"Yo Dawg I Heard That You Like Insights"

by John Belmonte

25 June 2013
Discussed Text: Critchley, "What Is A Philosopher?"
                           Fr. Roque Ferriols, S.J., "Insight"

Insight. That was what covered today’s lecture. To gain insight, by convention, is to learn more from something known. It can also mean to gain experience and be able to attain something by reflection. The pettifogger probably has some degree of reflection to the matters that are of concern to him, just not as apparent or of greater magnitude to the philosopher. With that said, insights are possessed by each and every one of us and can come in so many varieties and magnitudes. My coach from high school told me when I was about to compete in a tournament, “There was nothing to lose and everything to gain.” It makes me wonder though, do all insights provide some kind of learning experience?  Do all insights provide something better? In fact, what defines an insight to even be of any merit?

After some thinking, I made a little insight about making insights. Every insight that I’m able to form leads to new insights, leading to even more insights. It’s an unending cycle that always has some form of input from me. We will always have new views on life, whether they be completely new, a view that has been changed from a preceding notion, or a view of life reinforced by more information.

I also think the whole idea of “better insights” exists. Everyone has their own personal bias and as objective as we try to be, there is still that slight tinge of favoritism existing. (I actually think that the previous statement itself has some form of bias.) Some insights made will be more beneficial to others possibly because of its appropriate timing. This is similar to limit situations, wherein we seek to learn the reasons behind why these things happen or why we feel this way. We tend to receive advice that helps us cope or make us feel better. Aside from convenience, insights can also be significant from sentimentality. We have some kind of special bond with some very simple things, like children that receive their very first toy. For other people, it’s just a toy, while to the children, it may very well be the happiest moment of their lives. Like the children, we each have our own way of thinking that is unique to ourselves. The uniqueness comes from the cultivation of our thoughts from our lives and in turn provides different insights.

That is probably my most important point about making insights. We are all different, and in that difference, we are able to create a near-infinite amount of ideas. Indeed, we sometimes have coinciding claims with one another but more often than not there is something slightly different with how each of us think.  In each of our lectures, just a few of us tend to speak, but those few are able to have an amazing amount of input for everyone to take in. Our personal beliefs, upbringings, and attitudes provide so much to discuss and that’s just from a few of all 65 of us. (I doubt if we could fit everyone’s thoughts in one period though.)
We make insights to make even more insights that create more insights. I just made an insight about insights. This will lead to insights about making insights that lead to making insights about making insights.  

On The Death of Philosophers

by Agassi Agapito

25 June 2013
Discussed Text: Simon Critchley, "What Is A Philosopher?"

After today’s class, my friend told me that he wanted to know how Philosophy kills. The question then began bugging in my mind for an hour. I started looking around imagining how it could possibly kill someone today in this modern age. It was hard finding the answer so I took more time.

I googled the question and I found something interesting, a list of dead Philosophers. I think many Philosophers in the list can help me answer my question. I’m not sure if this has relevance, but most of them ended up either killing themselves or suffering a tragic death, like Aristotle who was forced to kill himself upholding his ideal and Simone Weil who starved herself to death.

Now I am thinking of two possible answers. First is about the story of Theaetetus. Sometimes, reflecting too much makes you unaware of what is in front of you. You forget how to live and act in reality then you become someone that you tried to avoid most, a fool. It can also be that it is not too much Philosophy that kills but rather having a wrong Philosophy if there is such, or a Philosophy which is not in accordance to proper living just like Simone Weil who became too passionate of her beliefs that she starved herself to death believing that self starvation was the best way of self denial.

Second is the Aristotle example which has something to do with society. You become wise as him that your ideals are now too hard to be comprehended and accepted by society. They might think that you have gone crazy or your ideals are too influential that it might endanger their well-being. Or maybe it is a matter of having conflicting Philosophies that makes people kill one another. It comes down to a battle of pride, a clash between points of view or simply disagreements that cost lives.

Or maybe I am wrong with all I have written and wrong for asking immediately the question, “How does Philosophy kill?” and not debated first with the question, “Does Philosophy really kill?”

Thinking

by Isabella Yatco

20 June 2013
Discussed Text: Simon Critchley, "What Is A Philosopher?"

When was the last time you stopped whatever you were doing to think? And I mean actually think – not necessarily about anything deep, but about things that really matter to you?

