Martin Heideggers Phenomenology of Death is written by Manuel B. Dy, Jr.

The
article is published in the same authors book Philosophy of Man in page 253.
Dy explains in the article about death as how Martin Heidegger defines it through
the phenomenological method. It does not talk about the concept of afterlife but
rather about how man usually perceives and how man should perceive death.
So what is death according to Heidegger? Before explaining his phenomenology of
death, Dy starts defining confusing terms like Dasein, Care, ahead-of-itself, and
other simple words that were put together with hyphens to represent some other
complex concept. I have however understood one essential term being-towards-
death, which refers to man and his attitude towards death. I will further talk about
this later.
Heidegger argues that death should not be defined on the basis of the life after it, if
there is. As Dy says in the article, No one has ever come out alive from death to
tell us about death. I was disappointed at this. I have a lot of questions about the
afterlife so I was expecting this article answers them. Nevertheless, I do agree with
the author. How will we describe the phase from the point of death to everything
after it? There are religious beliefs, each painting a picture of life after death. Who
preached these ideas? The prophets. They are dead now. However, they never
experienced death when they were still preaching. How can they be sure of the
afterlife they believe? For all we know, the prophets could have fooled us. Besides,
phenomenology is a process of attempting to disclose the reality of a subject, which
in this case is death.
Heidegger tried to describe death from the point of view of a living man. He sought
real and existing experiences to aid him in phenomenology. So again, what is death
for Heidegger?
Death is mans transition between his existence and non-existence. Such transition,
according to Heidegger, cannot be experienced. Personally, this might not be
entirely true. If there really is an afterlife, then man, or at least his consciousness,
continues to experience. However, the afterlife experience cannot be relayed to the
living world. Afterlife events stay in the afterlife world because the dead cannot
return to life. There is this concept of ghost, which stands on the foundation of the
dualistic notion of man. But this body-and-soul notion is just a theory, an unproven
idea. Therefore everything related to this concept, including the existence of ghosts,
is unproven. I have heard accounts of people dying and then waking up after a few
days. Unbelievable! The resurrected might have just been on comatose or
something. Even if he was proven to be dead, no heartbeat and all, Im still skeptic.
I dont give in to superficial miracles. Somehow, there must be a reasonable
explanation. Whether there is an afterlife or none, what truly happens on death and
after it is beyond the scope of the living mans knowledge.
Heidegger claims that death is not something that happens but something
impending. It is part of ones existence. It is part of mans nature. I believe that.
Immortality is impossible. Death will never fail to perform its job in every living
thing. In every man, death awaits. As Heidegger says, death makes the man
complete. In dying, man is proven to be man a mortal who existed. Death is not
the enemy of man. It is his destiny; his fulfillment; his wholeness. Once the man
exists at birth, he immediately starts his journey to death. Heideggers
phenomenology of death is about man as a being-towards-death.
Heidegger asserts that man should be aware of all his potentialities an existing
being, as a being-in-the-world. One of these potentialities is the loss of his own
existence, which is death. So it is important for man not to be too absorbed as a
being-in-the-world.
A being-towards-death attitude though is not always proper. Heidegger observed
that there is inauthentic being-towards-death. This kind of man sees death as
something general instead of taking it personally. He will say something like,
People die one of these days one will die too, in the end; but right now, it has
nothing to do with us. Such attitude does not accept that death can come anytime,
like the next minute. In personal experience, I go about doing things as if my
tomorrow will always come. I say, Bukas ko na lang to gawin. But what if I die
before bukas comes? Then I have just made a plan which I have not and cannot be
fulfilled.
Dy mentions that the inauthentic being-towards-death is aware of the possibility of
death. However he looks at the death of a one, which is actually nobody. He
evades the possibility of his own death being near. He thinks that thinking about
death is weakness. But for me, the denial of the spontaneity of death is true
weakness and cowardice. The inauthentic being-towards-death instead busies
himself with everyday matters.
Now the authentic being-towards-death is the man who anticipates death. Man
should embrace the indefiniteness of this possibility. In accepting this possibility,
man frees himself, as the article says. It means that he is freed from the false
perception of the inauthentic being-towards-death that his own death would not
come soon. The authentic being-towards-death understands his wholeness with the
possibility of death. In personal reflection, this attitude makes man act as if it is his
last day. It doesnt mean that he would prepare for his burial or write his last will.
The man aware of the unpredictability of dying would most likely be less covetous
with the material world. So what if I lost my job, was embarrassed, or got robbed?
These events are futile after death. The authentic being-towards-death does not
mean irresponsibility or carelessness. It just makes man take things more lightly as
he lives. This way, he wouldnt be too focused and disturbed with his temporal
existence.
Death grants man the insight of the significance of his every action. If he can die
anytime, then that means any of his actions can be his last action. This is an
important thought for people of religion. It is usually the last action of the living man
that determines his judgment in the afterlife. Grasping the possibility of death
motivates man to always make the right move as much as possible.
Man and Death

PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH
Pius G. Morados

It is never certain that we will be born; but once we are born, it is absolutely certain
that we will die.

We fear death and we use all our strength to forget it. We avoid what reminds us of
it, we call morbid any thought of it. We cultivate the habit of thinking always of
death as something that concerns others, only others, and we live more or less as
the fools of our own blind faith. In this domain as in all others, however, repression
and insincerity profoundly disturb conscience and life. The world at large sees us as
people immensely ourselves, for that is the face we show; but secretly we are
ceaselessly measuring how near the abyss has come towards us and we find
ourselves sometimes more, sometimes less aghast at the thought of it. There is
no use of lying to ourselves or pretending that is all a charade. All without exception
begin through birth and end in death. It is simpler, courageous, and more human to
reflect serenely on the mystery of death, which cannot but be my death.

1. To be human is to be in the world. Man is primordially directed towards the world

and has the power to be in the world. His being in the world consists in being
alongside with things and in being with others.
Through his being in the world, and involvement in it, man has the power to be. Man
realizes his own possibilities, constantly actualizes his potentialities of existence,
and so is always ahead of himself or of what he actually is.
While being, he is also always becoming.
2. Care is the fundamental structure of Dasein. As project it always comports itself
towards its potentiality for being. There is always something still outstanding in
man. As long as man exists in the world, his potentiality for being is never
exhausted.
As long as man exists in the world, his potentiality for being is never exhausted.
There is always something to be settled yet in man. As long as he is, man never
reaches his wholeness, he is always has an unfinished character.
3. Man reaches his wholeness is death. He then loses his potentiality for being.
There is no more outstanding in man, everything is finished, settled for him. He is
no longer being there.

Death is the transition of man from Dasein to no longer Dasein.

4. There is no possibility of experiencing this transition. No one has ever come out
alive from death to tell us about death. Our first experience of death is the death of
others. This does not necessarily give us the objective knowledge about death even
if we are beings with others; for the death of another person makes him no longer a
person but a thing, a corpse, although he may be the object of concern for those
who remain behind. We have no way of knowing the loss of being that the dying
man suffers; in other words, we never experience the death of another person as he
himself has experienced it.

My death is absolutely certain, but its modalities are wrapped in uncertainty and it
has the unique character of being completely inexperienciable. Those who break the
seal of its secret do not return to tell us either how the trial is offered, or how they
have met it, or how we in our turn must face up to it. Being strictly personal, death
is an act in which the experience of others can give us strictly personal, death is an
act in which the experience of others can give us but very feeble help.

No one can take my dying away from me. Death is always mine. It is a peculiarity of
my being in which my own being is an issue. Mineness and existence are
constitutive of death.
5. Death is the possibility of man, a not yet which will be. And what is unique in
this possibility is that it has the character of no-longer-Dasein or of no-longer-
being-there, and belongs to the particular man, his very own, non-representable
As long as man exists, he lacks a totality, a wholeness, and this lack comes to its
end with death. The lack of totality of man is not the lack of togetherness of a thing
which can be completed by piecing together entities or parts. This not yet of man
is something that is already accessible to him. Dasein, as long as it is, is already, is
already its not-yet or its end. This may be likened to the unripeness of the fruit
which contains as its end its ripeness. There is however, a big difference between
the ripeness of the fruit and the death of man; namely, with the fruit, the ripeness is
the fulfillment of its being. In the case of man, on the other hand, in death, man
may or may not arrive at his fulfillment.

