On The Level of Everyday Life

by Fuze Andrey

2 July 2013
Discussed Text: Garcia, "The Promotion of Responsibility and Hope"

Primum vivere deinde philosophari. We must first live and experience life before we can philosophize. It requires us to be knowledgeable of the things around us before we can actually explore and question them further. Just like the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover,” we should not judge that person/thing by what our eyes can perceive for we don’t know them/it fully. Also, when we argue about a certain topic, we don’t just say things that are irrelevant to the topic because we should be able to know something about it in order for us to defend our side.

Moreover, the connection between philosophical reflection and our everyday experience is somewhat the same. It’s impossible for us to reflect on something without experiencing it first. For example, we can’t learn from our mistakes without committing the mistake first. It’s just as simple as that. I think this is the reason why philosophers tend to live and experience life everyday as if it’s their last because it will give them more chance to reflect if they have more experiences.

Going to the topic about a person’s true happiness, in order for us to achieve that, we should narrow the gap between ourselves and the person we truly desire to be. But first, we should know who we really are. I don’t actually know how to know one’s self because according to my theo131 professor, knowing one’s self is the hardest thing to do. So an alternative way for acquiring our true happiness is to do our best to be the person we truly desire to be. We can do this by changing our outlook in life. We should learn how to care for others even if they don’t feel the same way. In addition, we should learn by heart to think about others as well and not just our own for we are sent in this world to serve and not to be served. Following the example of Jesus Christ, we should completely dedicate our life in helping and influencing others to do good to one another. By doing this, we are able to achieve our goal to be the person we truly desire to be by being men and women for others.

The goal that philosophy can offer to the present society, to will that all persons form one humanity and to will that each person realizes his/her unique humanity is very interesting and rather hard to do. Firstly, the idea that all persons should form one humanity is very difficult to do because we speak different languages, we have different customs and traditions, we have a different lifestyle and we all have our own way of living life. So in my opinion, this first goal of philosophy is almost impossible to achieve. The second goal of philosophy on the other hand, is more realistic and more feasible than the first one. Many of us now already realized his/her unique humanity. It is just like what I have said earlier, knowing one’s self. By knowing one’s self, you have already realized that you are unique and unlike any other.

To wrap things up, we should always make the most of our day because everything that we experienced in that day can help us to become the person we truly desire to be. By being that person that we desired to be, we can already attain true happiness.

Experience and Essence

by Rob Roa

15 November 2012
Discussed Text: Levinas, "Bible and Philosophy," Ethics and Infinity


Experience is a vague word. Sometimes you don’t have experience if all you’ve ever known is “true blue Ateneo”. Others will say you lack experience even if you’ve been around the world contracting business affairs. For some, one game in the UAAP is enough to call experience, where for others, a player needs four years to be called experienced.

Obviously it is true when we call experience “the world of more meanings”. Meaning is essence, and therefore experience is part of the world of more essence. Does this mean the more we experience, the more we discover the essence of the world? Or do we discover the essence of ourselves?

In experience, we cannot separate ourselves from the world, as we are experiencing it, so therefore the essence of the world, is a part of our own essence. What we have experienced of the world, each moment of action that we can be consciously aware of, makes up our own essence. Our own meaning.
At one point in my life, I was a server (a more fancy term for waiter) at an acceptably high class restaurant back home before I came to the Ateneo. In serving food, I was a server. I was being a server. I was experiencing the world of serving and working (almost full time), and because I was immersed in that world, I was discovering my essence, as a person being the server.

Or even more reflective; I came to the Philippines thinking it would be a “good experience for me” and it has turned out to be just that. So as I experienced the Philippines, I was discovering the essence of the Philippines, but at the same time I was discovering the essence of being Filipino.  Now does this mean before I arrived in Manila, I wasn’t a Filipino? Not necessarily, but when you can finally experience the land of your parents birth, there is more essence to be conscious of.

There is just more to experience. Or more to the world of more meanings. More to the world of more essence. Experience is a never-ending chase to know everything, but of course we must pick and choose what we want to be part of our essence. We can’t have it all, nor do we want it all, but there is always an experience that calls us and is ready to become a part of us.

One last question: when we experience more essence, are we simply discovering it in ourselves? Or allowing some essence of the world to become part of what we are being? Or maybe do we just become aware, or conscious of something else in the world, which changes our own essence, or meaning.

