Human Person and Development in Theistic and Atheistic Existentialist Thoughts

Abstract

The existentialist philosophy makes the human society to understand the choices and opportunities that are available for every human person to better his or her life and living, or the human person has the rationality and intelligibility to create opportunities through actions taken and choices made in order to better his or her life and living. With existentialism and its atheistic and theistic versions of development, we understand that the human person acts because he or she exhibits the two elements - existence and morality. The human person is the only acting being in the world. The actions of the human person make him or her morally good or morally bad. Our chosen actions do not merely bring about effects external to us; and these actions and choices also form our dispositions and characters towards our development and the society we live in. We are what we act. With actions and choices, morality of development becomes indispensable and inevitable to shape our world for the better. The paper observed the philosophical trends of unnecessary demarcated misconceptions of the human person by both theistic and atheistic existentialists, and then, posited that there is no pragmatic difference of their thoughts, as the human person is meant to create opportunities or possibilities for his or herself. This paper adopted the phenomenological method of analysis to show the pragmatic capacities of the human person as an active agent of development. Therefore, the paper concludes that, through the developmental consciousness for the realization of authentic and responsible living and development, the human society must sustain the belief that the human person has the freedom or the ability to create and maximize opportunities to change his or her world for the better, and which is dependably on responsible exercising one's actions and choices.