Personally...Philosophy

This is a paper i wrote to synthesize the course Philosphy 101: Philosophy of Man, as part of the end of term requirements to complete the course. It may be a hard read, but for those brave enough, you may yet learn somthing of value. Written on October 7, 2003

"Personally...Philosophy"

The course title for Ateneo’s Philosophy 101 is aptly named ‘Philosophy of Man.’ In general, it attempts to give the student an insight into the workings and machinations of the nature of man, in relation to the central question, “What is Philosphy?” This journey will take one through the colorful history pf philosophy, giving the student a taste of the many flavors of understanding man. At the end of the course, one should have a deeper understanding of man through a deeper understanding of philosophy, and the integration of these two insights gives one the opportunity to manifest his humanity with clarity.

Yes, this may seem all and well, hearing it as if from an infomercial, or seeing it on a disclaimer for the Ateneo Philosophy Department. It does seem interesting; it may even seem to be something one may take lightly. The disclaimer on the previous paragraph sounds sweet and eloquent to the ear, and it may give one the false impression that Philosophy may be something sweet too. Therefore, one should be cautious about one’s approach to Philo 101, but unfortunately, this is a mistake of one to many, including myself.

Philosophy is in many ways different from the other classes I have taken so far. Somehow, the course actually calls me out, by name, and challenges my being. What I mean is, Philosophy makes me put myself into question, that I have been pressed to answer my most savage critic, myself. Even at the start of the course, I immediately felt that I had to defend myself, from the challenges and assertions of the many philosophers in history, even my own classmates. They all seemed to think so differently, such that I felt alone in stark contrast to their thoughts and ideas. Even now, I still catch myself questioning all the things that I have held close to my heart. Unfortunately, I was ill prepared to meet the oncoming rush of philosophical tools and weapons, projectiles and missiles, swords and axes. And their masters were the grizzled war makers, the philosophy teachers and philosophers before them, who have had centuries of accumulated battle experience against the weakling foe, the student. Faced with this reality, how could I survive my enigma?

With the little knowledge and experience I had under my belt, I felt as if I was forced to fight the fight I could not win. Lost in the frontlines, pitted against a blood lusting foe, with allies no greater than I, things were at its dimmest. I crawled and scrapped myself to meet the enemy, along with my allies. And when their steel met our wooden sticks, we were dismayed. Some did not survive. Some may yet not survive. The first conflict was harsh. And this was Philosophy 101, the Philosophy of Man.

Philosophy is not like any form of thought we perform on a regular basis. Rather, I see it as a tool that will be made of use once the purpose for this tool is known. For example, you give a palm pilot to a 50 year-old man who does not even know how to turn on a computer. This person would have no idea how to operate the palm, he may turn the thing on by chance, but how to make the damn thing work and understand it is what eludes him. And when this person learns the full usage of the palm pilot, think of the satisfaction he would have in mastering the object and using it for his benefit.

In my opinion, this is how Philosophy is for the likes of mere mortals like us. We all have the potency to think, analyze, relate things to one another and store this information, but oftentimes, we know not how to use these capabilities. Philosophy then would now be a sort of palm pilot, maybe even a computer operating system if you wish, that would organize all this information at make it available for the individual. The impact of Philosophy in man’s way of thinking cannot be diminished; its fruits are exactly that which we aspire everyday to achieve in our present times. It gives man the ability to sort through information in a clear manner, giving him insight and valuable teachings about himself and his relation to others. Just think of how Windows revolutionized computer systems since its invention. The world has been a better and easier place because of it. The same may be said about Philosophy.

Now, how in the world would any college student begin Philosophy? Similarly, how may one be taught the concept of Windows? It would start by asking what it is. What is Philosophy? What is Windows? But Philosophy departs from Windows now because of the fact that Philosophy is never the same with everyone. It is like asking ‘what is happiness,’ we all know it is different for each person. This is because there are a lot different things that affect any individual, and it is precisely this fact that points to where the question may begin, that which affects us specifically, our own personal experiences.

