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Lecture 1

I. Introduction
A. The Act of Philosophizing
- this course, Philosophy of Man or Philosophy of Human Person, is not simply a study of the
different philosophies of man, i.e. the different ideas or theories of the philosophers on man, or
human person.
- it aims primarily to initiate the students, to lead them to philosophize about themselves, about who
they are - human persons. As Fr. Roque Ferriols in the first text that we will use in our course
remarks: this course "does not teach what philosophy is but to try to give you a chance to
philosophize."
- The first thing that we will clarify in our course is what it means to philosophize. Or more
properly, what one does when one philosophizes since the act of philosophizing is easier to do
than to define like all other activities, e.g. basketball, dancing, etc.
- In order to get familiar with the act philosophizing,
- first, we will put it in the context of our day to day activities and experience.
- We will try to realize that philosophizing is at the heart of our common experiences and
activities.
- And we will use the article of Fr. Roque Ferriols, Insight, to help us realize this.
- In this article, Insight, Fr. Ferriols illustrates and explains to us that philosophizing has to
do primarily with having an insight and doing something about it. And having an insight
is one of most common experiences and activities that we have.
- then, we will use the article, The Philosophical Enterprise by John Kavanaugh to point out
that the act of philosophizing is deeply personal act. Through this article, we will try to grasp
that:
- I, myself, must get involved in this activity.
- I must not remain as a spectator, distant observer and inquirer, an audience or just letting
others do it for me.
- My personhood is at stake in the act of philosophizing: my liberation and my growth as a
human person.
- Lastly, we will discuss the place and importance of studying the different philosophers in the
deeply personal act of philosophizing. With the article of William of Luijpen, The
Authenticity of Philosophy, we hope to correct any attitude or view that considers the study of
philosophers' ideas as substitute for one's own philosophical activity.

1. "Insight" by Fr. Roque Ferriols, SJ


Introduction:
- the act of philosophizing, doing philosophy has to do with thinking, and the crucial element of
thinking is INSIGHT.
- thus, in order to understand the act of philosophizing, we have first to clarify what is insight.
- And in order to help us understand what insight is, we need to consider three things:
- The experience of having an insight
- What can we do with the insight
- Some cautions or notes when doing with insight

a. The Experience of Having an Insight


- having an insight is the most common experience of our day to day life.
- And Fr. Ferriols gives us three examples of having an insight to illustrate how common
this is and how it is to have an insight:
- The first two examples or illustrations are two extreme situations in our day to day
where one experiences having an insight:
- First: hearing and getting a joke
- Second: the experience of death
- The last has to do with how we come to grasp number, like #4

i. Hearing and Getting a Joke


- When we hear someone telling a joke, not everybody gets the joke, i.e. not everybody
laughs.
- Some will immediately laugh
- Others will take some time to get the joke: few seconds after, minutes, after, hours
after, days after, months after, years after…
- There might also be those who will not get the joke at all.
- Yet, all hear exactly the same words, from the same person, delivered in the same manner
with same gestures.
- Thus, getting the joke involves more than just hearing the words, it involves perceiving
more deeply than ordinary hearing with our ears. Perceiving deeply:
- perceiving which does not just involve our senses (though they play an important
role for without them, there can be no insight)
- but a kind of perceiving which involves our mind, our mental faculty:
- mental seeing, perceiving
- seeing with our mind
Insight
- As an act:
- An act of perceiving deeply, perceiving more than our senses, perceiving by
means of our mind, by our mental faculty, a higher faculty than the senses
- As an object
- What is perceived deeply, what is perceived by the mind
- The deeper aspect or reality of things experienced, which is beyond and distinct
from what is presented by the senses.
- E.g.: point of the joke, the connection between the words.
- Oftentimes, we are not aware of the object (what we perceive deeply with our
mind), but we know that we perceive something though we could not say what it
is - IMPLICIT OR PRECONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE
- There is something that makes us laugh but we could explicitly say what it
is exactly
- There is something that makes us cry, ecstatic, consoled but we could not
just name it.

