What's Next

by Jaye Ruiz

Here’s a familiar scene from the movie Letters to Juliet.

Women who usually visit Verona, would write letters to Juliet (from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) to ask for relationship advice, the movie gives us insight to a company of women who do the responses. Claire receives Juliet’s response, made by Sophie, decades later.

Listen to what the letter said.


Rather than asking what we’ve done wrong to be held responsible for the death of the other. I believe, with a little help from a conversation with sir Earl, that the better question is what should you do now? Especially that we’re about to end with Philosophy 102.

The storyline of the movie is quite amazing really, how a person from thousands of miles away got to help someone who was from a different time. What we do affects people we may have never even met.

Serbis, Levinas, and Calasanz

by Ryan Racca

Levinas talked about the fear of alterity, the fear of otherness and in some way, it is also the fear of the unknown. Calasanz added to this in his discussion of the film Serbis and he said that the challenge is to keep moving on. The question there is this: but where? Alan, portrayed by Coco Martin, answered this in the film’s ending. He ran away from the Family movie house and into the unknown. The viewers of the film were left to think about where he went but the audience was left with this certainty: he ran away into the unknown.
The film maintained the theme of circles. Literally speaking, there were a lot of circular things in the film and figuratively speaking, the characters in the film were stuck in a loop. Levinas calls this the Law of the I and in it, one is stuck in a form of relating that is cyclical. It always goes back to itself and does not extend to the Other. The film’s characters were stuck in a vicious cycle of living a bohemian kind of life. To break the Law of the I, one has to experience a certain trauma and this shock comes from relating with the Other (as truly an Other). Here the Law of the Other comes in and in this way of relating, it is no longer cyclical. The title of the film is ironic in this sense. Serbis translates as an action of doing or helping the other but the film doesn’t portray the spirit of serbis (for the other). It portrays a Serbis to itself. The loop being repeatedly shown in the film may be likened to the i l ya. The loop prevents one from going out and much like in i l ya where the I does not assert it’s being an I. It is only in the appearance of the Other, a traumatic experience, that the I is shocked and brought out of itself into something else (taking up responsibility perhaps).

Sir Calasanz goes into the topic of the future, which possesses a nature of uncertainty. Future may entail disappointments and breakups and they will hurt. And the hurt will be normal. It’s what one does after the hurt. Then when one has decided to go beyond the hurt, one will be able to escape the loop. The film shows this breakaway when Alan decides to run away at the end of the film.


In the end of it all, one is called to escape the vicious loop. Breaking away from it is never easy nor painless. The Other beckons the I to go out and run. The future is full of uncertainty but letting oneself be trapped in the loop of things does no good. One must rise above this loop or this i l ya and into a being in service of Others.

See With Your Heart

by Victoria Rosso

I once heard someone say, “We depend on our eyes too much… use your heart to enjoy life.”

This reminds me of a trust exercise I once did at a training program where everyone was paired off and told to take turns being blindfolded while the other partner leads. The partners were not allowed to speak to each other and the leader was told to give the blindfolded a variety of unique experiences as they explored around the city of Shenzhen.

During this exercise I was able to connect with my partner as “face”, as Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas would say. My partner and I could not relate using sight or words, only an utter trust and responsibility to one another. Once the blindfolds went on, physical appearance, nationality, age, gender, first impressions and initial judgments didn’t matter anymore. Context became insignificant and only the pure experience of one another became of value.

When I was blindfolded, my partner was the only thing guiding me. I had no control over anything that happened. Not only was I forced to give my partner complete trust as he led me around the city center, I was also forced to relate to every experience using my senses of touch, smell, and hearing. Without being able to use my eyes to understand what was going on around me, I was forced to reflect deeper in my thoughts and in my heart about what I was experiencing externally. I also had nothing to distract me from reflecting about what I was experiencing within me as well. I remember my fears and anxieties shifting to serenity when I understood that worrying about me did not help my partner lead me.

When it was my turn to lead, it was my responsibility and utmost priority to make sure my partner didn’t walk into anything or stumble and fall while blindfolded. It was also my responsibility to give him a rich experience of life while blindfolded. I didn’t once focus on my own needs, what I wanted to do, or on how others were looking at me and wondering why these crazy people were walking around the city blindfolded. I was in tune to when my partner was feeling anxious and tried to give him a sense of security. My responsibility was entirely for “The Other”.