So little is the case that Dasein comes to its ripeness only with death, that Dasein
may well have passed its ripeness before the end. For the most part, Dasein ends in
unfulfillment.

6. Dasein, as long as it exists, is already its end. This end is not to be understood as
being-at-an-end but as being-towards-the-end. Phenomenology of death is not a
description of death or an afterlife but of man as being-towards-his-end or a being-
towards-death. If man is a being-towards-death, and his being in the world has the
fundamental structure of care, then the end of man must be clarified in terms of
that basic state.

7. Being-towards-death and Care Man, in being ahead of himself, as project,

comes to the disclosure of his extreme possibility, the possibility that he will no
longer be there. Death is the uttermost not-yet of man, something towards which
he comports himself. Death is not just something that happens to man; it is
something impending. The impending is not that of the coming of the storm, or of
the arrival of a friend, or a journey one is going to undertake. The impending death
is distinctive, because it is the possibility which is own most.
Death is mine, something that I have to take over myself. In death I stand before
myself in my ownmost potentiality for being, because the issue in death is no other
than my being in the world. Death is the possibility of my no-longer-possible, of no-
longer-being-able-to-be-there., the possibility of being cut off from others and from
things. And this possibility that must be, something that I cannot outstrip.
This possibility of my absolute impossibility is not just obtained in my rare moment.
As soon as I am born into the world, I am already thrown into this possibility. I may
not be aware of it, but the fact that I exist in the world, I exist with the possibility of
death.
8. The possibility of death is revealed only in the basic mood of man, anxiety in the
experience of dread, wherein man comes face to face with his potentiality for being.
Anxiety is not fear, because fear is concerned with something determinate which
threatens my immediate involvement of things. Anxiety is of something
indeterminate: what I dread is not entity, but the world itself, my being-in-the-world
Many are indeed ignorant of death as the possibility which is ownmost,
nonrelational and cannot be outstripped. They are engrossed in immediate concern
with things, thus covering up their own being-towards-death, fleeing in the face of
it. The fact remains that they are being-towards-death, that man is dying even in his
falleness, in his being absorbed in the everyday world of concern.
9. Everyday Being-towards-death inauthencity In the publicness of everyday
concern, death is known as a mishap that frequently occurs. The self of the public,
the impersonal they talks of death as a case of death, an event that happens
constantly. The they hides death by saying, People die one of these days one
will die too, in the end; but right now it has nothing to do with us. The they
realizes that death is something indefinite that must be arrive ultimately, but for the
moment, the they says, it has nothing to do with us. It is something not yet
present-at-hand, and therefore offers no threat. The they says one dies but the
one is nobody, no one will claim that it is I. In this way, the they levels off death,
makes it ambiguous, and hides the true aspects of this possibility, the mines,
nonrelational, and that which cannot be outstripped.
10. Everyday being towards death is a falling, a constant fleeing in the face of
death. The everyday man is constantly evading death, hiding it and giving new
explanations for it. The everyday man, even in his falling, attests to the fact that he
is a being-towards-death, although he assures himself in the inauthentic,
impersonal they that he is still living. Even in the mode of tranquilized indifference
towards his uttermost possibility of existence, man still has his ownmost potentiality
of being an issue.

11. The impersonal they is also certain of death. The they says, Death certainly
comes, but not right away. There is at the same time a denial of certainty which
seems only an empirical certainty derived from several cases of other peoples
death. As long as man remains on this level of certainty, death can never really
become certain for him.
Though man may seem to talk only of this empirical certainty of death in the public,
he is really at the bottom aware of another higher certainty than that of the
empirical and this is the certainty of his own death. The inauthentic man, however,
evades this higher certainty in carefreeness, in an air of superior indifference. He
stops worrying about death and busies himself in the urgency of concern, deferring
death as something later. He covers up the fact that death is possible at any
moment. The inauthentic man confers a kind of definiteness upon this
indefiniteness of death by intervening it with urgent matters of the everyday. He
cannot flee from death, however, because he derives the certainty of death from
the fact that being thrown into this world is being-towards-death. Death is ever
present in the very being of man.
12. Authentic Being-towards-death The authentic response of man to his
awareness of being-towards-death is not evasion, of covering up deaths true
implication, nor of giving new explanations for it. Man must face the possibility of
death as his possibility, the possibility in which his very existence is an issue. Facing
this possibility is not actualizing it or bring it to happen. That would be suicide and
suicide demolishes all the potentialities of man instead of bringing them into a
whole reality. Nor does it mean that man must brood over death, calculating it; for
death is not something one can have at his disposal
The authentic being-towards-death is anticipation of this possibility by which man
comes close to death, not by making it actual but by understanding it as the
possibility of impossibility of any existence at all for him. Anticipation reveals to
man that death means the measureless impossibility of existence. This projection of
his utmost possibility will provide him with a vision of his own present existence, the
latent possibilities lying before him.