ii. Juan's Experience of Death


- Juan's experience of his grandfather's death:
1. received the news of the death and came to see his grandfather's corpse
2. during the wake, he remembered/recalled his personal memories of his grandfather
- the earliest memory he had of his grandfather was that he was already old, weak
and shriveled for when he was born his grandpa was already 77 years old.
- Thus, all his personal memories of his grandpa were that he was old, shriveled,
and weak.
3. after burial,
- his mother handed him his grandfather's memoir: things, pictures that his
grandpa left. Through these memoirs, he learned about his grandpa in his
younger days, that during the revolution, he was young, full of vigor, full of
spirits
- from the tales of her aunts, he learned that his grandpa in his youth was so
dashing and quite popular among the ladies
4. comparing his life, with the life of his grandpa which he learned from his own
personal remembrance, from the mementos left by his grandpa and from the tales of
aunts, Juan got an insight (he perceived into something).
- he got an insight into:
- the rhythm/cycle of life and death of his father
- the rhythm/cycle of life and death of his own life
- the rhythm/cycle of life and death of the human race
- man starts his life full of vigor then withers away and dies, but only after he has
left behind sons and daughters who start life a new with vigor and enthusiasm.
- Seeing this rhythm of life and death, spiral cycle of life and death involves more
than ordinary perceiving, but already involves deeper way of perceiving, i.e.
perceiving with one mind.
- Unlike our experience of getting a joke, Juan's insight
1. Comes through gathering of his experiences
- his own personal experiences of his grandpa, of himself (both in the present and
the past)
- what he knows of his grandpa through the things he left behind
- the experiences of others (his aunts) regarding his grandpa
2. Takes some time for it to come; it is a result of a prolong-process of thinking.
3. Leads to another deeper insight.

iii. Number
- to count things, to know the number of things is another illustration of having an insight.
- How do I come to count things, how do we come to know number?
- First, I must consider the things I count in a particular way, under particular aspect.
- E.g.:
- I "see" a Toyota, Mercedez Benz, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi. Or I "see" a dog,
cat, a mosquito.
- I must look at them as car, in order to count them as four, I must consider
them as animal to count them as three
- If I consider them as Toyota or as dog, I can only count one.
- perceiving things under certain aspect without denying or affirming is what we
call as abstraction
- abstraction is a form of insight
- Then, I prescind from the fact that they are cars or animals, but simply as four.
- Here, I do not only abstract certain aspects of the things I count, but I have
abstracted from the things in themselves as dogs, animals, cars, etc.
- Here we have a higher level of abstraction, a second degree of abstraction
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- Thus, the simple insight into the meaning of four is seen to involve a rather
complicated preparation involving at least two abstractions.
- According to Aristotle, there are three levels of abstraction:
- First Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as dogs, cats, car, wood, etc. (Natural
Sciences)
- Second Degree of Abstraction: we consider things in terms of number (Mathematics)
- Third Degree of Abstraction: we consider things as Being (Metaphysics)
- These two extreme situations or illustrations and the case of counting things show that having
an insight is part of our day to day experience, something that happens in our ordinary life,
from the most trivial to the most serious or even tragic event of our life.
- And insight has to do with seeing deeply with our mind into the deeper aspects of reality, of
things that are presented in our senses, in our experience.
- The point is that we could see something more if we just learn to think, try to think over our
experience, and not simply experience.
- As the fox would say to the Little Prince, "what is essential is invisible to the eye."

b. What can we do with the insight


- After having an insight, we can do something about it, i.e. we can articulate, clarify and
deepen our understanding of our insight.
- Fr. Ferriols mentions 3 techniques in doing something with the insight: metaphor,
analysis, and other technique

i. Metaphor
- use of something familiar, ordinary to articulate, clarify, and deepen what is not familiar
and ordinary.
- E.g.
- Juan and Homer use the ordinary, familiar phenomenon/experience of the fall and
return of leaves to articulate, clarify and deepen his insight on the rhythm of life and
death of the generations of men and women
- Metaphor is very important because:
1. it fixes the insight in the mind
2. it sharpens the insight in the sense that:
- it clarifies the insight
- it makes us understand the insight more deeply
3. it enables us to understand the ordinary and familiar more deeply.

ii. Analysis
- We use analysis also to articulate, clarify and deepen our understanding of the insight
- analysis:
- breaking down into parts
- breaking down the insight into the different elements or dimensions which constitute
it.
- E.g.:
- If I want to clarify the point of a joke, to understand it, to be able articulate and
deliver it more effectively, I could break down the joke into different parts and see
how each part is related to one another:
1. Knock, Knock
2. Who's There?
3. Mary Rose
4. Mary Rose who?
5. Me Relos ka ba? Anong oras na?
- And I would discover, it would be made clear to me:
- that the point of the joke is this: Mary Rose and Me Relos which sound different
are made to sound alike by mispronouncing "me relos" into "me reros" as a
Japanese would.
- one of the tools in analyzing an insight is conceptual analysis
- an insight as an idea is made up of constitutive ideas. E.g.:
- idea of a man contains the idea of rational, animal,
- idea of triangle contains the idea of 3 sides, 3 angles, 180 degrees
- when I break down the idea into its constitutive ideas and see their relationship, then
I do conceptual analysis:
- e.g. idea of the rhythm of life and death
- could be understood in terms of biological aspect (i.e. in terms of physical
growth and decay)
- could also be understood with regard to the cycle of life and death of the
human spirit

