by Andrew Panopio
2 July 2013
Discussed Text: Garcia, "The Promotion of Responsibility and Hope"
One of the characteristics of a philosophical person is his or her ability to assess what they want in life. To illustrate, they say that a philosopher is stuck staring at the stars too much only to fall into a well. People may ostracize these thinkers for their absurdity in a rational modern context, but it’s refreshing to learn that the philosopher is exactly where he or she wants to be. Philosophical people, if they had gone through this assessment critically, could find themselves in the most socially different and unacceptable places or standpoints and be pleased with that understanding.
It is to live more intensely and to break up certain immediacies, as Dr. Garcia had put it, that Philosophy is experienced. These immediacies come in the form of the material things that most of us deem as important. In reality though, they are purely desires of power and maybe even desires fed by our own selfishness.
Ricoeur identifies that people around us are constantly prospective.
That speaks for itself because I think we can all identify with that. We try to control what we want in life by assessing mostly everything if they are of value to us. In a more unethical level, we assess our benefits within other people and we sometimes manipulate them. There’s a colloquial term that we Filipinos call such manipulative people; User-friendly.
For example, given a group of friends, another person happens to start hanging out with them more. Given enough time, they soon find out that this person is unusually wealthy. When this newbie friend leaves, they start pointing that out and they get excited whenever they get to go to the newbie friend’s house. In doing so, they see the person beyond who he is but what his worth is to them. This is just one of the many scenarios that happen in our society and it hinders us to develop as more critical people.
The philosophical wanderer has a lesson to teach us. Philosophy has taught us not to just be aware of our outside surroundings, which we can separate from, but it has also taught us about being aware of ourselves. Assessing ourselves is important to make sure that we keep to our morals and we are the proper person who we want to be and not the kind of person which selfishness and our hunger for power dictates us to become. We can find this ideal self when we are aware of our placement in a world that needs ethics and selfless individuals. We have to be aware that there are things happening graver than our smaller problems in life. Once we respond to that, I believe that philosophy would serve a meaningful purpose in our lives.
Showing posts with label philosopher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosopher. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Becoming The Joker
by Mara Cepeda
I want to become silly.
Like how Simon Critchley describes philosophers in the text “What is a Philosopher?” I want to become the one who destroys the status quo. I want to become “a laughing stock, an absent-minded buffoon, the butt of countless jokes.”
I want to become silly because it means that I am aware, that I have, or at least I am trying to, remove myself from my default setting.
You see, one of the main things that struck me from the past three meetings in class is that to philosophize means to constantly pay attention. Paying attention then means realizing that the “familiar” world we know is not so familiar after all. Apparently, we need to get out of ourselves and realize, accept and understand that the world around us still has so much more meaning to offer.
To philosophize therefore is to allow yourself to be constantly surprised by the world.
But isn’t that scary, the thought that you can never be too sure about yourself and the world?
It is. However, in my little contemplation these past few days, I realized that perhaps it is okay to realize one’s unfamiliarity with the world. To become the joker, to become the odd one out, may just be a good thing after all.
I believe it was Socrates who said that “I only know that I know nothing,” and I think this statement is spot on.
Isn’t philosophizing the act of, to borrow Dr. Garcia’s words in the last meeting, “being aware that you are aware,” and consequently, also being aware that you are not aware?
Because when we sought to know, we realize more and more how much we do not know. This uncertainty therefore can propel us to never be too sure of ourselves, to stop thinking that the world revolves around us, and to realize just how small we are compared to the unknown universe.
Perhaps this is why Critchley said philosophers are silly, because who on earth would want to humbly accept that you only know nothing?
The joker will. The silly one will. The philosopher will.
And maybe, just maybe, this is what PH 101 is us challenging to do.
I want to become silly.
Like how Simon Critchley describes philosophers in the text “What is a Philosopher?” I want to become the one who destroys the status quo. I want to become “a laughing stock, an absent-minded buffoon, the butt of countless jokes.”
I want to become silly because it means that I am aware, that I have, or at least I am trying to, remove myself from my default setting.
You see, one of the main things that struck me from the past three meetings in class is that to philosophize means to constantly pay attention. Paying attention then means realizing that the “familiar” world we know is not so familiar after all. Apparently, we need to get out of ourselves and realize, accept and understand that the world around us still has so much more meaning to offer.
To philosophize therefore is to allow yourself to be constantly surprised by the world.
But isn’t that scary, the thought that you can never be too sure about yourself and the world?
It is. However, in my little contemplation these past few days, I realized that perhaps it is okay to realize one’s unfamiliarity with the world. To become the joker, to become the odd one out, may just be a good thing after all.
I believe it was Socrates who said that “I only know that I know nothing,” and I think this statement is spot on.
Isn’t philosophizing the act of, to borrow Dr. Garcia’s words in the last meeting, “being aware that you are aware,” and consequently, also being aware that you are not aware?
Because when we sought to know, we realize more and more how much we do not know. This uncertainty therefore can propel us to never be too sure of ourselves, to stop thinking that the world revolves around us, and to realize just how small we are compared to the unknown universe.
Perhaps this is why Critchley said philosophers are silly, because who on earth would want to humbly accept that you only know nothing?
The joker will. The silly one will. The philosopher will.
And maybe, just maybe, this is what PH 101 is us challenging to do.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
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.
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.
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