28 June 2012
Discussed Text: Martin Heidegger, "What Is Philosophy?"
Most of the time, Heidegger worked in solitude in the Black Forest, and his dwelling in the forest influenced much of his writing, one of those being the use of a path, way, or road as a metaphor for doing philosophy. In the text, he asks us to tarry, to dwell in order to experience what it means to do philosophy, and hence one should pause, stop, and take time. This is one important point that we can reflect upon in the course of doing philosophy, as it is also a reminder of what we are supposed to do to arrive at an insight which will lead us to a greater appreciation of our own being (vb) as one with Being.
Another point we can reflect on is Heidegger's assertion that experience is always an experience of the whole, or an experience that comes with a sense of the whole. This is what David Foster Wallace means when he says about participating in a greater whole, or what Simon Critchley means when he talks about those who do philosophy as "being elsewhere."
With those two points, let us now meditate (or dwell on) the meaning of Being. To be clear, the word "being" here is not used as a noun (e.g. the table, the book, we human beings, or anything that exists), but as a verb, referring to the dynamic act of existence. The two, however are related, in such a way that all of these individual beings express the theme of Being in unique ways: being a table, being a book, being human.
But it is only in language where one can express Being. Language has the power of expression, that which enables us to communicate and render intelligible our experience, and this can either be immediately expressed (like the way we Filipinos refer to things through onomatopoeic words such as batingaw for the church bell, kuliling for the little bell, or paruparo for butterflies) or understood as metaphors (like the poems of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who expressed his insight on Being not through long philosophical essays but through poems). Heidegger's thought on philosophia points out that words are not merely signs or labels (like the ones we used to indicate where the washroom or parking lot is). Instead, they do present reality in a particular way, and philosophia certainly presents what it means to do philosophy for him.
One can see how Hopkins arrived at his insight on being, through language, in saying that the just man justices, in the same way that we can say the student studies, the teacher teaches, the painter paints, the dancer dances, which are all possible facets of being human. All of these suggest that only in acting out what one is that one becomes such. All of these are ways of expressing Being (which, on the other hand, for Hopkins, as a Jesuit, is acting out Christ in every moment).
The dynamic act of Being is that which binds everything together, with the diversity of acts as the ground for unity. Only when one is fully aware of the fact that we are bound together in the world with everything as beings in Being, then one gains a certain wisdom, an awakening to the fact that Hen Panta, all is one. And insofar as the human being is concerned, it is an awakening to everything that the human being can be, leading one to echo the classical and humanist thinkers, who in their own ways have said: "Nothing human is foreign to me."
Going back to Heidegger and bringing all of these points together, we go back to the path that leads us into philosophy, and that is the path to language, the path that calls us to name the experience, for naming things is to call out and recognize Being (such as a little child calling his playmate taba, in which the being of a person as fat stands out among other characteristics). The name is very important, and, like Adam who took the responsibility to name and consequently recognize other creatures, we are called to recognize other beings and their participation in Being by naming them, and to name is to recognize their existence, and more importantly to care for them. Indeed, language has this certain power to communicate being, given that what has been said manifests eloquentia that comes with much sapientia, or to simply put it, that one ought to speak well as one thinks well.
Meditating on Being and our way of expressing Being arises as a response to the question of Being, a question that is raised not only because we don't know, but more importantly, because the original view of things have been broken. In the same way disappointments in life force us to ask the meaning of things, the experience of not being able to know something brings us to these very essential questions that help us arrive at an insight. The philosopher Albert Camus brought up the question of the meaning of life, and he arrived at an insight: human beings need not exist, for there is no essential reason that they should, but what is important is that the human being is, and as he/she exists, the question "What should I be?" is constantly raised.
Language, as Heidegger's path, is the key to understanding as that which presents experience, and words draw us to a distinct domain that we might have not gone to before. For Heidegger, the Greek language alone is logos, able to present reality, as that which manifests immediately the experience and meaning that such word would want to refer to.
It should be noted as well that there are moments when things speak on behalf of their own Being, like the way the Marikina valley basking in sunlight telling me (Dr. Garcia) to "become a teacher." Rainier Rilke's poem on Apollo might not immediately show how these things speak their own being, but in the end, he made the message clear: "You must change your life." Perhaps we might also experience these as we walk through Katipunan Avenue, where the sight of the poor children begging in the streets, the massive traffic, or the dilapidated structures, draws us,moves us to tell ourselves that someday, somewhere, we can change the world and make it a better place. This is a response of being moved by Being, and therefore we should be excited with Being, to allow ourselves to be moved by Being by letting Being show itself, reveal itself to us.
And of course, this excitement over Being is a form of second naivete, knowing that one knows and yet recognizing that there is still something mysterious, that there is more that one should know. This recognition allows one to open oneself to Being and anticipate for it, unlike the "sophisticated" people who know nothing else than say "been there, done that" as if nothing new will reveal itself in every event.
Philein, as Heidegger has said, is a kind of harmony, availability, attunement (which means being able to put oneself in an instrument and go with the music). This reveals us what it means to love, to be sensitive to the vibration of the Other. To love what? The Sophon, the Hen Panta, the all expressing the theme of Being in their own singular way, which gathers them together in Being. If you have this sense that a stone, a tree, an elephant, and your fellow human being is a part of you and you are part of this gathering together in Being, then you have this sense, and in one way or another, you are on your way to becoming wise yourself.
This is the ground of our consciousness and care for something that is outside us: the environment, our heritage, our culture, and most importantly, our fellow human being, the other that is in a way that is similar to us and yet different and unique. We are called to such consciousness, but we can only realize and respond through our awareness that we are part of something greater, that which lies beyond and beneath ourselves.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Trudging the Path
26 June 2012
Discussed Text: Martin Heidegger, "What Is Philosophy?"
