The Median Principle of Morality

THE DISCUSSION BELOW CAME FROM VARIOUS SOURCES THROUGH WHICH I AM INDEBTED; NONETHELESS, THE DISCUSSION THAT FOLLOWS IS PRIMARILY BASED ON THE MAIN TEXT OF THE SCHOLAR ARISTOTLE'S "NICOMACHEAN ETHICS" (ARISTOTLE On Man in the Universe, Edited with Introduction by Louise Romes Loomis, Published for the Classic Club by Walter J. Black, Inc: Roslyn, New York)

Happiness as the “chief good”

= The contention is insufficient unless we philosophize what happiness is

a.)                to know its nature

b.)                to know how to achieve it

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What is the function of the Human Person?

= Such function must be unique or peculiar to the human person

a.)                that it belongs to the rational part of man

b.)                that it finds expression in action

= The rational part of the human person can be active or passive.  It is passive in that it follows the dictates of reason.  It is active in that it possesses and exercises the ability to reason.  Similarly, since the reasonable element of rational life may be active or passive, we must make it clear that we are discussing a life determined by the USE, as opposed to the mere possession, of rational faculty.

                          

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What is then Happiness?

            = Happiness is an activity of the soul which is in accordance with virtue and which is in conformity with reason

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Hence, the claim that Happiness is the “chief good” will only suffice provided that we see the attainment of Happiness in connection with the human person’s use of its ability to reason.

Aristotle says in Book I of his Nicomachean Ethics, since Happiness is some activity of soul in accordance with complete excellence or virtue, we should discuss the subject of excellence; for perhaps in this way we shall get a better view of happiness too.

There are two kinds of virtue or excellence:

a.)                Intellectual virtue is the result of learning or teaching

b.)                Moral Virtue is the result of practice or habituation

Ethics is a subject of great practical importance as well as theoretical interest, because we are interested not merely in determining the nature of goodness, but also on how we may become good men.  For this reason, it is necessary to investigate the problems of right and wrong actions and proper conduct, for, our actions govern the characteristics we develop.

It is generally conceded that persons must act according to what they consider the right principle of reason.  We have to remember that the nature of moral qualities is such that they can be destroyed either by deficiency or excess.  Just as too much or too little food or exercise is bad for the body, so the person who fears everything becomes coward and the man who fears nothing becomes reckless or foolhardy, and neither is able to develop the virtue of courage.  This same rule holds in regard to all the virtues.  Excess or deficiency destroys them.  Action in accordance with a mean produces and maintains them.

Moral excellence is primarily a matter of concern with pleasure and pain.  The following points are relevant here:

1.      The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain are the main causes of evil action, for pleasure can make men do have things and pain can deter them from doing noble things. This is why Plato said that right education is matters of making persons feel pleasure and pain for the right reasons.

2.      Virtue is concerned with actions and feelings or emotions and these may be accompanied by pleasure or pain.

3.      Pain is used as an instrument of punishment, for nature works by means of opposites and pain can have a remedial effect in the case of vicious men.

4.      Every characteristic of the soul shows its true nature in regard to those factors that can make it better or worse. Persons become corrupted through pleasure and pain, either by pursuing or avoiding pleasure or pain of the wrong kind, at the wrong time, or in the wrong way. This indicates that the object of ethics is to learn to feel pleasure or pain for the right reasons. We may assume that virtue enables men to act in the best way in matters involving pleasure and pain, and that vice does the opposite.

At this point it has been determined that Moral good ness is a quality disposing men to act in the best way while dealing with pleasures and pains, and that vice disposes them to act in the worst way in the same situation.

In all actions, to some extent, pleasure and pain are used as standard.  Virtue is not to be interpreted as freedom from pleasure and pain.  Rather these are the materials which, when molded into the right form, enable us to become virtuous. To sump up, the following conclusions can be made:

1.      Virtue or excellence is some caused with pleasure or pain.

2.      The actions, which produce virtue, are identical in character with those that increase it.

3.      These same actions differently performed can destroy virtue.

4.      Virtue finds expression or is actualized in the same activities that produce it.

When are we to consider an act to be a virtuous act?

