St.

Augustine
Immanuel Kant
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
 Historical Background
• 340-430 BCE
• Thagaste, a Roman city in Algeria
• His father was a pagan, but his mother
was a devout Catholic
 Historical Background
• He resorted to Neoplatonism.
• He believed that there is no real
contradiction between Christianity and the
Philosophy of Plato.
• That’s why we say that Augustine
“Christianized” Plato’s philosophy.
 Philosophical Thought
• God’s Foreknowledge
• God knows what we will do in the course
of our lifetime.
• Are we just God’s puppets?
• No, for God gave us freewill.
• Knowing is different from willing.
 Philosophical Thought
• The Kingdom of God
• The Kingdom of the World
• …a struggle between the two kingdoms.
• It is a struggle because we humans tend
to concern ourselves more with worldly
allurements than to things that makes us
holy.
 Questions
• How did Augustine’s thought influence our
view of man today?
-Foreknowledge
-The two Kingdoms
 Immanuel Kant
• (1724-1804)
• He was born in an era with two conflicting
movements.
• Empiricism vs Rationalism
• Kant reconciled the two.
• Spent 6 years as a private tutor
after college
Transcendental Idealism and
Categorical Imperative
– Act only according to the maxim by which you
can, at the same time will that should become
a universal law.
– Argued that the human mind creates structure
of human experience, that the reason is the
source of morality.
– Addresses the question, “what can we know”
– Every event has a cause.
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
(1908-1961)

All seeing is seeing something

 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• French philosopher
• Academic proponent of existentialism but
much more concerned with matters of
perception
• Phenomenology of perception: The study of
the essence of perception and consciousness
 Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Phenomenology – a method of describing the
nature of our perceptual contact to the world
• Concerned with providing a direct description
of human experience.

• Perception has to come from a body

 What does it mean to have a body?
 What does it mean to see versus to think?
 Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

• “If there is, for me a cube with six equal sides, and if I
can link up with the object, this is not because I
constitute it from the inside: it is because I delve into the
thickness of the world by perceptual experience.”

– You see all sides of the cube because your body

moves through space.
– All perception happens because of a body.
– All perception is also a perception of the body.
 The body in the world

• “Our own body is in the world, as a heart is

in the organism: it keeps the visible
spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life
into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it
forms a system.”
-Phenomenology of Perception
 Rediscover the world,
rediscover the self
• “We shall need to reawaken our experience of
the world as it appears to us in so far as we
perceive the world through our body, and in so
far we perceive the world with our body. But by
this remaking contact with the body and the
world, we shall also rediscover ourselves, since,
perceiving as we do with our body, the body is a
natural self and, is it where, the subject of
perception.”
-Phenomenology of Perception
 THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES (PHILOSOPHY)

PHILOSOPHERS KEY CONCEPTS VIEW OF THE SELF

Premodernism
St. Augustine Summum Bonum – The greatest The self craves for perfect and
470BC-399BC good. enduring happiness.

Modernism
Immanuel Kant Transcendental Idealism and Act only according to the maxim by
1724-1804 Categorical Imperative which you can, at the same time will
that should become a universal law.

Postmodernism
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of perception: Body as the primary site of knowing
1908-1961 The study of the essence of the world.
perception and consciousness
 SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Premodernism Modernism Postmodernism

St. Augustine Immanuel Kant Maurice Merlau-Ponty

“My heart is restless until it “Live your life as though your every “The body is our general
rests in you.” act were to become a universal law.” medium for having a world.”
Similarities
Focus on the Consciousness Emphasizes the conscious Emphasizes the conscious thought Emphasizes the conscious
& Unconsciousness thought thought

Human Freedom There is human freedom
since predestination does not can choose our actions under the
exist.
Philosophical Influence
Contribution to Education “Imitate the good, bear with
the evil, love all.” – St.
Augustine’s message to
teachers
Differences
View of the Self
Focus on the Mind & Body Emphasizes the mind
Religious View Sees the self in the eyes of
faith.
There is human freedom since one Existential phenomenology
which seeks to evoke and
guidance of categorical imperative. interpret structures of “being-in-
the-world”
Influenced by Descartes: Reconciled Influenced by Descartes:
empiricism and rationalism, two Considered Descartes’ notion of
bodies of philosophy that rose from the mind-body compound.
Descartes’ dualism, resulting to
more holistic view of the self.
The Educational Theories: Theory of Proponent of Existentialism and
Knowledge, Theory of Learning, Phenomenology
Theory of Human Nature, Theory of
Transmission, etc.
Transcendental idealist (a Both rationalism and empiricism
combination of rational and are inadequate.
empirical views).
Emphasizes both mind and body Emphasizes both mind and body
Wants to have moral norms
independent of religion.