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.