A person is the sum of his experiences, as a past teacher of mine used to say. Meaning, we are different from each other and are defined by our experiences. Then it would be easy to identify that our belief system would be a reflection of these experiences. The word reflection has a deeper meaning in our Philosophical context. Although reflection is just the simple task of ‘thinking’ of our past experiences (and the experiences of others as well), we should not overlook its importance in our process of philosophizing. An experience would be felt and viewed differently from time to time. It appears as if each experience has an almost indefinite number of ways in expressing and communicating them. Perfect examples would be the classics in Literature. Even through the ages, these classics continue to inspire many people as these texts are interpreted over and over again, in each individual’s specific time and culture, in each individual’s unique personal experiences. That is why they are classics: they are timeless.

When we reflect, in a sense, we are actually redefining ourselves, in our thoughts and beliefs, and even by the way we act. One must understand that Philosophy is not merely an ideology, but also a form of praxis. Being true to yourself means that you practice what you preach, as many would say. This is philosophically sound because our actions (experiences) affect our thoughts, and in the same way, our thoughts affect our actions. This never-ending process continually affects both our thoughts and our actions, so our reflections become turning points in our lives. And therefore, reflection must entail more seriousness on the part of the individual, for these reflections are the sources of important insights, of truth.

As mentioned earlier, students are so resistant to Philosophy because they cannot seem to identify Philosophy with themselves. Now with a more meaningful understanding of reflection in context with how it affects us, we begin to understand that we are doing Philosophy everyday of our lives, just by reflecting. ‘Learning from our mistakes’ is a line that often describes the trial-and-error process of any person’s life. Learning in itself would require the reflection from these mistakes. And therefore, it would be easy to identify now that Philosophy is truly part of our everyday lives.

The next conflict I had faced would be the understanding of being and Being. Simply put, Being is the act of existing, or the verb, and being would then be the noun or that thing that exist. This simple understanding gave me an easier time in understanding the meaning of ‘All being is in Being.’ In my opinion, this says that all of existence (being) is found to be in unity because they all must be doing the act of being (Being). This is what had most astonished even the most learned people of the ancient times, the Greeks. They found it totally amazing that in the level of existence, all things are equal and united with each other because they all exist through Being. The stone, the plant, the animal and the man, all do take part in this Primary Act. It is actually silly to think that just because we are alive and well means that we are more ‘in existence’ than the stone. The fact that both the stone and the man manifest themselves as we see now means that on the existential level, both are in Being, and thus united.

Understanding being on the level of humanity takes a different flavor. When we talk about man, we talk about two important ideas, the body, and the spirit or soul. The nature of man and his relation to both body and soul have been heated points of debate for millennia. It has been agreed that a man has both body and spirit, but the relation of both to each other have to main proponents, and may be summed up into two statements: I have my body. I am my body. Though as first, the may be similar, we should not be confused by their seemingly similar meanings. I was aware of this, but could not unlock its mystery. After some reflection, I decided to analyze the problem by using Latin, to describe them, as I had learned Latin for four years in my highschool.

In Latin, the former, ‘I have my body,’ would be translated as: (Ego) habeo meum corpum. Similarly, ‘I am my body’ will be: (Ego) sum meus corpus. Looking at both statements, the two main differences that one may easily see are the difference in verbs (habeo vs. sum) and the difference in declension (the enclitic –um vs. the enclitic –us). Ego is “I” in English, and is in parenthesis because it is already be expressed just by the verb in its conjugation. Habeo is ‘have’ in English, and is easily identified as a verb of possession. What does it possess? It possesses the word corpum, which is of the original word corpus, or ‘body.’ The enclitic –um is only used for nouns that are expressed as direct objects, and this is called the accusative case. Likewise, meus is also in the form of muem since it describes corpum, and also in the accusative case. As such, we see that there is possession taking place, that the ‘I’ is in possession of the ‘body.’ Extrapolating from this idea, I began to see that since the ‘I’ is possessing the body, they are both not the same thing. The ‘I’ exists alone from the body, and the body exists apart from the ‘I.’ If we equate ‘I’ to the spirit, we can say that the spirit is a separate entity from the body. This is one proponent of the belief of man’s nature.

On the other hand, the word sum is the linking verb ‘is’ in English. As such, the word corpus would then be a complementary noun that necessarily follows after the linking verb in the predicate. But take note of the word corpus, it takes the form of the nominative case from its enclitic –us, and so does the word meus. The nominative is normally used for words that are expressed as the subject of any sentence. But how may that be, since ‘body’ is in the predicate of the sentence? As taken from my understanding of grammar, the linking verb serves as a bridge that connects both subject and predicate, that they both share a certain reality. When we say ’something is something,’ are we not saying that the two things are the same thing, although probably expressed in different ways? This simple yet profound idea leads to the other proponent of human nature, that the human being is the unity between body and spirit. With our analysis in Latin, we can see that the word ‘I,’ as expressed in the verb sum, is actually complementary to ‘body’, that they share a certain reality, that yes, they refer to the same thing. These are seemingly two different ideas expressed as one when we use the word “human being.”