13. In authentic being-towards-death, man realizes that death is his ownmost

possibility and thus the awareness comes to him of his potentiality for being, for
fulfilling his own being. He must therefore wrench himself away from the impersonal
they and make himself an individual, alone.

Death individualizes man, because death does not belong to everybody but to ones
own self. This individual by death reveals the there man, his being-alongside-
things (concern) and his being-with-others (solicitude). It reveals to man that his
concern and solicitude is nothing when his ownmost potentiality for being is itself an
issue in death. This does not mean cutting himself off from all relationships but
rather projecting himself upon his ownmost potentiality for being instead on the
they self.

The authentic man does not outstrip death. His anticipation does not evade death. It
accepts this possibility and in accepting man frees himself. By his anticipation man
frees himself, he is free for his own death, he is delivered from becoming lost in
possibilities.
BIRTH. My birth is something for which I do not have the slightest responsibility. I
carry no memory of it. The temporal, local, racial, family and circumstances of my
birth have greatly influenced the whole course of my destiny, but it was entirely
independent of me. Whether under a blessing or a curse, my birth took place and I
could not shape its pattern. It is eternally what it has been, for it belongs to the
past.
DEATH. My death lies inescapably before me, but it has not yet come. It will be and I
may therefore expect it and prepare for it. My liberty, which could not intervene in
 my birth, can now be exercised in this at least: that I may at this moment bring
about my own death.
14. Man can thus understand and choose among the possibilities in the light of this
extreme possibility. In authenticity, man guards himself from falling into the
ambiguous they and he is now free to be himself, the person he himself wants to
be. His possibilities are now open before him, determined by his end and
understood, thus, as finite.

The indefiniteness which goes with the certainty of death calls for authentic Dasein
to open itself to the constant threat arising from its being in the world. The state of
mind that is open to this constant threat is anxiety. What he is anxious about is no
other than his potentiality for being. Anxiety individualizes man, and in
individualizing him, makes him become certain of the totality of his potentiality for
being.

PART ONE

PHILOSOPHY Defined.

Etymology: philos means love

sophia means wisdom

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Thus, in the beginning it was loosely used by the
Greek thinkers and it conveyed many things. It was Pythagoras of Samos, who coined the
term Philosophy.

PHILOSOPHY OF MAN holistic philosophical approach to understand the human

person better by considering all the important and significant aspects related to him

PROTAGORAS Man is the measure of all things

- He emphasized the importance of human existence and its attendant age old existential
issue and philosophical issues as the foremost problem of philosophy

PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES

1. Historical Approach has four major periods namely:

a. Ancient Classical Philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of reality and the
problem of virtue in a political context; era of Greek philosophers who ventured and dealt
on cosmological problems in theirs philosophical problem

e.g. What constitutes the cosmos (world)?

b. Medieval Philosophy philosophy was used to rationalize Christian beliefs

- Known as the limelight of Christian philosophy which was geared in a theocentric (God as
the Center) perspective;
- Focused on asserting reality of God and the proofs or arguments that proves his existence;

St. Thomas Aquinas leading proponent; argued that everything that exists has its
cause and the first cause that could explain everything is God, the first cause.

c. Modern Philosophy characterized by separation of reason from faith which eventually led
to the development of Science; starting point where philosophers imbibed a systematic and
empirical perspective in their philosophical discourse

d. Contemporary Philosophy concerns the late 19th and 20thcentury; generally focused
with man and linguistic analysis

2. Through a study of individual Philosophers one has to study the ideas and
thoughts of these philosophers by going through their major works and writings.

