Finiteness of the human person

• Man is not eternal: we began to exist at a particular moment in time
• Burke: '“Birth is not a sufficient explanation of the beginning or origin of one’s life and death is not a sufficient guarantee of its end”'
• We experience a desire to ‘surpass’ ourselves and the limits of our own nature
• Transcendence


  The human desire for something more than human existence
• Burke: '“When man reflects on his capacity and need for truth and goodness, for wisdom and beauty, he realizes that there is no end to it”'
• Man finds in himself the need to enter into contact with what surpasses the visible or physical dimensions of his existence
• Man’s hunger for values, his search for truth and beauty and goodness without limit is bound to end in frustration if it is not also a quest for dialogue and communion
• Contemplating the Niagara Falls, since we cannot talk with a waterfall, the natural response is “Praise be to you, O God”
• Desire to ‘overcome’ time is another manifestation of our transcendence
• Ways to overcome time

  • Remember the past
  • Conserve the present moment
  • Look forward to the future
• Death involves one’s disappearance from this world: the person who used to be there is no longer there
• Awareness of death includes external fact and internal awareness
• Death is an inevitable part of human existence
• Death implies destruction of the unity: body and soul
• Death


  Defined as the separation of the body and soul
• Desire for immortality is a sign of man’s rejection of death
• Ways to leave a mark

  • Leaving behind children
  • Architectural buildings
  • Photos of loved ones
  • Funeral rites
• Belief in life after death is almost universal and a deep conviction in every period and culture that has existed
• Respect and reverence for the dead

  • Funeral rites
  • Treatment of the corpse
• Burke: '“There is something in us that ought not to die”'
• We can show through our activity that there is something in us that is spiritual (hence immortal)
• Truth


  Something immortal, absolute and does not change with time
• Man is the only creature capable of knowing the truth in this world
• Loving


  The act of the will that transcends time and space
• We can continue to love people after they die
• The soul is spiritual and can continue to exist even if separated from the body or after we die
• Immortality of the soul

  Philosophical term for the soul's continued existence beyond death
• Health is psycho-social harmony between mind and body; state of complete physical and mental well-being
• Illness


  Absence of good health
• Illness is an intermediate state between health and death
• Pain and suffering are inevitable companions of man’s life
• Pain exists because we are living
• When we internalize pain, we “suffer” or we experience “sorrow”
• Only the suffering human being knows he is suffering and asks why he is suffering
• Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence
• Possible attitudes toward pain and suffering

  • Escapism
  • Acceptance
• Escapism entails avoiding suffering at all costs
• Acceptance entails finding meaning in suffering
• Victor Frankl: '“A man who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”'
• Finding meaning in pain and suffering can help one to survive even the worst conditions