The Human Experience and the JEEP Program

by JB Capinpin


*Disclaimer: If you’re also under Mr. Rochester and haven’t watched “The Human Experience,” do not read any further. This blog post will spoil the film.

Last Wednesday, I had to watch a movie, entitled, “The Human Experience”, for my Theology 131 class under Mr. Rochester. It was a movie about two brothers who decided to record a documentary about different human experiences. Instead of simply recording other people’s experiences and narrating it on film, they immersed themselves in other peoples’ experiences.

For this blog post, I will only focus on the challenge of living homeless in New York during winter season because this is very much similar to the JEEP program we will have this semester. The other two, interacting with children who were disabled and momentarily abandoned by their parents due to financial problems and interacting with lepers in a colony, are similar to the immersion programs I have experienced in high school and exposure trips in college. Hence, they didn’t really strike me as much as living the life of another person.

Below are some of the experiences they had:

• A number of scenes were taken at night to show how they survived the cold nights of New York (5° Celsius on night 1). They sought refuge outside the church and made use of a cardboard as a bed. This protected their backs from the freezing concrete floor, but they were still very much exposed to the harsh environment.
• During the day, they looked for a corner where they can sit down and ask for some loose coins or spare change to buy food. Sometimes, they didn’t collect enough so they had to approach the small food stalls along the streets and ask for any food that they have left.
• In an interview with a homeless lady, they mentioned that she felt excluded from society; she was simply ignored. She even mentioned an instance where a group of walkers-by helped this injured dog. She was also near the area, but she was simply looked over. She was puzzled that she had the similar features of a human being, yet the other citizens of New York don’t seem to see her that way. 
• Luckily, a church had a feeding program for the homeless people. It was there that the two brothers really got to interact with other homeless people and share their experiences. The group praised the brothers for having the courage to step out of their comfort zone and live as homeless people.

More often that not, we succumb to our biases and judge other people. It is so easy because this is what we have experienced, have observed or have heard. We tend to believe that these experiences will repeat and thus act as a safeguard. In some way, our biases set the boundaries of our comfort zone. Anything beyond can spell trouble and make us unhappy. However, since our biases can be very personal or subjective, we can be mistaken. Therefore, our comfort zone can limit us. In this regard, there appears to be a trade-off between one’s safety and experience. It focuses on the “I,” which was the focus of the 1st semester. Towards the end of last semester, the “I” was defined as a being-in-the-world-with-and-for-others, although the “with-and-for-others” description was only briefly tackled.

This 2nd semester asks us to shift from thinking about the “I” and instead think about the “Other.” From the question, “what is being?” we now discuss, “what does the Other demand from me?” From ontology, we now focus on ethics. From philosophy’s definition as the love for wisdom, we define philosophy as the wisdom of love. With that in mind, instead of focusing on our own comfort zones, our own lives, we begin to consider Other’s feelings and Other’s life. In other words, this semester is a call for us to be more compassionate.

That is precisely what the two brothers in the film showcased. They tried to see New York in the eyes of a homeless person, to understand the life of the Other. I believe that this is one of the reasons why we are going through the JEEP program this semester. What the two brothers did is a preview of what we will be going through, but it definitely won’t be as extreme as living in the streets of Katipunan for a week. When we start living as sales people in a supermarket, photocopies in U.P. or street vendors along Katipunan, we must become more sensitive and more open and more compassionate to the Other. Perhaps, we find telling ourselves that we already know this. We have dealt with this over and over again in grade school and high school. We have been always reminded to always think of our neighbor, to do the good. But at this point, it would be helpful to pause and reflect if we really understood and follow this concept of doing the good? I guess we probably know the good, but we often fail to exercise it. This is perhaps the challenge to us in our times. As Lexie Coloma, C&PR Manager of The GUIDON, said in her column entitled, “The Epiphany of the Face”, “As Ateneans, we have always been taught the value of being men for others. We pride ourselves in having theology and philosophy classes but despite this, we still fail to go down the hill, where we are needed the most.” We have an idea of what to do, but then how come we don’t anything for the Other?

Through the JEEP program, we may hopefully find this humility to see the world in the Other’s shoe. This experience will somehow open our eyes to the reality of what the Other is experiencing and how we can respond to the demands of the Other.

For this semester, let us all try to leave our own selfish ways and constantly remind ourselves to think of the Other and how to be good to him/ her. I believe that if we carry disposition with us wherever we go, we are already bringing about change in society in our own ways. We can still fix our “broken world.”