On The Questions That Matter: introduction

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

An Introduction to the Introduction

by Eve Avila

Today, our house was unusually busy because it was my first day in school. Not to bring my kids to their classrooms but to be the student myself.

Why did I enroll in Philo 101? At 61 years old on my last birthday, I’d say that I have almost completed the joyful journey of living, been there, done that. Now, what do I do with the rest of my life?

I recently returned from a two-year volunteer work in Africa and for the whole time that I was there, I was transported back to my childhood years when life was a struggle. Today, I can see that the meaning of my young life then was for NOW. Then what’s next?

I reckon that I can find the answer if I go back farther and start with the question, Who am I? And by knowing, then perhaps I can create another meaningful chapter in my life – the real meaning of life, in the first place.

About The Professor

Leovino Ma. Garcia, Ph. D. is a professor of the Department of Philosophy of Ateneo de Manila University. He finished his degree in humanities under the guidance and tutelage of Fr. Roque Ferriols, S.J., and eventually attained his doctorate degree in Philosophy in the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 1988 to 1994 as its first lay dean, and then became the dean once again, this time of the School of Humanities from 2001 to 2007. He is the second recipient of the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Lifetime Chair for the Humanities in 2011 and currently the President of the World Conference of Catholic Philosophers (COMIUCAP).

But most of all, he is a thinker, a life teacher, a lover of the arts, and, as he always claims to be, "the poor boy who knows the fields and rivers of the Cagayan valley," truly human in his own way.

These lectures delivered for the school year 2012-2013 are transcribed and summarized by Earl Allyson Valdez (AB Philosophy, Pre-Divinity Track 2010), once his student and now his teaching assistant.