In reading this text by Martin Heidegger (which is actually a lecture he presented in Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy in 1955), two important remarks have to be made in order for us to fully understand what Heidegger really wants to point out.
The first is that there is something lost in the English translation of the title ("What is Philosophy?"). The original title of the lecture in German is "Was ist das -- die Philosophie?" Obviously, what is lost in the English translation is the dash, which indicates a pause. This is a pause that indicates one taking time, as well as looking and listening. It is a pause of wonder, a pause to look at the experience of doing philosophy and asking the question itself. It somehow points to the fact that it would be more fitting to experience doing philosophy first rather than defining it.
It is interesting to note how we Filipinos use the word karanasan to point to experience. The Sanskrit word rasa can be derived from karanasan, which is equivalent to our very own lasa, meaning "to taste." To experience precisely is to taste, to get out of myself in order to take something in and let yourself be moved by it (Heidegger will later on talk about that which moves us). To experience, to taste is also to suffer in something, to take one's time doing or thinking about something. It is not merely fleeting from one thing to another, but to actually set one's own sights on something, for what presents itself, what happens before us, is something that won't happen again. Experience is sufferance.
The second is that Heidegger verbally stressed "ist" in "Was ist das," which indicates his emphasis on the dynamic act of Being (here, we talk about the verb). Heidegger is known as the philosopher who meditated, thought about Being, and as such, his question on Being is geared towards the dynamic act of each and every being (now, the noun), the becoming of each being. When we ask, for example, "What is a table?," we normally think of it as a question answered by "what" actually a table is; however, this question can also be a question of existence, precisely what does it mean to be such, i.e. "what does it mean for the table to be 'table-ing"'? Heidegger, as one who thinks of being, certainly asks this question in the second way, focusing on the dynamic act of being, in the same way that we ask how students exist as studying persons and teachers as teaching persons who, in their own ways, are becoming.
With these two remarks, we can then begin to look not at the answer of Heidegger, but the way he confronted and dealt with the question.
Heidegger recognizes that the question "what is philosophy?" can be answered in so many ways through so many methods. Given that wide range, Heidegger deems it necessary to limit his inquiry and define a direction which can lead us to an answer as to what philosophy is. The question has to be put in focus, and the answer should not be a "saturation bombing," but something that remains within the limits and directions set. After all, the word direction is very much related to sense, which brings us to the question of meaning: where are we going exactly with the things that we have said and are about to say?
The discussion therefore should be brought into a path (not the path, for this path is only one among others). The path (in Greek, hodos) that we are about to take not only points to the direction that we are going, but also somehow gives us a clue of what lies beyond (in Greek, meta hodos, from which the word method is derived). This path, then, with a given direction and goal, assures us that we are "fence ourselves," work within philosophy and philosophical thinking. Perhaps the image of philosophizing as a path and as a search for answers (as well as questions) can be seen in Heidegger, as he is known to philosophize while walking in the Black Forest in Freiburg, which involves following a trail, retracing his steps once he reaches a dead end, until he finds a clearing where light comes in. Perhaps this is the very method that he wants us to take, to at least trudge a path until we arrive at a clearing, where we gain insight about, in this case, philosophy and what it means to do philosophy.
Another thing to note is that Heidegger's inquiry on philosophy does not place us outside or around philosophy in order to define and answer it. Rather, the path that the question takes is into philosophy itself. It might appear that the question puts us outside of philosophy, but in act, it is asked in such a way that we are already inside, with the demand to dwell within it, to take our time, to pause, and to experience doing philosophy. In fact, in dealing with (or dwelling in) this question, Heidegger actually does philosophy already, which is, for him, the only way of arriving at the answer to his inquiry.
But does this path to discovering what philosophy is lead us to that which concerns us, affects us, and touches us, and therefore is a matter of affection, emotions, and sentiments? Heidegger agrees that it is that which concerns our very becoming as human persons, but he disagrees that it is not about sentiments, for too much sentimentality hinders us from thinking well. In fact, it is not about creating the divide between what can be counted as rational or irrational, of what is intellectual and sentimental, a matter of merely accepting one and rejecting the other. To ask about what is rational and what is irrational would lead us to a circular discussion and lead us nowhere. Instead, Heidegger wants to emphasize that philosophy concerns something that essentially moves us (be-ruhren, a metaphysical stirring) integrally, as whole human persons. It is neither witty nor "emo," but it is something that genuinely draws our very being to something else beyond us.
Given all of these, what, then, is the path that we are about to take? For Heidegger, it is the path of language, through which the experience of something is articulated, and certainly, the word philosophy is a word that points to an experience of it. Therefore, we have to go back to how philosophy has been spoken when it was conceived, specifically the Greek philosophia (in the original manuscript, he writes philosophia in its original Greek), and this is the path that we are traveling into. Through this, we will be able to uncover the words and determine what it originally means. It is important to go back to philosophia because its very foreign nature (as a set of Greek characters) disorients us and allows us to look at it like we have never known it before, to once again set out to explore what it actually means.
However, Heidegger goes back to language not to do a simple etymology of it in order to define what philosophy is. In fact, he does not define philosophy like a dictionary entry or a science. Rather, what he intends to do is to invite us to experience what it actually means to do philosophy by actually going back to the experience that brought forth such word which has changed and given various meanings across time. It is an inquiry of the nature of philosophy in order to remove the question and recover its fundamental relationship with human beings who are in the midst of doing philosophy or those who are about to do so. Because the Greek language is logos, through which the things we encounter and experience make sense and are spoken of (obviously, we see Heidegger's Eurocentrism here), he finds it worthwhile to trace the roots of philosophy in philosophia.
