Philosophy

• Freedom


  The capability of the person to make choices and decisions based on their own preferences, monitor, and regulate their own actions and be goal-oriented and self-directed
• A person must possess 4 qualities that validates him or her as a person: self-awareness, externality, dignity, and self-determination
• Animals behave like human beings


  They perform actions in response to commands
• Human persons


  Do not respond automatically to commands like animals
• Animals


  • Act instinctively, their actions are more like predetermined responses to certain stimuli
• Human persons


  • Can choose the course of action to take when given incitement or faces with a certain situation
  • Their actions do not necessarily follow a set pattern
• Three kinds of freedom


  • Freedom from physical restraint
  • Freedom of choice
  • Freedom to act responsibly
• Voluntariness


  The ability of a person to act out of his or her own free will and self-determination
• Responsibility


  The person being accountable for his or her actions and their consequences
• Whenever we decide to act, this results in a certain consequence. All human actions have consequences, and this affect not only the person who commits the action, but also other people in our surroundings
• Having the ability to choose and to enact a course of action does not automatically mean that we should act every time. It is also possible that the choice not to take action may be an acceptable and moral choice in a given situation
• When we make the choice to do a particular action, we can never go back and redo our actions and make another choice
• It is very important that when confronted with choices, we exercise caution and prudence and reflect on our possible courses of action
• Freedom is an intrinsic and essential property of a person. The human person is by nature free and seeks freedom
• Freedom is also understood to be the power to create and define oneself. It is also rooted in the person's rationality and the exercise of intellect and free will
• A person becomes less free when he or she is no longer in control of himself or herself and is instead controlled by other forces
• Actions that diminish freedom also dehumanize a person
• The two important elements of human freedom are voluntariness and responsibility
• Freedom is experienced through the act of making choices
• Intersubjectivity


  The shared awareness and mutual understanding among persons. It's about the experience and meaning of interhuman encounter. It opens us up to the nature of commitment, the value of others, and the reality of love as the highest form of recognition. It pertains to human relationships characterized by a shared sense of responsibility toward each other, respect for differences, and empathy.
• Intersubjectivity


  • Requisite to heroism
  • Characterized by empathy, respect, and selflessness without expecting something in return
• Communicative action (Jürgen Habermas)


  Mutual understanding is an important objective of any conversation. It is achieved through speech acts that meet four validity claims: comprehensibility, truth, truthfulness, and rightness.
• Comprehensibility (Habermas)


  Pertains to the use of ordinary language that both speaker and hearer are familiar with.
• Truth (Habermas)


  Refers to how true the uttered statement is in reference to objective facts.
• Truthfulness (Habermas)


  Pertains to the genuine intention of the speaker, which is essential for the hearer's gaining trust.
• Rightness (Habermas)


  Pertains to the acceptable tone and pitch of voice and expressions.
• Habermas believes that when actors do not violate any of the validity claims in their speech acts, it would result in intersubjective "reciprocal understanding, shared knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another".
• 1. It relationship (Martin Buber)


  The mode that modern man almost exclusively uses, where the "I" acts more as an observer while the "it" is viewed as a thing to be utilized, known, or put for some purpose.
• 1. Thou relationship (Martin Buber)


  Both the "I" and the "other" enter into a genuine relationship as active participants, where the "other" is transformed into a "Thou" or "You" and is valued as a subject, not an object.
• Love (Buber)


  A genuine relation between loving beings, where subjects do not perceive each other as objects but as subjects, sharing a sense of caring, respect, commitment, and responsibility.
• Face of the Other (Emmanuel Levinas)


  Whenever we deal with someone, we use the values and beliefs that we inherited from our society and used them to interpret the other person's actions and intentions.
• 1. Thou relation


  A genuine relation between loving beings where they share a sense of caring, respect, commitment, and responsibility
• Authenticity


  Reciprocal intersubjective relations wherein despite our differences we recognize each other as humans
• Others


  Not means, tools, or instruments for the fulfilment of my whims but rather a companion in life, a friend to rely on, a person worthy to live with
• Levinas offers insights for achieving authentic intersubjective relationship and complements what lacks in Buber's I-Thou relationship
• Moral duty and infinite responsibility to people who are marginalized and underprivileged


  We have to go beyond our self, our needs, our rights and demands and focus more on our duty to the "other"
• Responsibility to "other"


  Personal ("mine alone"), we should not wait for others to organize activities but do it by our own and try to be sincere and consistent in dealing with them
• Radical difference of the other


  Our society's standards of moral, good, and right could be instruments for "uniform" behavior, thinking, and living, but people are not the same and each individual is unique
• Reason for giving, caring, and helping others


  Reciprocity is not and should not be the reason, we give, help, assist because the other needs and no other reason
• Unconditional love, loving without condition and selfish intention, is needed to fulfil an extra-ordinary responsibility to others