3. Approach through philosophical problems philosophers devoted much on just one

or two questions while others tried to provide answers on almost all questions and thus
creating a whole system of philosophy. Each particular problem corresponds to a particular
branch of philosophy.

MAJOR BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY

1. Metaphysics known as the first philosophy

- Concerned with the ultimate nature of existence
- Attempts to characterize existence or reality as a whole
- Study of ultimate reality of all things
-
2. Epistemology study of knowledge, its acquisition and other known things

3. Ethics also known as moral philosophy

- Studies the ideal or purpose of life, the norms of right of actions and theories of good and
evil
-
4. Logic deals with principles of valid reasoning
- Philosophical inquiry directed to the discovery truth; the knowledge of distinction between
true or false
- An indispensable branch of philosophy, as important as metaphysics and epistemology

5. Aesthetics also known as Philosophy of Arts;

- Subject matter: BEAUTY

6. Psychology scientific study of the mind and its impact to human behavior contributes
to the great extent in understanding better the human nature
7. Philosophy of Religion takes up basic problems like the concept and existence of God;
conventional and rational religion; the nature of religious faith; doubt and belief and the
role of religion in the evolution of human civilization

8. Philosophy of Man attempts to understand, man as individual, as a knower, as a free

being, as a loving, as a being-towards-death, as a being-before-God, as a BEING-IN-THE-
WORLD.

PHILOSOPHY vs. SCIENCE

1. As to OBJECT:
- Sciences object of inquiry are tangible, material, observable and verifiable realities
WHEREAS philosophys formal object are all intangible realities such as God, right and
wrong, knowledge etc.
2. As to SCOPE:
- Because sciences objects are material things, its scope is limitedby its object of study;
WHEREAS, philosophy seeks to understand the ultimate reality, causes and principles of
being. Philosophy is boundless, without limit

3. As to METHOD:
- Science has its own methods of inquiry to find knowledge (Scientific method). It uses data
gathering, observation, hypothesis testing etc. WHEREAS philosophy is more bent on
just speculation

RELIGION Defined.

It is generally identified rituals, with practices of one kind or another, with taboos and
inhibitions and restraints of various kinds. Mostly, it implies belief in GOD.

PART TWO

MAN

- a rational animal
- an integral organism comprising with his being vegetative, sensory and rational life
- both material and spiritual being
- a corporeal reality endowed with life and soul
- its formal objects are: transcendental value, being, and the good
-creature made by GOD

-Man is capable, not only of feelings, but also of emotions because man is also a
possessor of the highest grade of soul called rationale.

MAN is a vegetative, sentient and rational organism.

a. As vegetative organism, man, like plants, is subject to nutrition, growth and reproduction.
b. As a sentient being, man, like animal, has sense- knowledge and appetency.
c. As a rational being, man, unlike any other creature on earth, has rationality which implies
cognitive and appetitive powers.
 PERSON

A person is an individual being. An individual being is a being which is one in itself and
distinct from all other beings. All real beings are individuals; general entities exist only in the
mind. A person is an individual possessing a spiritual nature. A spirit exist not only in itself (it is
a substance), and for itself (it is self-consciousness), but also by itself (it posits itself). Spirit is
essentially self-knowledge, self-volition, self-consciousness, self-position. It is EGO or I.

MAN AS ON OBJECT

- man being considered from the outside (objectum to throw in front)

- an individual belonging to a certain species
- man is an individual possessing a spiritual nature

MAN AS SUBJECT

- man is no longer a HE or IT but I

- man is no longer a thing or as an object but as SELF
- The fact that I know myself as a subject or the source of all my conscious activities explains why
although I know myself very intimately, this knowledge can never be exhausted.

PART THREE

EPISTEMOLOGY branch of Philosophy that focuses on the study of knowledge and seeks to
answer the questions and problems concerning human knowing.

To assert that we know something is at the same time to claim that such idea is true.