iii. Other Techniques


- according to Paul Ricoeur:
- Symbol
- Myth
- Speculation
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Some cautions or notes when doing with insight

i. Analysis could desiccate an insight


- analysis could dry up, fossilize the insight
- in other words, insight could cease to be alive, to be meaningful and relevant as one
subjects it to analysis.
ii. It is important to return to the concrete fullness of the original insight and insight should
permeate the whole process of doing with an insight. Why?
- to vitalize the insight
- to keep it alive, meaningful and relevant
- to prevent it from being fossilized, from being dried up.
- To check whether the analysis, metaphor or other technique of doing with insight really
leads to a clarification, articulation and deeper understanding of the insight
iii. Insight is inexhaustible
- one can explore and do something with the insight in variety of ways in order to clarify,
articulate and understand it
- but the insight itself is rich, superabundant such that it could never be exhausted by any
techniques; none of the them could fully and completely clarify, articulate, and
understand the insight.
- In every doing with an insight, there is a tension between: sense of knowledge/light and
sense of ignorance/darkness
iv. The richness of insight is the richness of reality itself
- insight brings us to the very heart of reality, to the deeper aspect of reality
- reality itself is superabundantly rich, inexhaustible
- thus, the richness of insight points to, indicated the richness of reality itself
- reality as mystery
- there is a tension between light and darkness in our knowledge, understanding,
appropriation of reality.
 In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a Post-Modern World by Jerome A. Miller
 “Insight” by Bernard Lonergan

2. "The Philosophical Enterprise" by John Kavanaugh


a. Introduction: False Notions of a Philosopher and Doing Philosophy
i. False Images/Caricature of a Philosopher
1. Isolated Thinker
- one who is confined, isolated within the walls of his rooms or sitting on a ivory
tower
- one who tries to make sense of the world which he is isolated from and which he
alone understands.
2. Great System Builder
- one who has built a great system of thought but now is relegated to obscure footnotes
and erudite commentaries
- one has to cite him in one's footnote in order to be considered learned, scholarly but
in fact he is difficult to understand.
3. Academician
- one who teaches courses in philosophy which seem to be not in touch with present
pressing realities and to be irrelevant to the demands of the day to day life.

ii. False notions in how a person conducts the discipline of philosophy


1. memorizing answers to questions which he himself never has asked or has ceased to ask
or which should have never been asked or never cares to ask
- trying to remember what the philosopher said rather than trying to understand what
drove the philosopher to say those things in the first place
- consequently, philosophy courses will turn out being a big mistake on all levels:
experientially, pedagogically, and humanistically
2. isolated from other disciplines and sometimes reduced to the same level as other
disciplines
- study of philosophy in general, and of philosophy of man in particular is conducted
in isolation from social/behavioral and natural sciences, and other disciplines
- thus, there is little connection between philosophy and history, myth, literature or arts
- Why? some want philosophy to be "science", a respectable discipline with subject
and credential of its own. But as a consequence, it reduces philosophy on the same
level as other disciplines.
3. Being concerned with the problems of "the one and many", the development of logical
atomism, and linguistic or metaphysical analyses than with the fundamental questions of
meaning and the horizon of his possibilities as a man.
- to correct these false notions of a philosopher and of how philosophizing is to be conducted,
let us try to see philosophy as a Discipline of Questioning, Discipline of Liberation, and
Discipline of Personhood.

