WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
by: Atty. Mark Gil J. Ramolete, MA Philos

          The question that we shall be struggling to elucidate is too broad to be discussed.  Such a question constitutes a theme that is quite embracive in its very nature, that is, with the influential ability to include different spheres of concerns.  Thus, the end of this discussion is to present a description and not to lay down a crystallized definition of philosophy.  Let the task of providing a definition of philosophy be left into the hands of a genius——but I think that in every attempt to define something shall only suppress the dynamical unfolding of that subject of our inquiry.  To define is to make a bold attempt to conceive the very real essence of the subject of our inquiry, and this is not what I want to do in this discussion.  What I want to do is to present a description of philosophy in order to give credit and an open space to the progressive unfolding of its crucial role and purpose not only to oneself but also to others and to the world.

          In our day to day encounter with the world and with the others, we usually ask questions.  Everyone asks questions, but “what is philosophy?” is not usually one of them.  Yet that question is quite significant.  Different civilizations have been changed because Greek thinkers dared to ask the question “what is philosophy?”  Philosophy came to be because of the human person’s lingering thirst for the meaning of its existence.  With the kind of plurality prevailing into the world where we are situated, a wide spectrum of meanings sprouted.  With the creation of new meaning or a discovery of a contextual meaning, new meaning is also fashioned to serve as the clothing of philosophy.  The persistent fashioning and refashioning of philosophy is but an attempt to constitute the dynamism of reality, and to show the standpoint of the human person facing reality whereby the human person has always been situated in the tension involved between sense of ignorance and sense of wisdom.   Perhaps, the service that we can contribute to philosophy is the constitution of new style of apparels directed to it whereby we can further that view about philosophy not simply a theoretical activity but also a practical activity.

Starting from the Pre-Socratics to our present era, a lot of insights have already been innovatively created to present a description of philosophy.  Nonetheless, philosophy never ceases to progressively unfold its role and purpose.  For philosophy to be philosophy, it must serve as an epistemological critique to whatever that exists and to those that will possibly exist in the future as elemental configurations of pictorial backgrounds.  All of us have to see ourselves as “situated.”   Our situatedness in a particular juncture of time and place enables us to understand who we are and what we are as existent subjects.  As subjects immersed in the world endowed with corporeal existence, we can generate and initiate meanings in this life through the availability of existing elemental configurations of pictorial backgrounds.  These elemental configurations of pictorial backgrounds refer to views, notions, concepts, traditions and practices woven through difference and similitude of communicability embedded in different human encounters and human relationships to form a background of the self in reality. As Charles Taylor puts in: “the background is what makes certain experiences intelligible to us.  It makes us capable of grasping them, makes them understandable . . . . that the background is what arises in engaged agency.”[1]  Just like in a picture....

[View from Martin Heidegger's vacation chalet in Todtnauberg, Germany where Heidegger wrote most of Being and Time.]

...it is constituted by the configurations of related and essential elements to create a pictorial form. In the same light, we are also shaped and reshaped by different but interrelated elemental configurations of pictorial backgrounds. We come to know to a certain extent who we are because of our immersion and situatedness into a certain life-world like the life-world of a traveler, the life-world of a parent or that of a life-world of a son or a daughter. The self is predicated by these life-worlds available in our midst as beings-in-the-world-with-the others.

Our notions of ourselves, of our “kabuuan,” or our “pagkatao” or our “kinatao” are not free packaged gifts. Our “pagkatao” or “kinatao” is that which we create as dialogical-social agents through the availability of elemental configurations of pictorial backgrounds in our midst.  

It is important to note, however, that not all existing discourses are enabling. Some of them are creations of dogmatic institutionalized belief systems or of those belief systems designed and established to harbor the desires, privileges and luxuries of some. Such deceiving and disabling discourses will only create a docile self, a self who is not receptive to change, if epistemological critique is not done.

