I have always wondered about the phrase “No man is an island.”

            Since I was a child, I have had the image of a man stranded alone on an island. It is not something difficult to imagine, and yet the phrase implies that man cannot exist this way. The course Philosophy of the Human Person has led me to then ask: what is man, and what does it mean for him to exist?

In Descartes’ Meditations, he comes to the conclusion that the human being is “precisely nothing but a thinking thing… a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.”[i] Man then, can say that he exists because he consists of a self, an ego, a Cogito. In the phrase “I exist”, “exist” can be understood upon examining the “I”: it is through the examination of this self that one can understand existence.

            With regard to this separation, Marcel begs to differ. On the contrary, he emphasizes that man’s existence consists of an “indissoluble unity, [where] the ‘I’ cannot be considered apart from the ‘exist’”[ii] The self that Descartes refers to needs a body to manifest itself, thus man is not just a thinking being but a manifest being. In short, man’s existence is an embodied one; man is an embodied spirit.

Arendt supports this idea that man’s existence is a manifest one when she describes three different forms of human acts: labor, work, and action. Through these three acts, three different aspects of man as a being are also highlighted. As labor is defined as “an activity which corresponds to the biological processes of the body”[iii], the act of laboring emphasizes that man is a being that responds to nature just as the animals do. Work, on the other hand, is an activity where “[the] sum total constitutes human artifice”[iv], and this highlights man as a creative being, where he has the power to use nature in order to create a material world for himself. Lastly, action is an act where we are able to insert ourselves into the human world through action and speech[v]. Man, then, is a social being. With this definition, we have a new dimension to man’s existence: a human world where man must insert himself. Arendt puts action as the highest human act, thus implying that this world is an integral part of man’s existence. If this is so, we must then question: what comprises this world, and how is man related to it?

            Arendt uses an important word: “insert”. This implies that the world had already existed before man himself did. And this is not just in the theological sense of creation, where God created the world before He created man, but also in the sense that a world of culture and traditions precede one’s birth. When we are born, we are immediately born into a society and its culture. Thus, it makes a difference when we are born in the Philippines or in Timbuktu because the social realities in these places are different from one another. We have no choice as to where we are born though –and neither do we have a choice whether to exist or not—and as Heidegger puts it, we are “thrown into the world”[vi], a fact which prompts Arendt to say that we must try and insert ourselves into this world.

            Through this, we can then say that there is already a past to which we belong, whether we choose to belong to it or not. Arendt puts it succinctly: “Wherever men live together, there exists a web of human relationships which is, as it were, woven by deeds and words of innumerable persons, by the living as well as by the dead.”[vii] As we are thrown into this already existing world, Dondeyne says, “[We] have been admitted to a tradition which [we ourselves] take over”[viii].

The words “take over” signify action, and this then says that man does not merely absorb all the lessons of the past, but must do something with these traditions he inherited. All this action must take place in the present moment, and we have the choice of what to do now. However, we do not have the power to control our action’s repercussions. The movie “Pay It Forward” best illustrates this: the idea is “one person helps three people in big ways which they can’t help themselves, on the condition that they do the same to three other people”[ix]. Hence, the action that person A does will definitely affect person Z, in that the good deed done to person Z will never have happened if person A didn’t start the chain of events. But person A will have no way of knowing at the present moment how his action will affect person Z in the future. This illustrates Arendt’s idea that “every deed and every new beginning falls into an already existing web, where it nevertheless somehow starts a new process that will affect many others even beyond those with whom the agent comes into direct contact.”[x] In short, life is so unpredictable that, in spite of being able to control our present, we can never really control our future.

We have thus established that man is thrown into an already existing world of past traditions and beliefs that he can use in his present to affect his future. Man then lives in time, and is the link between past and future. After all, if man did not exist in the present time, there would be nothing to insert into the past and no future to look forward to. Thus, “the experience of presence takes precedence over the past and the future, because it encompasses, as it were, the other two.”[xi] In short, living in the present moment is the manifestation of one’s existence, which already has the past and the future as inherent.[xii]

To recapitulate, man consists of a self which is manifested through the body, and he is thrown into a world of human relationships in which he must insert himself. He can do this by living in the present moment, serving as a link between the past and the future. Man then, in short, is not just a being. He is a being-in-the-world-with-others[xiii]. Thus, man can exist alone on an island, but his existence presupposes that other have existed before him.

