philo reflection

share ko lang. baka magamit na resource ng mga philo students. semi-fiction yung experience part. this paper got an A from Mr. Hermida.

Reflection on Aquinas

A human action is characterized by an action that is chosen by the will that is guided by the reason. What separates man from an animal is our capacity to be rational beings. While animals act based on their instincts, we, human beings, should act based on our free will and sound reasoning.

On this note, St. Thomas Aquinas states that the ingredients of man’s moral experiences are provided by its human nature. The fact that human beings have bodies makes them capable of certain acts. His senses become the vehicle for his appetite and passion. However, while these appetites and passion have a direct control over the lives of the animals, human beings have the capacity to control these appetites and passion. Aquinas emphasizes that in man, the will, in collaboration with the power of reason, consummates what is called the human act. And this will is the agency with which inclines man towards the achievement of what is good.

I would like to share an experience that demonstrates St. Thomas Aquinas’ point.

Last week can be considered as one of my hell weeks in Ateneo. To be exact, it may be considered as the “hellest” week, if ever there is a term such as that. Three papers, two long exams, and a thesis report are due that week, not to mention the responsibilities I had to assume as an organization leader. My groupmates in one subject, which happen to be my closest buddies, decided to meet Monday morning, eight o’clock to be exact, for we all don’t have classes until three thirty in the afternoon.at 8:00, all of us were already in the meeting place, except for two people. We waited until 9:00, but still, they weren’t there. They arrived at 10:30.

Of course one would expect us to be really pissed off because of their tardiness. I mean we could have done a lot of things in those two and a half hours that we wasted waiting for them. But when they arrived, what irritated me the most is when they told us that they were late because they played DoTA, an online game and enjoyed it and did not notice of the time. This is the third time that they were late in an appointment just because they were playing DoTA. They even added, “Sorry ha, tao lang kami. Nagkakamali din kami.” And because of my anger, I replied madly, “Ganun ba? Dapat pala nagkamali na lang din kami. Tao rin kasi kami. Pero pinili namin na hindi magkamali kasi nagpapakatao kami. Nag-iisip kami.”

I have nothing against DoTA. I mean playing DoTA in itself doesn’t constitute a bad act. However, the context must also be taken into consideration. Playing DoTA and enjoying every bit of it while making your groupmates wait, wasting their precious and priceless time, and forgetting about an undertaking you have committed into makes it a bad option.

What made me, and perhaps other people, even agrier was that they were trying to rationalize by saying that they are human and they make mistakes. I admit that being human and having a human body that experiences the world in its entirety makes us capable of making mistakes. But being human is not an excuse for an action that is not human in the first place. By an action that is human, I mean that the action must be a choice that is made and that choice must be guided by reason. And in their case, reason, clearly was nowhere to be found. I, myself, love playing computer games but because my reason told me that I have an appointment to make, I chose the other option of not playing and meeting my groupmates. They, on the other hand, controlled by their appetite and passion, continued playing. And that is not a human action because humans are capable of controlling these urges because of reason, a characteristic that is bestowed only upon us.

It is so easy to become human. However, acting like one seems so difficult for a lot of people. I would like to translate it into Filipino for it is more powerful a language. “Madaling maging tao. Mahirap magpakatao.”

Sensuality, desires, and passions are part of us as human beings. They, in themselves, are not bad. As embodied spirits, we also have the need to nurture them for having contact with the world entails being in touch with these things. We are not angels who do not have bodies and no experience of the bodily life. For if we were, then, we would not have the need for sensuality and appetite. However, these are not all that we are. Certainly, we are more that sensual creatures for if we were just sensual creatures, then we would have no difference with the animals. This is because animals cannot control their urges and desires, but rather, they are controlled by their urges and desires. And if a man begins to act based on sensuality alone, then he has no right to call it a human action. And perhaps he should think again if he is indeed a human because human beings were granted the special power of controlling their sensuality and appetite with the aid of reason.

Making mistakes is a human capacity. However, preventing oneself from making mistakes is yet another human capability. Human beings are gifted just by the mere fact of being humans. However, it still is up to us whether we use all of these potentials or not. Trying to reach the fullest potential of becoming human by doing what is human is a very difficult thing to do. However, it is not impossible. Trying in itself already makes us human. What more if everything that we do, would be human—that is making choices by the aid of the will that is guided by the reason?

The road to becoming fully a human is indeed rocky and difficult to traverse. But however it maybe difficult, we, as human beings would and should certainly want to achieve our full humanity. And I think that we can start our long and difficult journey by making the right decisions today. Whenever we are faced with a decision that we should make, we should try to weigh things out the best way possible. We should try to balance our sensuality and appetite with our will and reason for us to become a real human for we are not angels who do not have sensuality and appetite nor animals who do not have will and reason.

I am a man. And I am capable of using my will and reason without sacrificing my sensuality and pleasure. I am a man. And I am capable of satisfying my sensuality and appetites with the use of my will and reason. I am a man and I can act like a man. And I can do this by not acting just based on instinct. Using my will and reason for every decision that I will make would be good. And enhancing my knowledge will be of greater use for me to make more human acts. I would like to end this by saying that I will try to do things that are good by trying to weigh every option with the use of my knowledge. But however vast my knowledge is, I am still capable of making mistakes. So I should not only rely on my will and knowledge but rely on my God and always ask for his guidance so that I will know what the good to be done is and the evil to be avoided. For everything has its limitation, including our knowledge. But not my God.