Doing philosophy as the epistemological critique of pictorial backgrounds involves a reflective critical inquiry into one’s situated context.   However, such inquiry should not be confined to purely cognitive enterprise alone; otherwise, such activity will only be reduced to a nonproductive and futile effort if not substantiated by concrete actions.  This epistemological critique constitutes what Michel Foucault calls “a critique which consists of analyzing and reflecting upon limits.”[2]  Michel Foucault’s notion of critique upon limits could be understood on the need to analyze historically the limits imposed upon us by different pictorial backgrounds so that we may transgress or go beyond these culturally structured limits. One example of a culturally structured limit is the phallic oriented view that the essence of a woman is to carry a baby in her womb, that is, to serve as a “natural substratum” through which the “seed of life” is to be implanted and nurtured.

[Mother and Child in Mozambique]

 However, it must be pointed out that giving birth is but the result of a choice. To be a mother to one may be the result of a choice or even by some accident or circumstances but being a responsible parent is again another aspect that the woman has to decide to.

 We must remember that we can never transgress something or anything, if we do not have knowledge of those thresholds imposed upon us.  Only when we have critically and unblindly acknowledged, recognized and affirmed historically the thresholds imposed upon us that we can authentically start to discover, to acknowledge, to recognize and to affirm other modalities of becoming human. Foucault’s advocacy then of critique within the limits of a context entails an obvious consequential result: “that criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking and saying.”[3]  Allowing the self to be consumed by the passion of waging an epistemological critique to pictorial backgrounds that suppress and hinder authentic self-realization is but an attempt to live and to perpetuate a creative humanistic lifestyle, and eventually to constitute a valorized “kabuuan,” “pagkatao” or “kinatao”.  To show this, we must not be a victim of our own silence, passivity and even ignorance; thus, there is a need to continuously think and act in critical and assertive terms vis-à-vis those considered as universal, necessary and obligatory in our own respective cultural purviews.   Nonetheless, this endeavor should not be interpreted as a means of advancing the interest of a disengaged self, but an attempt to pursue and to authenticate a creative, assertive and emancipative humanistic lifestyle.

An epistemological critique to those considered as universal, necessary and obligatory in one’s respective cultural purviews can be seen as a form of philosophical activity towards the constitution of a valorized “kabuuan,” “pagkatao,” or “kinatao.”  Such activity is emphasized by Michel Foucault in his inspiring words in The History of Sexuality, Volume II: The Use of Pleasure:

          After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, the knower’s straying afield of himself?   There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently that one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.[4]

This inquisitiveness, however, is not the inquisitiveness to embrace and to conform to what is deemed appropriate and fitting for a person to be knowledgeable, but that which empowers a person to be emancipated or to be liberated from himself/herself.

Thus, philosophy which is generally defined as the “love for wisdom” is that which constitutes a kind of receptivity to change.  The pursuit of knowledge is never static but dynamic. Our passion for wisdom is that which should guide us to continuously unfold meanings to provide linguistic access to the dynamism of reality. Our love for wisdom should constantly remind us that “philosophy which aims at the creation and fabrication of concepts”[5] should be emancipative and liberative.   Philosophy as an epistemological critique is an act of discovering innovatory modalities of becoming human.  Philosophy as an epistemological critique is a way of responding to the “speaking of language”[6] to formulate and fabricate concepts which in their very nature shall open up the self to other possibilities of becoming human within the whole range of the others.

 _______________________________

[1] Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments, (USA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 69.

[2] Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?,” in the Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow (ed.), (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 45.

[3] Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?,” 45-46.

[4]  Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley, (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 8.   

[5] Handout in Special Seminar [Gilles Deleuze on “The Conditions of the Question: What is Philosophy?”, 473], Saint Louis University, Baguio City, 2^nd Semester of S.Y. 2002-2003.

[6] Handout in Contemporary Philosophy [Martin Heidegger on “Language” from Poetry, Language, Thought, 197], Saint Louis University, Baguio City, 2^nd Semester of S.Y. 2002-2003.

ATTACHMENTS:

[1.] From Wikipedia, View from Martin Heidegger's vacation chalet in Todtnauberg, Germany where Heidegger wrote most of his philosophical work "Being and Time," 22 September 2007.

[2.] Steve Evans, Mother and Child in Mozambique, 28 September 2005.