            = A virtuous act is not virtuous only because it is an act of certain quality or kind.  The agent or doer of a virtuous act must also be in a certain frame of mind and have certain characteristics when s(he) acts.  There are three conditions required: (a) that the agent must be fully conscious of what s(he) is doing, (b) that s(he) must deliberately choose or will (he)r action, and must choose it for its own sake, (c) that the act must proceed from a fixed moral disposition.

            = Hence, acts are called virtuous when they are the kind of acts a virtuous person would perform, but a person who performs a virtuous act is not necessarily (he)rself virtuous.  The virtuous person is one who performs that act in the way common to virtuous persons, that is, s(he) knows that the act is the right thing to do in the circumstances, and s(he)does it for the right motive.

The human soul is conditioned by three factors: (a) emotions or feelings, capacities and dispositions or characteristics.  It is evident that virtue must be one of these.  Emotions include such things as anger, appetite, fear, confidence, envy, pity and other state of mind that involves pleasure or pain. Capacities are our faculties for experiencing emotions.  Dispositions are the conditions or states of character in which we are in regard to emotions (e.g., we say that one has a bad disposition where anger is concerned if he tends to become excessively or insufficiently angry and has a good disposition toward anger if he consistently feels the appropriate amount of anger).

Virtue or excellence is something for which persons are called good or bad or for which they are praised or blamed.  Since one is not called good or bad on the basis of his emotions, it is clear that virtue is not an emotion.  Furthermore, virtues are the result of some kind of choice but a man does not exercise his will (i.e., make a choice) when he experiences such emotions as anger or fear.  It is also clear that virtue is not capacity, since a person is not praised or blamed for having the ability to experience certain feelings.  A human being receives (he)r capacities from nature, but nature does not cause (he)r to develop into a good or a bad man.  Therefore, since virtues and vices are not emotions or capacities, they must belong to the genus known as dispositions or characteristics.

Virtue in a person is whatever characteristic that makes (he)r a good man and causes (he)r to perform (he)r function well.

Any continuous activity (including feeling and action, the raw materials of virtue) is divisible into parts.  These may include a LARGER PART, a SMALLER PART, and the HALF OR EQUAL PART, which can be defined as the MEAN between too much and too little.  In things which do not vary there is an objective mean which is always the same (e.g., the mean between two points ten miles apart is always five miles).

The mean is relative in such things as the feelings and actions of persons.  This is because there are differences between people in regard to most characteristics and attributes (e.g., ten pounds of food may be too much for a person and two pounds not enough, but this does not necessarily imply that six pounds is the right amount for a person or for all men).

Moral virtue aims at the relative mean in feeling and action.  Moral virtue can be defined as a disposition to choose the mean relative to oneself, as determined by a rational principle (i.e., by the rational principle that would be applied by a person with practical wisdom and common sense).

It is possible to experience too much or too little of any emotion, and in either case the emotion is not experienced properly.  The mark of virtue is to experience an emotion at the right time, toward the right objects or person, for the right reason, and in the right manner; in other words, in accordance with the mean.  This principle applies to the evaluation of all human actions.  Excess, mean and deficiency can be determined for all feelings and action.

What then is Excellence or Virtue?

            = Aristotle puts in that excellence is a disposition issuing in decisions, depending on the intermediacy of the kind relative to us, this being determined by rational prescription and in the way in which the wise person would determine it.  And it is intermediacy between two bad states, one involving excess, and the other involving deficiency; and also because one set of bad states is deficient, the other excessive in relation to what is required both in affections and in actions, whereas excellence both finds and chooses the intermediate.

A shown by Aristotle, there are three kinds of dispositions.  Two are vicious (one characterized by excess, the other by deficiency), and one is virtuous (the mean).

