Kritike June2016

KRITIKE
An Online Journal of Philosophy

Volume 10, Number 1
June 2016
ISSN 1908-7330
KRITIKE
Volume 10, Number 1
June 2016
ISSN 1908-7330
THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

University of Santo Tomas
Philippine Commission on Higher Education
COPYRIGHTS
All materials published by KRITIKE are licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
KRITIKE supports the Open Access Movement. The copyright of an article published by the
journal remains with its author. The author may republish his/her work upon the condition
that KRITIKE is acknowledged as the original publisher.
KRITIKE and the Department of Philosophy of the University of Santo Tomas do not necessarily
endorse the views expressed in the articles published.
© 2007-2016 KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy | ISSN 1908-7330 | OCLC 502390973 | kritike.editor@gmail.com
ABOUT THE COVER

KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy, 10:1 (June 2016)
Roland Theuas DS. Pada, Valor, 2016. Photograph.

About the Journal
KRITIKE is the official open access (OA) journal of the Department of Philosophy of the University of
Santo Tomas (UST), Manila, Philippines. It is a Filipino peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, and international
journal of philosophy founded by a group of UST alumni. The journal seeks to publish articles and book
reviews by local and international authors across the whole range of philosophical topics, but with
special emphasis on the following subject strands:
 Filipino Philosophy
 Oriental Thought and East-West Comparative Philosophy
 Continental European Philosophy
 Anglo-American Philosophy
The journal primarily caters to works by professional philosophers and graduate students of philosophy,
but welcomes contributions from other fields (literature, cultural studies, gender studies, political
science, sociology, history, anthropology, economics, inter alia) with strong philosophical content.
The word "kritike" is Greek from the verb "krinein," which means to discern. Hence, kritike means the art
of discerning or the art of critical analysis. Any form of philosophizing is, in one way or another, a
"critique" of something. Being critical, therefore, is an attitude common to all philosophical traditions.
Indeed, the meaning of philosophy is critique and to be philosophical is to be critical.
KRITIKE supports the Open Access Movement and is classified under the "Platinum OA" category,
which means that articles published by the journal are fully accessible online without a
subscription fee. Moreover, the journal does not levy charges against the authors for the
publication of their works. Articles can either be read on site or downloaded as pdf files and old
issues are archived for future retrieval.
KRITIKE is committed to meet the highest ethical standards in research and academic publication. The
journal is guided by the principles set in its Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.
KRITIKE is a Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Accredited Research Journal (A-2
Category) and is indexed and listed in the following:
The Philosopher's Index

Humanities International Complete™
Humanities International Index™
International Directory of Philosophy
Modern Language Association (MLA) Directory of Periodicals
Directory of Open Access Journals
PhilPapers: Philosophical Research Online
Google Scholar
KRITIKE is a biannual journal published in June and December of each year.
ISSN 1908-7330 | OCLC 502390973 | www.kritike.org

Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief
Paolo A. Bolaños, University of Santo Tomas
Managing Editor
Roland Theuas DS. Pada, University of Santo Tomas
Associate Editors
Fleurdeliz R. Altez-Albela, University of Santo Tomas
Moses Aaron T. Angeles, San Beda College
Marella Ada M. Bolaños, University of Santo Tomas
Peter Emmanuel A. Mara, University of Santo Tomas
Melanie P. Mejia, University of Santo Tomas
Dean Edward A. Mejos, University of Asia & the Pacific
Book Review and Creative Works Editors

Darlene Demandante, University of Santo Tomas
Tracy Ann P. Llanera, Macquarie University
Wendyl Luna, University of New South Wales
Jonathan Villacorta, University of Santo Tomas
Style and Layout Editors

Ranier Carlo V. Abengaña, University of Santo Tomas
Pia Patricia P. Tenedero, University of Santo Tomas
Editorial Collaborative
Agustin Martin Rodriguez, Ateneo de Manila University
Napoleon Mabaquiao, De La Salle University
Jeffry Ocay, Silliman University
Renante Pilapil, Ateneo de Davao University
Ryan Urbano, University of San Carlos
International Advisory Board

Romualdo E. Abulad, University of Santo Tomas
Karin Bauer, McGill University
Alfredo P. Co, University of Santo Tomas
Leovino Ma. Garcia, Ateneo de Manila University
Heinrich Geiger, Katholischer Akademischer Ausländer-Dienst
John F. X. Knasas, University of St. Thomas - Houston
Zosimo E. Lee, University of the Philippines - Diliman
Julius D. Mendoza, University of the Philippines - Baguio
Hans-Georg Moeller, University of Macau
Karl-Heinz Pohl, Universität Trier
Peter L P Simpson, City University of New York
Nicholas H. Smith, Macquarie University
John Rundell, University of Melbourne
Vincent Shen, University of Toronto
John Weckert, Charles Sturt University
KRITIKE
Volume 10, Number 1
June 2016
ON FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE

1 EMMANUEL C. DE LEON
An Interview with Romualdo Abulad, SVD
38 LEO ANDREW B. BICLAR

Assumptions Related to the Literary Persona in Demetillo’s Barter in Panay: An Epic
54 LESLIE ANNE L. LIWANAG

Ang Pilosopiya ni Emerita S. Quito
83 NOEL L. CLEMENTE
Edukasyon bilang Tagpuan ng Katwirang Lungsod at Katwirang Lalawigan
ARTICLES
99 GEORGE PAPANDREOPOULOS
Bataille and Nietzsche on the Limits and Ambiguities of Sovereignty and Power
124 ANTON LUIS SEVILLA

The Ethics of Engaged Pedagogy:
A Comparative Study of Watsuji Tetsurô and bell hooks
146 IAN RAYMOND B. PACQUING

Neoliberalism and the Paralysis of Human Rationality
163 KELLY LOUISE REXZY P. AGRA

Ontology or Ethics: The Case of Martin Heidegger and Watsuji Tetsuro
192 ANTHONY LAWRENCE A. BORJA

Virtù, Fortuna, and Statecraft: A Dialectical Analysis of Machiavelli
213 LEANDER P. MARQUEZ

Belief as ‘Seeing As’
236 SAURABH TODARIYA

Authentic Historicality and National Socialism in Being and Time
255 SHAHARIR bin MOHAMAD ZAIN

A Need for New Algebraic System of Logic Based on Al-Ghazali’s Reasoning
269 JEREMY DE CHAVEZ

‘No theme requires more pure logic than love”: On Badiou’s Amorous Axiomatics
286 JEREMIAH JOVEN JOAQUIN

Feminism without Philosophy: A Polemic
301 JIOLITO L. BENITEZ

Aristotelian Categorical Syllogism: An Alternative Pedagogical Approach
315 FRANZ GIUSEPPE F. CORTEZ

Critical Rethinking of Critical Thinking:
A Contribution of Critical Pedagogy in Facing the Challenges of K+12
KRITIKE VOLUME TEN NUMBER ONE (JUNE 2016) 1-37
On Filipino Philosophy and Culture
An Interview with Romualdo Abulad, SVD

Emmanuel C. De Leon
Abstract: In this interview, the readers get the chance to listen

to one of the most significant Thomasian philosophers, and
undoubtedly, the most prominent Kantian scholar of our
country. His passion for teaching, writing, and truth is very
evident in this informal chat. The interviewer highlights the
intellectual biography of Romualdo Abulad, beginning from his
childhood in Lucban, Quezon, his accidental shift to philosophy,
his awakening from his Thomistic slumber, and his love affair
with Immanuel Kant. A bibliography of leading Thomasian
philosophers can also be found at the end of the interview.
Keywords: Abulad, Filipino philosophy, interview, Thomasian

philosophers
A Child of Lucban, Quezon
Emmanuel De Leon (Tagapanayam): Magandang araw po, Br. Romy!

Salamat po sa pagpapaunlak ng isang interbyu sa gitna ng marami ninyong
ginagawa. Unang-una po, narito po ako ngayon upang tanungin kayo ukol
sa mga alaala ninyo ng klase ng pamimilosopiya sa Unibersidad ng Santo
Tomas at baka sakali po ay mayroon tayong maiulat na kongkretong pamana
nito sa uri ng pamimilosopiya na mayroong tayo ngayon sa ating bansa.
Pero, bago po ang lahat, dito po sa inyong curriculum vitae na
nadownload ko sa internet, sinasabing nagtapos po kayo ng elementarya sa
Lucban Elementary School noong 1960 at ng sekondarya naman sa Lucban
Academy noong 1964. Br. Romy, maaari po ba ninyong gunitain para sa amin
ang inyong kabataan sa probinsiya ng Quezon? Ano pong nagugunita ninyo
tungkol sa inyong paglaki sa bayan ng Lucban?
Romualdo Abulad: Ah, mukhang marami ano? Let me see. Saan ba ako
magsisimula?
De Leon: Ilan po kayong magkakapatid?
© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/de leon_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
2 INTERVIEW WITH ROMUALDO ABULAD
Abulad: Okay! Tatlo kaming magkakapatid. Ako lamang ang lalaki, at ako’y
nasa gitna. Actually, second husband ng nanay ko ang tatay ko. ‘Yung first
husband niya ay sundalo na namatay noong giyera. Kaya mayroon akong
half-sister—‘yung panganay sa amin. Pero, noong lumaki kami ay parang
wala kaming pagkakaiba o distinction. Talagang ang pakiramdam namin ay
100% ang relationship namin bilang magkakapatid.
So, doon ako lumaki [sa Lucban, Quezon], doon ako nag-
Elementarya, doon ako nag-High School. At, ang pinakamahalagang bahagi
ng aking buhay ay noong madestino ang parents ko sa ibang lugar [laughs].
Kaya naiwan ako sa lola ko. Lola ko ang pumalit sa mother ko at saka kasama
ko sa bahay ‘yung pinsan ko. Very lax ‘yung aking lola kaya noong High
School talagang lubog ako sa barkada. Doon ko natikman ang kahalagahan
[ng pakikipagbarkada]. Alam mo, ang pinakamasayang bahagi ng aking
buhay ay ‘yung High School—dahil sa barkada. Barkada ang number one.
De Leon: At kung tungkol naman po sa sistema ng edukasyon noon sa

probinsiya, ano naman pong klase ang meron noon sa Lucban?
Abulad: Siguro, isang dahilan kaya okay naman ang aking Ingles
grammatically ay dahil na rin doon. Pero, hindi ko na malaman kung ano at
sino ang nagcontribute [sa kung ano ako ngayon]. Siguro nag-aaral din
naman ako. Siguro okay din ang mga guro ko. May mga guro na hanggang
ngayon ay naaalala ko pa. Magagaling silang guro. Pero, mayroon ding mga
teachers na katulad ng mga teachers ko sa college na ang tendency ay mag-
textbook, magmemorya, at pagkatapos ay magtest; at pagkatapos ng test ay
makakalimutan mo na lahat. Parang hindi mo alam kung may nangyari o
walang nangyari. Kaya sa maraming taon kong pag-aaral, tatlong teachers
ang maituturing kong nagpabago ng aking pananaw—swerte na ako dahil
mayroon akong tatlo. Alam kong maraming estudyante ang hindi nakatagpo
ng mga teachers na tulad ng tatlong ito.
De Leon: Sinu-sino po silang tatlo?
Abulad: I mean, si Dr. [Emerita] Quito sa pilosopiya, si Dr. [Josephine]

Pasricha pagdating sa … Pilosoper siya pero siya rin ang nagturo sa amin ng
literatura. At magagaling ang aming mga teachers sa literature noong araw,
kasama na si [Cristina] Jingjing Pantoja-Hidalgo. Ang gagaling ng mga
teachers namin sa Ingles at literature noon. Pero, natatandaan kong si
Pasricha ang nagturo sa akin ng literary criticism. And after that, parang alam
ko na kung papaano iaapproach at kung paano ako magbabasa ng literature
o ng essay. So, Pasricha was one of my most influential teachers. And then,

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 3
lately pagdating sa theology, itong ating Kardinal Chito Tagle ngayon. At

least may tatlo akong [maituturing na impluwensiya]. And they are really
first class.
De Leon: Noon pong kabataan ninyo sa elementarya at sekondarya, wala po

kayong naging impluwensiya doon?
Abulad: Meron, meron. Pero, hindi syempre kasing [lakas ng impluwensiya

ng tatlong nabanggit]. Syempre, General Education iyan eh. Sila siguro ang
dahilan kung bakit hindi baluktot ang aking Ingles, tama naman ang aking
Tagalog, at nagkaroon ako ng interest sa Mathematics—‘yung teacher ko sa
Geometry ay hindi ko makakalimutan. Pinabayaan niya ako sa Geometry
kaya kahit iba’t iba ang aking solusyon sa mga geometrical problems, nakita
ko kung bakit ang Geometry ay napaka-creative na subject. At, ‘yun ang
nagbigay sa akin ng inspirasyon para magustuhan ang Mathematics. Kung
hindi siguro ako nag-pilosoper eh nag-Mathematician ako [laughs].
On the UST College of Science and the Use of Intuition
De Leon: Mathematician? [laughs] May kaugnayan po ‘yan sa tanong ko

mamaya. Pero, paano naman po kayo napunta sa Unibersidad ng Santo
Tomas? Nag-aral po kayo sa UST simula noong 1964 hanggang 1969. Maaari
po ba ninyong ikwento kung paano ninyo napili ang UST bilang inyong
papasukang paaralan?
Abulad: Eh kasi pagkatapos ng High School ay parang lahat gusto ko eh

[laughs]. Kaya noong tanungin ako ng tatay ko kung anong gusto kong kunin
[kurso sa kolehiyo], hindi ako makasagot agad. Kaya siya na mismo ang
nagdesisyon para sa akin at sinabing “Magdodoktor ka!” [laughs] So,
punterya ang [pag-aaral ng] Medicine, kaya sa UST. Kaya tinulungan niya
akong mag-enrol sa UST. So, sa College of Science ako nagsimula, ‘no?
De Leon: Ah, sa College of Science po pala kayo noong 1964?
Abulad: Two years ako sa College of Science. Kaya mayroon din akong
interest sa science. Pero, after two years, ewan ko kung paano nangyari ‘yun,
pero natatandaan ko noong summer [ng taong iyon], sinabi ko sa parents ko
na I will shift. Ayaw nila. Pero, alam mo ang ginawa kong reason? [laughs]
Hindi lang dapat ang paalam ay “I will shift,” dahil kung iyon lang hindi
papayag ang parents ko. Sabi ko, “I will go to a seminary.” [laughs] Eh ‘pag
seminaryo hindi makahindi ang mga magulang [laughs]. Diyos eh, Diyos
[laughs].

ISSN 1908-7330
De Leon: Tama po. Lalo na po sa probinsiya ng Quezon.
Abulad: Right! Lalo sa aming bayan. It is very famous place para sa mga
priests.
De Leon: Opo. Halos lahat ng mga pamilya kailangang may kahit isang pari.
Abulad: Totoo ka diyan, totoo ka diyan. So, walang magawa [ang parents
ko]. Ang nanay ko naman … teachers kasi silang pareho. Sila ang main
influence ko. Parang nasa dugo ang pagiging teacher sa amin. So, by nature
yata, teacher ako [laughs]. You can take away from me everything, pero
teacher pa rin ako. By nature, teacher ako; tapos ang influence pa ng parents
ko nga. They were very good teachers.
De Leon: Pagkatapos naman po ng dalawang taon sa College of Science dito

sa UST, nagshift naman po kayo sa Liberal Arts sa AB?
Abulad: Hindi. Nagshift ako sa seminaryo muna [laughs].
De Leon: Ah, pumasok po pala talaga kayo sa seminaryo? Dito po sa

seminaryo natin sa UST?
Abulad: Hindi, hindi. Sa mga Jesuits. Dahil ang nanay ko, may estudyante
siyang naging Obispo na doon nag-aral sa San Jose Seminary—hindi doon sa
seminaryo kung saan [nag-aaral] para maging Jesuits. Dinala ako ng
Obispong iyon doon sa San Jose Seminary. I stayed there for just one year
[laughs]. Tapos lumabas ako.
De Leon: Philosophy na po ang kinuha ninyo pagkalabas ng seminaryo?
Abulad: Noong sabihin ko sa aking Rector na lalabas ako, ang tanong niya sa
akin ay kung anong kukunin ko paglabas? [laughs] Nakatunganga ako sa
kanya at hindi ko alam ang sasabihin. At, alam ko sa sarili ko na hindi ako
babalik sa Science. Noong makita sigurong hindi ako nagsasalita, siya na rin
ang nagsabi sa akin: “Do philosophy and later on you will come back!” So,
sabi ko, “Opo!” Masunurin akong bata eh. So, bumalik ako sa University of
Santo Tomas at diretso ako sa philosophy.
De Leon: So, parang aksidente lang po pala na napunta kayo sa philosophy—

dahil lamang sa pagsunod ninyo sa paghimok ng isang Rector [laughs].

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 5
Abulad: Oo [laughs]. Kaya sabi ko, “I’m not following my head, I’m following
my intuition.” [laughs] Hanggang ngayon, iyon pa rin ang sinasabi ko, “I’m
following my intuition.” And you know why? Kasi ang pinakamababa kong
grade noong nasa College of Science ako ay Logic at Ethics. ‘Yung dalawa ang
pinakamababa kong grades, 81 yata [laughs]. Pero, noong sabihin sa akin ng
pari [ng San Jose Seminary] na pumasok ako sa philosophy, pasok ako ng
philosophy. At, doon naman ako nag-enjoy sa philosophy. Especially noong
second semester ng third year, kasi tapos ko na ang second year eh, dumating
naman si Dr. Quito. At nabago ang philosophy sa UST [laughs]. Tuwang tuwa
yung mga kaklase ko [laughs].
De Leon: Bago po dumating si Dr. Quito galing sa Switzerland, ano po ba

yung sistema ng pilosopiya na mayroon sa UST?
Abulad: Eh kaya nga siguro ako naging 81 [sa philosophy noong nasa College
of Science ako] [laughing out loud]. Pero, I consider myself as a good student—
masunurin at ginagawa ko kung anong sabihin ng teacher—kaya natuto
naman ako ng Thomistic philosophy. Talagang solid ang aking Thomistic
background.
The Awakening from Dogmatic Slumber
De Leon: Noong dumating po si Dr. Quito sa UST, ano po kaagad ang itinuro
niya sa inyo?
Abulad: Basta ang alam ko, suyang-suya na ang mga kaklase ko sa Scholastic
philosophy. ‘Yun ang maaari mong tawaging “sick and tired.” So, noong
dumating si Dr. Quito, parang fresh air [laughs]. Hindi lang naman si Dr.
Quito ang dumating. Sa Ateneo, dumating sina Dr. Reyes, kaya
phenomenology at existentialism ang naging foundation ng Ateneo. Tayo
dito, Dr. Quito almost singlehandedly taught phenomenology at
existentialism. Kaagad naging successful ang phenomenology at
existentialism [dito sa UST]. And more than that, what I really like about Dr.
Quito, almost every semester, may ibinibigay siya parating bagong
philosophy sa amin. Noong matapos ako ng Bachelor of Philosophy,
immediately pumunta ako sa Graduate School [ng UST]. At, lagi akong nag-
eenrol kay Dr. Quito. Every semester, may bago kaming [nakukuhang]
philosophy sa kanya. Sa kanya ko nakuha ang structuralism, hermeneutics,
Marcuse, Marx, Plotinus, at pati Oriental philosophy siya rin ang nagbigay sa
amin. Name it! At sa kanya lahat iyan nanggaling.

