for the
temporal and the spiritual and eternal welfare there is no conflict.
- The two are inseparable in man’s present state of existence, where the material and the
spiritual, the body and the spirit, form one person.

LESSON II
Concepts of Man
Socrates- Socrates Man and virtue: virtue likewise is natural endowment, not an artificial convention or
habit of action to be acquired by education
- Virtue is awakening the seeds of good deeds that perhaps lie dormant in the mind and heart of
mind.
- virtue is inborn in the mind and self- knowledge is the source of all wisdom, then the only
way to acquire virtue is simply to know what is in the mind, in the self.
- Virtue then depended on knowledge
- “knowledge is virtue; ignorance is vice’
- True knowledge-includes with it the application of this knowledge.
o This means that it should be practical.
o True knowledge is wisdom which in turn means virtue.
- EVIL – is the result of ignorance
o A man does evil because he does not know any better, or that his knowledge is
imperfect or inadequate.
Plato- Man in his present earthly existence, is only an imperfect copy of his real original self, the perfect
man, in the realm of ideas.
- Man’s perfection consists in constant recollection and imitation of his former perfect self.
- Idealism
o The individual things that we perceive, exist in space-time.
o Plato emphasized on the idea behind the things that we see
o Originally, man existed as a pure mind, an ideal man, with all his pristine genuine
perfections as a perfect man in the realm of ideas.
- Man and knowledge
o man knew all things by direct intuition
o Man was omniscient, all knowing, before he came to be born in this world.
o by constant remembering and doing good, he can regain his former perfections;
RECOLLECTION
Aristotle- Characterizes man as “political animal”
- this refers to the social nature of man, social is not something that one enters into by contract
to achieve some common aim.
- The social is within each man; man does not only live in society, society lives in him.
- Aristotle argued that nature has built into us the desire to be virtuous
- Humans have a fixed nature – an essence – and that’s the way we flourish is by adhering to
that nature
 - GOLDEN MEAN- According to Aristotle, it is the just-right amount – the middle between the
extreme of excess and the extreme of deficiency.
St. Augustine- God is Absolute Spirit, Absolute Will, Absolute Intelligence, Absolute Freedom, Absolute
Good, Absolute Power, and Absolute Holiness
- He created man with a mortal body with an immortal soul and gave them freewill.
- The source of evil is freewill, God created man good, but the good of man ceases to be good
when man turn himself away from God
- Man’s freewill makes him imperfect. Man is capable of reaching perfection only if he keeps
himself good.
St. Thomas Aquinas- He claims that man is substantially united by the body and soul.
- Man is the point of convergence between the corporeal and spiritual substances.
- The soul is the united with the human body and it is the principle of life.
- The souls require the body as the material medium for its operation but the soul has operative
functions which do not need a material medium
- The soul are man’s intellect and will.
- Thus, at death the intellect and will remain in the soul as it is immortal and incorruptible.
Rene Descartes- He view human being as founded on his idea of substance, material and immaterial.
- Man as material substance is both thinking (soul) and extended (body) substance.
- Human can know and think apart from his body
- “Man is a thing which thinks”
- Man as a finite substance and thinking substance (dualistic) RES COGITANS- human can
know and think apart from the body as an extended substance. RES EXTENSA- refers to the
body.
- Everything, even his own body, was dubitable all except for one fact, the fact that he was
doubting.
- He could not doubt that he was doubting. And doubting being mode of thinking, brought him
to the realization of;
- “COGITO ERGO SUM” (I think, therefore I am)
o The question of man was now the foreground of other questioning on nature or on
God.
Thomas Hobbes- Everything is fundamentally matter in motion
- every event in the world is determined.
- Since human activity is similar to the events in nature it follows the behavior is absolutely
determined.
- Human being is essentially anti-social; essentially egoistic and this egoism makes life
difficult in the natural state of things “LEVIATHAN”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau- Human is essentially good and that good people are made unhappy and
corrupted by their experiences in society. He viewed society as artificial and corrupt that results to
continuing unhappiness of man. The Social Contract is the compact agreed to among men that sets
conditions for membership.
Karl Marx- Human nature is derived from labor since nature is the totality of human activity considering
that labor is human activity “Labor Man”.
- Human nature rests on labor; man should be productive. An unproductive human person
stops to be a human being.
Soren Kierkegaard- Philosophy became the search for the meaning of life.
- The search for truth was now the search for meaning.
- freedom is that which enables man to pass from the aesthetic state to the ethical and
ultimately to make a leap of faith, the highest act of man’s liberty
- believed that anxiety can be a positive force in the moral life because it can motivate us to
make better choices.
- Individuals are responsible for making their own moral decisions based on their own
conscience