KNOWLEDGE a JUSTIFIED TRUE BELIEF

A claim to knowledge is successful if:

1. If it is believed by someone;
2. That person can produce concrete evidence to validate his belief; and
3. This justification supports a claim that actually corresponds with facts

THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE

I. EMPIRICISM

- True knowledge comes from experience

- Posterioi or post-experiential
- This concept has its objective reference from which knowledge is acquired as we see, hear, taste,
smell and touch

JOHN LOCKE asserts that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa(empty slate or blank paper)
that is devoid of anything on it
II. RATIONALISM

- True knowledge is acquired through reason and not experience

- A priori or pre-experience or innate
- Knowledge ten is INTELLECTUAL rather than SENSORY
- All objects in nature and experiences are representation of the mind

PLATO at the moment of birth, the mind is already furnished with a range of ideas and
concepts that accordingly owe nothing to experience. INBORN KNOWLEDGE, however
is initially dormant, but with discussions, intellectual dispute and critical thinking will unfold
the innate ideas that a person has.

III. SKEPTICISM

- Upholds that knowledge is limited and that we cannot be completely certain of what we know
- Questions the limitations of the mind to process things we perceived
- Senses can be deceived therefore UNRELIABLE
- Does not preclude a person from seeking for knowledge but rather motivates him to further seek
for the certainty of the knowledge acquired, be it from mind or the senses
- DESCARTES and HUME are some of philosophers who adhere to this kind of thought

ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE

1. Dialectical Method also known as SOCRATIC METHOD; two interlocutors took

turns in questioning and answering; truth is arrived by means of asking and responding,
gradually eliminating the DOUBTFUL and QUESTIONANBLE

2. SYLLOGISTIC OR LOGICAL METHOD attributed to Aristotle, the founder of LOGIC; by

a combination of agreement and disagreement between three terms, a conclusion is reached;
has three parts namely: major premise, minor premise and conclusion

3. Thomistic Method - used by St. Thomas Aquinas; it neatly presents the problem to be solved
in the form of the question, then proceeds to put its objections, seemingly support the positive
or negative answer

4. Methodic Doubt emphasizes the necessity of trying to isolate the simple, and then, but only
then, trying to build the complex on its basis.

5. Reconstruction Method Go to the facts themselves for everything Francis Bacon

The Four IDOLS

1. Idols of the tribe fallacies or errors natural to humanity in general

2. Idols of the Cave we tend to believe what we want to believe, but such path does not lead to
knowledge

3. Idols of the Marketplace errors that emerge from the words we use everyday in business,
from association of men with one another
4. Idols of the Theatre migrated into mens mind from the various dogmas of philosophers
and wrong laws of demonstrations

e.g. sophistry, pseudoscience, superstition

VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE

1. Correspondence Theory

- Holds that a true or valid knowledge is what conforms or corresponds to facts or agrees with
objective reality
- Recognizes the interplay between the idea or belief we claim to know and the facts themselves
- The facts are neither TRUE nor FALSE but it is the knowledge or claim asserted about them
2. Coherence Theory

- Asserts the validity of knowledge if there is CONSISTENCY

- Knowledge that we claim is counted to be true when it finds harmony with other claims or idea

3. Pragmatic Theory

- True and valid knowledge is one which is practical and useful

- The relativity of knowledge for what works in one instance may not be to all

Intro: The will, in philosophy and psychology, is a term used to describe the faculty of
mind that is alleged to stimulate motivation of purposeful activity. The concept has been
variously interpreted by philosophers, some accepting the will as personal faculty or
function; and other seeing it as an externalized result of the interaction of conflicting
elements. Still others describe the will as the manifestation of personality. The reality of
individual will is denied altogether by the doctrine of determinism. Modern psychology
considers the concept of the will as unscientific and has looked to other factors such as
unconscious motivation or psychological influence to explain human actions.

In the whole history of philosophy, a great deal of debate has been done on whether
or not our will is free. We will consider two prepositions: FREEDOM OF THE WILL vis--
vis DETERMINISM.