Philosophia brings us back to the word philosophos, a term which the thinker Heraclitus coined. Certainly, this Pre-Socratic thinker does not have philosophia in mind. For him, the Greek adjective philosophos (the man who is philosophos is called an aner philosophos) is far from being philosophical, but it brings us into an insight that could perhaps tell us something about philosophia.
Philosophos can be expanded to the phrase hos philein to sophon, which means "to love the sophon." Philein, in the Heraclitean sense, is homolegein, to speak in the way the Logos speaks, to have a correspondence (or, as the older generations would say, ka-vibes) with the Logos. On the other hand, Sophon refers to Hen Panta (from which the English word pantheon is derived), which means One is all, signifies everything united into one through the dynamic act of Being.
Thus, the aner philosophos, and eventually the philosopher (or the one who does philosophy) is one who finds himself/hersef to be aware of the one that is all, knowing that he is a part of all that is, and is in an affinity with everything, knowing that he/she is united with everything by virtue of the fact that, like them, he/she fundamentally is.
Hos philein to sophon.
Discussed Text: Martin Heidegger, "What Is Philosophy?"
In reading this text by Martin Heidegger (which is actually a lecture he presented in Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy in 1955), two important remarks have to be made in order for us to fully understand what Heidegger really wants to point out.
The first is that there is something lost in the English translation of the title ("What is Philosophy?"). The original title of the lecture in German is "Was ist das -- die Philosophie?" Obviously, what is lost in the English translation is the dash, which indicates a pause. This is a pause that indicates one taking time, as well as looking and listening. It is a pause of wonder, a pause to look at the experience of doing philosophy and asking the question itself. It somehow points to the fact that it would be more fitting to experience doing philosophy first rather than defining it.
It is interesting to note how we Filipinos use the word karanasan to point to experience. The Sanskrit word rasa can be derived from karanasan, which is equivalent to our very own lasa, meaning "to taste." To experience precisely is to taste, to get out of myself in order to take something in and let yourself be moved by it (Heidegger will later on talk about that which moves us). To experience, to taste is also to suffer in something, to take one's time doing or thinking about something. It is not merely fleeting from one thing to another, but to actually set one's own sights on something, for what presents itself, what happens before us, is something that won't happen again. Experience is sufferance.
The second is that Heidegger verbally stressed "ist" in "Was ist das," which indicates his emphasis on the dynamic act of Being (here, we talk about the verb). Heidegger is known as the philosopher who meditated, thought about Being, and as such, his question on Being is geared towards the dynamic act of each and every being (now, the noun), the becoming of each being. When we ask, for example, "What is a table?," we normally think of it as a question answered by "what" actually a table is; however, this question can also be a question of existence, precisely what does it mean to be such, i.e. "what does it mean for the table to be 'table-ing"'? Heidegger, as one who thinks of being, certainly asks this question in the second way, focusing on the dynamic act of being, in the same way that we ask how students exist as studying persons and teachers as teaching persons who, in their own ways, are becoming.
With these two remarks, we can then begin to look not at the answer of Heidegger, but the way he confronted and dealt with the question.
Heidegger recognizes that the question "what is philosophy?" can be answered in so many ways through so many methods. Given that wide range, Heidegger deems it necessary to limit his inquiry and define a direction which can lead us to an answer as to what philosophy is. The question has to be put in focus, and the answer should not be a "saturation bombing," but something that remains within the limits and directions set. After all, the word direction is very much related to sense, which brings us to the question of meaning: where are we going exactly with the things that we have said and are about to say?
The discussion therefore should be brought into a path (not the path, for this path is only one among others). The path (in Greek, hodos) that we are about to take not only points to the direction that we are going, but also somehow gives us a clue of what lies beyond (in Greek, meta hodos, from which the word method is derived). This path, then, with a given direction and goal, assures us that we are "fence ourselves," work within philosophy and philosophical thinking. Perhaps the image of philosophizing as a path and as a search for answers (as well as questions) can be seen in Heidegger, as he is known to philosophize while walking in the Black Forest in Freiburg, which involves following a trail, retracing his steps once he reaches a dead end, until he finds a clearing where light comes in. Perhaps this is the very method that he wants us to take, to at least trudge a path until we arrive at a clearing, where we gain insight about, in this case, philosophy and what it means to do philosophy.
Another thing to note is that Heidegger's inquiry on philosophy does not place us outside or around philosophy in order to define and answer it. Rather, the path that the question takes is into philosophy itself. It might appear that the question puts us outside of philosophy, but in act, it is asked in such a way that we are already inside, with the demand to dwell within it, to take our time, to pause, and to experience doing philosophy. In fact, in dealing with (or dwelling in) this question, Heidegger actually does philosophy already, which is, for him, the only way of arriving at the answer to his inquiry.
But does this path to discovering what philosophy is lead us to that which concerns us, affects us, and touches us, and therefore is a matter of affection, emotions, and sentiments? Heidegger agrees that it is that which concerns our very becoming as human persons, but he disagrees that it is not about sentiments, for too much sentimentality hinders us from thinking well. In fact, it is not about creating the divide between what can be counted as rational or irrational, of what is intellectual and sentimental, a matter of merely accepting one and rejecting the other. To ask about what is rational and what is irrational would lead us to a circular discussion and lead us nowhere. Instead, Heidegger wants to emphasize that philosophy concerns something that essentially moves us (be-ruhren, a metaphysical stirring) integrally, as whole human persons. It is neither witty nor "emo," but it is something that genuinely draws our very being to something else beyond us.
Given all of these, what, then, is the path that we are about to take? For Heidegger, it is the path of language, through which the experience of something is articulated, and certainly, the word philosophy is a word that points to an experience of it. Therefore, we have to go back to how philosophy has been spoken when it was conceived, specifically the Greek philosophia (in the original manuscript, he writes philosophia in its original Greek), and this is the path that we are traveling into. Through this, we will be able to uncover the words and determine what it originally means. It is important to go back to philosophia because its very foreign nature (as a set of Greek characters) disorients us and allows us to look at it like we have never known it before, to once again set out to explore what it actually means.