I am so grateful for my sight, but I wish I could live each day as if I were blindfolded and forced to rely on my heart to experience and understand the world around me. I wish I could relate to everyone I encounter as if they were blindfolded and silently crying out to me for assistance.

Levinas’ philosophy states that we relate to The Other as “face” when we start to accept The Other in their humanity, and extend ourselves to these people not based on pretense. This relation to The Other can be practiced through pure attention and generosity, like how I was able to attend to the needs of my blindfolded partner simply by noticing his discomfort. We have to be in relation to others even when nothing is being explicitly said. The reward of this in the

exercise was a pure, mutual trusting relationship with my partner that lasted until the end of the training program. The Other has the capacity to impact us with a meaning apart from the one we gave them. It was my partners care for me when I was blindfolded that created an impact. My partner was able to invite, inspire, and draw me out of my fears and anxieties about being blindfolded through the experiences he shared with me during the exercise. Reflecting on the relationship we built through this simple exercise has shown me the importance of trust and responsibility in any relationship.


When we look at others only with our eyes we cannot fully experience their emotions, which motivate us to extend ourselves in order to care for their needs and desires. Depending on our heart allows us to perceive experiences and others on a deeper level, while the eyes can only perceive the external. Seeing with the heart penetrates through our initial judgments, and draws us out to be more than we ever thought we could be. We should depend less on our eyes and more on our hearts, and life and relationships will be that much more rich, meaningful and enjoyable in the most profound way.

Levinas and King Lear: On the Infinity of Love

by Alec Abarro

King Lear is one of my favorite Shakespearean tragedies. It opens as the King Lear, wanting to retire, holds a contest between his three daughters so he can decide how to divide his kingdom between them. Yet what kind of contest does the old king hold? King Lear’s idea was to give the largest portion of his kingdom to the daughter who loves him the most. Each daughter must give a speech in front of an audience on how much she loves the king—her father.

Immediately, we see something off here. Can love really be quantified with words? And moreso, knowing that that there is a price depending on how eloquently well you display your love, and having ostentatious display in front and an audience poisons the purity of the emotion and the bond your have with your father. By placing love in a context of competition, love decays. In fact, King Lear’s only good daughter, the one who truly loves him, says to herself:

CORDELIA

(aside) Then poor Cordelia!
And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s
More ponderous than my tongue.

Cordelia pities herself, since she knows this “game of love” is not something she can win, or want to participate it. Yet, Cordelia also acknowledges that she isn’t so pitiable, for she recognizes the infinity of love, and the inability of language to entirely express the richness of the affection, and most especially, the bond she has with her father. So when King Lear calls her, Cordelia can only remark, “Nothing, my Lord.”

“Nothing?” King Lear asks, baffled. Cordelia repeats her answer, “Nothing.” Yet the old king urges her on, How? Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.” Cordelia replies:

CORDELIA

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
According to my bond, no more nor less.

Cordelia beautifully echoes her earlier notion of the richness of the being of love,

“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.”

In my own words, Cordelia is saying,

I cannot lift my affections for it is too rich and too heavy for the pull of language!

King Lear doesn’t see the truth of Cordelia’s love, even if he knows that Cordelia is the daughter who loves him most, all because King Lear is too interested in display. Unknown to himself, the old king has totalized and reduced the love of the daughter who loved him truly.

His good servant Kent warns him:

KENT

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,
Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.

Kent gives us the image of a container. A full container when tapped, makes little or no sound. While an empty container when tapped, reverbs and echoes. The three daughters, the older two, having an empty heart, yielded a loud display of eloquence. So when King Lear knocked on the hollow hearts of Goneril and Regan, so did their words echoed loudly, telling us that they contained no substance, only barren words; and when King Lear knocked on Cordelia, whose heart is brimming and true, she barely yielded a sound at all.

Let us recall the secret of the fox, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Or in King Lear’s case, what is essential is inaudible to the ear. In life, we learn that the most important things are always found beyond the senses.

So what did King Lear do? He disowned and banished the only daughter who loved him. The same fate happened to his good, loyal servant Kent. How did they respond? Kent, knowing full well that Cordelia married the King of France, informs a nearby French camp of King Lear’s plight brought about by the cruelty of his two elder daughters. Kent learns that the French already had dispatched an army, lead on by Cordelia, to take back King Lear’s kingdom and save her father. Kent also takes on a disguise to tend to the disheveled King Lear wandering in a storm, completely afflicted by madness. Despite everything, Cordelia and Kent, driven by love and loyalty, still went out of themselves and took on a responsibility for King Lear.