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b. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Questioning
- to understand the act of philosophizing, we must find out and understand first what
drives, moves, leads one to philosophize as sheer human exigency, i.e. very necessary to
human existence.
- What drives a person to philosophize is the inescapable dynamism and capacity of the
human person himself to question and to seek answers to questions he himself raises.
- In short, at the root of all philosophizing is the pre-eminent personal affair of question-
asking.
i. Queston-Asking
1. Question-asking is very common, at the heart of our day to day experience
- we could not escape, pass the day without asking question, without being confronted
by a question
- we could not start nor finish the day without some questions
- Why? Because of our desire, our dynamism to:
- To be confronted by things outside of us (Experience)
- Know, understand the things we experience (Understanding): What is it?
- Find out the truth of what we come to understand (Judgment): Is it?
- Make decisions for what we do/act (Decision/Action): What should I do?
2. Different Levels of Question
2.1 Horizontal/Superficial Questions
- questions of survival
- Where will I find money to pay my rent?
- What will I do to save myself from trouble?
- practical questions
- What will I do tomorrow?
- How do I use the computer?
- What shirt, shoes, pant will I wear?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of VFA?
- scientific questions: Questions of facts and making sense of certain, particular
empirical reality
- How does the sun produce its heat and light?
- How does a computer work?
- Are there intelligent life-forms outside of our planet?
- Why is there a rainbow?
2.2 Vertical/Depth Questions
- questions of ultimate purpose and meaning
- questions of significance and meaning that enables us to perceive order and
harmony in the world as a whole, our place in the universe.
- E.g.:
- Where does the world as a whole come from?
- Why is there existence rather than non-existence?
- Why am I here? What is my place in the universe?
- Where am I going?
- question of truth/reality
- Is what I perceive, understand true? What makes it true?
- question of value
- Is it good? What makes it good? What makes us truly happy?
- These are ultimate, fundamental questions in life:
- deeper questions, questions we ask even if our superficial questions are
answered; questions to which the superficial questions bring us ultimately if
we pursue the inner dynamics of questioning
- questions whose answers have bearing on our superficial questions,
questions which are the bases/foundations of our horizontal questions.

ii. Personal Affair of Asking Depth-Question


1. I myself have come to these depth-questions
- I myself see them as questions, as problems
- They are really questions/issues for me.
2. The depth-questions are really of personal value to me
- the answer to these questions are of great value to me: significant, important, would
make a difference in my life
- such that these questions:
- consume my entire person: my intellect, my will, my effort, my time, my body
- no let up till I find the answers
3. Starting point of all the depth-questions is my own person.
- behind, at the center and the beginning of all depth questions: questions about
MYSELF, AS A HUMAN PERSON
- Question of Meaning and Purpose: Why am I here? What can I hope for?
- Question of Truth: Who am I really? What are my potentialities? My uniqueness?
- Question of Value: What is my good, my happiness? What should I do? What is the
criterion in deciding what is good or not, my happiness or not?
iii. Conclusion: Greatness of philosophy lies in perpetual questioning
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- philosophy does not begin with an answer/insight but a question
- it continues because we still continue to ask questions, particularly depth-questions
- and the answers to our questions do not stop the question-asking but spur one to further
search for a better answer, to ask for further, deeper or different questions.
- Thus, philosophy is music of the fugue: incessant counterpoint of questioning and
answering.

c. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Liberation


- philosophizing as a discipline of questioning is a discipline of liberation, i.e. in asking
questions, philosophy leads to liberation:
- liberation from encapsulation, conditioning, determination
- liberation to the horizon of possibilities
- liberation to affirm one's possibilities and one's determination
i. Questioning liberates one from historical, sociological, psychological encapsulation,
determination or conditioning
1. Historical, Sociological and Psychological encapsulation, determination, conditioning
- Historical
- what am I know, what can I do, what I am doing, how I value things, how I see
things could be determined or conditioned in large extent by the past events, by
what happened in the past
- past events: personal, family, society.
- Sociological encapsulation, determination, conditioning
- the kind of society that I live in, the culture, the social structures I find myself
in affect in significant degree to the point even of conditioning, determining and
encapsulizing my seeing, doing and valuing.
- Psychological encapsulation, determination, conditioning
- refers to how my genes, experiences of pain and pleasure, neurons, among
others affect my seeing, doing and valuing.
2. By questioning, I am liberated from these conditioning, encapsulation and determination
- Why? By questioning, I am able to place myself at a distance from these types of
conditioning, determination or encapsulation, such that they no longer determine at
least in the same degree as before I have begun to question
- By questioning, I could say, "wait a minute", to the present situation: the present
conditioning, determination
- In this way, I could resist the conditioning, the currents, the pull; in effect, I revolt
against the historical, sociological and psychological conditioning.
ii. Questioning opens me to the horizon of possibilities
1. What was seen before as a pure necessity (that which could not be otherwise, in which I
have no choice) is now seen upon questioning as a possibility which I could choose to
reject or accept.
2. Other possibilities, possible patterns, options which I never have thought before open
before me.
iii. Questioning leads one to Affirmation
1. Affirmation of the Future as Creative Self-Project
- the possibilities that are opened before him/her in questioning, he must affirm, he
must choose, must take responsibility of as his/her project, through which he shapes,
determines himself/herself.
- Only in this way, he takes responsibility to determine/shape himself/herself, what
kind of self/person he will be in the future (future self-project), rather than being
determined by one's history, society and psychological make-up.
2. Affirmation of the Past, of my determinations
- Questioning leads one to confront the past and embrace/accept/own/possess the past
as his/her past
- Why is this very important?
- The past is part of one's identity though I do not have to be determined by it
- The possibilities of the present that are opened to me and among which I must
choose to determine my self-project are the results of the past.
- Thus, to embrace the past is also to embrace my present identity and my future
self-project.

