Philosophical Journey: Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas was probably the first and most difficult ethics philosopher I encountered. I remember taking up his philosophy right after studying Heidegger. My instructor, Ms Jacinto, said that Levinas' works were born out of his experience during the second world war as a P.O.W. They were also responses to Heidegger's philosophy. Unfortunately, it took me a while before I could appreciate his works since he's French and the French are notorious for being messy and chaotic with their compositions. I'm not joking on this one. The directions of his sentences were all over the place that I could not get the message of his articles.

In a nutshell, Levinas talks about responsibility and the other as an enigma. His concept of the human being as an enigma, or as a puzzle shatters the fatalistic image of Dasein in Heidegger's works. We are not simply beings going towards death. Humans are like puzzles or mysteries whom one cannot fully determine or reduce as an object. In other words human beings, or the others, are full of surprises. And this enigmatic characteristic of the other is the basis of his advocacy of responsibility. Being responsible for the other is a sign of respect. It is how an individual recognizes the other's subjecivity and the limitlessness of their possibilities. This sense of inexhaustible potential does not only lift the limits of what the other can do but also what the other can become. It gives a sense of chance, hope and belief in the growth of an individual. It recognizes the possibility that a criminal can change for the better or that a corrupt leader can be convinced to work for the prosperity of a nation. We have no right to objectify and box-in an individual because we simply cannot have a hundred percent certainty on what they are capable of. Unfortunately, Levinas is silent on how long before these changes could take place. It is not question of when but how.

The philosophy of Levinas is truly an attempt to criticize the works of Heidegger. Despite our common destiny of dying, it is not an excuse for us to disregard our relationship with the others and their personhood. Well, that finally restored my confidence in humanity but Levinas wasn't enough to repair the damage Heidegger did. It was just a shame that he said nothing about religion... at least, not in our lectures.

A Video Really Worth Sharing

John Ford Coley @ SM Megamall

When I went to SM Megamall last Sunday, there was a stage set up at the Atrium for a small, 15-minute concert. The performer was John Ford Coley. Who is John Ford Coley? Unfortunately, Filipinos know his music more than man behind the talent. He performed a lot of love songs during the 70's and surprisingly, his tunes are still being aired by the local radio stations making them unforgettable classics to the Filipino people. Here's a sample of his music below.

Philosophical Journey: Heidegger

Among the first philosophers I met was Martin Heidegger. I can immediately say that my encounter with his philosophy was very unpleasant. Sure, I learned a lot of life's truths from him. Like how we are alone, how we are thrown into this world, how dependent we are on time and how we are given life only to lose it in the end. I became more aware about these inescapable facts. Unfortunately, these truths were so depressing that it awakened the emo in me.

Heidegger's discussions on death made me realize how limited my time is on this planet. What's worse is that all the things I do here would amount to nothing since I'm going to die in the end with a hundred percent certainty. If that is the case, then what is the point of living? What is there to hope for? It is so tempting to sit in a corner and wallow in depression since death is going to waste us all anyway.

Death is the ultimate mystery and I can't deny that Heidegger came up with many good points about it. First is about how one's death really shows the individuality of a being. He argued that each person's end is really their own experience because they cannot share it with someone in anyway. This pointed out to the fact that we really are alone.

Second is about how people try to make the most out of what they can in life. They pursue happiness whether it may be earning material wealth, gaining knowledge or deepening their faiths in an almighty Being. He said that people engage in these activities only because they want to distract themselves from the anxiety brought about by the fact of death. This was the point that got me thinking about my faith. What if Heidegger is right all along? What if people are simply engaging in religious activities because they want salvation? Doesn't that self-serving drive degrade the value of faith? And that's not all. What if religion was merely another creation of mankind (Dasein) to distract themselves from death. After all most, if not all, religious teachings preach about an eternal afterlife. There is no empirical proof about an afterlife. All we hold on to is our faith.

It's no wonder I got depressed after every PH 101 class. Heidegger created a big dent in my faith and almost made me throw it away. His discussion of individuality and death made me feel very alone. It made me lose all purpose in life and extinguished all hope I had. Life became a curse because all people are forced to face the great unknown of death.

Damn you Heidegger.

PLDT Stockholder's Meeting

I went to PLDT's annual stockholder's meeting with may dad at the Dusit Hotel in Makati. He figured that it would be a good opportunity for me to learn the activities of the corporate world. We don't have any investments in PLDT but it turns out that all land line subscribers are technically entitled to 1 share. It's not at all significant but it's enough for us to get invited to the meeting. I saw some big personalities in the business world like Mr. Tony Tan Caktiong of Jollibee, Mr. Alfred Ty of Metrobank and of course, Mr. Manny Pangilinan. Believe it or not, Fr. Nebres was even there as an independent director and, as expected, he presided over the opening prayers. I don't know exactly what an independent director does that is different from the regular members of the board. I also have no idea whether Fr Nebres really owns stocks or if the Ateneo owns it and he is just the university's representative.

What I learned from the event... during the portion of the meeting where the shareholders ask questions about the company activities, there were (and I guess always will be) people who either asked irrelevant questions or did not ask any questions at all and just ranted random sentences. There was this old lady who began preaching verses from the Bible (weird!) and this greasy fellow, who looked like a drug pusher, who voiced out his useless concerns loudly and emotionally. He kept on hogging the microphone even after the technicians cut off the mic's power to force him to shut up. He finally stopped only when Mr Pangilinan threatened to throw him out (But I think he should have done that earlier). These people acted as if they had a majority of the shares when they probably don't even own one. My dad said that these nuisances are a fact of shareholder meetings. They're just there to waste everyone's time and annoy the board of directors. Now I'm really impressed with CEO's like MVP because not only do they put up with the rigors of corporate activities but they also put up with these disruptive lunatics every year.

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Testing mobile blogging feature. If you can read this, then the mobile blog posting test via email is a success. :)

Philosophical Journey: The Introduction

Philosophy was a subject that used to be so alien to me. I never understood its purpose and objectives. I used to think that it's another academic hurdle that I need to overcome since unfortunately, my school was one of the few, if not the only university in the country, that made the subject compulsory. Whenever I entered Ms. Jacinto's class, I had this feeling of isolation from everything else as if I'm encased inside a shell. It felt like the lessons are disagreeing with me and that my brain is refusing to process the lectures. I felt no progress and spent most of the class time staring blankly into space since I could not keep up with the pace. I kept trying my best to review the lessons on my own but to no avail. Everything seemed absolute gibberish.

Every session, I kept wondering if there was something wrong with me. I just found it so difficult to understand why those philosophers could not construct formal paragraphs and sentences to express what they want to say. Why do they invent their own words and add "ness" to those nouns and adjectives? Why do they keep on asking questions and leaving them unanswered? What made things worse was the feeling that I'm alone in this struggle. The rest of my peers seemed to have no trouble absorbing the lectures. I still remember my classmates who kept looking down at their notebooks and writing feverishly as if they are taking down every single word the teacher was saying. Nobody had any questions and if they did, it would be so advanced and insightful that I could not grasp it.

I hated philosophy at that time. Like all of my other minor subjects, I never saw its importance in my life after graduation. I really felt that this subject was going to be my downfall. Philosophy felt like a ticking time bomb since the semester was half way done and I still could not understand anything. Fortunately, Ms. Jacinto was lenient enough with my performance and my grades. I can say that I was just really lucky for surpassing that ordeal but it will take two whole semesters before I really learned to appreciate the discipline.