In the beginning, the reason for King Lear’s retirement was that he wants to enjoy all the benefits of being King but without the responsibility that comes along with it, and this self-interestedness caused a war and the deaths of the people around him. Kent could only look on as King Lear died, who—in a brief moment of sanity—held the dead body of his daughter, Cordelia.

LEAR

And my poor fool is hanged.—No, no, no life?
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? Oh, thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never.—

If King Lear had recognized the infinite and his responsibility for the Other as father, as King, and as a human being, would all have ended on a much happier note?

Wasting Time With The People

by Jeanne Peralta

This morning we had a brief run-through of the whole course when we reviewed the thesis statements. As I went through the day, I had experiences that made me reflect, and they eventually led me to realize how people play a significant role in our lives by simply being there for us. It makes sense now why Levinas gave so much importance to the Other, or the people around us; the people we encounter. To me, the point about the importance of the Other in our lives finally hit home.

You see, I’ve always been the type of person who’s very conscious of her time. I was always aware of the requirements I need to pass, the exams I have to study for, and in my mind I would schedule every part of my day and see how I can accomplish my deliverables as a college student. I knew I was the type who needed a lot of preparation time for anything, and I become anxious when I feel like I haven’t prepared enough for a certain test or spent as much time to reflect and write a good paper.

In the second semester of my sophomore year I had half-day classes everyday, and I took this opportunity to spend my afternoons reading the required readings, writing papers and reviewing for exams—almost every day. I skipped having block lunches and bonding with my peers, because I would always think of the extra work I can accomplish if I skip bonding time. I felt that my hard work paid off because I got good grades. I felt responsible and accomplished. But sooner than I expected, I became lonely. One afternoon when I decided to rejoin my block for lunch, I felt a certain distance I didn’t realize I had created. I haven’t spent as much time with them as I used to, and now they have formed a sort of clique I know I can’t be part of. Looking back, I remembered something Sir Garcia mentioned in class, “sometimes, you need to waste time with people.” You can’t always withdraw yourself to do ‘useful’ work; you need people and ‘distractions’ to keep you sane and happy.

Last semester I had a mirror experience of having almost no regular interaction with my block mates. Being in third year, we had fewer classes in common, and often I’d find myself alone during lunch, finishing long history readings by myself. Yes I had a lot of time by myself to finish the things I needed to do, but most of the time, I wasn’t so happy. In class I learned that there’s a philosophical term for being sad when you’re alone, that is, “The Solitude of Being.”

Even though I’m an introvert, I’ve discovered that what gives me energy and that sense of “being alive” is spending time with people. I noticed that during the days when I had a lot of ‘people interactions’, those are the days when I’m most happy. This semester proved to be lot better than the previous ones because I had a regular group of lunch buddies. We belonged to the same classes before and after lunch almost everyday, so we’d spend most of our lunch breaks together. Some of them were my block mates, others my course mates. Besides eating lunch, we crammed papers together; we loved playing UNO cards; we reviewed each other for orals, but most of the time, we just talked about ourselves and life in general. Little by little we got to know more about each other;

what food this person likes or is allergic to; what movies we enjoyed watching in common; what plans we had about family and marriage and even what characteristics we’re looking for in our future spouse. We also talked about the heartbreaks, the sensitive issues, and the things that mattered a lot to us.

Whenever one is absent from the group we’d always ask where he/she is; in short, we became clingy to one another. And a while ago as we were having lunch, I realized that this may just be the last lunch we’ll have together this semester. We’re already finished with most of our classes; all that’s left are final papers and exams. I don’t know what classes we will be in next semester, or if we’ll have common breaks to have lunch dates like these again.

It struck me how time flies so fast, and I became sentimental (though I kept it to myself). I realized how grateful I am for these people I got to spend time with. Their company had kept me sane throughout the hell weeks we’ve survived this semester; their words of encouragement helped me go on when I was at my lowest; their presence gave me the assurance that I’ll always have people to hold on to for support, and I did the same for them.