How to Find the Mean?  The following points have been established:

1.      Moral virtue is a mean.

2.      It is a mean between two vices, one marked by excess and the other by deficiency.

3.      It is a mean in the sense that it aims at the middle point in emotions and actions.

Here are some rules for the guidance of those who seek the mean (i.e., who seek after virtue):

1.      Avoid the extreme most opposed to the mean for which you are seeking. One of the two extremes is always more in error than the other. If you must err from the right path, it is better to choose the lesser of two evils.

2.      Guard against those errors into which you are most likely to fall because of your natural inclinations by forcing yourself to move in the opposite direction. One can determine his natural inclinations by observing the amount of pleasure and pain he experiences in regard to certain things.

3.      Remember that you will make few mistakes if you try to avoid pleasure and pleasant things and move away from whatever is most tempting for this will tend to be the path toward the mean.

FEELING	ACTION	EXCESS	MEAN	DEFICIENCY
Fear		Cowardice	Courage	Unnamed
Confidence		Recklessness (overconfidence) Self-indulgence (intemperance)	Courage Self-control (temperance)	Cowardice “insensitivity” (word in this context coined by Aristotle)
Sensual pleasures (note that pain may arise from the desire for such pleasures)	Giving of money Taking of money Giving of money on a large scale (as for charity or public use) Pursuit of honor on a large scale Pursuit of honor on a small scale	Extravagance Stinginess Vulgarity Vanity Ambitiousness	Generosity Generosity Magnificence Highmindedness Unnamed, could be called ambition in proper amount	Stinginess Prodigality Meanness Smallmindedness Unambitiousness
Anger	Telling the truth about oneself Pleasantness in amusement Pleasantness in daily life	Shorttemperedness Boastfulness Buffoonery Obsequiousness	Gentleness Truthfulness Wittiness Friendliness	Apathy Self-depreciation Boorishness Grouchiness
Shame		Bashfulness	Modesty	Shamelessness
Pain and pleasure felt at good or bad fortune of others		Envy	Righteous indignation	Spite

An important point worth noting is that Aristotle’s mean is not a rigid mathematical abstraction, since he points out several times that it is a “mean relative to us,” and differs fro people of different dispositions or in different circumstances.  Although his doctrine of the mean is stated abstractly, Aristotle was well aware that goodness and moral conduct cannot be reduced to artificial formulas or rules.

From Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"....THE GOLDEN MEAN (THE MEDIAN PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY)
ARISTOTLE On Man In the Universe, Edited with introduction by Louise Romes Loomis, Published for the Classic Club by Walter J. Black, Inc: Roslyn, New York.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (from the UN Official Website)

GROUNDWORK OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS

THE DISCUSSION BELOW CAME FROM VARIOUS SOURCES THROUGH WHICH I AM INDEBTED; NONETHELESS, THE DISCUSSION THAT FOLLOWS IS PRIMARILY BASED ON THE MAIN TEXT OF THE SCHOLAR IMMANUEL KANT'S "GROUNDWORK OF THE  METAPHYSIC OF MORALS (GERMAN: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)"

   

taken from the the social networking site FACEBOOK

          A person who fruitfully resists the temptation of desire has willpower ( willpower means  a combination of determination and self-discipline that enables somebody to do something despite the difficulties involved) while the individual who gives in and acts to satisfy the desire does not have willpower.

          This concept of willpower brings to mind the following model of human action: The agent begins with a group of beliefs and desires that are motives or reasons to action.  Motives to action are like forces that get the body into action.  The agent, however, must (or at least should) evaluate the desires to determine whether they should or shouldn’t be satisfied.  The agent’s reason acts as the evaluator.  When reason acts as evaluator, reason is also considered governor, because it is the last thing that determines the will (will means  the part of the mind with which somebody consciously decides things; the use of the mind to make decisions about things; the determination to do something or a desire or inclination to do something), which in turn determines action. Before a particular desire can be acted on by the agent, the act of willing to attempt to satisfy the desire must first exist.   The agent needs needs to choose or decide to either act or not act on the desire. Only then does the body act.  Hence, we could imagine human action schematically in the following manner:

              Beliefs + desires → evaluation of reason → Act of will to satisfy desire (decision)

 → Action to satisfy desire.