In a time where everything is so fast-paced, mostly thanks to technology, it seems as if people simply take things as they are and hardly ever put things into question. We’ve become so habituated with the way we live our lives that we neglect certain important details that may have the ability to change the way we perceive life as we know it. Take, for example, the English language. We’re so used to hearing it that we don’t even remember a time when it didn’t make sense to us. What makes a word a word, anyway? Or have you ever wondered what English sounds like to non-English speakers?

In his speech, Simon Critchley quoted the English philosopher Wittgenstein who said that philosophers ought to greet each other with “take your time” instead of the conventional “hello,” or maybe even the occasional nod in passing. Imagine if we started to greet one another in a similar way. To be reminded constantly to “take your time” could even create a new sense of awareness, which is what philosophy calls for. Doc G mentioned in class today that with that sense of awareness, we would be able to determine what is essential and what is not. If we start paying attention and “take time to make things important” as Doc G said, we will begin to see the things far beyond what is before us.

Don’t lose your sense of wonder. Keep asking questions.

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.

The Importance of Doubting

by Russell Virata

20 September 2012

Discussed text: Rene Descartes, Mediations on the First Philosophy

The common perception of people when it comes to the word “doubt” is something negative. To doubt means to question, to be unsure, or simply to distrust. When someone, say a close friend, doubts you, you will definitely get hurt or be offended (unless of course you know yourself that what you said to him or her was a lie). Reversing the situation, when you doubt someone, there is the possibility of losing your trust and bond with that person. However, as we have discussed in class, doubting can be positive and is an important step in doing philosophy.

Galileo, through the act of doubting that the sun is the one revolving around the earth, was able to discover that the opposite is true. Descartes also doubted the philosophical foundations during his time and was able to come up with his own method known as the “Universal Methodic Doubt”. He first doubted his senses, thinking that these can be a form of deception like when you are dreaming or when you are in reality a butterfly thinking that you are a man. (I personally had a similar experience in the past when I thought, what if I, together with other people, are just characters being controlled by someone who is playing “The Sims”? But then this sounds improbable given the fact that a Sims character should not have a thinking of his own and I, having this thought, am sure that I am thinking.) Descartes then also doubted the foundations of mathematics, thinking that there could be an evil genie who is tricking him to believe that a triangle is a three-sided polygon or that two plus three equals five. Finally, after doubting everything, Descartes came up with the conclusion that there is only one thing he cannot doubt, and that is he exists as a thinking thing which doubts. Through doubting, Galileo and Descartes were able to have their own thoughts.

Indeed, doubting the norm and the status quo, just like what these two did, is very important in philosophy. As Simon Critchley says, “The philosopher neither sees nor hears the so-called unwritten laws of the city, that is, the mores and conventions that govern public life.” Bear in mind that this does not mean doubting and philosophy is about contradicting socially accepted truths or proving new discoveries. This just means that in doing philosophy, one should not easily accept things and take them for granted even if they are universally accepted, but rather to be always open to inquiries, questions and possibilities. It is from these questions that insights, reflections and realizations come in. For example, I have my own experience, which I believe some of us have also encountered, where my parents instilled in my mind when I was still a child that I should be a doctor when I grow up because no one in our extended family has become a doctor yet and of course doctors have very high salary. As I grew up, I doubted that being a doctor was for me because I did not like science much and so I took up a course which was more interesting for me. If I accepted my parents’ advice for me and closed my mind from the other possible paths, then I am pretty sure I would not be enjoying college now.

Take the RH Bill debate as another example. We should not choose a side simply because many people are pro-RH Bill or because the Catholic Church is anti-RH Bill. Rather, we should carefully assess and inquire about the different advantages and disadvantages of it before thinking critically whether the bill is actually worth passing or not. And even after having your own stand, I think you can still doubt some more and increase your thoughts about both sides. This is just one of many situations where doubting can be relevant.

As we can see, doubting is not only relevant in the times of Galileo and Descartes, but also in the present. It is a very essential ingredient in philosophy, which is not meant to break the laws, but rather to enable one to think and reflect on his own. Let me end with a quote by George Iles, “Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.”

New Perspectives

by Jason Dacuyan

A few days ago, my gastritis had struck again and since the pain was unbearable, I really had to go out and buy medicine from the drugstore. Mercury Drug Katipunan wasn’t far since I live in the Ateneo university dormitory but it was still a challenge for me with my stomach all fiery and painful. So I mustered up my courage and took a “trike” (short for tricycle) going to Mercury Drug. And did I mention how much I dislike trikes? They drive so recklessly fast leaving me kind of nauseated every time I go down. To add to that, the brakes on their motorcycles sound like those annoying sounds one makes when scratching the chalk board. Okay, so I buy my medicine but before I’m able to leave the drugstore, heavy rain fell and just my luck, I forgot to bring an umbrella. After faring the heavy rains for a few minutes, I finally found a trike going home. And it was on this trike ride that David Foster Wallace’s speech entered my mind.