Conversations with them always take me by surprise, because I get amazed at how talented or how good or how loyal this person is. It’s true what Levinas says, that the other will always reach out to us and surprise us, taking us out of ourselves. We can’t live by ourselves, and we don’t simply live for ourselves. We’re created as social beings for a reason. Though we have our own rich interiorities, there will always be gaps that the Other can fill through our encounters with them. Sometimes when we’re too tired, it takes people to remind us of our worth because we cease to see it ourselves. And sometimes, especially during the difficult moments, their company is all we need.

All of these things reminded me how we should be grateful for every single person in our life, and the time we get to spend with them—because we don’t know what circumstances will be like the next time. We may never get to interact with them the way we do now. As the quote reminds us, “you may only pass this way once.” It’s good to be reminded that there’s more to life than fulfilling requirements; more importantly, life is about relationships. Every encounter with people is unique in itself. Every moment is a gift.

“When you spend time with people, it’s never wasted time.”

Connecting Deeper

by Kokoy Co

In my browsing online, I came across a tumblr blog online called the "Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows", which features original words created by a man. One of these words is called 'apomakrysmenophobia', and the meaning is as follows:

apomakrysmenophobia¹

n. fear that your connections with people are ultimately shallow, that although your relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would produce an emotional safety deposit box of low-interest holdings and uninvested windfall profits, which will indicate you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

This word is very evident from what I've seen and experienced. Throughout our lives we interact with a lot of different people. Some of them are friendships whereas others are work related. From our interactions with these people, we sometimes end up taking them for granted, as if they were part of the background, the scenery. Sometimes we laugh, we cry, we get mad with them. But at times, we aren't really into what we're doing with them. Sometimes, we aren't touched or we don't let ourselves be affected by what touched them, what impacted them. We just nod and take our time with them for granted.

The scary thing is that when we look back at these times and we realize that we weren't really invested in what we went through, it feels so lonely. This is my take on what is called "the solitude of being". We end up just looking at our point of view, what we take from events, and our connections with people all go back to us. Maybe that's why we think that our connections with people are ultimately shallow.

The teachings that Levinas is espousing may provide an insight in order to escape this feeling of "apomakrysmenophobia". When we go outside of ourselves and not just dwell on our perspectives on things, we end up having a bigger perspective of things. We look at other people and invest our time and connect with them on a deeper level; we experience them as Face. This goes beyond the superficial but relates to the person as a fellow human being. We choose to be responsible for the Other and do our best to be there for them. Of course if we do this, we are putting a lot of faith and trust in them, and they may not necessarily reciprocate. However in doing this, we form meaningful relationships with people and we understand who we are more clearly.
___________________________

¹Koenig, John. Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. N.p.. Web. 13 Mar 2014.


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Amour

by McMurphy Quito

Many European films have surprised me by their approach to narrative. Amour is one of those films that really stuck with me even after the movie.

The whole narrative was about the married life of Anne and Georges. The world they lived in changed when Anne has a stroke. Georges deals with it until she has another stroke that makes it even more difficult for both of them. Anne’s physical and mental deterioration has made Georges miserable and conflicted. But the shocking thing was when Georges decided to euthanize his wife out of the blue. Was it because he loved her and did not want to see her suffer? Or was it because he was tired of taking care of her? Or was it because he knew that’s what she wanted? The answer is vague and we may never know.

In relation to Levinas’s idea about the Other and seeing the Other as a Face, Georges has shown the audience the most extreme circumstance in which you can take care of the Other. Unlike Anne, Georges is physically well and very capable of living independently, yet he chooses to stay with her and take care of her. He showers her, dresser her up, soothes her pain, feeds her, and cater to all her needs. We see not only an act of kindness, but an act of going beyond oneself and reaching out to the Other. His actions extends out and affects Anne’s life. There was a point in the movie in which a nurse forcefully brushes Anne’s hair. Georges immediately fires her. Although the nurse was doing her job, she was only doing what she wanted (the way Anne’s hair to look). Her actions were more directed towards her. As for Georges, he does it for Anne.


The fact that Anne has become incapacitated, it’s amazing how Georges sees her as still his wife. He does not see an old woman, a burden, or someone who is just taking up space. Georges sees the Face in his wife because he is extending himself to her. He talks to her the same way before they were married. He holds and lifts her lovingly. He is being there for her. Despite the tragic ending, he has done all that he can humanly do to make his wife happy. And that represents what we can do for the Others in our lives.