ISSN 1908-7330
De Leon: Itinuturing po ang mga nasabi ninyong kurso na “bago” noong

panahon ninyo dito sa UST? Fresh air po talaga?
Abulad: Fresh air talaga ito! At, dahil fresh air nga, ‘yung stable system dito
ay medyo nayanig. Ang lahat kasi noon ay halos Tomista eh [laughs]. Solo si
Dr. Quito na dumating at hindi naman nila magawang ma-ignore. So, “hero”
itong si Dr. Quito noong panahong iyon.
De Leon: Pero, si Dr. Quito po, matatag din ang kanyang pundasyon
pagdating sa sistemang Aristoteliko-Tomistiko.
Abulad: Kaya hindi siya mabasta-basta ng kahit na sino diyan. Sinong mga
nandiyan [noong panahong iyon]? Sina Antonio Piñon, Salvador Gonzales,
Ariston Estrada, mga diehard ang mga yan at mga tried and tested.
De Leon: ‘Yan po ba yung tinatawag na “be-all and end-all” pagdating sa

Tomismo?
Abulad: ‘Yan! Right! Noon ay lahat dapat nasa textbook ‘yan eh. Kapag
nagkamali ka at hindi alinsunod sa pilosopiya ni Santo Tomas, parang
pakiramdam mo ay malaki ang pagkakasala mo. Mortal sin! [laughs].
Mapupunta ka sa impyerno. But, with Dr. Quito? The new philosophies
came.
De Leon: Pero, mukha pong sa nabasa ko mula sa mga isinulat ninyong

artikulo, hindi nyo naman po minamasama ang Tomismo, tama po ba?
Abulad: Ah, hindi.
De Leon: Sa inyo pong artikulong may pamagat na “Contemporary Filipino

Philosophy” (Karunungan 5, 1998), nabanggit po ninyo ang dalawang mukha
ng Tomismo sa Pilipinas. Ipinaliwanag po ninyo na mayroong mabuti at
masamang naidulot ang tradisyon ng pamimilosopiyang matatawag na
Tomismo. Wika po ninyo,
Thomism in this country became indomitably stubborn

that it started giving the impression that no truth could
possibly lie outside of its pre-established framework. In
my youth, I saw very clearly how intellectual
doggedness could prove fatal to an aging philosophy (3).
Sa sumunod naman pong pahina, sinabi ninyo,

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 7
Indeed, one incontestable virtue of a solid background

in the system of St. Thomas lies in its formative value. By
“formative value” I refer to the fact that student who has
an early exposure to Thomism tends to develop a well-
organized and lucidly logical manner of thinking,
which, to use Kant’s words, constitutes a conditio sine qua
non for a competent philosophy (4).
Maaari po bang ipaliwanag pa, ano po bang nakikita ninyong

positibo sa sistema ng Tomismo?
Abulad: Oo. Ganun nga. Kung hindi dumating si Dr. Quito, talagang suyang-
suya na ang aking classmates [laughs].
De Leon: ‘Yun ang term ano po, “suyang-suya.” [laughs]
Abulad: Oo. ‘Yung para bang sa tuwinang kakain ka ay pare-pareho ang

ulam mo. Eh kahit na masarap ang ulam mo, kapag sobra naman,
[nakakasuya rin]. Tapos, in the end, sasabihin pa sa ‘yo na hindi tama itong
sinasabi mo. Parang naging objective tuloy masyado—right or wrong. At
wala ka nang kalayaang mag-isip. Especially, you are young [during that
time]. Bakit ganyan ang sitwasyon, eh philosophy ‘yan? You can see what
kind of trap it could be, ano? Hindi lang ‘yan sa Tomismo maaaring
mangyari. Analytic philosophy could be like that too. Kahit na ano. Marxism
could be like that also. Lahat na sistema ay maaaring maging dogmatic, na
parang sasabihin mo na ito lamang ang totoo at lahat ng labas dito ay mali.
Ah, hindi na ‘yan uubra ngayon.
De Leon: Bukod po doon sa sinasabi ninyong tulong ng Tomismo sa pagiging

sistematikong mag-isip, ano pa pong nakikita ninyong positibo dito?
Abulad: Una, hanggang ngayon, naniniwala pa rin ako na dapat unahin ang
Aristotelico-Thomistic philosophy. At, naniniwala pa rin ako na iyan ay
magandang pundasyon. Pero, sabi ko nga, hindi ka dapat manatili na lamang
diyan. I-establish mo lang ‘yan, at pagkatapos, lampasan mo ‘yan. Alam mo,
may nakikita pa rin akong hindi makalampas doon hanggang ngayon.
Ang hirap kapag ikaw ay naging Tomista, you take everything said
by St. Thomas hook, line, and sinker [laughs]. Si Santo Tomas ay hindi naman
ganyan. Pinag-aaralan niya ang mga sciences ng kanyang panahon. Kaya nga
nakacompose siya ng Summa Theologiae—lahat ng mga ‘yun ay galing sa mga
sciences na available noong panahon niya. Kaya nga, open-minded si St.

ISSN 1908-7330
Thomas. In fact, pwede mong sabihin na rebolusyonaryo siya—intellectual

revolutionary siya—noong panahon niya. Tapos, ipepreso natin siya ng
ganun?
Pangalawa, hindi tinapos ni Santo Tomas ang kanyang Summa at
ayaw niyang tapusin kahit kaya naman niyang gawin. Bakit? Sabi niya,
“Lahat ‘yan basura!” ‘Yan ang paborito kong St. Thomas Aquinas. Hindi siya
dogmatic na pilosoper. Pero, pwede mo siyang gawing dogmatic. Pero, hindi
siya naging dogmatic. At ang nagsalba sa kanya sa pagiging dogmatic ay ‘yun
nga na ayaw niya [na tapusin ang kanyang Summa]. He could have, but he
did not finish his Summa Theologiae, leaving a lot of doors open for
possibilities.
Pangatlo, ngayon may encyclical si Pope Francis, itong Laudato Si’.
Ang inirerekomenda niya ay itong “integral ecology.” Ano itong integral
ecology na ito? It’s about time na magkasama-sama ang mga disciplines.
Nandiyan ang environmental ecology, social and political ecology, at
nandiyan din ang ethical ecology. Lahat ay dapat sama-sama iyan. Para sa
akin, si Pope Francis ay isang postmodern na Santo Tomas at hindi medieval.
Sabi ko nga, “integral ecology” is another name for philosophy. Hindi siguro
conscious si Pope Francis doon. Pero, integral ecology is another name for
philosophy. Philosophy is integral ecology. And the best example is still St.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae is the summary of all knowledge, which
is not just a philosophy but also a theology.
Makikita mo ang value ni Santo Tomas h’wag mo lang ipipilit na
“everything is made up of matter and form.” At, kung ipipilit mo yan, naku
po! Ngayon ang ibig sabihin ng “matter” ay ibang iba na kesa noong panahon
ni Aristotle o ni Santo Tomas. “Form?” Naku, mahihilo ka sa napakaraming
kahulugan. Kaya, kung magsulat ka at itratranslate mo sa ating lengwahe, o
kung paano natin naintindihan ‘yan, ibang-iba na ang theory of
hylemorphism.
Teaching Philosophy
De Leon: Nagtapos po kayo sa UST nang 1969. Tama po?
Abulad: Tama.
De Leon: Tapos, kaagad din kayong nagturo sa UST …
Abulad: Kinuha agad ako.
De Leon: Opo. Maaari po ba ninyong ibahagi kung sinong naghikayat sa

inyong pumasok sa pagtuturo ng pilosopiya dito sa UST?

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 9
Abulad: Gusto ko talagang magturo. Intuition ang aking sinusunod. It comes

from me, pero si Dr. Quito yung nag-suggest na “mag-apply ka!” Nag-apply
naman ako at magagaling din yung mga kasabay kong nag-apply. Kilala ko
na magagaling din sila. Pero, ako ang tinanggap [laughs].
De Leon: Ito na po ‘yung panahon ni Presidente Marcos di po ba?
Abulad: Oo.
De Leon: Anu-ano pong uring pakikibaka ang masasabi ninyo na ginawa ng

mga Tomasino noong panahong iyon?
Abulad: Oo, oo. Mararamdaman mong wala kang silbi kung nagtuturo ka
lamang sa classroom. Na nagtuturo ka pa ring tulad ng dati at parang walang
pakialam. Kapag ganoon, mararamdaman mong walang kabuluhan ang
iyong ginagawa.
Kasama kami! Kasama kami! Lumalabas kami ng unibersidad [para
makibaka]. Siguro ang administration ay medyo nag-iingat kaya medyo
konserbatibo ang tingin. Pero, ang faculty at estudyante ay hindi ganoon.
From day one of Martial Law, ayaw na namin [dito]. Nakikita naming hindi
ito tama.
De Leon: And then, mas pinili po ninyong mag-Masterado sa Ateneo?
Abulad: Ah, kasi ang aking pilosoper ay si Kant. Nagsimula ako dito sa UST,
of course narinig ko na [ang turo ni] Dr. Quito. Dahil sa kanya kaya ako
naimpluwensiyahang mag-Kant. Sa klase namin sa undergrad hanggang
Graduate School, laging sasabihin sa amin ni Dr. Quito, “Kapag wala kang
Kant, may kulang sa iyong edukasyon.” Ang sitwasyon, dahil palagay ko
naman simula noong pumasok ako ng philosophy ay nag-aaral na akong
mabuti; naintindihan ko naman yata ang mga itinuturo sa akin; at binigyan
ni Dr. Quito ng pinakamahabang panahon ang pagtuturo kay Kant. And yet,
sa lahat ng pinag-aralan ko ang pinakamalabo ay si Kant. Hindi ko siya
maintindihan. “I Kant understand.” [laughs].
De Leon: Paano po nangyari yun? Iniisip ko pong parang imposible yun sa

isang Br. Abulad [laughs].
Abulad: Eh naintindihan ko si Hegel, pero hindi ko talaga maintindihan si

Kant kahit binigyan ni Dr. Quito ng pinakamahabang panahon ang pag-aaral
namin kay Kant. Saka, isiniksik sa amin na kapag wala kang Kant ay kulang

ISSN 1908-7330
o may lacuna o gap ang iyong edukasyon. So, pinilit kong pag-aralan si Kant.
After a while, narealize kong wala na akong matutunan tungkol kay Kant sa
UST. At iyon ang nag-move sa akin papuntang Ateneo. Akala ko [laughs],
mayroong magtuturo sa akin tungkol kay Kant doon. So, nag-enrol ako doon,
especially kay Dr. Ramon Reyes, dahil siya ang supposedly Kant expert doon
sa Ateneo. Pero, in the end, wala. Ako pa rin ang mag-aaral kay Kant—on my
own. And it took me something like ten years bago ko nasabing kahit paano
ay may nakuha na akong linaw kay Kant.
De Leon: Mayroon po bang malinaw na pagkakaiba sa sistema ng

pamimilosopiya sa Ateneo at UST noong mga panahon na iyon?
Abulad: Siguro, hindi ako fair dito, pero dahil galing ako kay Dr. Quito eh.
Then, pagdating ko sa Ateneo, walang makacompare sa kanya [laughs].
De Leon: Wala pa po ba noon sina Roque Ferriols at iba pang philosophers

nila doon?
Abulad: Naroon! Naroon na silang lahat. ‘Yun na nga eh. Nandoon na sina
Roque Ferriols—siya nga ang aking naging adviser sa aking thesis.
De Leon: Ganun po pala. Ano po ang sinulat ninyong thesis noon?
Abulad: Tungkol kay Kant din. Pinagcompare ko si Kant at si Shankara.
De Leon: Iyan din po yata ang inyong sinulat na disertasyon?
Abulad: ‘Yan nga ang aking disertasyon. Teka, sa Ateneo pala ang sinulat
kong thesis ay tungkol sa epistemology at metaphysics ni Kant. At hanggang
ngayon ay alam ko kung anong mali sa trabaho ko [laughs]. Pero, hindi nila
napansin. Kita mo, hindi nila alam [laughs]. Pero, ako alam ko na ngayon,
may mali talaga [laughs].
De Leon: So, andun na po pala noon sina Roque Ferriols.
Abulad: Sina Roque Ferriols, [Manuel] Manny Dy [Jr.], at [Leovino] Leo

Garcia—they were already there.
De Leon: Umupo din po kayo sa klase ni Ferriols?
Abulad: Oo. Pero, Ingles ang language niya sa klase namin.

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 11
De Leon: Hindi pa po siya nagsisimulang magturo sa Filipino?
Abulad: Nagtuturo na siya sa Filipino, pero ang partikular naming klase ay

Ingles ang gamit.
Further Studies
De Leon: Natapos naman po ninyo ang inyong Doktorado sa pilosopiya sa

ating alma mater na UST noong 1978.
Abulad: Oo. Kasi walang ibang unibersidad sa Pilipinas ang nag-ooffer ng

Ph.D. sa philosophy kundi ang ating unibersidad noong mga panahong iyon.
De Leon: Opo. Tapos, isang taon po ang makalipas, nagpunta naman kayo sa
Alemanya, sa Unibersidad ng Hamburg (1979-1981) upang mag-aral pa lalo
ng pilosopiya. Maaari po ba ninyong isalaysay ang inyong mga karanasan at
aral na natutunan sa ginawa ninyong ito?
Abulad: Kasi pagkatapos ko ng aking Ph.D. dito, alam ko dahil intuition nga
ang aking sinusunod, hindi naman utak, hindi ako smart [laughs], kaya
intuition ang aking sinusunod; alam ko na ang kulang ko. Hindi pa ako
kuntento sa aking Kant. And the reason really is I had not read him in the
original German text. Nag-aaral na rin naman ako ng German language sa
Goethe Institute, pero hindi ko pa noon nabasa si Kant sa original German.
So, alam ko na ang dapat kong gawin ay pumunta ng Germany para basahin
si Kant sa wikang Aleman. And you know, sinusunod ko lang naman ang
intuition ko, nag-apply ako sa Alexander von Humbolt Foundation. Ang
bilis-bilis. Sumulat ako sa mga universities at maraming professors ang
sumagot sa akin. Sayang nga lang, wala akong kamuwang-muwang. Sabi ko,
“ito yata ang mas madali.” [laughs] Kaya yun ang pinili ko. Next time alam
ko na [laughs].
De Leon: Tatlong taon po kayo doon?
Abulad: Dalawa.
De Leon: Ito po yun panahon na nakatayo pa ang Berlin Wall di po ba?
Abulad: Oo. Kaya nga hindi ako nakapunta sa Königsberg dahil sakop yan
ng Russia, ng mga komunista.
De Leon: Talaga pong na-in love po kayo kay Kant, ano po?

ISSN 1908-7330
Abulad: I don’t know if that is “in love,” but I have no regrets. Basta ang
nagtulak sa akin kay Kant ay hindi ko siya maintindihan [laughs]. At ‘yung
mga naging guro ko, hindi naman nakatulong sa akin. I hope they could teach
me more, pero hanggang doon lamang yata ang alam nila, ano? Kaya, sa
katupus-tapusan, ako talaga ang nag-aral ng Kant.
De Leon: Sino pong pilosoper sa Germany ang nakadaupang-palad ninyo

doon?
Abulad: ‘Yung adviser ko. Well, kung post-doctoral ‘yan, magkasama lang
kayo ng … you don’t even call it mentor … pereho kayo eh, equal ang
treatment sa iyo. Sabi ko nga sa kanya, gusto ko yatang mag-doctorate dito.
Sabi niya, “that’s unheard of.” [laughs] May “Doctor” ka na [laughs].
De Leon: Pagkatapos po ay lumipat kayo ng De La Salle College?
Abulad: All this time, nasa De La Salle na ako. Dito sa UST ay nagturo lamang
ako ng mga dalawa o tatlong taon. Tapos, si Dr. Quito kasi ay na-pirate ng
De La Salle [laughs]. Eh noon naman ay kaigtingan nga ng mga social
movements dito. Kaya, maligaya na rin ako noong sabihin sa akin ni Dr.
Quito na doon na lang din ako sa De La Salle. At, hindi na rin ako
komportable sa atmosphere ng university, mas komportable ako sa mas
“rebolusyonaryo.” [laughs]
De Leon: Sino po ang mga kasama ninyo sa departamento ng pilosopiya sa

De La Salle noon? Ano pong tradisyong pilosopikal ang mayroon noon sa La
Salle?
Abulad: Well, sa departamento, si Dr. Quito nga ang number one.
De Leon: Maituturing po ba ninyo siyang founder ng philosophy doon?
Abulad: Siya ang paradigm shift. Noong dumating siya, nabago lahat. Siya
halos ang nagturo ng lahat sa amin, pero hindi ako nasusuya. Malayong
malayo sa kanya ‘yung mga kasabayan niyang nagturo ng pilosopiya. I don’t
want to name names anymore. But, they are good humans. Pero, malayo ang
agwat ni Dr. Quito sa kanila. Kaya hindi ako masyadong nag-enjoy
halimbawa sa rational psychology ko. Sa aesthetics, may magaling akong
teacher, kaya lang entertaining lang siya sa klase at saka maganda siya. Kaya
ayaw ko ng pareport-report na style sa pagtuturo, wala akong natututunan
sa ganyang style except ‘yung aking inireport na topic. Kaya sa aesthetics,

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 13
pinareport ako tungkol kay Rembrandt, hanggang ngayon alam ko pa ang

Rembrandt. Pero, ‘yung iba ay hindi ko na alam. Oo, maganda rin nga ‘yung
aking teacher sa aesthetics noon [laughs].
De Leon: Kung pagbabatayan po ang dami ng inyong sinulat kasama si Dr.