However, Heidegger goes back to language not to do a simple etymology of it in order to define what philosophy is. In fact, he does not define philosophy like a dictionary entry or a science. Rather, what he intends to do is to invite us to experience what it actually means to do philosophy by actually going back to the experience that brought forth such word which has changed and given various meanings across time. It is an inquiry of the nature of philosophy in order to remove the question and recover its fundamental relationship with human beings who are in the midst of doing philosophy or those who are about to do so. Because the Greek language is logos, through which the things we encounter and experience make sense and are spoken of (obviously, we see Heidegger's Eurocentrism here), he finds it worthwhile to trace the roots of philosophy in philosophia.
Philosophia brings us back to the word philosophos, a term which the thinker Heraclitus coined. Certainly, this Pre-Socratic thinker does not have philosophia in mind. For him, the Greek adjective philosophos (the man who is philosophos is called an aner philosophos) is far from being philosophical, but it brings us into an insight that could perhaps tell us something about philosophia.
Philosophos can be expanded to the phrase hos philein to sophon, which means "to love the sophon." Philein, in the Heraclitean sense, is homolegein, to speak in the way the Logos speaks, to have a correspondence (or, as the older generations would say, ka-vibes) with the Logos. On the other hand, Sophon refers to Hen Panta (from which the English word pantheon is derived), which means One is all, signifies everything united into one through the dynamic act of Being.
Thus, the aner philosophos, and eventually the philosopher (or the one who does philosophy) is one who finds himself/hersef to be aware of the one that is all, knowing that he is a part of all that is, and is in an affinity with everything, knowing that he/she is united with everything by virtue of the fact that, like them, he/she fundamentally is.
Hos philein to sophon.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Invitation To A Free Concert
From Dr. Garcia:
Greetings of friendship and peace! As an independent dance artist, I have been producing one-woman multi-media dance concerts, dedicated to the cause of promoting values formation and ethics through the arts. As in the past, the shows are FREE OF CHARGE as a service to the community.
This year, I will present “A Light-Bulb Moment,” a concert based on the lectures of Dadi Janki, touted by scientists as the “World’s Most Stable Mind.” It will talk about themes of forgiveness, letting go, self-respect. The event will be held on July 10 at Onstage, Greenbelt 1. As in my other concerts, I will be collaborating with director Bart Guingona, choreographer Douglas Nierras. Australian international guest speaker Charles Hogg will give a short inspirational talk on “The Power of the Light-Bulb Moment.”
Respectfully,
Marge Enriquez
Greetings of friendship and peace! As an independent dance artist, I have been producing one-woman multi-media dance concerts, dedicated to the cause of promoting values formation and ethics through the arts. As in the past, the shows are FREE OF CHARGE as a service to the community.
This year, I will present “A Light-Bulb Moment,” a concert based on the lectures of Dadi Janki, touted by scientists as the “World’s Most Stable Mind.” It will talk about themes of forgiveness, letting go, self-respect. The event will be held on July 10 at Onstage, Greenbelt 1. As in my other concerts, I will be collaborating with director Bart Guingona, choreographer Douglas Nierras. Australian international guest speaker Charles Hogg will give a short inspirational talk on “The Power of the Light-Bulb Moment.”
Respectfully,
Marge Enriquez
Thursday, June 21, 2012
The Thoughtful and The Thoughtless
21 June 2012
Discussed text: D.F. Wallace's Graduation Speech at Kenyon College
David Foster Wallace, in talking about the benefits of a liberal arts education, distinguished between two kinds of thinking. The first is the thinking that solely concerns the self: the I, me, and mine of everyday life, and the second is that which recognizes that all of us belong to one home. While the first is a sort of thoughtlessness, a kind of thinking that is selfish, the second is that which is thoughtful, mindful of the existence of the other and how it is related with the self.
It is on the second kind of thinking that reflection arises. To reflect is always to reflect on something outside, and while we are aware of it as a spectacle before ous, there is also a recognition of "I am here," of being part of that which we reflect upon. This tells us that to be thoughtful is to precisely get out of our minds.
The same goes with experience. Normally, we think of experience as "taking it in" (like the way we talk about experiencing food, experiencing a place, or experiencing some form of vice), but the deeper meaning of experience is to have gone out of yourself. It is going beyond our own thoughts and concerns and seeing, listening, and hearing the other. One cannot experience if we just think of our own selves, our own values, our own comfort zones. What is needed is for us to de-center, to travel outside ourselves, and pay attention to the fact that the world is not all about you.
This basic realization about experience breaks the notion that the philosopher is a person who is elsewhere and is not in the world. The person who does philosophy, who reflects on experience, is he who thinks of what goes beyond himself, who thinks of the whole humanity. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says that indeed, the mind hates fences, and always searches that lies outside it, which leads us to the conclusion that it is a certain passion in the life of the mind to get out of itself, a passion that should fuel us in our experiencing and reflecting.
That is why the philosopher necessarily takes time, having a certain urgency that, given that he will soon die, he strives to be truly alive by going out of himself, and to not take for granted that we are alive. D.F. Wallace tells us that we must live, in the same way that there is the imperative for us to seize the day: Carpe diem!
To be truly alive is to get out of ourselves and take time for things that we take for granted, the things that are obviously essential but, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, invisible to the eye. To waste time in important issues and things in our lives is to actually not waste time, time which the pettifogger would prefer to use for the "important" things.
The philosopher, therefore, is one who is rooted to the earth, aware of what he encounters in everyday life, thinks about it ("sieves it" in his intellect"), and says something about it. The one who is truly rooted in the earth is one who is not, in Wallace's words, "unconscious" of the life that they live; rather, they are the ones who are conscious of their own selves alongside others, conscious that we are conscious, and to be conscious is to rid ourselves of prejudices about ourselves in the world and to learn to look and look again in order to discover the world, ask questions, arrive at answers, and ask more questions.