d. Philosophizing as the Discipline of Personhood


- philosophizing becomes an authentic discipline of questioning and of liberation when it is
discipline of personhood, i.e.:
- personal task
- at the root of one's being a person
- important in my growth as a person
i. Philosophizing as a Personal Task
1. Personal Affair of Asking-Question
- I must myself personally ask the depth-question
- The personal questions and their answers are of great value to me
- The questions have to do with my person, my identity
2. Personal Search for the answer, for the truth to these depth-questions
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- I myself will look/find for the answers to these depth-questions
- I could not delegate this to other, nor just be a spectator to the searching-activity
- In my personal search, I must not be content:
- with sheer conjecture,
- with sentimentalism: feeling good and nice
- with philosophical warm blanket
- just with pursuing relevance
- utmost aim: pursuing truth:
- be it palatable or not
- be it a comfort or threat/discomfort
- my personal search for the answer involves:
a. exacting, careful, disciplined reflection of my own experience and thoughts
b. philosophical dialogue:
- I will be open to other philosophers' experiences and insights
- Study works of others
c. study also of other disciplines
- open to other things which might be vehicle for finding answers to my
depth-questions about myself: myth, history, literature, natural sciences,
behavioral sciences.

3. Seeing the answers to these questions or the truth myself


- in finding some answers to my depth-questions, I myself see, realize
- the truth of these answers
- that they are really true to me
- they really answer my personal depth-questions

ii. Philosophizing is at the root of one's being a person


- the human person is driven by his personhood to philosophize:
- to ask depth-questions
- to seek/find answers for them
- to see himself the truth of the answers he has found
- Why? because of the nature of his person as homo viator (man on the way)
- His present situation - the situation he finds himself at the moment:
- not yet complete, not yet finished-product
- not yet sufficient with himself
- contingent
- finite truth, happiness, justice (Pascal)
- yet not content, satisfied with what he is: restless, insatiable
- he is not happy, at rest, content with he is and has at the moment
- he desires, longs from something more than what he is and has at the moment
- Quixotic man: dreaming the impossible
- Alexandrian man: crying because there is no more to conquer
- Augustinian man: ever restless until my heart rests in Thee.
- Pascalian man: great abyss within that cannot be filled by anything finite.
- Dostoyevski's moral hero
- Thus, he asks more questions, he searches, demands for more answers about himself,
about his world.

iii. In philosophizing, one's personhood, one's growth as a person is at stake


- when I stop philosophizing (to ask depth-questions, to seek/find answers for them and to
see himself the truth of the answers he has found),
- I become determined, conditioned, encapsulized by my history, society, and
psychological make-up
- I refuse to be open to my own possibilities, and take responsibility of them and
myself as creative self-project
- Remain satisfied with the present and stagnate, arresting my growth as a person.

Conclusion/Summary:
- questioning, then, is the starting point and the continuing force of all philosophy
- questioning leads one to find answers, and finding the answers he himself must see the truth
of those answers
- but in finding answers to the depth-questions primarily about himself: his identity and action,
he will not reach a point of no return; rather leads him back to new questions, leading to a
new search, new answers, so on and so forth.
- In so doing, he is liberated from those which enslave, he becomes open to his own
possibilities, and takes responsibility of himself as a creative self-project

3. The Authenticity of Philosophy (William Luijpen)


a. Introduction
i. The Innumerable Contradictions of Philosophy
- for 2,500 years, man has been philosophizing and the result is innumerable and
contradictory claims and systems of philosophy.
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- much older than Modern Science, yet unable to formulate even a few theses (statements)
which are unanimously accepted by all philosophers as observed by the philosophers
themselves like the Sceptics, Rene Descartes, Hume, Kant
- not a single thesis is not denied by another philosopher in the past, present, or/and future.