This is something that we can conclude just by looking around us. We see that we belong in a world, and that others exist with us. We know that there is something inside of us–such as thoughts and emotions—that we can express through our bodies. Why do we need to call these things into question?

Because all the superficial things in our world point to something deeper, to a certain superabundance in reality.[xiv] There are many things in this world that we take for granted, and one of these things is our existence. We go through each day without really thinking that we are existing, that we are living. Husserl points out, “By questioning what we had previously taken for granted, or by wondering at what seems most familiar, [we are able to] look at the world with ‘new eyes’.”[xv] Through this, we are able to examine our strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately, our identity. I can say that through this examination, “I am [now] able to communicate at a broader level with myself… and I am [now] able to enter into far more intimate communication with [others].”[xvi]

We are then presented with a mutual relationship between reflection and life: “the more richly it is experience, the more, also, it is reflection.”[xvii] On the one hand, the more we reflect, the more open we are to the richness of life. On the other, the more we experience the richness of life, the more we are able to reflect on the essence of all objects in existence. Thus, the more we know ourselves, the more we contemplate and understand the complexity of our being. And the more we understand this complexity, the more we are able to know ourselves as beings that exist. Hence, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of others, as we are stripped down to our very essence: our existence.

We can then say that reflection allows us to live beyond mere existence, leading us to a richer life. But reflection does not allow us to understand this richness of life. It is ironic that what reflection actually does is it makes us more aware that these things are too complex to understand, that reality is too superabundant to grasp. Ferriols says, “the stance of a human being facing reality has always to be a tension between a sense of knowledge and sense of ignorance.”[xviii] Hence, the more we think we have been illuminated by truth, the closer we actually are to darkness. An understanding of something is never final: it will always lead to new questions that will put us in a position of ignorance.

This is the way life works then: we are in a constant “state of tension between a sense of knowledge and light and a sense of ignorance and darkness.”[xix] Life is like a journey that moves in this direction, in a direction towards truth. The more we embark on this journey, “we get more and more chances of being visited by a sort of spiritual illumination; for… Truth can be considered only in this way, as a spirit, as a light.”[xx] Just like light, which shines on everyone, truth is also revealed to everyone existing in this world. The problem is, not everyone is aware of it, just as not everyone acknowledges the light shining on him. Through reflection, then, we can say that we are illuminated to see the truths revealed in the world. Not only that, but we have the capability to be a source of illumination for others, especially since we belong in this intricate web of relationships. In recognizing –though not fully understanding—the richness of life, we are able to lead others into seeing this same richness. Together, we are able to live life as a journey towards truth.

And what is this truth that we are seeking to understand? Heidegger is able to capsulate it in just one phrase: “All being is in Being”.[xxi] The idea that everything exists all at once in unity, all in the foreground, all in its fullest potential, is something that is not easy to understand. This makes it the ultimate experience, which is so complex that we can only strive towards it.

And this is precisely what philosophy is: a striving towards this reality. The idea that “being is in Being” is embedded in the very etymology of the word: this idea is the translation of the Greek word “sophon”, while “philo” comes from the word “philein”, which means to love.[xxii] Hence, “to love the sophon” becomes for us a striving towards understanding that being is in Being. We strive to understand this complex reality by beginning with something simpler: understanding what it means for us to be, to exist as individuals in this grand scheme of things. The more we journey towards an understanding of our existence, the more we understand what it means to be a “being-in-the-world-with-others”: we understand what it means to be an existing being, to belong in the world, and to co-exist with others.

            The course had begun with the question of “What is Philosophy”, and Marcel answered this by saying “Philosophy [is] an aid to discovery.”[xxiii] I agree with him, but I would rather say that philosophy is an aid to rediscovery, where we are able to see our world and ourselves in a different light. To discover something means we have never previously known this thing. But as we exist in this world, we have always already known all these things around us; we just took them for granted. And the greatest thing we took for granted was our existence. In rediscovering what it means to exist, we realize just how blessed we are to be living such a rich life. Through the course Philosophy of the Human Person, not only do we understand what it means to be or to exist, we become aware of the responsibilities and opportunities that come with living out this existence.

            Truly, no man is an island. Man’s existence is much more complex than just that, but there is no doubt that as we are born into this world, we have the chance to discover how reality is so rich that we can only strive to understand and grasp this richness. We have the chance to make the most of our existence by living our lives in the present moment, cultivating our relationships, and looking at everything with new eyes so that we may never tire of living.

            Armed with that chance, I wouldn’t want to confine myself to just an island. That would be mere existence.

            I want to live.