In that respect, what separates the philosopher from the pettifogger in terms of the use of their freedom? While the pettifogger's life is pretty much programmed and dictated by his affirs, the philosopher, on the other hand is spontaneous, that is he is aware of the things that might surprise him, amaze him, and eventually allow him to engage in philosophical thinking towards action. The philosopher also needs some order in his life, but he is no "control freak." He is that which recognizes the true meaning of ex-perience ("going out of ourselves") as a surprise (from the French sur prise, "that which cannot be controlled"). This is precisely what makes us human: to be surprised with what is the unexpected, that which draws us to philosophical thinking and further action.
Given these, how then do we characterize the philosopher as a man of thought and action? We have already shown that he should be reflective as well as truly free, and the last and most important thing that he must be is that he recognizes that he is part of the whole, a member in the community of human beings who are equal and must enjoy the same fundamental rights and privileges. Doing philosophy is necessary because it is that which helps us realize that we are persons for others, knowing that life, thought, and action is not about the self, but it is about being social, acknowledging that he is fundamentally bound to others, responsible for them in every way possible. Yet it is also to be noted that philosophy is not a discipline that is based on authority. The philosopher does not certainly take for granted authority, inherited privilege, or established knowledge and procedures, for he/she thinks on his/her own, using his/her mind in order to think and communicate, not blindly following anyone who says "this is so and so."
All of these have been articulated by Wallace in his speech, and he in fact speaks about being reflective, aware, free, and critical as that which makes us human. But most of all, the true meaning of being human is to be truly compassionate, which involves attention, awareness effort, and true care about other people and being able to sacrifice for them for their own and not the self's sake, but for humanity. To be a philosopher, as a person of culture, does not mean becoming too engaged with books, art, films, and poetry. Rather, the real cultured person is able to be moved by the other towards compassion and love, to have a sense of responsibility and concern for the other, in contrast to the old, "sophisticated" person who has grown tired of life and sees nothing new in it.. That is why the philosopher recognizes that the gift of his very self is that which has to be given out precisely as it is, as a gift for the well-being of others. It is to recognize by something that we experience as the same as ourselves, but radically different from our very own selves. And the only thing that is necessary for realizing this gift is to recognize an determine the meaning of things that he puts within and outside it.
Greek mythology speaks of the carpenter Procrustes, who cut off the legs of men and women who are too tall to fit in the beds that he made. This goes the same for the pettifoggers and those who are not aware of their own selves. Instead of actually adjusting in order to fully experience things, they merely limit themselves and refuse to move on with life with new ways of looking at it. Are we those who repair our beds or cut out the legs of those who lie in it? Remember that as persons doing philosophy, the challenge is for us to fully experience things and reflect seriously upon them, in order for us to face the most important questions (and perhaps the most important answers) in our lives, and it is necessary for us to question, to think, and to act continuously in our pursuit of meaning and fulfillment as human persons.
And for this to happen, it is necessary that we remain to be filled with wonder and amazement with the things before us, and most importantly, to the other, for the very measure with which we will be measured does not lie on the things that we have done for ourselves, but that which we have done out of compassion for the other.
So far, what have we done to the other?
Discussed text: D.F. Wallace's Graduation Speech at Kenyon College
David Foster Wallace, in talking about the benefits of a liberal arts education, distinguished between two kinds of thinking. The first is the thinking that solely concerns the self: the I, me, and mine of everyday life, and the second is that which recognizes that all of us belong to one home. While the first is a sort of thoughtlessness, a kind of thinking that is selfish, the second is that which is thoughtful, mindful of the existence of the other and how it is related with the self.
It is on the second kind of thinking that reflection arises. To reflect is always to reflect on something outside, and while we are aware of it as a spectacle before ous, there is also a recognition of "I am here," of being part of that which we reflect upon. This tells us that to be thoughtful is to precisely get out of our minds.
The same goes with experience. Normally, we think of experience as "taking it in" (like the way we talk about experiencing food, experiencing a place, or experiencing some form of vice), but the deeper meaning of experience is to have gone out of yourself. It is going beyond our own thoughts and concerns and seeing, listening, and hearing the other. One cannot experience if we just think of our own selves, our own values, our own comfort zones. What is needed is for us to de-center, to travel outside ourselves, and pay attention to the fact that the world is not all about you.
This basic realization about experience breaks the notion that the philosopher is a person who is elsewhere and is not in the world. The person who does philosophy, who reflects on experience, is he who thinks of what goes beyond himself, who thinks of the whole humanity. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says that indeed, the mind hates fences, and always searches that lies outside it, which leads us to the conclusion that it is a certain passion in the life of the mind to get out of itself, a passion that should fuel us in our experiencing and reflecting.
That is why the philosopher necessarily takes time, having a certain urgency that, given that he will soon die, he strives to be truly alive by going out of himself, and to not take for granted that we are alive. D.F. Wallace tells us that we must live, in the same way that there is the imperative for us to seize the day: Carpe diem!
To be truly alive is to get out of ourselves and take time for things that we take for granted, the things that are obviously essential but, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, invisible to the eye. To waste time in important issues and things in our lives is to actually not waste time, time which the pettifogger would prefer to use for the "important" things.
The philosopher, therefore, is one who is rooted to the earth, aware of what he encounters in everyday life, thinks about it ("sieves it" in his intellect"), and says something about it. The one who is truly rooted in the earth is one who is not, in Wallace's words, "unconscious" of the life that they live; rather, they are the ones who are conscious of their own selves alongside others, conscious that we are conscious, and to be conscious is to rid ourselves of prejudices about ourselves in the world and to learn to look and look again in order to discover the world, ask questions, arrive at answers, and ask more questions.