ii. Reactions Leading to Inauthentic Philosophy


1. Scientism: Rejecting Philosophy and Absolutizing Physical/Empirical Sciences
- Unlike philosophy, Physical/Empirical Sciences:
- Very successful discipline
- Better knowledge of the physical world
- Fruitful knowledge: leads to mastery/control of the physical world
- Greatly contributed in making life better
- Highly Verifiable/Intersubjective Knowledge
- Because of these characteristics of Physical Sciences, some are led to reject
philosophy and to absolutize Science (Scientism). How? By claiming/believing that:
1. Science alone is the only genuine and reliable source of knowledge, not
philosophy or any other means.
- what can be known and is known by Science constitutes alone as the true
knowledge
- knowledge, pure and simple, is the knowledge offered by Science
- here, Science, already claims and decrees, not about the physical world but
claims and decrees on Theory of Knowledge: the possibility, extent and
validity of knowledge
2. Science alone discloses reality such that whatever cannot be disclosed or are not
disclosed by Science is not real.
- here, reality is equated or reduced with the reality accessible to Science
- from its epistemological claim, Science is led to an ontological claim: A
Theory of Reality: The Structure and Constitution of Reality.
- Scientism (absolutizing Science) is not a science, not scientific
- It already claims about things beyond the competence/realm of physical sciences
- It deals with or addresses some things beyond its tasks, namely: Theory of
Knowledge, Theory of Reality
- This is already the work of philosophy.
- Thus, in rejecting philosophy, it philosophizes although in a contradictory way,
an inauthentic philosophy
- Scientific yet unscientific
- Verifiable yet unverifiable
- Rejects philosophy but already takes a philosophical position on the issues
of Knowledge and Reality

2. Scepticism
- rejection of all claims of knowledge of reality, all claims as doubtful, not only
philosophical claims, but all claims
- this is itself is a philosophy, a philosophical position/view about knowledge and
reality
- yet a self-contradictory philosophy; thus, an inauthentic philosophy
- claim: all knowledge is doubtful
- yet this claim is also a form of knowledge
- therefore, this claim (that all knowledge is doubtful) is also doubtful
- this shows that the conclusion falsifies the first premise; thus the argument
contradicts itself.
- Any rejection of philosophy (Scientism, Scepticism and others) is itself a philosophy
though a bad one
- To ridicule philosophy, to laugh at philosophy is itself a philosophy

3. Dogmatism
- claims that of the different philosophical systems, one can be the philosophy, is the
philosophy
- thus, one looks for THE philosophy:
- in the past: turns to different philosophies or philosophers in the past
- in the present: turns to every new philosophy or system to whether at last it
present THE philosophy
- in the future: expects that THE philosophy will be formulated in the future.
- This expectation, of course, meets with disappointments, frustrations, and
disillusions. Why?
- Because there was, is and will be never such thing as THE philosophy

b. Authentic Philosophy as a Personal Task


i. Philosophizing: not an attempt to learn a philosophical system
- few geniuses in history laid down their thoughts in grandiose masterpieces and systems
like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Whitehead
- to philosophize authentically is not simply to learn one of these philosophical systems
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- not just to talk about, study/learn with or without proof:
- the questions they asked
- the answers the found and proposed
- and these questions and answers are in the first place not my own personal questions
nor could their answers mean anything to me nor make a difference in my life, nor
make me more human, more of a person I am meant to be.
- In short, learning their truth, but not my truth.

ii. Philosophizing is authentic only when it is a personal affair


1. Personal Affair of Question-Asking
- I myself personally raise the depth questions
- I myself see the importance of these questions and their answers to me
- It is myself that I question
2. Personal Affair of Searching the Answer to these questions
- I myself look diligently for the answers, overcoming any obstacles, subjecting
myself to certain disciplines
3. Personal Affair of Seeing the Truth of the answers
- I myself see the truth of the answers I found.
- Only in this way can philosophizing be authentic philosophizing, i.e.:
- Philosophize in an original and personal way
- My own philosophy, not just any other philosophy

iii. Philosophizing is authentic when it one's own life that raises the philosophical questions
- man has to live his own life, determine his own action
- he is responsible for his own life and his actions
- he is only human, a person only when he himself lives his own life and determines
his own actions
- others could not live my life for me nor I could simply live the life of others
- I could not let others determine my life and actions, nor determine others' lives and
actions
- To live my own life, to determine my own action is to live according to my own basic
convictions about:
- Life/Realtiy
- Myself
- Values
- To come to my own basic convictions, I myself have to discover them:
- I myself ask the questions about them
- I myself seek the answers
- I myself have to see the truth of the answers
- Thus, I myself can discover my own basic convictions from within.