          In any event that reason is not acting as evaluator, the model turns into something like this:

                 Beliefs + desires → Act of will to satisfy desire (decision)  → Action to satisfy desire.

          Immanuel Kant acknowledged that desires often conflict. There are instances that acting to satisfy one desire will ensure that we cannot satisfy another desire. Let us say for example that you have the desire to go out with friends this coming Saturday to dance and party.  Satisfying now this desire would mean sacrificing your other desire to jump to bed early and maximize the highly recommended hours of sleep of 7 to 8 hours a day.  Take again for example the given situation, you have the desire to play DOTA or to have an EB with someone else you have been chatting lately over the net after your class this afternoon; however, you also have the desire to read something about Immanuel Kant’s life so that you will not be getting a failing score in your quiz in this subject next meeting.  In such instances where we have with us conflicting desires, we must decide which desire to satisfy.

          As rational individuals, it is expected on our part that we have to let our reason decide between conflicting desires (but sometimes, as individuals with organic or earthly bodies with organic or earthly desires and needs, we oftentimes find ourselves consumed in satisfying our base desires. I am not saying this as an excuse but we should at least now how to master our desires as rational individuals…I hope you still remember “the mark of virtue” of Aristotle).  No particular action will be done until our will has been activated.  Hence, our will is considered to be the master of our actions.  According to Immanuel Kant, if we are rational, then our will must not be the slave of our desires by merely doing the request or command of our desires.  Our will instead can cooperate with our reason to master whatever desires we have.

        The only thing that is good without qualification or restriction is a good will. A good will alone is good in all circumstances and in that sense is an absolute good or unconditioned good.  The goodness of a good will is not derived from the goodness of the results which it produces.  A good will continues to have its own uniqueness goodness even where, by some misfortune, it is unable to produce the results at which it aims. As Kant would say in the Groundwork, “it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself” (see your reading for further emphasis on this point of Kant on the good will and its result).

        In going further with his discussion on the good will, Kant in the Groundwork tried to discuss the function of reason.  According to Kant, reason has been imparted to us as a practical power─that is, as one which is to have influence on the will; the true function of reason must be to produce a will which is good, not as a means to some further end, but in itself….(see your reading for further emphasis on this point of Kant on the function of reason).  For Kant, reason in action has for him two main functions, the first of which has to be subordinated to the second.  The first function is to secure the individual’s own happiness (a conditioned good), while the second is to manifest a will that is good in itself.

        However, despite these discussions made by Kant, a question comes to mind─that is, if one thing that is good without qualifications is a good will, then what makes will good and what makes it bad?

Kant was a supporter of what we have called commonsense morality. He thought that the moral views common to most people are pretty much correct. Therefore, he would think that a person with a good will would not commit major moral offenses such as murder or robbery, would not commit minor moral offenses such as maliciously gossiping about people, and would help people in need.

        Kant took these things for granted. But he recognized that a person might have a good will and not to be able to actually do any of the things a good person would do, or refrain from doing the things a good person would not do, similarly, someone might do all the things that a good person would do and refrain from doing all the things that a good person would not do, and yet not have a good will. For example, someone may contribute to charity only because it’s in his self-interest, perhaps a politician who believes that he will gain votes by (publicly) contributing to charity. Kant does not think that his contributing money shows that he has a good will.

        What about performing actions that normally would be considered an indication that someone lacks a good will? Suppose someone acts n a way that is deeply offensive or insulting to someone else. Would that necessarily show that he or she lacks a good will? No- not if he or she did not intent to offensive or insulting.