Quito, talagang masasabi po na napakalaking inpluwensiya niya sa inyo.
Abulad: Sure. Kasi siya ang namamahala nga ng departamento namin sa De

La Salle. Very very active at very creative si Dr. Quito. Silang dalawa ni Br.
Andrew Gonzales ang magka-tandem. At ‘yang si Br. Andrew Gonzales ay
genius pagdating sa school administration. Kay Br. Andrew nakaranas ako
ng mahusay na pamumuno sa eskwelahan, that’s really great leadership. At,
magka-tandem sila ni Dr. Quito na napakahusay din pagdating sa
departmento. Kaya, maganda talaga ang tandem nila. At sa palagay ko ang
magandang ginawa ni Dr. Quito sa De La Salle ay yung pagsisimula ng
kultura ng pagsusulat. Nagkasundo sila ni Br. Andrew sa larangan na ‘yan.
Kaya nahikayat din akong magsulat. Kung pababayaan mo lang ako, baka
hindi ako nagsulat. Halos lahat ay hikayat niya. Dahil sa hikayat niya kaya
nagsulat kami ng ensayklopediya, ng libro sa pilosopiya ng tao, itong mga
textbooks na ito na magaganda, si Dr. Quito ay may ideya ng mga ‘yan.
De Leon: At hindi lang po siguro sa pagsusulat, noong panahon po ninyo,

may kultura ng pagsusulat gamit ang wikang pambansa.
Abulad: Kasama na ‘yan. Si Dr. Quito ang alam kong kauna-unahang

pilosopong Pilipino na nagsulat sa Filipino. Una pa siya kesa kay Roque
Ferriols.
The Use of Filipino Language
De Leon: Napansin ko po na marami-rami talaga kayo nasulat gamit ang

wikang pambansa. Kasama kayo sa nagsulat ng napakahalagang
Ensayklopediya ng Pilosopiya (1993), andiyan din ang Ang Pilosopiya ng Tao
(1980) na sinulat ninyo kasama si Dr. Quito, at mga artikulong tulad ng
“Bayani,” “Ang Diwa at Kaisipan ng Pilipino sa Kasaysayan ng
Himagsikan,” “Kalooban Mo, Kagustuhan Ko,” “Mga Puna Tungo sa Pag-
asa,” “Pilipino sa Pilosopiya,” “Ang Pilosopiyang Pranses sa Pananaw ng
Isang Pilipino,” “Ang Pilosopiya ng Salapi ni Georg Simmel,” “Si Kant at ang
Pilosopiya sa Pilipinas,” “Ang Teorya ng Ebolusyon,” “Ulat Bunga ng
Pakikipamuhay,” at kasama rin kayo sa artikulong “Ulat Tungkol sa
Sanggunian at Leksikon ng Pilosopiya.” Siguro po ay mayroon pa akong
nakaligtaang banggitin.

ISSN 1908-7330
Abulad: Oo. Meron pa, meron pa.
De Leon: Maaari po ba ninyong ilahad kung paano kayo nagsimulang

magsulat ng mga pilosopikal na akda gamit ang wikang pambansa?
Abulad: Kasi unang-una ay Tagalog ako. Pagkatapos, marunong akong

masulat. At syempre ang susulatin ko ay pilosopiya. At saka si Dr. Quito ang
halimbawa ko. Si Dr. Quito ay Kapampangan, kaya ang Tagalog niya ay
Kapampangan din [laughs]. Pero, nagsumikap siyang magsulat sa Filipino
kahit na ang Tagalog niya ay hindi mo masasabing polished Tagalog.
Nagpilit siyang magsulat sa Filipino dahil naniniwala siyang dapat nating
linangin ang sariling atin. Galing siya sa mga bansa na ang ginagamit ay
sariling wika sa pagtuturo at pagsusulat. Dito sa atin, medyo tayo … Ano
bang term doon?
De Leon: Kolonyal?
Abulad: Kasama na rin ‘yun, may pagka-kolonyal tayo. Look around. Ang
Vietnam ay sa Vietnamese nagtuturo at nagsusulat, ang mga Japanese sa
Japanese, ang Chinese sa Chinese, ang Indonesian sa Indonesian. Pero tayong
mga Pilipino sa Ingles [laughs]. Kaya lang, no turning back na. Mahihirapan
tayo. Pero, baka wala na ako dito, at ikaw din wala na dito, bago talagang
masabi na tayo ay nagpipilosopiya sa Tagalog. At isa pang problema diyan
ay ang Tagalog naman ay isa lamang sa mga wika natin dito sa Pilipinas.
De Leon: May rehiyunalismo po ba kayong napapansin?
Abulad: Oo. Bakit hindi Cebuano? Bakit hindi Ilokano? Bakit hindi
Kapampangan? May karapatan din sila.
De Leon: Pero, ang sinasabi po nilang wikang Filipino ay pinagsama-samang

lengwahe sa Pilipinas.
Abulad: Eh nasaan ‘yun? Wala pa talaga. ‘Yung “Filipino” na iyon, wala pa

‘yun eh.
De Leon: Nasa diksyunaryo pa lamang po yata [laughs].
Abulad: Oo.

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 15
De Leon: Nasabi po ni Dr. Alfredo Co sa kanyang artikulong “Doing

Philosophy in the Philippines Fifty Years Ago and Fifty Years From Now,”
na marami na ang pinanghinaan sa paggamit ng wikang Filipino sa gawaing
pamimilosopiya. Tama po ba ang sinasabi ni Dr. Co? Kung tama po, isa po
ba kayo sa masasabing “pinanghinaan na ng loob”?
Abulad: Hindi naman. Season season lang ‘yan eh [laughs]. Isa pa, talagang
hindi natin kayang labanan ang Ingles. Kung Tagalog lang ang ating
gagamitin sa pag-aaral, itong alam natin sa pilosopiya ay hindi natin
makakamit. Isa tayo sa pinakamaulad sa pilosopiya dito sa Asya because of
English. Kung gagamitin natin ay Filipino “lang,” anong access natin sa mga
primary works?
De Leon: Mahalaga ang parehong wika para sa inyo?
Abulad: Oo. Ang mahalaga ngayon, ang mga nag-aaral ng pilosopiya ay

kailangang magaling sa Ingles para may access sila sa mga translations. So, I
have nothing against translations. At, itong mga magagaling na ito sa Ingles
at saka sa pilosopiya, ito rin ang magagaling sa Tagalog. Sana ay
magkatuwang sa kanila ‘yung pagsusulat din sa Tagalog, pamimilosopiya rin
sa Tagalog. ‘Pag ganyan, dahan-dahan ‘yang lalago; magkasabay na lalago
ang Tagalog at Ingles.
De Leon: Hindi po ba napapag-iwanan ang Tagalog sa takbo ng

pamimilosopiya sa ating bansa?
Abulad: Hindi lang naman sa pilosopiya. Mabuti pa nga at nagtatagalog tayo

[laughs]. Talagang Ingles dito, kaya nga may mga foreign students tayo. Kung
wala tayong Ingles baka wala ang mga ‘yan. Ang problema diyan ay ang
klase ng ating pagtuturo at pagtatalakay ng pilosopiya—‘yung uri ng ating
edukasyon. Hindi ‘yan question ng language sa akin.
De Leon: Ano pong uri ng edukasyon ang inyong kinakalaban?
Abulad: Wala naman akong nilalabanan [laughs]. Mabuti nga ngayon hindi
na ako nagagalit. Natatandaan ko, two years ago, “Ano? Gusto ninyo na puro
na lang quizzes? Pambata ‘yan! Pang-High School yang mga quizzes, graded
recitation, True or False.” ‘Yang mga ‘yan [ang ayaw ko]. Sabi ko sa mga
estudyante ko, “I will treat you as adults. Hindi ko igregrade ang inyong
recitation. And be open. You don’t have to be afraid. Kung may ayaw kayo
sa sinabi ko, sabihin ninyo at mag-usap tayo.” ‘Yung ganun ba—mag-usap.
Kaya lang, baka sabihin naman na extreme ako. Kasi ayaw ko ng reporting sa

ISSN 1908-7330
klase, dahil inaasahan mo ang guro na magturo. Pero, hindi naman

nangangahulugan na sa lahat ng pagkakataon ay hindi bagay ang reporting.
Istratehiya ‘yan ng pagtuturo eh. Kailangang creative ka. Kaya nga lang sa
sistema ng edukasyon natin, nagtuturo tayo 90% dahil sa sweldo [laughs].
De Leon: Nagpapublish para lamang sa promotion [laughs].
Abulad: ‘Yan, tama yan.
De Leon: Br. Romy, gusto ko pong balikan ‘yung mga unang taon ninyo ng
pagtuturo dito sa UST noong 1969. Sinu-sino po ang mga nakasama ninyo sa
departamento ng pilosopiya noon? May departamento na po ba ng
pilosopiya noon?
Abulad: Meron.
De Leon: Pwede po ninyong idescribe kung paano ito noon?
Abulad: Sandali ha! Kasi ang palagi ko lamang nakikita noon ay si Dr. Quito
[laughs]. Pero, iisa ang aming Faculty Room, dito sa 2nd floor [ng St.
Raymund’s Building]. Katabi ‘yan ng opisina ng Dean. Lahat kami
nandoon—literature, economics, lahat ng subjects; iisa ang Faculty Room
namin. Parang ang Department of Philosophy noon ay si Dr. Quito lamang
ang natatandaan ko [laughs].
De Leon: Batang-bata po kayo noon. Ano pong istilo ninyo sa pagtuturo?
Abulad: Ewan ko. Pero, parang nasa dugo ko talaga ang pagtuturo. At, galing
ako kay Dr. Quito at nakita ko kung papaano siya magturo. At, mayroon din
akong lousy teachers na sabi ko sa sarili ko, “Hindi ko tutularan ang mga ito.”
[laughs]. Kaya, sana naman, kahit na noong simula pa lamang ay pinilit kong
ayusin ang pagtuturo. At habang nagtuturo ako, wala sa isip ko ‘yung
kwarta. In fact, ngayon ko lang nakikita na mahirap pala ako noong
panahong iyon [laughs].
De Leon: Gumamit din po ba kayo ng wikang Filipino sa pagtuturo?
Abulad: Hindi. Parang hindi uso talaga.
De Leon: Ano pong dahilan? Dahil po ba walang mga tekstong gagamitin?

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 17
Abulad: Isa na ‘yun. Pero, dahil din noong panahon ko nagsimula na rin
‘yung ayaw nila ‘yung paggamit ng TagLish. Gusto nila ‘yung Bilingual. Ang
ibig sabihin ng bilingual noon, kung Tagalog ang gagamitin mo dapat
Tagalog all the way; at kung Ingles ang gagamitin mo, Ingles all the way. And
the reasoning is kapag pinagsama mo sila, TagLish ang ginawa mo,
chopsuey, baluktot pareho.
De Leon: So, mas pinili niyo pong gamitin ang wikang Ingles?
Abulad: Walang choice ba. Pero, kung sabihin sa akin na Tagalog ang
pagtuturo ay walang problema sa akin. Kaya ko [laughs].
De Leon: Mayroon po kayong sinulat na librong Introduction to Philosophy

(2001) kasama si Dr. Ceniza?
Abulad: Yeah!
De Leon: Ano pong nag-udyok sa inyong gawin ‘yun? May pangangailangan

po ba noong mga panahon na ‘yun?
Abulad: Actually, dito ‘yun [sa UST] nanggaling. Si Dr. Co ang nagbigay sa
amin ng proyekto na ‘yan—two-volume work. Isinama ko lang si Dr. Ceniza
dahil parang alam namin na he will be going soon—parang may ganoon na
kaming premonition sa kanya. ‘Yung first volume ay tungkol sa Cosmology,
Metaphysics, at ….
De Leon: Theodicy?
Abulad: Yeah, Theodicy. ‘Yung Cosmology part, kinausap ko si Dr. Ceniza

[na siya ang magsulat]. Good enough, ‘yun ang last work niya. ‘Yung second
volume naman, ibinigay ko rin ang aking ginawa doon. Kaya lang nagkagulo
sila ata doon [laughs].
De Leon: Ano naman pong contents noong second volume?
Abulad: Psychology, Ethics, and Epistemology. Those three. Tapos na ‘yun,

naayos ko na ‘yan. Isinubmit ko na. Tapos nagkaroon ng politika diyan. Kaya
sabi ko, inyo na lang ‘yan. May politika na kasi [laughs].

ISSN 1908-7330
UST Philosophy Department Before and Today
De Leon: Mga panghuli na po [laughs]. Ah, kung inyo pong paghahambingin

ang istilo ng pamimilosopiya noon at ngayon, kasama na siguro ang hilig ng
mga estudyante sa pilosopiya noon at ngayon, ano po ang inyong
napapansin? Mayroon po bang pagkakatulad at pagkakaiba?
Abulad: I will not go back. Ang aking isip ay palaging paabante, hindi
paatras. Kaya, ang isang hindi ko babalikan ay ‘yung walang ibang
pilosopiya sa UST kundi Tomismo at Iskolastisismo. Hindi na ako babalik
diyan. Pero, sisiguraduhin din dapat na malakas ang pundasyon natin sa
pilosopiyang Iskolastiko at maging sa Tomismo. Pundasyon ang kursong
‘yan.
Alam mo noong nandoon ako sa Aparri [sa conference ng
Philosophical Association of the Phillippines], just two weeks ago, nakinig
ako ng ibang parallel sessions. Napuna ko magagaling ‘yung mga batang
faculty sa UST. At, maganda ang kanilang philosophical attitude. I think we
are succeeding in developing our young faculty here. Balanse sila. Alam nila
[ang kanilang pundasyon], pero hindi sila sarado. Hindi sila trapped.
Postmodern sila [laughs].
De Leon: Ano pong nakikita ninyong challenges pa sa philosophy sa buong

Pilipinas, in general, at sa paraan ng pamimilosopiya natin dito sa
Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas?
Abulad: Alam mo, dapat ipakita natin sa bansa na mahalaga ang pilosopiya.
Kailangang makita ng bansa ang kahalagahan nitong ating ginagawa. Kaya
tuwang-tuwa ako noong ipalabas ni Pope Francis ‘yung kanyang Laudato Si’.
Hindi niya lang siguro alam na ang sinasabi niya doon ay “Go back to
philosophy!” ‘Yung kanyang [ideya] ng “integral ecology,” pilosopiya ‘yan.
That’s all over again Hegel, for example. That’s all over again St. Thomas
Aquinas. That’s all over again Plato and Aristotle. That’s all over again all
philosophy na walang closure—na bukas ang pag-iisip. ‘Yung postmodern
thinking, very useful, very practical, very helpful in the currest thrust of
society. Towards what Kant called “eternal peace.” [laughs] Philosophy ‘yan!
At dapat makita ‘yan ng ating lipunan. ‘Yun sana ang sama-sama nating
maging main project.
Sama-sama nating gagawin. Hindi tayo dapat mag-away-away
[laughs]. Kasi ang pilosopiya, conversation ‘yan eh. Bakit nakarating
hanggang dito ang Western philosophy? Dahil walang tigil ang pag-iisip nila.
At hindi lang isang tao ang nag-iisip. Lahat sila nag-iisip. Tulong tulong sila.

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 19
Nag-aaway-away pero, sa katapus-tapusan, pinapatakbo nila ang kaalaman.

Ganyan din ang dapat mangyari sa Filipino philosophy.
De Leon: Sa palagay po ninyo wala pa niyang mayamang kultura ng

matinong pag-aaway-away?
Abulad: Ah, medyo lumalakas na. Medyo nararamdaman ko na

nagkakaroon na. So, I’m not worried about the future of philosophy. Kaya
lang, ang dami-daming pumupunta sa psychology. Akala ng mga tao,
psychology will save the world [laughs]. No, it’s philosophy that will change
the world.
De Leon: Ano po bang advantage kung talagang may grasp ka sa philosophy

bilang tao?
Abulad: Yeah! Well, on the higher level, walang magaling in any discipline
na walang pilosopiya. The best artist has a philosophy, the best scientist has
a philosophy.
De Leon: Tama po. Nabasa ko po na talagang sinabi ni Albert Einstein na

kung ano siya ay dahil sa kanilang inaral na pilosopiya mula sa pagkabata.
Hindi nila kinakalimutan ang inaral nilang pilosopiya simula elementary
hanggang sa pagtanda nila.
Abulad: Yeah! If you are good in your discipline, you will eventually be
doing the philosophy of it. Sa buhay, ganoon din. You are as good or as bad
as your philosophy. Basahin mo si Marx, ang sinusulat niya ay tungkol sa
economics pero isa siyang pilosoper; Si Amartya Sen …ang galing galing ni
Amartya Sen, isa rin siyang pilosoper.
De Leon: Ano naman po ang inyong “huling habilin?” Hindi naman po pala
“habilin,” ano pong inyong mga hamon sa mga batang namimilosopiya
ngayon sa Pilipinas?
Abulad: Basta galingan ninyo! Kung anong ginagawa ninyo, hindi ko

pipiliting maging Tomista kayo [laughs]. Kung ano ang ginagawa ninyo … At
saka h’wag kayong matatakot sa wika. Kung magustuhan mo, halimbawa, si
Kant, ang hamon sa iyo ay pag-aralan din ang wikang Aleman. H’wag kang
matatakot sa mga ganoon ding hamon. In fact, walang madali sa philosophy.
H’wag nating pipiliin ang isang pilosoper dahil lamang sa siya ay madali sa
tingin natin. Pero, sa totoo lang, wala namang madaling pilosoper, ano?!
Kung magustuhan mo ang isang pilosoper na ang wika ay French, o German,

ISSN 1908-7330
o Chinese, o kung anuman, kailagan mong hamunin ang sarili mo. Ang
mahalaga ay mag-excel ka sa larangan na ‘yan. Kailangang makita mo kung
saan kang larangan ng pilosopiya makakapag-ambag. Everybody should
challenge himself. Money is secondary.
De Leon: Maraming salamat po, Br. Romy. Malaking tulong po ito sa aming
nagsisimula pa lamang.
Abulad: Sige. Goodluck sa iyo. Ph.D. na ba ang tinatapos mo?
De Leon: Opo.
Abulad: Ano ang talagang topic na gusto mong sulatin?
De Leon: Naiisip ko pong idokumento ang mga pamana ng mga

pangunahing Tomasinong pilosoper sa takbo ng pamimilosopiya sa
Pilipinas.
Abulad: Kasama pala ako diyan. Hindi ko alam ‘yan. Salamat naman at
isinama mo ako [laughs].
De Leon: Maraming maraming salamat po ulit.
End of Interview
Bibliography of Leading Thomasian Philosophers
Mga Pangunahing Pamagat ng mga Akda Bilang ng

Tomasinong citations
Pilosoper (1945- base sa
Kasalukuyan) Google
Scholar
1. Romualdo Abulad 1. “What is Hermeneutics?” in Kritike: An Online Journal of 19
Philosophy, 1:2 (December 2007), 11-23.
2. “Contemporary Filipino Philosophy,” in Karunungan: The 12
Official Journal of the Philippine Academy of Philosophical Research
(1988), 1-13.
3. “Options for a Filipino Philosophy”, in Karunungan, De La 6
Salle University (1984), 17-30.
4. “Kant’s View of Science”, in Sophia, De La Salle University, 3
vol. XVII, no. 1 (Aug 1987), 8-18.