At that moment in time, I was really tired and frustrated not to mention the gas pains that were currently happening in my stomach. “This is Water”, I told myself. As I paid attention to the heavy rains, the cars on the road beside my trike, the people on the sidewalks in umbrellas, and even the trike driver himself —I finally began to understand. I am not the center of the universe. I thought how the cars around me could have more urgent problems than me wanting to go home or how the trike driver might not have had lunch yet or he might also be sick but he’s risking his health to earn money for his family. I thought of the people who have to walk home under the heavy rain—only then that I felt lucky to be riding on a trike. I can control how and what I think, that’s what I realized. And once I was aware that I was aware, everything seemed okay.

The rain didn’t frustrate me anymore. I began to see it merely as rain, not some external factor giving me discomfort. The screeching brakes of the trike didn’t seem to matter anymore. The trike driver must have spent a lot just to have those brakes work properly and maybe he couldn’t do anything about the screeching sound anymore without spending more money. This experience has surprised me in a lot of ways. It has allowed me to see the bigger picture—that I am part of a greater whole. This must be what Simon Critchley meant when he said that philosophers seem to be elsewhere. And I was elsewhere. I was at that moment the same Jason but my mind was on the things around me. The experience was a big surprise and I was amazed at the realization. Although I already knew about these things after reading the articles, it really is different if you experience the realization firsthand.

Because of this experience, I also remembered Heidegger’s article about being in Being. I never really quite understood what it meant but now I think I have gained some understanding. By looking at the bigger picture and being aware of the things around me, I was moved. I was moved by Being. This must be what Heidegger meant about Philein which he described as a kind of harmony that reveals to us what it means to love and be sensitive to the vibration of the other. I think for a moment there, I experienced Philein with the people around me. I thought to myself, “If I’m already bothered and frustrated with all this rain, how much more the trike driver. He’s soaked from the rain.” Also, during my ride home, one car even splashed some water on the trike I was riding as it sped past a rain puddle. Normally, I would’ve been pissed. But because of my awareness, I was able to let it go and remind myself that I am part of a greater whole. I usually don’t bother thinking about these kinds of things at all. But I did think of these things. And because of that, I finally realized what Heidegger said about “being gathered together in Being” meant. Me, the trike driver, the cars, the road, the passersby, the tees—we’re all connected. We’re all expressing our Being, the dynamic act of existence, in a singular way. It means that we are part of something greater. I am part of something greater, something beyond and outside myself.

Everything seemed to connect —from Critchley, to Wallace, to Heidegger, and finally to Ferriols’ insight—seeing what something actually means as it exists. Who knew a mere tricycle ride could help me philosophize, gain some insight about the world and change my perspective. I choose what I think about. I get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. I am part of a greater whole.

A Part Of All That Is

28 June 2012


Discussed Text: Martin Heidegger, "What Is Philosophy?"

Most of the time, Heidegger worked in solitude in the Black Forest, and his dwelling in the forest influenced much of his writing, one of those being the use of a path, way, or road as a metaphor for doing philosophy. In the text, he asks us to tarry, to dwell in order to experience what it means to do philosophy, and hence one should pause, stop, and take time. This is one important point that we can reflect upon in the course of doing philosophy, as it is also a reminder of what we are supposed to do to arrive at an insight which will lead us to a greater appreciation of our own being (vb) as one with Being.

Another point we can reflect on is Heidegger's assertion that experience is always an experience of the whole, or an experience that comes with a sense of the whole. This is what David Foster Wallace means when he says about participating in a greater whole, or what Simon Critchley means when he talks about those who do philosophy as "being elsewhere."

With those two points, let us now meditate (or dwell on) the meaning of Being. To be clear, the word "being" here is not used as a noun (e.g. the table, the book, we human beings, or anything that exists), but as a verb, referring to the dynamic act of existence. The two, however are related, in such a way that all of these individual beings express the theme of Being in unique ways: being a table, being a book, being human.