LESSON III

A. Human Act
 The human activity of man as man
 Act of rationality of man
 Involves understanding and free will
 “an act which proceeds from the deliberate free will of man” (Glenn:3)
 The agent becomes responsible and accountable of such act
 A human act can be morally good or morally evil
 The human act is one that is proper to a human being, an act that proceeds from the free will of
a man.
Act of Man
 Activities of man as animal
 Acts are not deliberately done nor voluntary
 Performed without the free will of the agent
 Includes beating of the heart, dreaming, sensations by the five sense organs
 Do not demand responsibility from the agent
 Amoral acts and not subject to morality

COMPARISON OF CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN ACTS AND ACTS OF MAN

Human Acts Acts of Human

1. The act must be deliberate. 1. They are done indeliberately
2. The act must be free. 2. They are not done freely acts
3. The act must be voluntary 3. The acts are done involuntarily

LESSON IV

Moral Theories

THOMAS AQUINAS
- natural law
o the theory of natural law is from that perspective just one part among others of the
theory of divine providence.
o the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by
which human action is to be judged as reasonable or unreasonable
o the theory of natural law is from that perspective, the pre-eminent part of the theory
of practical rationality
o It is a habit of choosing what is good and right, and it is essential for living a
good and moral life.
Utilitarianism
- Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, identified the good with pleasure
- They also held that we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about ‘the greatest amount
of good for the greatest number’
- Jeremy Bentham
o He famously held that humans were ruled by two sovereign masters — pleasure and
pain
o We seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain
o promulgated the principle of utility as the standard of right action on the part of
governments and individuals.
o Actions are approved when they are such as to promote happiness , or pleasure, and
disapproved of when they have a tendency to cause unhappiness, or pain
o When called upon to make a moral decision one measures an action's value with
respect to pleasure and pain according to the following:
 intensity (how strong the pleasure or pain is)
 duration (how long it lasts)
 certainty (how likely the pleasure or pain is to be the result of the action)
 proximity (how close the sensation will be to performance of the action)
 fecundity (how likely it is to lead to further pleasures or pains)
 purity (how much intermixture there is with the other sensation)
- John Stuart Mill
o There are some pleasures that are more fitting than others
o There are some pleasures that are more fitting than others.
o Intellectual pleasures are of a higher, better, sort than the ones that are merely
sensual, and that we share with animals.
o There are a variety of parameters along which we quantitatively measure pleasure —
intensity and duration are just two of those
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

- End justifies the means. Where end=peace and order and means=force.
- Also known as mightism ~ "Might is Right."

FRIEDRICH NIETZCHE
 - Inherent in every individual, regardless of race and clime, is the will to power or the will to
dominate.
- All that proceeds from power is good and all that springs from weakness is bad.
- Reason is an instrument of the will, and the will is narrowed down to a single purpose: the
will to power.
- Culmination of the full development of man's will to power is the state of SUPERHUMANS
or OVERMEN.
BUDDHA
- There is only one absolute, uni0versal all-pervading Reality, Brahma, in which all things are
one.
- Man, therefore, in reality was united originally with Brahma and is called a Brahman
- According to him, the selfishness and uncontrollable fleshly impulses of a man endangered
by his passions are the root cause of human misery and suffering
- Hence, man, in order to be happy, must liberate himself of this selfishness, subjugate his
baser instincts by self-restraint or denial, and in so doing he acquires virtue.
LAO-TZU
- Work the importance of the virtues of humility, self-negation and absolute calm or quietism
in the face of misfortune or calamity or even death.
- Man should avoid display and self assertion; he should be humble, modest, calm, ready to
meet misfortunes in life and fearless even in death.
- Man rises above his bodily desires because his spirit is stronger than matter

CONFUCIUS

- There are a few core values for Confucianism

o Jen
 prioritizes Human Heartedness, goodness, benevolence, dignity for the
human life, and last but not least, characteristics that make humans, humans
(something that makes them what they are, human).
o Li
 is the principle of gain, benefit, order, priority, and the concrete guide to
human action.
 2 meanings of Li:
o The first meaning is the ways things should be done in one’s social
life
o The second sense of li is the principle of social order; comply with
the norms of Jen.
o Yi
 focuses on the righteousness, which is a necessary condition for a superior
man.
 Implies a moral sense, which is the ability to decide what is right or wrong
- Another key aspect of Confucianism is the Hsiao
o focus on respect
o One must feel obliged to do well and make the family known and respected, and
giving your parents emotional, physical, and spiritual richness.
- JUNZI
o It is the gentleman or superior man, by which he means a man of virtue,
learning, and good manners
- DE
o is not something Heaven-sent for the ruling classes, but something that can be
cultivated—and cultivated by anyone
- Benevolence
o arguing that ruling by example rather than by fear would inspire the people to
follow a similarly virtuous life
Western Ideas of Morality

- WU WEI
o It is a Chinese term that means "action without action" or "effortless action."
- Yin
o Is associated with the feminine, the dark, and the passive
- YANG
o Is associated with the masculine, the light, and the active