In that respect, what separates the philosopher from the pettifogger in terms of the use of their freedom? While the pettifogger's life is pretty much programmed and dictated by his affirs, the philosopher, on the other hand is spontaneous, that is he is aware of the things that might surprise him, amaze him, and eventually allow him to engage in philosophical thinking towards action. The philosopher also needs some order in his life, but he is no "control freak." He is that which recognizes the true meaning of ex-perience ("going out of ourselves") as a surprise (from the French sur prise, "that which cannot be controlled"). This is precisely what makes us human: to be surprised with what is the unexpected, that which draws us to philosophical thinking and further action.
Given these, how then do we characterize the philosopher as a man of thought and action? We have already shown that he should be reflective as well as truly free, and the last and most important thing that he must be is that he recognizes that he is part of the whole, a member in the community of human beings who are equal and must enjoy the same fundamental rights and privileges. Doing philosophy is necessary because it is that which helps us realize that we are persons for others, knowing that life, thought, and action is not about the self, but it is about being social, acknowledging that he is fundamentally bound to others, responsible for them in every way possible. Yet it is also to be noted that philosophy is not a discipline that is based on authority. The philosopher does not certainly take for granted authority, inherited privilege, or established knowledge and procedures, for he/she thinks on his/her own, using his/her mind in order to think and communicate, not blindly following anyone who says "this is so and so."
All of these have been articulated by Wallace in his speech, and he in fact speaks about being reflective, aware, free, and critical as that which makes us human. But most of all, the true meaning of being human is to be truly compassionate, which involves attention, awareness effort, and true care about other people and being able to sacrifice for them for their own and not the self's sake, but for humanity. To be a philosopher, as a person of culture, does not mean becoming too engaged with books, art, films, and poetry. Rather, the real cultured person is able to be moved by the other towards compassion and love, to have a sense of responsibility and concern for the other, in contrast to the old, "sophisticated" person who has grown tired of life and sees nothing new in it.. That is why the philosopher recognizes that the gift of his very self is that which has to be given out precisely as it is, as a gift for the well-being of others. It is to recognize by something that we experience as the same as ourselves, but radically different from our very own selves. And the only thing that is necessary for realizing this gift is to recognize an determine the meaning of things that he puts within and outside it.
Greek mythology speaks of the carpenter Procrustes, who cut off the legs of men and women who are too tall to fit in the beds that he made. This goes the same for the pettifoggers and those who are not aware of their own selves. Instead of actually adjusting in order to fully experience things, they merely limit themselves and refuse to move on with life with new ways of looking at it. Are we those who repair our beds or cut out the legs of those who lie in it? Remember that as persons doing philosophy, the challenge is for us to fully experience things and reflect seriously upon them, in order for us to face the most important questions (and perhaps the most important answers) in our lives, and it is necessary for us to question, to think, and to act continuously in our pursuit of meaning and fulfillment as human persons.
And for this to happen, it is necessary that we remain to be filled with wonder and amazement with the things before us, and most importantly, to the other, for the very measure with which we will be measured does not lie on the things that we have done for ourselves, but that which we have done out of compassion for the other.
So far, what have we done to the other?
Why Are We Here?
19 June 2012
Discussed Text: Simon Critchley, "What Is A Philosopher?"
Why are we here? Perhaps this is one of the questions that you have asked yourselves as you entered our Philosophy 101 class. What is this thing called philosophy? Why is it necessary for me to take it? Questions like these are the concern of philosophy, and in doing philosophy, we are going to ask many questions, and it is in questions that we are interested in and not with the answers (like Theology or any other science).
Simon Critchley, on the other hand, thinks that it might be better to ask "What is a philosopher?" in order to have an idea of what philosophy is. Critchley started with Alfred North Whitehead's claim that all philosophy is merely a footnote of Plato, the man whom we have known as the one who really founded a philosophical tradition way back in Ancient Greece.
This brings us back to one occurrence in Plato's Theaetetus, where, in a conversation between Socrates and Theodorus, they talked about Thales of Miletus, who, with his Thracian maid, strolled around. Because he was so amazed with the stars, he kept looking at the sky and accidentally fell on a well, and his maid laughed at that unfortunate event.
The maid's laughter in fact reflects the perception and reaction of people towards philosophers, for the common folk have this knowledge of philosophers to be silly and stupid buffoons who seem to be elsewhere and out of this world. This sets the philosopher contrasting with lawyers or pettifoggers, people who are preoccupied with the "unimportant" things as if these things really matter in living one's life.While lawyers and pettifoggers, on one hand, is pressed for time to do something very important for them, and had to present their argument before the waters in the clepsydra (where we can find the word kleptes, "thief," therefore suggesting that it robs us of our time) run out. The philosopher, however, takes his time, and he has the time, the leisure (which is skole in Greek, from which the Latin world schola, "school") to freely think about important things, without being compelled to do something else compared to the lawyer, the doctor, or the slave.
From this, a gap has been created between the philosophers and the non-philosophers, the pettifoggers. From this, there also rose the gap between being a person who takes their time to meditate about things and being a busy person. It also exists between beings who are elsewhere and beings of the world, the servile arts and the liberal arts, doing and thinking, and many more that we can use to refer to the contrast between philosophers and pettifoggers.
However, this distinction should not be taken for granted and should therefore be asked once again, for it is not a matter of contrasting between action (doing) and speculation (thinking). Plato, in the Republic, asserts that a person should be thoughtful and at the same time capable of doing thins based on what he thought about, leading to his conclusion that the one worthy of ruling the city would be the philosopher-king.