c. Authentic Philosophy as a Speaking Word


- though authentic philosophy is a deeply personal affair, there are already concluded
philosophies, i.e. thoughts laid down in a system by great genius of the past, like Plato,
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas among others.
- What is the role of constituted philosophies in the philosophizing as a personal
task/affair? This we will answer:
- First, by clarifying the nature of these constituted philosophies. This we will do in
this section.
- Then, by clarifying the proper relationship between my philosophizing as a personal
affair with these constituted philosophies. This we will do in the next section.

i. Philosophy as Personal Expression of Particular Experience of Reality


1. Philosophy as Speaking Word, not Talking Words
- talking:
- ideas are just set of ideas
- which we must relate with one another
- which we understand in themselves as ideas/ statements/words
- speaking:
- ideas are expressions of the philosopher's personal experience of reality
- experience:
- subject presence to reality: personal presence of who I am to reality, my
opening up to reality
- reality presence to the subject: presence of reality to the person; unfolding,
manifestation, unveiling of reality to the person.
- Ideas try to express, articulate what the person sees himself deeply in reality,
what he himself experiences, his particular insight of the wealth of reality
2. Not All Speaking Word is Philosophy
- there are different ways of experiencing reality, i.e.
- of being present to reality
- of reality being present to me
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- not all of these are philosophy, or philosophical experience. E.g.:
- Rose, a beautiful beach:
- Economist
- Lover
- Theologian
- Scientist
- Philosopher
- School
- Student
- Teacher
- Administrator
- Janitor
- A philosopher is someone:
- who sees particular aspects of reality, in a particular depth
- who experiences reality in a particular way
- who is present to reality in a particular way
- to whom reality is present in a distinct way
- philosophy (philosophers ideas, theories, etc.) is an articulation, expression of this
particular way of experiencing the world/reality.
- E.g.: Plato's Philosophy: Theory of Forms
- As solidified thought it may sound abstract
- But it is really an expression of Plato's particular experience, insight of
reality.
ii. End of Philosophical Formation and Training
- not just:
- drilling the aspirant into different philosophical theses or ideas
- memorizing the different philosophical theses and understanding them in themselves
- but the ideas/theses/solidified thoughts are just means:
- to make us personally see/experience what the philosopher has seen, has experienced
of reality
- to make us enter into a whole new world we have never seen or even suspected
before
- analogy of index finger as a sign

d. Authentic Philosophy as a Common Task


i. Authentic Philosophy as both a personal task and a common task
- Philosophizing to be authentic should both:
- A personal task/affair
- A personal affair of asking questions, seeking answers, and seeing the truth of
the answers I have found.
- Philosophizing about my person, philosophizing arising from my own personal
situation
- A common task
- Demands the study of the works, thoughts of the philosophers
- Why?
- I am inserted in a history of thought, which is not purely personal, which I
have not made myself.
- I do not start from zero, from scratch in my own philosophizing for other
have thought before me.
- I am carried by their thought; I am in the stream of thought established by
tradition
- at least because of the language I speak
- and because of the ideas in this language which permeate me
- Thus, impossible for me to think without tradition
- Problem:
- How do I philosophize in such a way that we do not compromise either:
- The act of philosophizing as a personal task
- The act of philosophizing as a common task
ii. Constituted Philosophy makes us sensitive and gives us access to the wealth of reality
which they great philosophers have perceived and which otherwise we could not have
perceived.
- philosophers have long been dead and their own particular experiences of reality have
long passed.
- Yet these experiences found expression, are embodied, contained in their philosophy
which is a speaking word.
- Through their works, we have access to their unique experience of reality and through
them, their own experiences of reality could also be ours.
- Without their experiences, it would be difficult for us to come to those experiences. E.g.:
- without Plato,
- our experience and conception of reality would be trivial and materialistic
- the totality of being could not be experienced and understood in its great variety
and levels, at least when we reflect philosophically upon reality
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- without Augustine, we would not have been sensitive and understood the meaning of
our restlessness of being-in-the-world.
- Without Marx, Darwin, Freud, we could not have been corrected of our exaggerated
spiritualism.
- Therefore, they make it possible for us to have personal experience of reality, to make us
sensitive to the superabundance/wealth contained in the totality of all that is.

iii. What the great philosophers saw/experienced remains fruitful and source of inspiration
- works of great philosophers are considered classical not only because they make us
see/experience what they saw/experience which otherwise we could have been blind of.
- But at the same time they inspire us to see/experience over and beyond what they saw
- They further inspire us to ask questions, further beyond, deeper than they have asked
- To find/seek answers beyond what they found
- To see ourselves the truth of the answers beyond what they themselves saw.
- Yet as every philosopher was struck/awed by a particular aspect of reality, and every
system constructed by a great philosopher is an expression/articulation of some aspect of
reality, there is a danger:
- that a particular aspect of reality might be elevated by him to the rank of reality, pure
and simple, or THE REALITY
- that a particular experience of reality may be proclaimed as the only REALITY and
its articulation and systematization as the SYSTEM, THE PHILOSOPHY.
- When this happens, it becomes antiquated.