Now we may establish that there is unity between body in spirit, as it is the nature of man. The word unity takes on a more profound role than as previously mentioned, because this unity would mean that for man to exist, it necessitates the union of both body and soul to express the human being. This intrinsic unity justifies that they really do need each other in order to express the existence of the being that they represent. Thinking about it, our language may be partly at fault because the human spirit and human body must be expressed in two terms. Now what does this intrinsic unity imply? In my opinion, the body, as a physical representation of our existence, is a reflection of the spirit. They both share the same existence; therefore they share the same experiences. But we all seem to forget this with the way we treat our bodies. Most of the time, we treat them as if they were two different realities. We always hear the line “the soul is willing, but the body is weak,” and vice versa. This represents the disparity on how we view our bodies to our own existence. Especially in during the days of our youth, we feel as if we were invincible, that our bodies are strong, that even if the body is weak, our spirit will pull us through. This leads us to pushing our bodies to its limits, often abusing them. Smoking, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, poor sleeping habits, and even poor hygiene are the most common examples of this paradigm. And bitterly, the effects of these misuses will only catch up on us in our later years, when the “spirit is willing but the body is weak.” So therefore, we must treat our bodies with care, and our souls as well.

Just as Philosophy is also praxis, being human is not just having its nature, but also in practicing it. What makes us truly human is the fact that we can communicate and relate to others, not only in the present, but in the past and future as well. We are all connected to each other, and this may be a simple description of historicity. But what makes us all connected are the things that we do to contribute to human experience. Personal human experience is what makes us unique, but what completes us as human would be the integration of other’s experiences as well. We do not just learn from our experiences, but also through those who have gone before us. Their work have contributed to the world we live in today, and those before them, and those even further down history lane. And in the great road of human history, we are products of those before us, such that we enjoy the fruits of their labor so we may live accordingly with those in our time, but apart from this, we should also contribute to the well-being of those coming after us in hope that they will value the contributions of the past, and make a further contribution to those proceeding them. It is like a chain, each generation is linked to the next, and the chain will only be complete if each generation is linked with the past and future. But the strength of this chain is the strength of its weakest link, and there is danger of things falling apart and having undesirable things come to pass if we do not contribute meaningful works in the human chain of history.

But the secret ingredient that binds all together is love, the love for the past, the love for the future, the love for our neighbor, the love for ourselves, consequently, the love for harmony. And this love must not be a passive contribution, but rather an active one, and should translate into yearning, just as the Greeks believed in their time with the idea of Eros. Love should be an active one, a yearning, a desiring love, and as mentioned time and again, praxis. We have to continually strive not just for ourselves, but for others as well, just as others have done so before us, and will do after us. This is what being human is, taking part in the whole of humanity by contributing meaningful acts, motivated through love; being in union with the rest of humanity.

And so finally, we come back to where we started: “What is Philosophy?” I found it rather amusing that the central subject of Philosophy is being, because if some letters are repositioned in that word, you would come up with a completely different one, but with profound importance as well, that is begin. Taking this into context, Philosophy is not just the study of man, but also his beginnings. We are nothing had those long gone had not begun it. The knowledge of the past will give us direction of the future. And in this new light, I found acceptance for Philosophy. It is a human tradition that has been passed generation to generation, like the chain. And like the word being, we must begin to continue this tradition in hopes of contributing something good, and passing on this timeless human tradition to the next, and so on forth. This gives depth and clarity to our understandings of the past and the direction of the future, so that we may act rightly in the present.

And with this appreciation comes a different view of the merciless slave drives that we know as the philosophers of the past. They are the ones who learned to use a palm pilot without a manual. They are the bastions of humanity, continuously contributing great wealth to the human cause. The same may be said as well for our teachers, who are disciples of such a noble order. In all things there is hope, and I hope that I may be what I am meant to be, for it is my obligation to humanity. And I hope to contribute as much meaning as those mentioned who have gone before me, personally…philosophy.