The distinctions that exist between the philosopher and non-philosopher, the otherworldly and the this-worldly, speculation and action, should therefore be removed, and through Critchley, we can see that everyone can be a good philosopher, that everyone can live in this world with recognition of what lies beneath, that everyone can think and act out of one's thoughts which provoke one to take action once again.
Critchley identifies the philosopher as someone who seems to be mysterious and uncanny, primarily because he has to think things through. He does not accept common sense, or popular opinions, or those that we take as basta. The philosopher is in a sense critical (from the Greek word krisis, "sieve"), letting things pass through one's mind with the sieve of intelligence before speaking and acting, and he/she has the humility to say "I'm sorry" once he/she does not know. And in relation to this critical attitude, Critchley also pointed out the double irony that stands between the philosopher and pettifogger. The philosopher who has the time to think about things is one who has the opportunity to ask and find answers to the fundamental questions, while the pettifogger, who is good in writing and speaking in arguing his case, stutters once he encounters these fundamental questions.
But why ask questions?
We have questions primarily because we do not know something, and there is in here a recognition, a knowing that we do not know, and therefore it is necessary to ask a good question. It has been said that the ignorant lives in bliss, although it is a most terrible bliss. They are those who do not know that they are stupid, and are content in being such.
The nature of questions also reveal something about philosophy, as a discipline that is concerned not just with questions, but more on the fundamental ones. This tells us that the start of philosophical thinking, the investigation into the fundamental questions, starts when these questions arise. And when do these questions arise? From wonder (which the Greeks speak of as thaumazein), a moment which urges us to ask: Bakit ganyan? What is it that is before us? Why is it such? And eventually, "What IS?," which points us to being.
The most wonderful insight that we get out of wonder, out of our questioning things, is that they are. They exist before us, and it is a moment of awakening to their existence which draws us to ask more questions about them in order to discover why they exist and why they exist as such. This is the very moment of awakening that inspired Fr. Roque Ferriols to talk about meron which is a loose (in fact, not quite!) a translation of being, a powerful word in Filipino which allows us to point out that it is, that things are!
Philosophy not only arises in wonder and amazement, but also in disappointment that something stops to be anymore, that they are precisely no more. Think of relationships that are once there but no more because of disagreements, disappointments, separations, and break ups. In moments like those, we are forced to ask: what is friendship? What is motherhood? What is fatherhood? What is maleness? What is femaleness? Unfortunate as they may be in our lives, they bring us to these essential questions and, by dealing with them, we become better persons, not just wiser but more thoughtful and more aware as well of what is within and outside us.
In wonder and disappointment, we ask: bakit merong ganito? These are moments of thinking and examining, our step-by-step response to Socrates' challenge when he said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." In our questioning, life rises to a higher level. We become what we are as humans who differ from animals and plants and rock: we become conscious of our consciousness in the moments that affirm our existence.
The questions that philosophy poses are big and would require us to encounter others who are also in pursuit of encountering these questions. This is why philosophy needs to dialogue. In doing philosophy, one is never alone. We reflect in order to act in order for us to reflect once again, and this is a circle, a dialectic that we have to go through as individuals and groups in order to truly live life. Once again, Plato, in his Allegory of the Cave, challenges us to step into the light and not be contented with the shadows. It is insight which allows you to do that, and it is in facing the truth through questioning that we can be set free.
And of course, what we have thought about must be expressed. Thinking bears fruit once it is articulated and expressed (and hence what Ateneo wants to impart to us: sapientia et eloquentia, becoming wise and knowing the right way of expressing our ideas and views). This class may be an artificial session for us to do philosophy (for philosophy should occur in the mundane, everyday moments of our life), but it goes back to thinking about and articulating what has been thought of. It is in the very exchange of insights that we come together as thinking human beings and tackle the fundamental questions that surprise and disturb us.
In the end, philosophy is about being free. David F. Wallace, in talking about the benefits of a liberal arts education, spoke of the freedom of what to think and how to think. We are not against the world, and clearly no man is an island. Rather, as social beings, we exist for the world, and everything we say or do is not only within the context of the world that we live in, but also for the benefit of the other who remains attentive to us (and perhaps say something about it). We are for others, and because we are, I am!
Therefore, philosophy is facing and eventually going towards the other, identifying similarities and differences that make us possible to dialogue with each other. To engage in philosophy is to be enthusiastic about what is different and to be a little less arrogant. It is to set aside what is established and think of new ideas.
But ultimately, philosophy allows us to go out of ourselves and let the other affects us. It is our noblesse oblige. Hopefully, philosophy would allow us to realize this freedom not just to be attentive and aware of, but also and most importantly, to really care about the other.
Discussed Text: Simon Critchley, "What Is A Philosopher?"
Why are we here? Perhaps this is one of the questions that you have asked yourselves as you entered our Philosophy 101 class. What is this thing called philosophy? Why is it necessary for me to take it? Questions like these are the concern of philosophy, and in doing philosophy, we are going to ask many questions, and it is in questions that we are interested in and not with the answers (like Theology or any other science).
Simon Critchley, on the other hand, thinks that it might be better to ask "What is a philosopher?" in order to have an idea of what philosophy is. Critchley started with Alfred North Whitehead's claim that all philosophy is merely a footnote of Plato, the man whom we have known as the one who really founded a philosophical tradition way back in Ancient Greece.
This brings us back to one occurrence in Plato's Theaetetus, where, in a conversation between Socrates and Theodorus, they talked about Thales of Miletus, who, with his Thracian maid, strolled around. Because he was so amazed with the stars, he kept looking at the sky and accidentally fell on a well, and his maid laughed at that unfortunate event.