        Kant points out that we cannot tell whether someone has a good will by looking only at what that person does or does not do, or only at the effects or consequences of his actions. One’s intentions are the key to whether one has good will. It is what one wants to accomplish – what one wills – that counts (for the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, it is the consequence of the act that counts while for Immanuel Kant, it is not the consequence of the act that counts but the intention of the person doing the act). A person has a good will if he or she tires to do what is right and tries to avoid doing what is wrong. But the trying must be a genuine trying a summoning of all one’s capacities to work hard toward doing what is right and to refrain from doing what’s wrong (if by this time you now have in mind this question of what is right and what is wrong, then such question will be answered as we proceed with our discussion).

        Kant says that the concept of duty contains the concepts of a good will but it probably would be more accurate to say that the concept of a good will entails the concept of duty (a duty is an obligation of behavior or conduct in relation to others or even to God which has a stronger claim on a person than (he)r self-interest). One has a good will if one tries to do one’s duty. But Kant emphasized that for a will to be truly good, it must try to do its duty from purely moral motive, rather than from a self-interested movie. The purely moral motive is the desire to do one’s duty out of respect for the moral law. A person with a good will respects the moral law and tries to act dutifully because he or she desires to act in ways that conform to what (he)r duties are.

        In introducing the concept of duty, Kant came up with 3 propositions about morality rooted on duty: (1) A human action is morally good, not because it is done from immediate inclination─still less because it is done from self-interest─but because it is done fro the sake of duty (Consider the implication of this situation, what if for example in this particular room at around 7 pm in the evening, I saw you desperately in need for immediate medical attention but then the problem is I am not disposed this time to help; likewise, I have a business deal to attend to at 7:15 pm to have this 4 million pesos account deal to be safely deposited to my account.); (2) An action done from duty has moral worth, not from the results  it attains or seeks to attain, but from a formal principle or maxim─the principle of doing one’s duty whatever that duty may be (This simply re-states the first proposition in a more technical way.  We  have already seen that a good will cannot derive its unconditioned goodness from the conditioned goodness of the results at which it aims, and this is true also of the morally good actions in which a good will acting for the sake of duty is manifested.); (3) Duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law (What is this law? This law speaks a a law which is valid for all rational beings as such independently of their particular desires. This law is better understood with the Categorical Imperative of Kant as a test of maxim by helping us evaluate whether or not a maxim is possible to become a universal law.).

ACTIONS AND MAXIMS

Kant believed that people acts as they do for the reason (whether or not they are immediately conscious of the reason or engage in deliberation before acting). For example, suppose that Marc and Andrew each contribute PHP 100,000 to charity. According to Kant, each has a reason for his or her action. Let’s assume that we know their reasons. Marc approves of the goals of the charity and wants to help in accomplishing its goals.  Andrew knows that the names of large contributors will be publicized; he wants to impress his business associates and customers, which he thinks will improve his business.

Kant believed that when people act for a reason, they’re following a maxim – a kind of personal rule of action. Of course, people do not always consciously formulate maximum and then deliberately follow them. Rather, people often act as though they formulate and follow maxims. However, Kant seemed to assume that we can discover what maxim will follow, even if we did not consciously formulate and follow it. Given Marc and Andrew's reasons for contributing to charity, we might express the maxims they were following as M1 (Marc’s Maxim) and M2 (Adrew’s maxim.)

M1. I will contribute to charity when I approved of the Charity’s goal, and I want to help it achieve its purpose.

M2. I will contribute to charity when I think that doing so will help improve my business and I want to improve my business.

A maxim takes the form “I will do action X in circumstances C for purpose P.” It is a personal principal of action, a kind of prescription of how a person will act in certain circumstances to achieve what he or she wants. Thus, a maxim must specify: (1) what I will do, (2) the concrete circumstances in which I will do it, and (3) why I will do it.