But it is only in language where one can express Being. Language has the power of expression, that which enables us to communicate and render intelligible our experience, and this can either be immediately expressed (like the way we Filipinos refer to things through onomatopoeic words such as batingaw for the church bell, kuliling for the little bell, or paruparo for butterflies) or understood as metaphors (like the poems of the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who expressed his insight on Being not through long philosophical essays but through poems). Heidegger's thought on philosophia points out that words are not merely signs or labels (like the ones we used to indicate where the washroom or parking lot is). Instead, they do present reality in a particular way, and philosophia certainly presents what it means to do philosophy for him.

One can see how Hopkins arrived at his insight on being, through language, in saying that the just man justices, in the same way that we can say the student studies, the teacher teaches, the painter paints, the dancer dances, which are all possible facets of being human. All of these suggest that only in acting out what one is that one becomes such. All of these are ways of expressing Being (which, on the other hand, for Hopkins, as a Jesuit, is acting out Christ in every moment).

The dynamic act of Being is that which binds everything together, with the diversity of acts as the ground for unity. Only when one is fully aware of the fact that we are bound together in the world with everything as beings in Being, then one gains a certain wisdom, an awakening to the fact that Hen Panta, all is one. And insofar as the human being is concerned, it is an awakening to everything that the human being can be, leading one to echo the classical and humanist thinkers, who in their own ways have said: "Nothing human is foreign to me."


Going back to Heidegger and bringing all of these points together, we go back to the path that leads us into philosophy, and that is the path to language, the path that calls us to name the experience, for naming things is to call out and recognize Being (such as a little child calling his playmate taba, in which the being of a person as fat stands out among other characteristics). The name is very important, and, like Adam who took the responsibility to name and consequently recognize other creatures, we are called to recognize other beings and their participation in Being by naming them, and to name is to recognize their existence, and more importantly to care for them. Indeed, language has this certain power to communicate being, given that what has been said manifests eloquentia that comes with much sapientia, or to simply put it, that one ought to speak well as one thinks well.

Meditating on Being and our way of expressing Being arises as a response to the question of Being, a question that is raised not only because we don't know, but more importantly, because the original view of things have been broken. In the same way disappointments in life force us to ask the meaning of things, the experience of not being able to know something brings us to these very essential questions that help us arrive at an insight. The philosopher Albert Camus brought up the question of the meaning of life, and he arrived at an insight: human beings need not exist, for there is no essential reason that they should, but what is important  is that the human being is, and as he/she exists, the question "What should I be?" is constantly raised.

Language, as Heidegger's path, is the key to understanding as that which presents experience, and words draw us to a distinct domain that we might have not gone to before. For Heidegger, the Greek language alone is logos, able to present reality, as that which manifests immediately the experience and meaning that such word would want to refer to.

It should be noted as well that there are moments when things speak on behalf of their own Being, like the way the Marikina valley basking in sunlight telling me (Dr. Garcia) to "become a teacher." Rainier Rilke's poem on Apollo might not immediately show how these things speak their own being, but in the end, he made the message clear: "You must change your life." Perhaps we might also experience these as we walk through Katipunan Avenue, where the sight of the poor children begging in the streets, the massive traffic, or the dilapidated structures, draws us,moves us to tell ourselves that someday, somewhere, we can change the world and make it a better place. This is a response of being moved by Being, and therefore we should be excited with Being, to allow ourselves to be moved by Being by letting Being show itself, reveal itself to us.

And of course, this excitement over Being is a form of second naivete, knowing that one knows and yet recognizing that there is still something mysterious, that there is more that one should know. This recognition allows one to open oneself to Being and anticipate for it, unlike the "sophisticated" people who know nothing else than say "been there, done that" as if nothing new will reveal itself in every event.

Philein, as Heidegger has said, is a kind of harmony, availability, attunement (which means being able to put oneself in an instrument and go with the music). This reveals us what it means to love, to be sensitive to the vibration of the Other. To love what? The Sophon, the Hen Panta, the all expressing the theme of Being in their own singular way, which gathers them together in Being. If you have this sense that a stone, a tree, an elephant, and your fellow human being is a part of you and you are part of this gathering together in Being, then you have this sense, and in one way or another, you are on your way to becoming wise yourself.

This is the ground of our consciousness and care for something that is outside us: the environment, our heritage, our culture, and most importantly, our fellow human being, the other that is in a way that is similar to us and yet different and unique. We are called to such consciousness, but we can only realize and respond through our awareness that we are part of something greater, that which lies beyond and beneath ourselves.

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.