The maid's laughter in fact reflects the perception and reaction of people towards philosophers, for the common folk have this knowledge of philosophers to be silly and stupid buffoons who seem to be elsewhere and out of this world. This sets the philosopher contrasting with lawyers or pettifoggers, people who are preoccupied with the "unimportant" things as if these things really matter in living one's life.While lawyers and pettifoggers, on one hand, is pressed for time to do something very important for them, and had to present their argument before the waters in the clepsydra (where we can find the word kleptes, "thief," therefore suggesting that it robs us of our time) run out. The philosopher, however, takes his time, and he has the time, the leisure (which is skole in Greek, from which the Latin world schola, "school") to freely think about important things, without being compelled to do something else compared to the lawyer, the doctor, or the slave.
From this, a gap has been created between the philosophers and the non-philosophers, the pettifoggers. From this, there also rose the gap between being a person who takes their time to meditate about things and being a busy person. It also exists between beings who are elsewhere and beings of the world, the servile arts and the liberal arts, doing and thinking, and many more that we can use to refer to the contrast between philosophers and pettifoggers.
However, this distinction should not be taken for granted and should therefore be asked once again, for it is not a matter of contrasting between action (doing) and speculation (thinking). Plato, in the Republic, asserts that a person should be thoughtful and at the same time capable of doing thins based on what he thought about, leading to his conclusion that the one worthy of ruling the city would be the philosopher-king.
The distinctions that exist between the philosopher and non-philosopher, the otherworldly and the this-worldly, speculation and action, should therefore be removed, and through Critchley, we can see that everyone can be a good philosopher, that everyone can live in this world with recognition of what lies beneath, that everyone can think and act out of one's thoughts which provoke one to take action once again.
Critchley identifies the philosopher as someone who seems to be mysterious and uncanny, primarily because he has to think things through. He does not accept common sense, or popular opinions, or those that we take as basta. The philosopher is in a sense critical (from the Greek word krisis, "sieve"), letting things pass through one's mind with the sieve of intelligence before speaking and acting, and he/she has the humility to say "I'm sorry" once he/she does not know. And in relation to this critical attitude, Critchley also pointed out the double irony that stands between the philosopher and pettifogger. The philosopher who has the time to think about things is one who has the opportunity to ask and find answers to the fundamental questions, while the pettifogger, who is good in writing and speaking in arguing his case, stutters once he encounters these fundamental questions.
But why ask questions?
We have questions primarily because we do not know something, and there is in here a recognition, a knowing that we do not know, and therefore it is necessary to ask a good question. It has been said that the ignorant lives in bliss, although it is a most terrible bliss. They are those who do not know that they are stupid, and are content in being such.
The nature of questions also reveal something about philosophy, as a discipline that is concerned not just with questions, but more on the fundamental ones. This tells us that the start of philosophical thinking, the investigation into the fundamental questions, starts when these questions arise. And when do these questions arise? From wonder (which the Greeks speak of as thaumazein), a moment which urges us to ask: Bakit ganyan? What is it that is before us? Why is it such? And eventually, "What IS?," which points us to being.
The most wonderful insight that we get out of wonder, out of our questioning things, is that they are. They exist before us, and it is a moment of awakening to their existence which draws us to ask more questions about them in order to discover why they exist and why they exist as such. This is the very moment of awakening that inspired Fr. Roque Ferriols to talk about meron which is a loose (in fact, not quite!) a translation of being, a powerful word in Filipino which allows us to point out that it is, that things are!
Philosophy not only arises in wonder and amazement, but also in disappointment that something stops to be anymore, that they are precisely no more. Think of relationships that are once there but no more because of disagreements, disappointments, separations, and break ups. In moments like those, we are forced to ask: what is friendship? What is motherhood? What is fatherhood? What is maleness? What is femaleness? Unfortunate as they may be in our lives, they bring us to these essential questions and, by dealing with them, we become better persons, not just wiser but more thoughtful and more aware as well of what is within and outside us.
In wonder and disappointment, we ask: bakit merong ganito? These are moments of thinking and examining, our step-by-step response to Socrates' challenge when he said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." In our questioning, life rises to a higher level. We become what we are as humans who differ from animals and plants and rock: we become conscious of our consciousness in the moments that affirm our existence.
The questions that philosophy poses are big and would require us to encounter others who are also in pursuit of encountering these questions. This is why philosophy needs to dialogue. In doing philosophy, one is never alone. We reflect in order to act in order for us to reflect once again, and this is a circle, a dialectic that we have to go through as individuals and groups in order to truly live life. Once again, Plato, in his Allegory of the Cave, challenges us to step into the light and not be contented with the shadows. It is insight which allows you to do that, and it is in facing the truth through questioning that we can be set free.
And of course, what we have thought about must be expressed. Thinking bears fruit once it is articulated and expressed (and hence what Ateneo wants to impart to us: sapientia et eloquentia, becoming wise and knowing the right way of expressing our ideas and views). This class may be an artificial session for us to do philosophy (for philosophy should occur in the mundane, everyday moments of our life), but it goes back to thinking about and articulating what has been thought of. It is in the very exchange of insights that we come together as thinking human beings and tackle the fundamental questions that surprise and disturb us.
In the end, philosophy is about being free. David F. Wallace, in talking about the benefits of a liberal arts education, spoke of the freedom of what to think and how to think. We are not against the world, and clearly no man is an island. Rather, as social beings, we exist for the world, and everything we say or do is not only within the context of the world that we live in, but also for the benefit of the other who remains attentive to us (and perhaps say something about it). We are for others, and because we are, I am!
Therefore, philosophy is facing and eventually going towards the other, identifying similarities and differences that make us possible to dialogue with each other. To engage in philosophy is to be enthusiastic about what is different and to be a little less arrogant. It is to set aside what is established and think of new ideas.
But ultimately, philosophy allows us to go out of ourselves and let the other affects us. It is our noblesse oblige. Hopefully, philosophy would allow us to realize this freedom not just to be attentive and aware of, but also and most importantly, to really care about the other.
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