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.