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 21
5. “Origen’s Contra Celsum: A Touch of Postmodernism”, in 2

Diwa: Studies in Philosophy and Theology, Divine Word
Seminary, vol. XXII, no. 1 (May 1997), 26-40.
6. Ensayklopidiya ng Pilosopiya (co-authors: Quito, Timbreza, 2
Reyes), De La Salle University Press, 1993.
7. “The Filipino as a Philosopher in Search of Originality”, in 1
Karunungan, De La Salle University, vol. II, 1-25.
8. “The Mystical Philosophy of St. John of the Cross”, in 0
Karunungan, De La Salle University, vol. 9, no. 1 (1992), 40-58.
9. “Challenge, Chance and Change: Dynamics of Lesson 0
Planning in the Philippine Secondary Schools” (co-author: H.
Guru)
10. “Post-Machiavelli”, in Karunungan, University of Sto. 0
Tomas, vol. 18 (2001), 91-100.
11. “The Philosophical Bases of Values Education”, in The 0
DLSU Graduate Journal, De La Salle University, vol. 12, no. 2
(1987), 145-158.
12. “The Future of Ethics: A Postmodern View”, in Diwa: 0
Studies in Philosophy and Theology, Divine Word Seminary –
Tagaytay, vol. XXVII, no. 1 (May 2002), 14-31.
13. “Edith Stein on Being Human as Grounded and Supported 0
by Eternal Being (co-author: J. Conrado Estafia)
14. Book Review: The Way of Greater Self Constructing a 0
Theology Around a Filipino Myth
15. “Science, Philosophy, Religion”, in Diwa, Divine Word 0
Seminary – Tagaytay City, vol. XXIII, no. 2, pp. 99-125.
16. “Moving Forward, Moving Backward: Politics of 0
Curriculum Development in the Philippine Secondary
Schools” (co-author: H. Guru)
17. “Kalooban Mo, Kagustuhan Ko”, in Malay, De La Salle 0
University, vol. VI, no. 1 (Oct 1986- May 1987), 40-47.
18. “Saan Ba Nanggaling ang Tao?”, in Malay, De La Salle 0
University, vol. 2, no. 1 (1982).
19. “Ulat Tungkol sa Sanggunian at Leksikon ng Pilosopiya” 0
(co-authors: Quito, Timbreza, Reyes), in Malay, De La Salle
University, vol. 3, no. 2 (July 1983), 157-173.
20. “Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya and Ang Pilosopiya sa 0
Diwang Pilipino”, by Emerita S. Quito,” in Sophia, De La Salle
University, (Oct 1974-Jan 1975). [Book review].
21. “Ang Pilosopiyang Pranses sa Pananaw ng Isang Pilipino”, 0
in Karunungan, vol. 8 (1991), 65-89.
22. “Kant and Postmodernism”, in Phavisminda Journal, 0
University of San Carlos, vol. 2 (May 1998), 32-51.
23. “Postmodern Critique of the Ethics of Postmodernism”, in 0
Karunungan, University of Santo Tomas, vol. 19 (2002), 65-80.

ISSN 1908-7330
24. “God and Postmodernity”, in Karunungan, University of 0

Santo Tomas, vol. 19 (2002), 5-13.
25. “What is Postmodernism?”, in Karunungan, University of 0
Santo Tomas, vol. 17 (2000), 34-54.
Mga Akda na Hindi Nakalagay sa Google Scholar
1. “Bayani” (Karunungan, 1997)
2. “Freedom in Times of Crisis” (Unitas, 2001)
3. “A Philosopher’s View of EDSA” (Karunungan, 2001)
4. “Anthrosophy of Rudolf Steiner” (Sophia, 1991)
5. “Facing the Moral Challenge of the Postmodern Times”
(Karunungan, 1999)
6. “Links Between East and West in the Philosophies of
Shankara and Kant” (Dissertation, 1978)
7. “Ang Pilosopiya ng Salapi ni Georg Simmel” (Karunungan,
1989)
8. “The Significance of Kong Zi in the Age of Postmodernism”
(Karunungan, 2003)
9. Two Filipino Thomasian Philosophers on Postmodernism (co-
editor: Alfredo Co)
10. “What is Philosophy?” (Karunungan, 1998)
11. Criticism and Eternal Peace: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as
the Method of Scientific Metaphysics, Alexander von Humboldt
Stiftung, University of Hamburg, 1980.
12. The Future of Man: The Philosophical Viewpoint, De La Salle
University, 1975.
13. Introduction to Philosophy, vol. 1: Metaphysics, Theodicy,
Cosmology (with C. Ceniza), University of Santo Tomas, 2001.
14. Occasional Paper No. 4: Ang Pulitika ni Quezon at Iba Pang
Sanaysay, ni Marcelino A. Foronda (patnugot), De La Salle
University, 1977.
15. Readings in Filipino Philosophy, The Department of
Philosophy, De La Salle University, 1990.
16. The Status of Metaphysics in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason,
Ateneo de Manila University, 1975 (unpublished thesis).
17. Toward a Reconstruction of Christology in the Context of
Postmodernity, Divine Word Seminary – Tagaytay City, 2003
(unpublished thesis)
2. Alfredo Co 1. “Doing Philosophy in the Philippines: Fifty Years Ago and 4
Fifty Years From Now”, in Across the Philosophical Silk Road: A
Festschrift in Honor of Alfredo P. Co (Manila: University of
Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2004), 49-62.
2. “Elements of Chinese Thought in the Filipino Mind”, in 4
Sophia, vol. 5 (1988), 27-34.
3. Philosophy of Ancient China (Manila: University of Santo 4
Tomas Publishing House, 2002).

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 23
4. The Blooming of a Hundred Flowers: Philosophy of Ancient 5

China (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House,
1992 and 2002).
5. “In the Beginning…. A Petit Personal Historical Narrative 2
of the Beginning of Philosophy in the Philippines”, in Unitas:
A Quarterly Scholarly Journal for Arts and Sciences, vol. 79
(2006).
6. “Filipino Philosophers in a Dialogue on Filipino Culture (A 1
Report)”, in Karunungan, vol. 9 (2011).
7. “Chinese Thought and the Birth of Postmodern Culture: 0
The Western Man’s Early Encounter with China”, (Thailand:
Assumption University, 2015).
8. “The Future of Man: The Classical Chinese Vision”, in 0
DLSU Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Cultural Studies,
vol. 14, no. 2 (2013).
9. ACTA: Proceedings of the Quadricentennial International 0
Philosophy Congress (co-editor: Paolo Bolanos), [Manila,
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2012].
10. Thomism and Asian Culturess (co-editor: Paolo Bolanos) 0
11. “The Work of Lao Zi as Found in the Ma-Wang-Tul 0
Archeological Excavations”, in Karunungan, vol. 8, no.1
(Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2011).
12. Across the Philosophical Silk Road: A Festschrift in Honor of 0
Alfredo P. Co (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 2009).
13. Across the Philosophical Silk Road: Under the Bo-tree, on the 0
Lotus Flower, Philosophy of the Compassionate Buddha (Manila:
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2009).
14. Philosophy of the Compassionate Buddha: Under the Bo-tree--on 0
the Lotus Flower (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
Publishing House, 2003).
1. Ang Tao at ang Pagkatao sa Pag-iisip Pilipino”
(Karunungan, 1998)
2. “Classical Roots of Contemporary Chinese Politics” (Unitas,
1985)
3. “The Dialectics of Tolerance” (Karunungan, 1997)
4. “Edengram as an Approach to Confucianism”
5. “The Meeting of the East and West: A Story of the Class of
Cultures, Humiliation of a Civilization and the Restoration of
Pride (Karunungan, 2001)
6. Across the Ancient Philosophical World: Essays in Comparative
Philosophy (UST Publishing House, 2015)
7. “An Aesthetic Evaluation of Chinese Art” (UST Journal of
Graduate Research, 1987)

ISSN 1908-7330
8. “An Man Created God: Understanding Postmodern Faith”

(Karunungan, 2002)
9. “The Book of Tao: A Work on Mysticism, a Political
Treatise, or a Military Treatise?” (Karunungan, 1986)
10. “Buddhism, Nihilism and the Contemporary Quest for a
Meaning in Life” (MA Thesis, 1974)
11. “Chinese Miniature Carvings” (UST Journal of Graduate
Research, 1989)
12. “Confucian Model for a Filipino Philosophy”
(Karunungan, 1990)
13. “Confucius: The Man, the Humanist at the Turn of a New
Millennium” (Karunungan, 1999)
14. “A Critical Reflection on Rene Descartes’ ‘Rules for the
Direction of the Mind’” (Unitas, 1997)
15. “Ethics and the Fears and Wonders of Human Cloning”
(Unitas, 1998)
16. “Expanding Worldview in a Shrinking Planet: Reading
Postmodernism in the Age of Globalization” (Karunungan,
2002)
17. “Ang Hedonismo ni Yang Chu ng Antigong Tsina”
(Karunungan, 1989)
18. “Isang Komentaryo sa Paglulunsad ng Aklat na
Pinamagatang Commentaries on Moral Philosophy”
(Karunungan, 1999)
19. “Man’s Search for Fulfillment: An Oriental Perspective”
(PhD. Dissertation, 1976)
20. “Media and Communication Technology and the Pitfalls
of Modern Populism: The Case of the Impeachment Trial of
Ex-President Joseph Ejercito Estrada of the Republic of the
Philippines” (Karunungan, 2001)
21. “Oracle Bones: Ancient China’s Tool for Divination” (UST
Journal of Graduate Research, 1985)
22. “The Problem of Truth in Classical Chinese Philosophy”
(UST Journal of Graduate Research, 1988)
23. “A Reflection on the Hindu Concept of Niskamakarma”
(Karunungan, 1999)
24. “Some Reflections of the Philosophy of Man in Ancient
Confucianism” (UST Journal of Graduate Research, 1989)
25. “Some Reflections on the Thanatology of Zhuang Zi”
(Karunungan, 2000)
26. “Sun Zi’s Art of War and His Message of Peace” (Unitas,
1988)
27. “Why Death Penalty? … Why not Death Penalty?”
(Karunungan, 2000)

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 25
3. Florentino Hornedo 1. Taming the Wind: Ethno-cultural history on the Ivatan of the 11
Batanes Isles (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 2000).
2. Culture and Community in the Philippine Fiesta and Other 6
Celebrations (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 2000).
3. “Ivatan Oral Traditions: A Survey”, in Philippine Studies: 6
Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, vol. 25, no. 4 (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1977), 384-419.
4. Laji: An Ivatan Folk Lyric Tradition (Manila: University of 6
Santo Tomas Publishing House, 1979).
5. “The World and the Ways of the Ivatan Anitu”, in Philippine 6
Studies, vol. 28, no. 1 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press, 1980), 21-58.
6. “‘Induyan’: An Amburayan Migration Song”, in Philippine 4
Studies (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press,
1990), 358-368.
7. Christian Education: Becoming Person-for-others, Essays in 4
Philosophy of Education (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
8. “Development Begins with Self-help”, in Payuhwan (1989). 4
9. “The Alien in the Bakun-Amburayan River Valley Oral 3
Literature”, in Philippine Studies (Quezon City: Ateneo de
Manila University Press, 1990), 199-225.
10. “Notes on Batanes and the Ivatan Way of Life”, (1971), 5- 3
46.
11. Batanes Ethnographic History—A Survey (Quezon City: 3
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1976).
12. The Power to be: A Phenomenology of Freedom (Manila: 3
13. “The Persona in Philippine Folk Literature” in Reading 3
Popular Culture (Quezon City: Office of Research and
Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 1991), 67-80.
14. “Truth, Man, and Martin Heidegger” in St. Louis 3
University Research Journal, vol. 2 (Baguio City, 1971), 1-18.
15. Ideas and Ideals: Essays in Filipino Cognitive History (Manila: 2
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2001.
16. The Favor of the Gods: Essays in Filipino Religions Thought and 2
Behavior (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 2001).
17. “Report in the Regional Seminar for Culture Personnel in 2
Asia and the Pacific”
18. “Death and After Death: Ivatan Beliefs and Practices”, in 2
Philippine Studies, vol. 42, no. 4 (Quezon City: Ateneo de

ISSN 1908-7330
19. “The Traditional Filipino Notion of Nature”, in Nature, 2

Science, and Values, Readings, ed. Norberto Castillo (Manila:
20. “Medical Beliefs and Practices in a Traditional Society: The 2
Isabtangs in Batanes Provinces”
21. Pagmamahal and Pagmumura (Quezon City: Ateneo de 2
Manila University Press, 1997).
22. “Notes on the Filipino Novels”, in Ideas and Ideals: Essays in 2
Filipino Cognitive History (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
Publishing House, 2001.
23. Pagmamahal and Pagmumura: Essays (1997). 1
24. The Glitter of Gold: In Batanes Culture Heritage (Manila: 1
25. “The Social and Human Sciences in Philippine Basic 1
Education: A Review of Elementary and High School
Textbooks” (co-authors: Mirelao and Sta. Maria)
26. On the Trail of Dominican Engineers, Artists, and Saints in the 1
Cagayan Valley and Batanes (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
27. “The Sources of Nick Joaquin’s ‘The Legend of the Dying 1
Wanton’”, in Philippine Studies, vol. 26 (Quezon City: Ateneo
de Manila University Press, 1978), 297-309.
28. “Indigenous Aspects of Worship in the Church of the 1
Philippines”, in Philippiniana Sacra, vol. 36, issue 106 (Manila:
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2001), 127-138.
29. Pagpapakatao and Other Essays in Contemporary Philosophy 3
and Literature of ideas (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
30. “A Bibliography of Philippine Studies by William Henry 0
Scott, Historian”, in Philippine Studies, vol. 32 (Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1984), 54-76.
31. Epics and Ballads of Lam-ang’s Land and People (Manila: 0
University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 20060.
32. Ritmo ng Lingkaw: Mga Bagong Tulang Premyado at Iba Pa by 0
Federico Licsi Espino, Jr., reviewed by Florentino Hornedo, in
Philippine Studies, vol. 27 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
33. The Social and Human Sciences in Philippine Basic Education 0
(Manila: Philippine Social Science Council, 2000).
34. “The Lives of Damian Domingo and Simon Flores”, Jose 0
Ma. Clotet, SJ, translated by Florentino Hornedo, in Philippine
Studies, vol. 40 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University
Press, 1984), 83-98.
35. “Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao”, Harold Conklin, reviewed 0
by Florentino Hornedo, in Philippine Studies, vol. 31 (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1983).