According to Kant, an action done from duty has moral worth based only on the maxim that the agent follows, which specified the action, the circumstances and the motive. But surely an action cannot have moral worth if the agent is following a bad maxim, such as “I will kill people whenever it is advantageous to me.” Presumably an action has moral worth if and only if the maxim being followed is a morally acceptable maxim. But what makes a maxim morally acceptable or morally unacceptable?

Before turning to this question, however, let us reflect a bit more on the maxims and behavior of Marc and Andrew. Did Marc or Andrew do anything wrong in contributing to charity? If they were following morally unacceptable maxims, then they were doing something wrong, but if they were following morally acceptable maxims, they were not doing anything wrong. Whether they did anything wrong, then it all depends on whether their maxims are morally acceptable. Surely neither did anything wrong. However, Kant would say that Andrew’s action lacked moral worth because the maxim he followed was purely self-interested. (Lacking moral worth, their actions do not merit praise; but it does not follow that because they lack moral worth, they merit condemnation instead) so once again, we face the task of distinguishing between morally acceptable and morally unacceptable maxims.

Thus, whether we are talking about the moral worth of actions or the rightness and wrongness of actions, we need to distinguish between morally acceptable and morally unacceptable maxims. We require a test of maxims that will enable us to distinguish between those that are and those that are not morally acceptable to act on.

Kant did not think that we need to invent a totally new test to determine the rightness and wrongness of maxims. He believed that there is a test that most ordinary people apply and that has been endorsed by most of the world’s major religions, including Christianity.  This test is the so-called Golden Rule: Treat people the way you want to be treated. However, he did think that the Gold Rule needed to be made more precise in order to be applied correctly. He called his reformulation of the Golden Rule the Categorical Imperative. It’s an imperative because it takes the form of a rule. It’s categorical because it applies in all circumstances, regardless of an agents’ desires and because it binds all rational agents.

5 FORMULATIONS OF THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE:

(1) The Formula of Universality  or the Principle of Universal Law  

"Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should be come a universal law."

(2) The Formula of the Law of Nature

"Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will as a universal law of nature without contradiction."

(3) The Respect for People Formulation or The Principle of an End in Itself

"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end."

(4) The Formula on Autonomy or The Principle of Freedom (Freedom of Will as Rational Agents)

"So act that your will can regard itself at the same time as making universal law through its maxim."

(5) The Formula of the Kingdom of Ends

"So act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends."

Can your maxim be universalized without contradiction?

Can your maxim show respect to yourself as a person and to other persons as well?

If your answer is NO, then your maxim cannot become a moral law.
In the application of the rule on contradiction, you have to consider if in the process  your happiness or your own survival or existence  or humanity's survival would be at sake or compromised. At this point, it is important to point out that for Immanuel Kant, committing suicide to escape the challenges and sufferings in life is not morally acceptable because this maxim can never be universalized without contradiction aside from the fact that committing suicide will not also show respect to oneself as a person since the self is sacrificed to achieve an end which is to run away from those challenges and sufferings.

Take note that in the kingdom or in the World of Ends, one has either a price or a dignity or intrinsic value or unconditioned value. If it has a price, then something else can be put in its place as equivalent. If it is exalted above all price and so admits of no equivalent, then it has a dignity.

Autonomy or Freedom is the ground or the cornerstone of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature. Dignity must be viewed as the result of people who are free and autonomous moral and rational agents mutually respecting each other.  

Ang paggamit ng kapwa natin tao ay hindi tahasan at agad-agarang masama. Kailangan nating alamin kung ano ang pamamaraan at kung paano natin gagamitin ang iba. Do you just treat the other  person  as a thing? Hipocrito ang taong magsasabing hindi ako nanggamit at hindi ako mangagamit ng iba. No one will ever continue living/surviving without (he)r using others or being used in return. We all live in communities and societies where we all are functionally related to one another because of necessity. Hindi lahat ng pangangailangan mo ay kaya mong ibigay sa iyong sarili.

taken from the the social networking site FACEBOOK

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.

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[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.