FREEDOM OF WILL

Freedom, in general, means the absent of restraint. There are different kinds of
restraint and freedom. (1) Physical Freedom absence of any physical restraint; (2)
Moral Freedom absence of moral restraint, of an obligation, of a law; (3)
Psychological Freedom absence of psychological restraint (consist in drives which
force a subject to perform as such)

ARGUMENTS
1. Argument from common consent majority of men believe that their will is free. This
conviction is of the utmost practical importance for the human life. Ergo, the majority of
mankind cannot be wrong in this belief.

2. Psychological argument men are directly and indirectly aware of their freedom in the
very act of making a decision; they are indirectly aware of it because of many instances of
the behavior which can only be explained by admitting the freedom of the will.

a. Direct awareness of the freedom of our decision: In this argument we claim that at the very
moment in which we are exercising our freedom we are aware of it. We do not claim, on the
other hand, that we are directly aware of being able to choose freely before the choice is
made or after it has been made.

b. Indirect awareness of the freedom of will: Many facts in our daily lives can be explained
only if we are free. We deliberately, before taking a decision, weigh the pros and cons, and
we tend to regret some of our past decisions. These on imply that we should have acted
differently. We tend to admire, praise and reward virtuous action and manifest through our
attitude the implicit belief that the person who performed them was not forced to do so.

3. Ethical Argument if there is no freedom, there is no moral responsibility, no virtue, no

merit, no moral obligation, no duty, and no morality. The necessary connection between
freedom and the spiritual realities is quite obvious and is demonstrated in Ethics.

4. Philosophical Argument It presupposes the following philosophical statements:

a. Every kind of knowledge evokes a corresponding kind of striving. This follows from the fact
that the knowledge and striving are two fundamental functions or aspects of human being.

b. Immaterial striving is free at least in this sense that it is not determined from outside.
Determinism derives from matter.

Therefore, there is in man an immaterial kind of knowledge. Hence, there must also
be in him an immaterial kind of striving. And since immaterial striving is free, there is man
a free kind of activity, which is called the will.

DETERMINISM

Determinism is the philosophical concept that every event, including human

cognition and behavior, decision and action, is actually determined by an unbroken chain of
prior occurrences or by number of forces which compel us to act as we do.

For an instance, if X occurs then Y occurs. If a patient is sick, there must be a

reason for such condition which certainly explains everything.

Determinism is the contention that all physical (and mental) events and
experiences of man in the universe can be incorporated under such law.
 Determinism, as a philosophical doctrine, is absolutely contradictory to the belief
that there is such a thing as freedom of will.

In other words:

Determinism is true: all events are caused. Therefore, all human desires and
choice are caused. For an action to be free it would have to be the result of a choice, desire
or act of will which had no caused. That is, free will means that the will or choosing
mechanism initiates the action. Therefore, there can be no free choices or free will.

ARGUMENTS

1. Argument from Biology

Biological determinism maintains that physiological factors exert a compelling influence to

mans life. We tend to do what we do because of the kind of body we have inherited from our
parents, because we are born that way.

2. Law of Causation

Mans decisions or actions then do have their causal explanation but such cause is physical
or material aspect and not of physical or immaterial, the free will, which the concept of
freedom asserts.

3. Argument from Sciences Philosophy of Nature

The universe, whole and in part, is governed by the action of mechanical law. The reign of
law is universal. Man is a very small creature upon a small earth, which is itself a
comparatively small planet in one of the smaller solar system and so on A single free-will
act would introduce caprice, whim, chance, into a universe whose actions are so
mechanically determined that an omniscient observer of the present could predict infallibly
all futurity.

4. Argument from Ethics

A mans character determines his acts, he is responsible, for the act is his own; he
committed it because, being the man he could not have done otherwise. If his acts were an
effect of free will, no one could count upon him, he would be an irresponsible agent.

5. Argument from Theology

God is omniscient, He, therefore knows what a man is going to do, there is, therefore,
nothing for a man to do except what God knows what man is going to do, there is
consequently but one reality, not two possibilities awaiting in the future; therefore, a man is
not free to do otherwise that what he must do when time comes.

6. Argument from psycho-social

Psycho-social determinists emphasize a combination of psychological and social factors as
explaining human conduct.

Psychology: the drives and tendencies which impel the individual;

Social: the continual pressure of the environment words, customs, fashions, and
the like.

Man as part of social group is not freely deciding but merely following.