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 27
36. “Towards an Hermeneutics of Pagmamahal and 0

Pagmumura”, in Saint Louis University Research Journal, vol. 16
(June 1985), 72-89.
37. “Batanes at the Start of the American Era according to Jose 0
Serres”, in Ad Veritatem, vol. 4, no. 2 (March 2005), 459-470.
38. “Journey to Majayjay”, Paul de la Gironierre, reviewed by 0
Florentino Hornedo, in Philippine Studies, vols. 32-33 (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1984), 239-241.
39. “Epiphany and Celebration in Asian Life and Aesthetics”, 0
in Luz y Saber, vol. 1, no. 1 (2007).
40. “Bago Mythology and the Ecosystem” in Unitas (Manila: 0
41. “The Bago Ballad of Delnagen and Anmusan Lumawig” 0
42. Back to the Things Themselves: Selected Essays in Recent 0
Western Philosophy (Editor, 2003)
43. Book Review: Lorenzo Ruiz, the Protomartyr of the 0
Philippines, and His Companions (by Villaroel)
44. “Battle of La Naval: Rage of Waves Fury of Faith” 0
1. “The Agamaniyog Folktales: Mindanao Art and Culture”
(Unitas, 1980)
2. “Alejandro G. Abadilla: ‘Ako ang Daigdig’ (Unitas, 2007)
3. “Ang Humanismo sa Panahon ng Reasinyento” (Unitas,
2003)
4. “Ang Klasisismo at ang Panitikang Pilipino” (Unitas, 2003)
5. “Ang Literatura sa Silid-aralan: Ilang Kwadradong
Konseptwal Para sa Pagtuturo ng Literatura” (Unitas, 1999)
6. “Bibliographic Study of Fray Tomas Ortiz Arte y Reglas de
la Lengua” (Colloquia Manilana, 1993)
7. Book Reviews: Myths and Symbols Philippines (Unitas,
1980)
8. “Challenges to Literacy Education in the 21 st Century”
(Unitas, 1999)
9. “The Changing Core Themes of Filipino Nationalism and
their Literacy” (Unitas, 1989)
10. “The Classical and the Romantic World Views: Their
Reflection in the Philosophy of Art” (UST Journal of Graduate
Research, 1984)
11. “The Condition of the Present” (Unitas, 1999)
12. “Crisis of Law” (Unitas, 1985)
13. “’Cultural Studies’ and Hegemony” (Karunungan, 2002)
14. “Cultural-Rooted Education” (Unitas, 2004)
15. “Current Trends in Literary Theory and Criticism”
(Unitas, 1997)
16. “The Development of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Concept of
Human Freedom” (The Thomasian Philosopher, 2010)

ISSN 1908-7330
17. “Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao” (Unitas, 1982)

18. “Excellent Book to Clarify All Clarifications” (Unitas,
1996)
19. “The Favor of the Gods” (Unitas, 1997)
20. “Filipino Values (Institutional vs. Personal) [Unitas, 1999)
21. “Fr. Bernardino Melenderas ‘Antologia Poenca’ and 19 th
Century Philippine Literary Relations” (Unitas, 1990)
22. “French Revolution and the Rise of the Filipino
Nationalism” (Unitas, 1993)
23. “George Seferis” (Unitas, 1999)
24. “Honest to Rizal and to the Filipino People” (Philippiniana
Sacra, 1984)
25. “Hotline to Heaven” (Life Today, 1992)
26. “Indigenous Aspects of Worship in the Church of the
Philippines” (Unitas, 1997)
27. “Jose Calatrava Remebers the Guerila Days in Batanes in
1945”
28. “Kabbuni” (Unitas, 1993)
29. “Kulturang Popular” (Unitas, 1993)
30. “Leadership/People Mutal Alienation as Cause of Peace”
(Unitas, 1983)
31. “Literary Theory and Literary Pedagogy” (Unitas, 2002)
32. “Methods of Teaching and Learning” (Unitas, 2001)
33. “Notes on Postmodern Literary Theory and Criticism”
(Unitas, 1995)
34. “Pagpapakatao” (UST Journal of Graduate Research, 1990)
35. “Philippine Literary Aesthetics and Social Class” (Unitas,
2005)
36. “Professionalism and the UST Academician” (Unitas,
1991)
37. “Reforestation in Traditional Ivatan Yam Cultivation”
(Unitas, 1995)
38. “Religious Art in Batanes” (Philippiniana Sacra, 1983)
39. “The Right to Education and Culture in the Basic
Document of the United Nations” (Unitas, 1990)
40. “The School and the Family: Towards a Culture of Peace”
(Unitas, 2003)
41. “Social Sciences” (Unitas, 1989)
42. “Some Notes on the Philippine Flag” (Unitas, 1996)
43. “Stone in Batanes Cultural History” (Unitas, 2000)
44. “Survey of the History of Urbanization and Religion—
Related Arts in the Cagayan Valley-Batanes Region from the
16th Century” (Unitas, 1994)
45. “The Theme of Loneliness and Hollowness in Modern
Western Literature” (Unitas, 1999)

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 29
46. “Three Essays on Values and Education” (UST Journal of

Graduate Research, 1989)
47. “Today’s Native was Yesterday’s Visitor: Filipinicity in
Folk and Popular Literature” (UST Journal of Graduate
Research, 1988)
48. “Wittgenstein’s Language-games” (The Thomasian
Philosopher, 2010)
49. “World, the Sacred, and Traditional Filipino Societies”
(Unitas, 1991)
50. “Youth and the Challenge of a Fast Expanding Global
Horizon” (Unitas, 1996).
4. Leonardo Mercado 1. Elements of Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban City: Divine Word 68
University Publication, 1974).
2. Elements of Filipino Theology (Tacloban City: Divine Word 30
University Publication, 1975).
3. The Filipino Mind, published by CRVP (1994). 27
4. The Filipino Religious Psychology, editor (Tacloban City: 15
Divine Word University Publications, 1977).
5. Christ in the Philippines (Tacloban City: Divine Word 13
University Publications, 1981).
6. Applied Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban City: Divine Word 12
7. Elements of Filipino Ethics (Tacloban City: Divine Word 10
8. “Notes on the Filipino Philosophy of Work and Leisure”, in 7
Philippine Studies, vol. 22, nos. 1-2 (Quezon City: Ateneo de
9. Inculturation and Filipino Theology (Manila: Divine Word 6
Publications, 1992).
10. Filipino Popular Devotions: The Interior Dialogue Between 4
Traditional Religions and Christianity, editor (Manila: Logos
Publications, Inc., 2000).
11. Filipino Thought on Man and Society, editor (Tacloban City: 4
Divine Word Publications, 1980).
12. El Shaddai: A Study (Manila: Logos Publications, 2001). 4
13. “Filipino Thought”, in Philippine Studies, vol. 20, no. 2 5
(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1972), 207-
272.
14. Mission and Dialogue: Theory and Practice, co-edited by 4
James Knight (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1987).
15. “Loob, Body, Self, Bait”, in The Filipino Mind (Washington 4
DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and
Divine Word Publications, 1994).
16. Essays on Filipino Philosophy (Manila: Logos Publications, 3
2005).

ISSN 1908-7330
17. Doing Filipino Theology, editor (Manila: Logos Publications, 2

Inc., 1995).
18. “The Filipino Image of God”, in Philippiniana Sacra, vol. 26, 3
issue78 (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 1991), 401-415.
19. Working with Indigenous People: A Philippine Source Book
(Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1994).
20. Philippine Muslim-Christian Dialogue, co-edited by Maxwell 2
Felicilda (Manila: Logos Publications, 1993).
21. Research Methods in Philippine Context, editor (Tacloban 2
City: Divine Word University Publications, 1983).
22. “Soul and Spirit in Filipino Thought”, in Philippine Studies, 2
vol. 39, no. 3 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University
Press, 1991), 287-302.
23. Legal Philosophy: Western, Eastern, & Filipino (Tacloban City: 2
Divine Word University Publications, 1984).
24. Filipino Psychology for Village Development, editor (Tacloban 2
City: Divine Word University Publications, 1980).
25. “Christian and Interfaith Spirituality”, in Interpretations for 1
Peace in the Religions of the Near East (2007), 7.
26. Towards an Asian Theology of Mission (Manila: Logos 1
27. “Inculturation and Biblical Apostolate”, in Philippiniana 1
Sacra, vol. 26, issue 76 (Manila: University of Santo Tomas
Publishing House, 1991), 37-49.
28. “Reflections on Buut-Loob-Nakem”, in Philippine Studies, 1
vol. 20, no. 4 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University
Press, 1972), 577-601.
1. “Bayani: The Filipino Concept of Hero” (Karunungan, 1997)
2. “El Shaddai and Inculturation” (Philippiniana Sacra, 2000)
3. “The Erap Impeachment Trial: People Power 2 and Filipino
Legal Philosophy” (Karunungan, 2001)
4. “The New Paradigm and Filipino Philosophy”
(Karunungan, 1998)
5. “A Notion of Philosophy” (Karunungan, 1998)
6. “Behind the Media Show” (World Mission, 2006)
7. “A Five-Century Devotion” (World Mission, 2008)
8. “A Poetic Salvation History” (World Mission, 2008)
9. “The Saint of Last Resort” (World Mission, 2007)
10. “Cross-cultural Ministry” (Philippiniana Sacra, 2008)
11. “Dancing with the Music: Missionary Spirituality as
Experienced with the Indigenous Peoples and Community”
(Institute of Spirituality in Asia, 2008)
12. “Descartes and Ecology” (Unitas, 1996)
13. Dialogue and Faith: A Philippine View (Logos, 2009)

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 31
14. Explorations in Filipino Philosophy (Logos, 2009)

15. “Filipino Face of Christ” (Philippiniana Sacra, 1992)
16. The Filipino Mind (Washington, D.C.: Council for Research
in Values and Philosophy, 1994)
17. Filipino Religious Experience and Non-Biblical Revelation
(Logos, 1992)
18. Filipino Religious Psychology (Divine Word University,
1977)
19. “Holy in the Analects of Confucius” (Sophia, 1989)
20. “The Image of Filipino Faith” (World Mission, 2008)
21. Inter-religious Explorations: The Challenge and Rewards of
Inter-Religious Dialogue (Logos, 2004)
22. Inter-religious Stories and Experiences (Compiled and Edited,
Logos, 2000)
23. “Kagandahan: Filipino Thought on Beauty, Truth, and
Good” (Karunungan, 1992)
24. “Muslim and Christian Fundamentalism in the
Philippines” (Philippiniana Sacra, 1998)
25. “The Role of the Religious in the Indigenization of Liturgy
and Prayer” (Boletin Eclesiastico de Filipinas, 1978)
26. “A Notion of Philosophy” (Karunungan, 1998)
27. Old Cultures Renewed Religions: The Search for Cultural
Identity in a Changing World” (Logos, 2001)
28. “On Evaluating Religious Phenomena” (Karunungan,
2002)
29. “On Filipino Ethics” (Karunungan, 1999)
30. “Paradigm Shifts and Religious Tolerance” (Philippiniana
Sacra, 1996)
31. “Philippine Shamanism and Inculturation” (Philippiniana
Sacra, 1995)
32. “Signs and Wonders from the Philippine Perspective”
(Karunungan, 2000)
33. Towards and Asian Theology of Mission (Divine Word
Publications, 1995)
34. Working with Indigenous People: A Philippine Sourcebook
(Divine Word, 1994)
5. Emerita Quito 1. The State of Philosophy in the Philippines (Manila: De La Salle 12
University Press, 1983).
2. “The Ambivalence of Filipino Traits and Values” in 11
Karunungan (Sophia), (Manila: De La Salle University Press,
1988).
3. The Philosophers of Hermeneutics (Manila: De La Salle 10
4. The Merging Philosophy of East and West (Manila: De La Salle 5

ISSN 1908-7330
5. “Volksgeist in Vernacular Literature”, in A Life of 6

Philosophy: Fetschrift in Honor of Emerita Quito (Manila: De La
Salle University Press, 1990).
6. “Structuralism and the Filipino Volksgeist”, in Dialogue, 3
vol. 18, no. 2 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1983).
7. Philosophy of Education for Filipinos, in A Life of Philosophy: 2
Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle
University, 1990).
8. Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein (Manila: De 2
La Salle University Press, 2001).
9. Oriental Roots of Occidental Philosophy (Manila: De La Salle 2
10. Ensayklopidiya ng Pilosopiya (co-authors: Abulad, Timbreza, 2
11. A Life of Philosophy: Selected Works (1965-1988) 1
12. Three Women Philosophers (Manila: De La Salle University 1
Press, 1986).
13. Fundamentals of Ethics (Manila: De La Salle University 1
Press, 1989).
14. “The Role of the University in Changing Women’s 1
Consciousness” in DLSU Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Journal
for Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no, 1 (Manila: De La Salle
15. St. John Baptist de la Salle and Education Today (Manila: De 1
16. Critique of Historical Today (Manila: De La Salle University 0
Press, 2002).
17. “The Paradox of Freedom in Louis Lavelle” in 0
Unitas (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing House,
2003).
18. Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society (Manila: 0
19. Lectures on Comparative Philosophy (Manila: De La Salle 0
20. “Address on a New Concept of Philosophy at the Opening 0
Exercises of Academic Year 1967-1968”
21. A Structural Approach to Philippine Epics (Manila: Museo ng 0
Kalinangan, 1989).
22. “The Best of a Decade of Sophia 1971-1981” (Manila: De La 0
Salle University Press).
23. “Robert Ardrey: Scientist or Philosopher?” in Unitas 0
24. “Yoga and Christian Spirituality”, in Unitas (Manila: 0
25. Four Essays in the Philosophy of History (Manila: De La Salle 0

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 33

(co-authors: Abulad, Timbreza, Reyes), in Malay, De La Salle
27. "Philosophy of History: An Introduction." In DLSU 0
Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Cultural Studies, vol.
13, no. 1 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 2013).
1. “Frank Tipler’s the Physics of Immortality” (Karunungan,
1999)
2. La Notion de la Liberte Participee dans la Philosophie de Louis
Lavelle (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse,
1969)
3. “Pro Death Penalty: Hic et Nunc” (Karunungan, 2000)
4. “What is Philosophy?” (Karunungan, 1998)
5. Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya (Zone Print, 1974)
6. Ang Pilosopiya ng Tao (Alemar, 1980)
7. Ang Pilosopiya ng Diwang Pilipino (United Publishing, 1972)
8. Critique of Historical Theory (DLSU, 2002)
9. Festchrift in Honor of Dr. Marcelino Foronda, Jr. (Edited,
DLSU, 1987)
10. “God in the Third Millenium” (Karunungan, 2002)
11. “Hermeneutics of Jurgen Habermas” (Sophia, 1990)
12. “Introduction to Hermeneutics” (Karunungan, 2000)
13. “Ang Konsepto ng Kalayaan ni Louis Lavelle”
(Karunungan, 1989)
14. The Philosophers of Hermeneutics (DLSU, 1990)
15. “A New Concept of Philosophy” (Karunungan, 2003)
16. “Philosophy as a Critique of Society” (Karunungan, 2002)
17. “Pulong-isip: Meeting of Filipino Minds” (Karunungan,
1986)
18.” Reflections on the Death of God” (Unitas, 1971)
19. “The Will and Its Relation to Divine Casuality and
Knowledge” (MA Thesis, 1956)
6. Florentino Timbreza 1. Pilosopiyang Pilipino (Manila: Rex Book Store, 1982). 10
2. Alternative to a Dead God (Manila: De La Salle University 8
Press, 2001).
3. Filipino Values Today (Mandaluyong City: National 7
Bookstore, 2003).
4. Filipino Philosophy Today: A Sourcebook in Teaching Filipino 5
Philosophy (Mandaluyong City: National Bookstore, 2008).
5. Bioethics and Moral Decisions (Manila: De La Salle University 3
Press, 1993).
6. Quest for Meaning: Philosophy Made Easy for Filipinos (Manila: 2
New Day Publishers, 2000).
7. Intelektwalisasyon ng Pilosopiyang Filipino (Manila: De La 2

ISSN 1908-7330
8. “Understanding Filipino Philosophy” in 2

Karunungan (Manila: University of Santo Tomas Publishing
House, 1997), 9-35.
9. Mga Hugis ng Kaisipang Pilipino (Manila: Rex Book Store, 2
1989).
10. Ensayklopidiya ng Pilosopiya (co-authors: Abulad, Quito, 2
11. Logic Made Simple (Quezon City: Phoenix Publishing, 1
1992).
12. “Sex Selection: Any Taker” in Karunungan, vol. 9, no. 1 0
13. Pro Life and Pro Choice Views on Contraception and Abortion 0
(Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1994).
14. “The Filipino Value of Non-violence”, in Filipino Cultural 0
Traits: Claro R. Ceniza Lectures 4 (Manila: De La Salle
15. “Maituturo ba ang Pagpapahalaga?” in IDEYA: Journal of 0
the Humanities, vol. 2, no. 2 (Manila: De La Salle University
Press, 2001).
16. “Pamimilosopiya sa Sariling Wika: Mga Problema at 0
Solusyon”, in Malay, vol. 22, no. 1 (Manila: De La Salle
17. “Ano ba ang Buhay?”, in Malay, vol. 9, no. 1 (Manila: De 0
18. Ang Tao Te Ching ni Lao Tzu sa Filipino (Manila: De La 0
19. “Mga Suliranin at Iba Pang Mga Balakid sa Paggamit ng 0
Filipino sa Pagtuturo”, in Malay, vol. 6, no. 1 (Manila: De La
(co-authors: Quito, Abulad, Reyes), in Malay, De La Salle
21. “Mga Sangkap ng Pilosopiya ng Buhay ni Huseng Batute”, 0
in Daloy, vol. 4, no. 2 (Manila: De La Salle University Press,
1995).
22. Paghahanap ng Kabuluhan (Manila: De La Salle University 0
Press, 2002).
23. “Pagsasakatutubo at ang Katutubong Teolohiya”, in 0
Malay, vol. 5, no. 1 (Manila: De La Salle University Press,
1986).
24. “Ekolohiya at ang Landasin ng mga Tao”, in Malay, vol. 0
15, no. 2 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1999).
25. “Pilosopiya ng Buhay ng mga Pilipino”, in DLSU Graduate 0
Journal (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1990).
26. “Mga Ugaling Pilipino”, in Malay, vol. 10, no. 2 (Manila: 0
De La Salle University Press, 1992).

