I wrote this blog post to thank my classmate Beverly Hao from the bottom of my heart for returning my wallet that I lost in our philosophy classroom through the lost and found of Ateneoand to philosophize about this incident.
We have learned in our class that responsibility is the inherent primary foundation of subjectivity. This responsibility is to be understood as accountability and answerability. This accountability is accountability not just for the self, but also for others. The self and others are not only to be understood in terms of the words and deeds of the self and others, but also to be understood simply, without any attachments, as self and others. This answerability is to give FEEDBACK to others.(The word feedback is capitalized for easy reference further in this blog post.) Going back to the first sentence of this paragraph, this inherence means that responsibility is already in-the-here or in the presence of being subject. One cannot be a subject before one is responsible. Rather, to be a subject is to be responsible. This is ethics.
If I am not mistaken, Dr.Garcia, also mentioned about being speechless and ethical force on the same day of the lecture on this topic. He mentioned that there are times that we lose our brains, because we do not know what to say. He also mentioned that ethical force is very powerful. Upon this incident, I was able to understand deeper he means by speechless and ethical force.
On the day I lost my wallet, since I went to Handyman Riverbanks for JEEP, I really thought that I lost my wallet in Handyman Riverbanks. In other words, I never thought that I lost my wallet in Ateneo or even in our philosophy classroom. Two days after, when Beverly Hao asked me whether I got back my wallet from lost and found or not, I was completely shocked. I was completely shocked not only because of not expecting to lose my wallet in Ateneo, but also, because of the power of this ethical force itself.I also turned speechless for a few seconds, at the same time I was completely shocked. I knew I have responsibility, which is to say something. However, because I was overwhelmed by this ethical force, I lost my response-ability or my ability to response.
Here, we can see how powerful ethical force is. Ethical force is so powerful to the extent that it deters temporarily my response-ability. After having back my response-ability, I promised Beverly Hao to write a blog post about this, but she said there is totally no need to do so. That’s so ethical.
The next meeting of philosophy class after this, Beverly Hao automatically asked me once again whether I got back my wallet from lost and found or not. By ethics, I must be the one who was supposed to give FEEDBACK, which is to say something back,that I got back my wallet, before she even asked.However, I didn’t know this at that time, because I understood feedback as feeding-back a blog post and not feeding-back a response that I got back my wallet.(Pardon me if the term feeding-back does not sound nice.)Just like how being good is never enough, feeding-back is never enough. More importantly, responsibility is never enough.
I remember my JEEP experience as a UP manininda and one Ate shared to me how a lot of people left their things near their stall in the past. Some of them left books, one left a laptop, and others also left their wallets. I was a bit moved when they told me that they did their best in returning all of these things. I thought, they could have sold these things and use the money for themselves, but no, they remained honest and returned the things back to their owners. It made me reflect that in being responsible towards the Other, it need not be in terms of economical goods such as money, food, clothings etc. It may also be in terms of honesty. Honesty may seem such a small thing, but it still makes the Others happy and appreciate you.
ReplyDelete-Russell Virata
Ph102C