Conclusion:
- If constituted philosophy is a speaking word (i.e., an articulation/expression of a
particular experience of reality), then the study of the works of the different philosophers
leads us to:
- Experience the philosophers' particular experiences of reality (APPROPRIATION)
- Experience new and deeper aspect of reality other than what they have experienced
(EXPANSION)
- And one does not simply accumulate knowledge but listens to reality no matter where it
speaks to him.

e. The Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth


i. Denial of Intersubjectivity of Philosophical Truth
- Subjective View of Philosophical Truth: Philosophical Truth has to be subjective in order
to be authentic. Why?
- Philosophy is a personal task/affair:
- Asking one's own depth-questions
- Seeking find by himself answers for them
- Seeing himself the truth of the answers
- As a personal task, it involves study of other philosophers in order to see the truth
they discovered as true to me, to be inspired to see myself more than what they have
seen.
- Subjectivistic View of Philosophical Truth
- Philosophical truth (that which I see, discover, know in my philosophical enterprise,
that which is unfolded before me in philosophical pursuit) is true/valid to me alone
but not true/valid for all.
- Philosophical Truth is per se not truth for all (not intersubjective)
- Intersubjective View of Scientific Truth
- Scientific truth is the only intersubjective truth, i.e. the only truth which could be
accepted/validated by all as true.
- Intersubjectivity as the exclusive characteristic of Science

ii. Subjectivistic View of Philosophy is Self-Contradictory View


- those who claim that philosophical truth is true to me alone but not true to all contradict
themselves; in other words, their claim contradicts/falsifies their claim
- How?
- For them to claim this subjectivistic view of philosophical truth, they presuppose that
this view as true is valid to all and not just to a particular person.
- To claim otherwise, they would not make sense at all as they would not make any
statement or any claim on this view. Why?
- For to make a claim of anything before anyone, I presuppose that no one can
rightly deny this truth. Thus, this implies that he can also see the truth of what I
claim.
- But they claim that no philosophical truth is true to all
- Thus, they contradict themselves.

iii. Difference between Philosophical Truth and Scientific Truth


- difference is not that scientific truth is intersubjective while philosophical truth is not
- but that the intersubjectivity of scientific truth is easier to achieve than the intersubjective
examination of philosophical question and discovery.
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- In principle, both are intersubjective.

iv. Philosophical Truth is intersubjective simply because any truth is intersubjective.


- In principle,
- Truth is not true to me alone but to true to all; otherwise is not true at all.
- Though in fact (de facto)
- A particular philosophical truth is not yet recognized by all
- Yet, it can be recognized by all as true, as valid.

f. The Usefulness of Philosophy


1. Philosophy is not useful in the "World of Work"
- "World of Work":
- technocratic world, functional world
- control/manipulation of nature to serve/meet one's particular needs
- dealing with practical living
- life on the horizontal dimension
- Science is very useful in this kind world
- E.g. Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Economic, Psychology
- But philosophy is not useful, and even wholly useless in this kind world, the world of
work
- Thus, when a person concerns himself with the practical living and as society tends to
become a technocratic organization of work, philosophy is seen as useless
- Ironically, it is to this person, and to this society that philosophy becomes not only useful
but even necessary.

2. Philosophy is useful in the "World of Philosophy"


- unless one enters into a particular presence to reality (world) achieved by philosophers,
unless one enters into the level, dimension, realm, aspect of reality which the
philosophers have entered, one cannot be convinced of the usefulness of philosophy.
- Thus, the usefulness of philosophy can only be appreciated by those who have left behind
or go beyond or deeper than the world of work, and have experienced, perceived or
entered into this realm, dimension of reality - world of philosophy
- For those who have already entered, they do not need to be convinced of the usefulness
of philosophy for the value of philosophy clearly reveals itself.
- For those who have not yet entered into the world of philosophy, they can at least accept
the usefulness of philosophy in good faith, and start philosophizing.

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