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 35
27. “Walang Kaibigan, Walang Kumpare, at Walang Kamag- 0

anak”, in IDEYA: Journal of the Humanities, vol. 3, no. 1
28. “Diwang Pilipino: Pangako at Pagkatao”, in Malay, vol. 3, 0
no. 2 (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1984).
29. “The Marxist Philosophy of Man” (1989) 0
31. The Florentino T. Timbreza Reader, by Alejandro Padilla 0
1. “Ang Pagtatanghal sa Bayani at Kabayanihan”
(Karunungan, 1997)
2. “Ang Sariling Disiplina” (Karunungan, 1999)
3. “Ano nga ba ang Pilosopiya?” (Karunungan, 1998)
4. “Can There Be Morality Without Religion?” (Karunungan,
1998)
5. “Filipino Concept of Life and Death” (Karunungan, 1986)
6. “Filipino Logic: A Preliminary Analysi” (Karunungan,
1989)
7. “Filipino Philosophy in Dialogue with Three Philosophers
of Non-violence” (Karunungan, 1990)
8. “Sex, Freedom, and Responsibility” (Sophia, 1986)
9. “The Struggle for Wholeness in Asia: Challenge to
Education in the Next Millenium” (Sophia, 1989)
10. “Tolerance in Filipino Experience” (Karunungan, 1997)
11. “Truth is Greater Friend” (Sophia, 1995-1996)
12. Ang Landas ng Buhay ayon kay Lao Tzu (Dissertation, 1980)
13. “Filipino Perception of God” (Karunungan, 2002)
14. “The Future of Democracy in the Philippines” (New York:
Journal of Philosophy, 1988)
15. “Konseptong Pangkasamaan ni Santo Tomas de Aquino”
(Karunungan, 1989)
16. “Man and Morality” (Karunungan, 1999)
17. “Moral Issue of Abortion” (Sophia, 1991)
18. “The Moral Issue of Lovemaking Without Baby Making”
(Sophia, 1993-1994)
19. “Parusang Kamatayan” (Karunungan, 2000)
20. “Pilosopiya Bilang Tagasuri ng Kulturang Filipino”
(Karunungan, 2002)
21. Pilosopiyang Pilipino (Rex Book Store, 1982)
22. Sariling Wika at Pilosopiyang Filipino (C&E, 2008)
23. “Shinto Religion and the Japanese Way of Life” (Sophia,
1990)
7. Magdalena Villaba 1. The Mission of Women: A Return to their Original Role (1975) 0
2. “Confucian Humanism” (Unitas, 1993) 0
1. “Phenomena and Their Interpretation” (Unitas, 1993)

ISSN 1908-7330
2. “Ang Wikang Filipino sa Kasaganaan at Kapayapaan”

(Unitas, 1999)
3. “The Concept of Maya in the Philosophy of Shankara”
(Karunungan, 2000)
4. “The Dominican’s Mission Here and Now” (Unitas, 1988)
5. Philosophy of the East (UST Publishing House, 1996)
6. Prelude to the Wisdom of the East
7. “The Social Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi” (UST Journal
of Graduate Research, 1988)
8. Manuel Pinon NONE NONE
1. “An Evaluation of the Reply to the Questionnaire of the
Population Institute” (Santo Tomas Journal of Medicine, 1970)
2. Being and Reality: The Philosophy of the Contingent Being and
Contingent Reality (UST Press, 1972)
3. Birth Control and Family Planning in the Light of ‘Humanae
Vitae’”
4. “Change and Reform” (Unitas, 1972)
5. Elements of Metaphysics (UST Press, no date)
6. “Fertilization of in Vitro, Its Morality” (Santo Tomas
Journal of Medicine, 1970)
7. Fundamentalism: Bible Christians Rejection of the Blessed Virgin
Mary and Born-again Christian (RTP Foundation, 1989)
8. Judgment on Agrarian Reformatory Expropriations: A
Sociological, Economic, Historical, Juridical, and Ethical Study
(UST, 1959)
8. A Magna Carta for the Unborn: Fifth Commandment Thou Shall
Not Kill (RTP Foundation, 19?)
9. The Metaphysical Conciliation of the Universal Primary
Causality of God with the Particular Secondary Causality of
Creatures in Particular with the Free Action of the Will (UST
Press, 1971)
10. “’Musings a Propus’ the Population Year and Population
Education” (Boletin Eclesiatico de Filipinas, 1974)
11. “The Natural Right of Personality (Does the Unborn
Human Fetus have such a Right?)” (Boletin Eclesiastico de
Filipinas, 1978)
12. The Nature and Causes of the Psychological Freedom or
Psychical Mastery of the Will Over Its Acts in the Writings of St.
Thomas (undated)
13. Off-beat Aggiornamento: The New Prophetic Movement and the
New Charismatic Church (Manila: Novel, 1969)
14. Predestination and Salvation (QC: Dominacan House of
Studies, 1977)
15. Psychological Freedom: Mastery of the Will Over Its Acts Form
and Under Efficacious Grace (RTP Foundation, 1987)

ISSN 1908-7330
E. DE LEON 37
16. Religion and “Religions” (Dominian House of Studies, 1980)

17. Review Article “Musing on ‘Inculturation’ and the
Filipinization of Theology” (Unitas, 1981)
18. “A Study on ‘A Study of Sin’” (Boletin Eclesiastico de
Filipinas, 1978)
19. “Teaching of the Church on the Carp and the Natural
Right to Ownership” (Boletin Eclesiastico de Filipinas, 1989)
Department of Philosophy, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

ISSN 1908-7330
Assumptions Related to the

Literary Persona in Demetillo’s
Barter in Panay: An Epic
Leo Andrew B. Biclar
Abstract: Literature is the bearer of all the treasures in the world—that

includes the Filipino’s ideology and philosophy, which are reflected in
their own literatures. This literary analysis is a descriptive-qualitative
research, employing the Marxist criticism in the assumptions related to
the literary persona in Ricaredo Demetillo’s Barter in Panay.
Specifically, the literary analysis unveils the relationship between the
poet’s milieu and his literary persona, the socio-political phenomena
revealed by the literary persona, and the critical views on race and
power relations based on the construction of the poet’s literary
persona. The findings reveal that Demetillo, by projecting himself in
his literary persona, Datu Sumakwel as a capitalist, favors today’s
capitalism and displays him to be a bourgeois proletarian. Through the
assumptions regarding the literary persona in Demetillo’s literary epic,
we can hear the voices of the folks in the past who were the ruling class,
and the voices of the modern folks—both the ruling and the ruled in
today’s world. The persona’s poetic voice comes from the memory of
every Filipino who lives in the here and the now, who passes the
folkloric and historical records of ideologies to the younger
generations.
Keywords: Barter in Panay, literary criticism, literary persona, Marxist

philosophy
Introduction
T
he Philippines is segmented socially, economically, culturally, and
ideologically, with geography not even a functional common
denominator. The archipelagic makeup of the country has brought
about the heterogeneity of the people with the constituent individuals hardly
representing anything like a majority, because every aspect and every part of
© 2016 Leo Andrew B. Biclar

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/biclar_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 39
it claims to be members of majority, and not one claims to be part of the

minority.
Persona as the core element in understanding Philippine literature
may be regarded as the medium through which the perception, sensibility,
and attitude toward the topics of the language arts, especially the longest and
deepest roots of Philippine cultural history—the folk tradition.1
In literary criticism, a persona refers to a person figuring in, for
example, in a poem. It could be someone who may or may not represent the
author himself. The persona is assumed to be the intellectual or emotional
center who speaks, as it were, to the reader or an audience. It is the mirroring
device, which the author used to speak in his own name, whose words and
ideas may also be fictive so as to produce a consistency between a fictional
character and the ideas that he expresses.2
The subject of this literary criticism is Ricaredo Demetillo’s Barter in
Panay (1959), which he claims as the first true literary epic of the Philippines.
Barter in Panay is a narrative material having been gathered “from the
checkered history of the Filipinos themselves.” Ricaredo states in his
foreword to its published version (1961) that his literary epic aims to “project
racial urges and desires for freedom, righteousness, and justice for our
people.” To fulfill this, he uses principally the myth of “Bornean settlement
in Panay under the leadership of Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel found in
Maragtas” which contains, by his own description, “the semi-historical, semi-
legendary accounts.”
One of the important literary devices employed by Demetillo in his
literary epic Barter in Panay is the persona. In folk literature of known
authorship like Demetillo’s, whose poetics are identifiable, the literary
persona is not anonymous. The reader can identify the persona in the
character of Datu Sumakwel, but his historical origin is difficult to determine
for the author constructs him to sense the aspects of the world not only in the
past and during the creation of his work, but also in the contemporary period.
The author uses him to elucidate the less known to be known, and to discuss
tangibly the less intangible in relation not only to his own perception, but to
the reader’s as well. It is difficult to determine what kind of people he was
addressing at the time he composed his work, and what cultural conditions
he merely presupposed. Thus, it is the readers/audience who would assume
the matters depending on their perception and reception of the author’s
work. In effect, Demetillo’s literary epic leaves a lot unsaid yet expects his
readers to know what he does not say. In this regard, Hornedo affirms that
the identification of the speaker or persona in folklore and perhaps in a
1 See Florentino H. Hornedo, Culture and Community in the Philippine Fiesta and Other
Celebrations. (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2000).

2 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
40 LITERARY PERSONA IN BARTER IN PANAY
literary epic helps in the reconstruction of the social milieu which produced
the material, and hopefully broadens the reader’s understanding of the
attitudes and social contexts of the literary constructs.3 Thus, an attempt to
identify the persona in the literary epic or any form of literature is empirical, a
critical need, and a pedagogical prerequisite to fully appreciate what the work of
art is saying.
Hornedo showed a historical evidence of Philippine society’s
stratification along lines of power and wealth that created a plurality of social
interests and, therefore, of social perspective.4 With this declaration, it can be
assumed that Demetillo as the poet and creative artist of folk literature is
addressing his work to a particular society. He uses his characters to suit his
purpose of presenting life around him as he sees it. In the process, he sees his
contemporary world, and from that vantage point, he speaks through his key
characters or creates characters who speak for themselves. In this way, Datu
Sumakwel as Demetillo’s persona is born to bring his audience to the
different lenses and scenic angles and social stratification of his world and the
Filipinos represented in Barter in Panay.
Though a lot can be said about the identification of literary persona,
this researcher shall limit its identity as class persona for the present purpose
of the study.
Objectives of the Study
The study aims to draw assumptions on the characteristics of a

literary persona in Ricaredo Demetillo’s literary epic Barter in Panay.
Specifically, this literary analysis sought to unveil: (1) the relationship
between the poet’s milieu and his literary persona in the text; (2) the socio-
political phenomena reveals by the literary persona; and (3) the critical views
on race and power relations based on the construction of the poet’s literary
persona.
Theoretical Framework
This literary analysis is anchored mainly on Marxist criticism and

literary theory, grounded on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx
(1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels, which are summarized by Abrams in the
following contexts:
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 41
(1) the evolving history of humanity, of its social

relations, of its institutions, and of its ways of thinking
are largely determined by the changing mode of its
“material production”—that is, of its overall economic
organization;
(2) historical changes in the fundamental mode of
production effect changes in social class structure,
establishing in each era dominant and subordinate
classes that engage in a struggle for economic, political,
and social advantage; and
(3) human consciousness is constituted by an ideology—
that is, the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and
feeling through which human beings perceive, and
recourse to which they explain, what they take to be
reality. An ideology is, in complex ways, the product of
the position and interests of a particular class. In any
historical era, the dominant ideology embodies, and
serves to legitimize and perpetuate, the interests of the
dominant economic and social class.5
Marxism as a radical materialist philosophy claims that everything in

the world that is not material is a consequence or product of some mode of
material reality. In the world of humans, what is fundamental is the
production and distribution of goods. The production, the social relations,
and the institutions which arise because of economic forces structure society
into a dominant exploitative class called capitalists, who own the material
means of production and distribution, and the proletarian or wage-earning
class. This social structure is not a permanent condition but a result of the
present era of capitalist economic organization. If the present economic
organization is changed, a new social order will emerge. It is with the
conviction that the present capitalist era is susceptible to change that
revolutionary Marxist ideas and praxis have been actively and aggressively
promoted. In the context of promoting that change, Marxist criticism finds its
role, for it has an explicit political agenda.6 It is on this philosophy that the
assumptions of the literary persona in Demetillo’s Barter in Panay was
conceptualized.
5 M.H. Abrams, “Marxist Criticism,” in A Glossary of Literary Terms (USA: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1988), 218-222.

6 Florentino H. Hornedo, Pagpapakatao and Other Essays in Contemporary Philosophy and
Literature of Ideas (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2002), 141-142.

ISSN 1908-7330
Research Methodology
The study uses mainly the descriptive-qualitative type of research,

employing Marxist criticism focusing on the literary persona used by
Demetillo in his Barter in Panay. Likewise, the critical analysis is made by
employing the close reading approach, wherein the text speaks itself to the
reader, and the latter understands its contexts based on the significations of
his/her experiences.
Results and Discussion
The Plot of Barter in Panay
Barter in Panay constitutes Book I of an epic trilogy centered on Datu

Sumakwel. Book II is entitled “The Heart of the Emptiness is Black,” which
covers the tragic relationship between Kapinangan, wife of Datu Sumakwel,
and Gurong-gurong, leading to the killing of the latter by the chief. Book III,
Demetillo said, would deal with Datu Sumakwel’s romance with Alayon, a
chastened Kapinangan. But it was never written. In this context, Barter in
Panay presents only a part of the entire epic text that articulates Demetillo’s
construct of Bornean, as well as of Aeta identity.
Demetillo’s Barter in Panay is a literary epic composed of eleven
cantos.
Canto I. The opening lines in Canto I establish the position of the
persona of the epic, a Bornean “we” (the nearly consistent point of view shifts
notably in Canto VIII and X, which take the perspective of the Aetas).
Chronologically, the persona is positioned “full ten years from now… / Since
at the Siruagan Creek we anchored,” recalling their flight “From far Brunei,
where Makatunaw grasped / A despot’s sceptre and a murderer’s sword.”
The use of “we” suggests a communal telling of the story, but the line “We
struck the rabid billows with our oars,” suggests a male speaker, possibly a
maharlika brave (“Ten datus sailed together with their wives; / And with
them kindred maharlika braves…/ And many slaves…”). As early as Canto I,
Datu Puti speaks of the Bornean offer to the Aetas to barter the Panay land
for gold:
Chief Marikudo, lay aside your bow …

Grant to us strangers hospitability:
Water and food for bodies cramped with toil
And, most of all, barter us land for gold …

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 43
Canto I also presents the readers with the first descriptions of the
Aetas, as well as of pirates. Chief Marikudo demands a hostage as a guarantee
of the Borneans’ good conduct while he is away consulting with his elders
about the proffered barter. Paibare, a young Bornean boy, offers to go with
Chief Marikudo as his hostage.
Canto II. Canto II describes the Bornean community in a new
territory, with their social structure intact. It devotes many stanzas to Datu
Sumakwel’s wife, Kapinangan, who is twenty years younger than the chief,
and is “unfulfilled with child.”
Canto III. Canto III features and names all ten datus who “sat in the
council and debate / Presided by great Datu Puti.” Maliksi, their interpreter
and guide, relates to the council the result of his surveillance work on Chief
Marikudo and his tribe in Sinugbuhan, the Aeta settlement: “I saw nearly a
thousand warriors there, / Twice that our number … all armed / With spears
and arrows tipped with poisoned darts.” Further, Maliksi reports that he sees
the amazement of the Aetas at the glitter of Paibare’s clothing and ornaments.
Maliksi assures the datus that Paibare is treated well by the Aetas. Paibare
endears them with his natural kindness. Paibare’s condition in the hands of
the Aetas figures importantly in the decision the datus would make on how
they would negotiate the barter.
Canto IV. Canto IV is a continuation of the preceding canto with
focus on the discussion among the datus, Datu Sumakwel (who declares
Panay “the land our gods have promised”), Paiburong (who reminds the
other datus that “The black tribe holds the true deed to this land”), and
Bangkaya (who cautions them against Datu Sumakwel’s aide, Gurong-
Gurong’s suggestion that “we can seize, with boldness, all this land”).
Canto V. In Canto V, Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel stay after the
dispersal of the others from the council meeting. Datu Puti tells Datu
Sumakwel that he feels the strain of being a leader because of his old age.
Thus, he wishes Datu Sumakwel to relieve him of the leadership of the group
for he would go back to where he buried his first wife in Brunei. Datu Puti
and Datu Sumakwel make up their minds “About the terms that we shall ask
the blacks / And what to barter in return for land.” Here, Datu Puti reminisces
the “situation of Brunei,” particularly the tyrant Makatunaw’s ruthlessness
which resulted in the murder of Datu Puti’s first wife.
Canto VI. Canto VI relates Datu Sumakwel’s musings about Rishi
Lakhsman’s prophecy “That on this island I shall leave a name.” Rishi’s
vision includes allusions to subsequent Filipino heroes like Lapu-Lapu, Rizal,
and Mabini. Rishi’s prophecy is a revelation of the Filipinos’ future under
Datu Sumakwel’s leadership. The canto then digresses to Datu Sumakwel’s
thoughts on Kapinangan.

ISSN 1908-7330
Canto VII. In Canto VII, Gurong-Gurong is “the butt of jests,” despite

the fact that “many younger braves approved his plan,” because “they all
agreed Sumakwel different / … marveled at his gift / To sway the datus with
his arguments.” Envious, Gurong-Gurong entertains the thoughts of being
“in Sumakwel’s place” and decides to seduce Datu Sumakwel’s wife in his
ruse to usurp leadership “not on the throne but in his wife’s embrace.”
Canto VIII. Canto VIII shifts the focus to Chief Marikudo and the
Aeta settlement where the council deliberates “On what the people from the
seas desire / That we sell land to them along the coast.” The Aetas assess the
might of the Borneans and argue about the wisdom of driving away “These
men, intruders on these coasts of ours,” as Girum has suggested. Chief
Marikudo warns them of the possibility that the Borneans might “… burn our
settlement / And massacre our tribe.” Upon hearing this, Uran suggests “we
should barter land. / This island is quite large and we can live / As much up
in the highlands as on the coasts.” Polpulan, Chief Marikudo’s father,
recounts a fortuneteller’s horoscope: “You will not die until brown strangers
come / To barter gold for your patrimony.” He advises them to “Take gold
and let the will of gods be done.” Girum is later killed for insulting Chief
Marikudo’s father for his alleged cowardice and senility. Heeding the
warning of the babaylan (“Blood defiles this place. / Two ghosts flit over us
and, unappeased, / They will cast their evil spells”). Chief Marikudo seeks the
other chiefs’ advice. He proclaims: “… Let us all find / A new home in the
hills …”
Canto IX. In Canto IX, with the literary epic focused back on the
Borneans, Gurong-Gurong subtly flirts with Kapinangan. Paibare, the
hostage, returns with the news that “Chief Marikudo promises to grant / Us
all the coastal plains in exchange for gold!” Soon the Bornean and the Aeta
elders meet to confirm the terms of the pact: a salakot and one large batya,
both of solid gold, in exchange for the costal plains. The Aetas retain the hills,
including “an outlet to the sea,” for which they will relinquish their right to
their houses in their settlement.
Canto X. Canto X contains two extended monologues by Chief
Marikudo and his wife about their life stories, upon the urging of Datu Puti
in the opening scene of the canto.
Canto XI. In Canto XI, Chief Marikudo begs Datu Puti to relate his
own life story. Datu Puti’s narrative recalls the Borneans’ first home, Brunei,
and again, the ruthless reign of King Makatunaw that led the ten datus and
their families to flee to Panay. Datu Puti states his reflections on their new
land where, “we’ll carve destiny / Commensurate with our hope of
righteousness” and invites “Chief Marikudo [to] drink with me a pledge.”
The literary epic ends with Datu Sumakwel and Kapinangan in an intimate
embrace; however, Kapinangan’s thoughts are of young Gurong-Gurong.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 45
Demetillo employed some structural features learned from Western

literatures in writing Barter in Panay.
The opening canto starts with the landing at Siruagan River and the
encounter with Chief Marikudo. Actually, the whole action starts with the
tyranny and pillage of King Makatunaw as told by Datu Puti in Canto XI, of
which tyranny, all the datus, especially Datu Puti, were the victims. Such
technique by the author is a device called in media res, where the narration of
the story starts from the midpoint rather than the beginning. This creates a
nostalgic effect on the narrativity of Datu Sumakwel as the persona of the
literary epic. In Canto X, Marikudo narrates his youthful exploits, ending
with his marriage to Maniwantiwan. Both episodes in Canto X and Canto XI
are told at the banquet in the same manner as the adventures of Ulysses are
told by the hero himself to his audience of nobles at the palace of King
Alcinous, father of Nausicaa. The episodes are included to complete the
panoramic action of the literary epic to signify that a whole people, not just a
handful of datus, are involved. By these means, Demetillo lets his
contemporary audience take in the action as it were by making them feel
involved in it, which, while having taken place in the past, still had strong
ethical and social implications in Demetillo’s milieu. The author tries to
achieve the same purpose especially in Canto VI where Datu Sumakwel tells
of his consultation with Rishi Lakshman, as in Virgil’s epic where Aeneas, in
conversation with his father Anchises in the underworld, sees the glorious
deeds of his descendants, culminating in the achievement of Augustus Caesar
himself. In this canto, the future of the Filipino people would be revealed to
Datu Sumakwel in dramatic prophecies regarding the Filipino struggles for
liberty and the rise of leaders, both political and artistic, to give luster to the
national destiny. Highly entertaining narratives, the modifications add body
to the whole epic structure and increase dimensions to the heroic characters
of Datu Puti and Datu Sumakwel, as well as their lesser companions, sharers
of a magnificent destiny. Thus, all movement of a large migration is given
form and evoked by concrete details of which the barter is only the
culminating point.
Literature and Its Society
Literature is not simply a mimetic discourse of or about nature; rather,

nature and society imitate literature. Hence, literature is both mimetic and
pragmatic. In a sense, literature does not only connect with the society by
being its product, mirror, and source of moral end, but literature also registers
the details of society’s internal conflicts especially when the society like
ours—the Filipino society—is stratified by economic inequality and/or
segmented by cultural differences. Looking at the period to which a literature

ISSN 1908-7330
was produced, the tone and texture of the text significantly identifies the
interests of a class or group for whom, about whom, and/or against whom the
literature was created. Authors like Demetillo identify in their works the
interests they write for, as well as the point of view from which they look at
the world they write about.
It is known historically that at least the larger parts of the Philippines
in the Tagalog and Visayan regions were socially stratified before the arrival
of the Spaniards.7 A similar stratification has also been noted among the
unhispanized Filipinos who, one may imagine, have carried into the 20 th
century some reflection of what they were before and during the colonization
of much of our country by Spain and later by the United States of America.
Instead of losing their stratification and becoming a homogeneous society,
and despite the concerted effort to create a homogenously Christian society,
the colonized parts of the country have become more clearly stratified, both
economically and politically. The Americans came after the Spaniards with
the promise of egalitarian democracy. But while Spain culturally segmented
the Filipinos by religion, the Americans resegmented the Filipinos by
education. If at the inception of Hispanization, the conversion to Christianity
paved the way to certain political and social privileges, during the American
period, the fast absorption of American cultural ideals became the key to
political and social positions. It is clear that Filipinos have always been, in
general, socially and culturally stratified and consequently have been more
or less plagued over time by the consequences of class disparities and
conflicts of interests.8
Demetillo and His Society
Hornedo declares that a piece of literature documents the world and

the worldview of its author—and in the case of folk literature, the world and
the worldviews of the society that created it or carried it on by tradition.9 The
assumption is meaningfully true in Demetillo’s literary epic. As a document
of the world of the author (author-society), Demetillo’s Barter in Panay records
the interests existing in and experienced by him, particularly by the people in
the real world of its origin. In other words, the assumption construed is that
Demetillo and the people in his society share their common experiences and
interests expressed and recorded through a form of literature.
As a record of the worldviews of the author or as a social segmental
author as Demetillo projects through his persona, Barter in Panay indicates the
7 William Henry Scott, “Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of Philippine
History,” in UNITAS, 41:3 (1968), 371-387.

8 See Hornedo, Culture and Community in the Philippine Fiesta and Other Celebrations.
9 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 47
attitudes and values assumed to be favorable to him and unfavorable to the

people or class (particularly King Makatunaw, and either Datu Sumakwel or
Chief Marikudo and the class they represent) detrimental, or at least inimical,
to his interests. However, Datu Sumakwel, as Demetillo’s literary persona,
belongs to both classes—the ruling and the ruled. Assuming that Datu
Sumakwel is a member of the ruling class, he represents the Filipino in
general and this allegorically legitimizes his aspirations of a just, equal and a
liberal society, and disdains whatever puts him in an unfavorable light that
may hinder the attainment of his aspirations for his society. To this, he
projected the Aeta as the “othered” by describing their skin color—black.
Datu Sumakwel, as a persona of the ruling class is solemn, almost humorless
and is concerned with legitimizing his assertions for the good of his people.
He legitimizes his own interests and that of the Borneans in general by
bartering the land with the Aetas for gold.
In the same manner, it can also be assumed that Datu Sumakwel
represents the ethos, the voice of the Filipino people, particularly the ruled
class. He upholds the dignity or praises the abilities of his own kind, like what
he did in the characters of Datu Puti and Chief Marikudo as individuals who
are ruling in their tribe. He let the two heroes narrate their own tales (Canto
X and XI). Consciously, the persona showed a high reverence to the royalty
and nobility of his own class as well as the values of morality they upheld. In
doing so, he did it at the expense of those who are outside of his class and/or
a member of his own class, that is by dishonoring King Makatunaw as a ruler
who caused their subjugation, forcing them to flee and to seek freedom and
justice elsewhere. Likewise, he stratified their rule and power in Panay by
buying the land from its rightful owners, the Aetas and driving them away
to the uplands.
It is also assumed that it is possible for Demetillo, who may represent
a member of another class, to write in favor of another class either because he
is caused to do so or because, by cultural subjugation, he has come to identify
his own interests as a social critic with what he particularly sees as the
malpractices and/or immoralities of his society. In this case, it is clear from a
moral perspective that the ultimate class origin of the literature is one in
whose interest is slanted.
It is also worthy to note that the composition of folk in Philippine
history has changed. In precolonial times, folk excluded the datu and sultan,
even the maginoo classes, for they were the ruling class in old Philippine
society. However, during the colonial era, many of the datus and maginoo fell
from power and became reduced to the status of the common people or folk—
the classless individuals. In effect, Datu Sumakwel as Demetillo’s literary
persona becomes one of the forebearers of these downgraded classes. Thus,
Barter in Panay can be classified as folk literature, a literature of the ruling

ISSN 1908-7330
class in a form of literary epic, eulogizing the virtues of the once ruling class
of our society. We thus see literature as the voice of power—seeking to
legitimize the ideals, virtues, and philosophical views regardless of whose
voice articulates it—and in this instance, it is Demetillo, an educated folk.
The Socio-Political Phenomena Revealed by the Poet’s

Persona
What we have to learn from Demetillo as a nationalist-socialist critic

in our time is that the poet and/or the critic, with his intellectual knowledge,
can operate with ease and freedom what he could use as materials for his
possession as a poet. Demetillo writes with the primary purpose of giving
pleasure, of sharing memorable experience communicated through a
medium of language. He has the gift or talent to identify and isolate what is
memorable in his own experience or in the experience of others, which he
imaginatively made his own. Demetillo turns these memorable experiences
from abstract into concrete, so when we hear or read them, we find them
suitably expressing our own pleasurable experiences. Here, our pleasure is
not of recognition but of discovery. In any case, to use T.S. Eliot’s words, there
is in the literary production of Demetillo “the communication of some new
experience, or fresh understanding of the familiar, or the expression of
something we have experienced but have no words for, which enlarges our
consciousness and refines our sensibilities.”10 Thus, the twin pleasures of
recognition and of discovery which literature offers lead inevitably to
something of even greater value—an enlargement of consciousness, a
refinement of sensibility, or to put it in another way, a better and deeper
understanding of ourselves.
We are living in the most terrifyingly chaotic epoch of human history.
Daily events shatter our ease and complacency; often, after continuous
tremors, our responses are deadened into indifference. The events in our
midst accent our feelings of uncertainty and our alienation from the people
around us whose values are often totally different from ours. Newspapers,
the radio, television, and movies around the world force us on surface values
that immobilize or coarsen our sensibility as human persons. And these
become the concern of the artist of every age. Mass media affect man with a
culture that is beneath the level of human intellect and morality, degrade man
to a mere organ motivated by sex, a mere semi-mechanical, semi-
physiological organism devoid of any divine spark, of any absolute value, of
10 T.S. Eliot, 1957: 18. Eliot, T.S., The social function of poetry in On poetry and poets.
London: Faber and Faber, 1957). T.S. Eliot, “The Social Function of Poetry,” in On Poetry and Poets
(London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 18.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 49
anything noble and sacred. All these debasements of morality make man their
end victims. In the urban societies of the contemporary world, thousands lead
lives of waste and quiet despair. We feel the bluffs leading into the endless
abysms of the spirit, stutteringly instructed by frenzied years and decades of
violence, horror, and death. All these terrorize us almost daily and deaden
our individual sensibility to the point where evil no longer arouses our
indignation and good, no longer arouses us to commitment, because many of
us feel that it is futile to do so. This picture of Philippine society today is the
same picture that provoked Demetillo in the creation of his work.
At the present, the country is passing through a crisis, which puts
walls between the people and the government systems and officials,
metaphorically and literally. The cases of then President Arroyo, the money
laundering scam of Ex-Chief Justice Renato Corona, and the scam of Senators
Enrile, Revilla, Estrada, and the like depict the segmental crises of the Filipino
values system. As a nation, there are important human values that emanate
even people from prison - vigilance against corruption and exploitation,
human dignity that deserves better than scurvy treatment, righteous will to
bring the goods of the world to everyone. It remains true that the 21st century
man will still be subjected to the tensions and the meaninglessness of
existence, which in the modern world, crowded and alienating city life, force
many to live.
Demetillo, through his Barter in Panay, evokes the emotions and the
attitudes that make up an intellectual and aesthetic milieu. His imagination
as a modern man—a poet and a critic—tries to find the oblique images that
enable Filipinos to confront the gorgons of life’s reality. Time will come when
Demetillo and other artists will tilt precariously in the night because of age;
however, their works still keep their vigil through the readers/audience, who
will defy the darkness of society while creating the proud emblems of human
dignity.
At this time, the Filipino people appreciate the narratologies of their
fictive and checkered history and continue to aspire for the ideals and cultural
values of their ancestors. Though acculturation with the global through
education, mass media, and travel have certainly drifted a lot of them into the
mainstreams of the modern world, there are still in the Filipino masses a
resilient and adaptive Datu Sumakwel, Datu Puti, and Chief Marikudo who
always remind them of their true Filipino identity, values, morality, and
aspirations, such as the desires for freedom, righteousness, and justice. And
they should embrace these traditional values that treat all humanity equal
regardless of their social stratification.
In totality, the tones and mood of the literary persona in Demetillo’s
literary epic are those of the ruling class. Datu Sumakwel is a distinguished
member of the ruling class who projects their attitudes, worldviews, values,

ISSN 1908-7330
and mores. Demetillo belongs to an elite and bourgeois proletariat, a class

which is equal to his literary persona Datu Sumakwel. Through his literary
persona, Demetillo moralizes or legitimizes his control over his society. He
uses Datu Sumakwel as a didactical element to enshrine his class, entertain
his readers, and criticize other characters, groups, or situations. As member
of the ruling class himself, Demetillo is not capable of exposing himself and
his literary persona to ridicule by telling nasty stories about him. Demetillo is
incapable of speaking against the members of his own class who behave
badly. Therefore, Demetillo’s literary epic projects not only a tale of the
Bornean settlement in Panay Island, but it is created to generally project the
acts of the people—the act of the ruling class who possessed the idealistic and
heroic characters. Thus, Demetillo’s Barter in Panay is characterized as the
literature of the ruling class.
The Critical Views on Race-Power Relations
In the analysis of Demetillo’s representations of the Aeta and the

Bornean identities, it is assumed that he was not able to establish himself as a
true Filipino socialist of his time. He represented himself in the persona of
Datu Sumakwel, a Bornean and a ruling class. This signifies that Demetillo
was conscious of the social class of his literary persona who tries to speak on
his behalf, because he himself belonged to the elite and was a bourgeois-
proletarian. As a Bornean, the persona criticizes the Aeta when:
Chief Marikudo grabbed the salakot / And crowned his

head with it – the fit exact. / The gold was startling
contrast to his skin. / We dared not laugh, however, at
the sight. (Stanza 34, Canto 9).
Daring not to laugh signifies a mockery and discrimination between

his race and the Aetas in terms of awareness of the self, skin color, and most
importantly of the greediness projected on the “blacks.” In effect, Demetillo
projects the ruling class by favoring the Bornean over the Aeta.
Just like Rizal of his time, an ilustrado who critically depicted the
Spanish subjugation of the Filipinos in his novels, El Filibusterismo and Noli
Me Tangere, Demetillo shows the Filipinos’ weaknesses and ugliness of
character through his description of the Aeta identity. Thus, he legitimizes
the superiority of the Bornean both in color and values. In the same way,
Demetillo is comparable to that group of Filipino ilustrados/elites who
gathered together as a revolutionary group against the Spanish government
when, in fact, they are not proletarians.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 51
Implicitly, Demetillo by projecting himself in Datu Sumakwel as a

capitalist, favors today’s capitalism in his own land. The foreigners serve as
the capitalists who buy the prime resort and tourist land from the Aeta—the
natives in Boracay and/or El Nido, Palawan. The capitalists transform the
lands into resorts while the erstwhile owners are driven out to the margins of
the society. In a sense, Demetillo is considered not a serious/true proletarian
critic but, instead, a bourgeois proletarian because he favors the Bornean who
represents the capitalists, who belong to the same social stratification as he.
Demetillo’s view of the social stratification between the Aeta and the
Bornean is a familiarization of the present situation not only in Panay, but in
the country in general. In Panay, the capitalists buy the land at a
lower/cheaper cost from the natives. In return, they build commercial
establishments like hotels, subdivisions, and resorts. The growth of the Zobel-
Ayala Land corporations and the sprouting of Henry Sy’s SM Supermalls all
over the Philippines are examples of capitalism spreading in the country.
While they bring significant economic development to the land, they are
either driving away people or hiring them as workers, thus, subjugating them
in their own land or territory.
But what has happened to the natives? Since they sold their lands,
they lost their patrimony. Obviously, the money did not last long in their
hands and they become nomads. Truly, the natives have become victims of
capitalists. In some establishments, the natives serve as the employees of the
capitalists, yet they are projected as the slaves in their own land. In addition,
the Aetas are hired as manufacturers, utilizing their own materials, but they
are paid less by the capitalists. Relatively, Datu Sumakwel as the forefather
of the Filipino nation, is a metaphoric figure of the Filipino today.
Conclusion
What Demetillo, as the author of a fictional work, or what Datu

Sumakwel, as his persona, narrates is held to constitute “pretended”
assertions of his ideologies, which are understood by his audience. In this
view, it is Datu Sumakwel and not the author himself who is committed to
the truth of ideologies that he asserts. It is assumed, moreover, that within the
frame of a fictional world, literature through the persona created by the author
imitates reality by representing in a verbal medium the setting, actions,
utterances, and interactions of human beings. Thus, through the persona
created by the author, we can respond emotively with our shared experiences
and, perhaps, our own utterances.
Through the assumptions regarding the literary persona in
Demetillo’s literary epic, we can conclude that Datu Sumakwel carries the
voices of the folks in the past who were the ruling class, and the voices of the

ISSN 1908-7330
modern folks—both the ruling and the ruled in today’s world. Thus, we hear
the voice of our ancestors—the past—and its relativity to the present, its
timelessness. The persona’s poetic voice comes from the memory of Datu
Sumakwel, and every Filipino who lives in the here and the now who passes
on this account as a folkloric or historical record of ideologies to the younger
generations. The voice in Demetillo’s literary creation depicts a Panay-anon
himself and the Filipinos as a whole, and sketches the community beyond the
spatial and projects itself into the future that will continue and preserve his
legacy and his race. It yields insight into the literary epic’s own preservation
and function. In this part, Demetillo’s role as a writer-critic of his time brings
not only the historical aspects, but also the class consciousness of the Filipinos
through his literary work. His motives as a social critic are constructed
through the representations of his literary persona and his relation to it, his
literary text, and his society.
The picture of the society today imitates literature through the
character representations, situation or plot, and the literary persona of
Demetillo’s Barter in Panay. Demetillo’s projection of Datu Sumakwel as an
aristocrat and capitalist affirms the assumption that he legitimizes his own race
as an elite and bourgeois proletarian whose ideologies and interests of power
are further strengthened. Datu Sumakwel upholds the dignity and abilities of
his own kind. Notably, Demetillo as the voice represented by Datu Sumakwel
does these at the expense of those outside his class—the Aeta. Demetillo
should have written his literary epic with the aim of projecting the race-power
relationships of the Bornean and the Aeta, so that the later generations—
today’s natives, the true-blooded Filipinos—would be illuminated and
moved to seek freedom, righteousness, and social justice from those who
marginalized them in Philippine society. Thus, the projected result would be:
today’s natives will no longer be yesterday’s visitors.
Research, Development, and Extension Center (RDEC) – Social Science Research

College of Education, Capiz State University, Philippines
References
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 5th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc., 1988).
___________, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition
(London: Oxford University Press, 1953).
Beyer, H. Otley and Jaime C. De Veyra, Philippine Saga: A Pictorial History of
the Archipelago Since Time Began (Manila: Evening News, 1947).

ISSN 1908-7330
L. BICLAR 53
Biclar, L.A.B., “The Socio-cultural and Political Undertones in Demetillo’s

Barter in Panay: An Epic,” in JPAIR Multidisciplinary Research, 16:1
(2014).
___________, “Understanding the Filipino Worldviews in Demetillo’s Barter
in Panay: An Epic,” in IAMURE International Journal of Literature,
Philosophy, and Religion, 6:1 (2014).
Carreon, Manuel L., Maragtas: The Datus from Borneo (Manila: Maragtas
Symposium, National Historical Commission, 1956).
De la Costa, Horacio, “The Responsibility of the Writer in Contemporary
Philippine Society,” in Readings in Contemporary Philippine Literature,
ed. by The Committee on the Humanities (Quezon City: KEN Inc.,
1967). Also in the following: Literature and Society: A Symposium on the
Relation of Literature to Social Change (Manila: Alberto S. Florentino,
1964); The Background of Nationalism and Other Essays (Manila:
Solidaridad Publishing House, 1965).
Demetillo, Ricaredo E., Barter in Panay: An Epic (Quezon City: Office of the
Research Coordination, University of the Philippines, 1961).
___________, Barter in Panay: An Epic, reprinted ed. (Quezon City: New Day
Publishers, 1986).
Eliot, T.S., “The Social Function of Poetry,” in On Poetry and Poets (London:
Faber and Faber, 1957).
Foucault, Michel, Language, Counter-Memory, and Practice, trans. by D.F.
Bouchard and S. Simon (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977).
Hornedo, Florentino H., Pagmamahal at Pagmumura: Essays. (Quezon City:
ADMU Office of Research and Publications, 1997).
___________, Laji: Anu maddaw ka mu lipus, an Ivatan Folk Lyric Tradition
(Manila: UST Publishing House, 1997).
___________, Culture and Community in the Philippine Fiesta and Other
Celebrations (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2000).
___________, Pagpapakatao and Other Essays in Contemporary Philosophy and
Literature of Ideas. (Manila: UST Publishing House, 2002).
Lukᾴcs, Georg., History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics,
trans. Rodney Livingstone (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1968).
Scott, William Henry, “Prehispanic Source Materials for the Study of
Philippine History,” in UNITAS, 41:3 (1968), 371-387.

ISSN 1908-7330
Ang Pilosopiya ni Emerita S. Quito

Leslie Anne L. Liwanag
Abstract: This paper is a study on how a female professor of

philosophy became a leading figure in the development of Filipino
philosophy. Emerita Quito, of De La Salle University, is probably the
greatest philosopher in contemporary Philippines. This paper contains
the following substantive parts: 1) her theoretical and praxiological
foundation; 2) her reflective thoughts on Filipino philosophy; 3) her
method of philosophizing; 4) her praxiology; and 5) her views about
the Philippine society. This paper concludes with a discussion on how
her thoughts impacted Filipino philosophy.
Keywords: Quito, manifestations of Filipino philosophy, theory and

praxiology, discourse
Introduksyon
Mithiin ng papel na itong maibahagi ang mahahalagang aspekto at

puntos ng kaisipan ng pilosopong Pilipina at propesor na si Emerita S. Quito
(1929), na hindi maitatatuwang nagkaroon ng malaking ambag sa pag-aaral
ng kairalan ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino. Gayunman, hindi naging lihim sa
kanya ang kakulangan sa paglaganap ng kahalagahan at kakapusan sa pokus
ng larangang ito sa bansa. May layunin ang pag-aaral na itong matukoy ang
mga puntos ng pamimilosopiya at diskurso ni Quito upang mapalakas at
mapalinang ang araling kultural at araling Pilipino, sa pamamagitan ng
tekstwal na proyektong ito ukol sa pilosopiya ng isang lokal na pantas.
Intelektwal na Talambuhay ni Quito
Ipinanganak si Quito noong ika-11 ng Setyembre, 1929 sa San

Fernando, Pampanga. Bilang bunso sa magkakapatid, hindi ipinagkait sa
© 2016 Leslie Anne L. Liwanag

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/liwanag_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 55
kanya ang hilig sa mga libro gaya ng kanyang mga magulang.1 Hinangad ni
Quito ang kursong abogasya, kaya agarang pumasok sa kursong pilosopiya
sa Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas (UST) at natapos ang digri sa batsilyer noong
1949. Nahulog ang loob sa nasabing disiplina, ipinagpatuloy niya ang
gradwadong programa sa naturang unibersidad at natamo ang digri sa
masteral noong 1956.
Noong lumisan si Quito ng Pilipinas noong 1961, puspusan ang
kanyang naging pag-aaral sa iba’t ibang pilosopiya sa Europa at umahon
mula sa pagkakalunod sa Tomismo ng UST. Sa Europa, natapos ni Quito ang
digri sa doktorado sa Universite de Fribourg, Switzerland noong 1965 na may
disertasyon na may titulong “La Notion de la Liberte Participee dans la
Philosophie de Louis Lavelle.” Bumalik siya sa Pilipinas at nagturo sa UST
noong 1967. Naunsyami si Quito sa Eskolastisismo at Tomismo ng UST at
kakapusan sa imprastraktura ng pananaliksik para sa mga fakulti at mag-
aaral. Mula rito, sinubukan niyang magturo sa Pamantasang Ateneo de
Manila at Kolehiyo ng Assumption hanggang sa imbitahan siya ni Br.
Andrew Gonzalez na lumipat sa Pamantasang De La Salle (DLSU).
Ginanahang manaliksik sa DLSU si Quito sapagkat maraming
insentibo sa pagsasagawa ng mga pag-aaral. Alinsunod dito ang pagiging
fultaym fakulti pa sa nasabing institusyon noong 1971. Nagkaroon rin siya
ng oportunidad na makakuha ng post-doctoral fellowships at grants sa
Universitat Wien, Austria noong 1962, sa Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
noong 1964. Isinulong niya pa ang pagsasanay sa pilosopiyang oriental at
Sanskrit sa Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, France noong 1974. Pinangunahan
ni Quito ang pagbubukod sa orihinal na estilong Eskolastisismo at
Tomismong pamimilosopiya sa DLSU. Nagretiro siya sa nasabing
institusyon bilang full professor at professor emeritus noong 1993.
Ang mga Obra ni Quito
May dalawang listahang natagpuan ang mananaliksik na

maituturing na pinakakomprehensibong mga tala ng mga nailathalang obra
ni Quito: una, ang isa sa mga apendiks ng tesis na may pamagat na Ang
Kaganapan ng Isang Dalubhasa sa Pilosopiya na nasa Foronda Collection ng
Aklatan ng Pamantasang De La Salle, at pangalawa, ang pinakahuling
curriculum vitae ni Quito na kasalukuyang nakatago sa Departamento ng
Pilosopiya nang magretiro siya sa Pamantasang De La Salle. Gawa ng isa si
Quito sa mga unang nagsulong na maging sentro sa pananaliksik ang
Pamantasang De La Salle, tunay na napakarami ang kanyang naging
1 Janet Jimenez, et. al., Ang Kaganapan ng Isang Dalubhasa sa Pilosopiya (Thesis, Manila:
De La Salle University, 1990), 1.

ISSN 1908-7330
56 PILOSOPIYA NI EMERITA QUITO
publikasyon. Sa katunayan, taong 1990 noong gawaran siya ng Pamantasang

ito ng isang festschrift (“festival of writings”) na may titulong A Life of
Philosophy: A Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito na naglalaman ng kanyang
piling-piling mga publikasyon.
Kasama mismo si Quito sa lupong pumili at sumala sa mga

monograph at artikulong isinama sa festschrift, kaya minarapat na gamitin ito
bilang prinsipyo sa pagpapasyang maging bahagi ang mga artikulong
kabilang sa kabuoang aklat:
Taon Mga Akda ni Quito sa Festschrift

A New Concept of Philosophy
La Notion de la Liberte Participee dans la Philosophie
de Louis Lavelle
Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society
The Philosophy of Henri Bergson
1965 -1970
The Symposium of Plato
Existential Principles and Christian Morality
The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl
The Theme of Absurdity in Albert Camus
Should Communism be Taught in our Universities
Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino
Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya
Oriental Roots of Occidental Philosophy
Four Essays in the Philosophy of History
Lectures on Comparative Philosophy
Structuralism: A General Introduction
Reflections on the Death of God
1971-1980 Robert Ardrey: Scientist or Philosopher
The Historical Concept of Being and Truth
The Philosophy of the Renaissance: Nicolas of Cusa
Yoga and Christian Spirituality
The Role of the University in Changing
Women’s Consciousness
Ang Kayamanan ng Wikang Filipino
Process Philosophy: An Introduction
Homage to Jean-Paul Sartre
Three Women Philosophers
Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura
An Existentialist Approach to Ecumenism
1981-1988
Teaching and Research of Philosphy in the Philippines
Values as a Factor in Social Action
Structuralism and the Filipino Volksgeist
Isang Teoriya ng Pagpapahalaga

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 57
A Filipino Volksgeist in Vernacular Literature

Philosophy of Education for Filipinos
Table 1: Seleksyon ng mga Pangunahing Publikasyon ni Quito

mula sa “A life of Philosophy: Selected Works of Emerita S. Quito (1965-1988)”
Bukod sa intelektwal na talambuhay ni Quito at pagbalik-tanaw sa

kanyang mga obra, nakapokus ang papel sa anim na aspekto ng kanyang
kaisipan: 1) ang kanyang teoretikal at praksiyolohikal na batis; 2) ang
kanyang replektibong pananaw sa pilosopiya; 3) ang kanyang diskursibong
katayuan sa pilosopiyang Pilipino; 4) ang kanyang metodo sa pamimilsopiya;
5) ang kanyang praksiyolohiya; at 6) ang kanyang pananaw sa lipunang
Pilipino.
Teoretikal at Praksiyolohikal na Batis Ni Quito
Nagtapos si Quito sa UST na may reputasyon sa pagkakaroon ng

pilosopiyang nakasentro sa Eskolastisismo at Tomismo bilang sistema ng
kaisipan. Nakaposisyon ang Tomismo sa pangunguna ni Santo Tomas de
Aquino (1227-1274) na isang teolohista, pilosopo, at hinirang na Doktor ng
Simbahan. Malinaw na ipinapahayag ng pinakatanyag na paksa ng
pilosopiya ng Tomismo ang pagpilit ni Santo Tomas na pagkasunduin ang
pag-iisip ni Aristoteles at ang pag-iisip ng Kristiyano.2 Matatagpuan ang
kanyang teolohiya sa Summa Theologica, ang pinakamaimpluwensiyang
dokumentong patuloy na ginagamit bilang sanggunian ng pilosopiya at
teolohiya ng Simbahang Katoliko. Nakasaad dito ang maningning na
pagkakabalangkas ng kanyang mga argumentong nauukol sa usapin ng
kairalan ng Diyos, paglikha at tunguhin ng tao, si Kristo, at ang mga
Sakramento. Tinangka ring panindigan ni Santo Tomas na ang Diyos ang
Unang Sanhi. Walang anomang gawain ang maaaring mangyari kung
walang kapahintulutan ng Diyos. Ngunit hindi nagmumula sa Diyos ang
kasiraan sa anomang kilos o gawa ng tao.3
Sa puntong ito, masasabing mahalagang makita na naging matapat
sa Tomismo si Quito bilang produkto ng institusyong ito—bagay na
napatunayan sa kanyang tesis para sa masteral na digri na pinamagatang
“The Will and its Relation to Divine Casuality and Knowledge” na isinumite sa
Unibersidad ng Sto. Tomas (UST) noong 1956. Tinalakay niya sa tesis na ito
ang sinauna pang problema ukol sa kalayaan ng pagpapasya (freedom of the
will). Alinsunod dito ang pagbusisi ni Quito sa depinisyon ng kagustuhan
2 Emerita Quito, “Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya,” in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor
of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 78.

3 Ibid., 79.

ISSN 1908-7330
(appetite), ang kagustuhan ng tao, at kung anong uri ng kagustuhan ang

ninanais ng tao. Pinatunayang malaya ang pagpapasya ng tao at ito ang
nagtatalaga ng limitasyon ng nasabing kalayaan. Nanindigan ang kanyang
pag-aaral kung paano nananalaytay ang kalayaan gayong may Divine
Motion at nagpahayag ng detalyadong rason kung bakit hindi mareresolba
ng tao ang ganitong problema.
Dahil lubos ang pagtuon ng UST sa diskursong Eskolastisismo at
Tomismo, para kay Quito hindi nito nagawa ang malawakang pagtugon sa
mga pangangailangan at mga inaasahan ng mga mag-aaral at guro sa
pilosopiya ng bansa. Naunsyami sa sitwasyong ito si Quito noong mabuksan
ang isipan mula nang bumalik siya galing sa Belgium. Bunsod nito, niyanig
niya ang mga haligi ng akademya sa kanyang lektyur tungkol sa pilosopiya
ni St. Thomas Moore hinggil sa kapwa-Fribourger na si Herbert Marcuse, na
nanguna sa ideya ng “Great Refusal.” Aniya: “…it must take the risk of failure
for in doing so it can consolidate its strength and expose the banalities of civil
obedience to a reactionary regime.”
Bukod dito, malaki ang ambag ng kaisipan ni Louis Lavelle kay
Quito kaya umangkla siya sa diskurso nito. Napatutunayan ito ng kanyang
doktoradong disertasyong may titulong “La notion de la Libertè participèe dans
la philosophie de Louis Lavelle” na isinumite sa Universite’ de Fribourg,
Switzerland noong 1965. Eksistensyalistang Katoliko ang turing ng mga
pantas kay Lavelle. Lunduyan ng kanyang pilosopiya ang pagkadakila ng tao
bilang isang Bagay na presensiyang total (presence totale). Saanman
nakapaloob ang tao, doon din nakapaloob ang kanyang kamalayan at
katalinuhan.4 Para sa kanya, hindi kailanman maipaliliwanag at nararapat
lamang tanggapin na malawak ang kalayaan ng tao—hindi nilikha ng sarili
o binigay lamang ng Diyos. Datapwat masasabing lubos ang kalayaan ng tao
at lubos ang pagkakaloob ng Diyos.
Buhat nito, isang mapangahas na Quito ang natunghayan nang
naging sandigan niya ang Alemang pilosopo at politikal na teorista na si
Herbert Marcuse noong panahon ng Batas Militar. Malaki ang naging
impluwensiya ni Marcuse sa Estados Unidos noong huling bahagi ng 1960s
at unang bugso ng 1970s. Sentro sa kaisipan ni Marcuse ang pananaw ukol sa
ganap na kalayaan ng sangkatauhan (total human emancipation) at
pagbubuo ng sibilisasyong malaya mula sa panunupil. Ayon sa introduksyon
ni Marjorie Evasco sa mga artikulo ni Quito mula 1965 hanggang 1970 sa
festschrift, isa sa mga panulat ni Quito na may titulong “Herbert Marcuse and
Contemporary Society” ang nagsilbing tila isang pagpihit ng gatilyo upang
pumutok ang mobilisasyong pinangunahan ng mga mag-aaral ng UST at
4 Ibid., 201.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 59
pagtayo laban sa tuluyang pagkalusaw ng kamay na bakal ng pambansang

administrasyon.
Bandang huli, mababatid na nangamba si Quito sapagkat
mapupunta sa alanganin ang kanyang kapakanan noong rehimeng Marcos
gawa ng kanyang panulat at aktibistang pilosopiya. Kaya matutunghayan
mula sa kanyang mga artikulo noong 1971 hanggang 1980 na mas naging
tampulan ng kanyang diskurso ang usapin ng diwang Pilipino, kasaysayan
ng pilosopiya, komparatibong pilosopiya, at ilan pang mga kahalintulad na
paksa. Mas pinagtuunang-pansin ni Quito ang nasyonalismo sa
karunungang Pilipino bilang naging motibasyon niya sa pagsisimula nito sa
larangan ng agham—panlipunan (social sciences). Naging batayan niya ang
pagsusulong na ito upang kalaunang makabuo ng kanyang kontribusyon sa
Pilosopiyang Pilipino.
Replektibong Pananaw sa Pilosopiya sa Pilipinas ni Quito
Labis ang atensyon ng bansa sa ekonomikong pagbangon (economic

recovery) hanggang sa kasalukuyan, kaya ipinagdiinan ni Quito na hindi
nakapagtatakang ‘di nabibigyan ng wastong kahalagahan ang pilosopiya sa
Pilipinas.5
Inihain ni Quito ang pagkakaiba ng academic at formal philosophy,
gayundin ang grassroot at folk philosophy. Gayong hindi kasalukuyang
nananalaytay ang academic at formal philosophy sa bansa, dahil limitado ang
karamihan sa mga bulto ng pilosopikal na gawain sa eksposisyon ng
dayuhang pilosopikal na teorya, ipinagdiinan naman ni Quito na mayaman
ang sisidlan ng grassroots philosophy o folk philosophy, na hindi pa nasusuri ng
mga maka-Kanluraning akademiko. Tinawag ni Quito ang tinaguriang
“loose philosophy” bilang “diwang Pilipino” (Filipino spirit), “Volksgeist”
(Folk spirit) at “Weltanschauung” (worldview). Naniniwala siyang hindi
lamang malalimang pag-unawa sa sariling pambansa at kultural na
identidad ang pagkabatid natin sa ganitong nibel at pakiwari sa pilosopiya,
datapwat magkakaroon din ng mga konsepto, wika, at mga sistema ng pag-
iisip na maaaring gamitin upang bumuo at mapayabong ang sarili sa
makabuluhan at makapangyarihang diskurso.
Pinagtuunang-pansin ni Quito ang katanungan kung bakit may
kakulangan tungo sa pag-unlad ang academic at formal philosophy sa Pilipinas.
Itinanghal niya ang sampung dahilan na hinati sa 1) mga salik sa politikal at
kultural na klima; 2) mga salik na may kinalaman sa institusyonal at
estruktural na pagkukulang ng ating mga unibersidad at kolehiyo; at 3) mga
5 Jimenez, et. al., Kaganapan ng Isang Dalubhasa sa Pilosopiya, 9.

ISSN 1908-7330
salik na may kinalaman sa propesyonal na kapasidad ng mga propesor sa

pilosopiya.
Itinurong dahilan ni Quito ang politika at kultura sa Pilipinas na
hindi bukas sa mabusising pamimilosopiya at pilosopikal na pananaliksik.
Kung babalikan, dagdag niya na ang kasaysayan ng bansa sa ilalim ng
kolonya ng Espanyol, Amerikano, at Hapon ang pumigil sa kalayaang
mamilosopiya sapagkat hindi ito sang-ayon sa kanilang interes bilang mga
pinunong kolonisador, at nangangambang baka kalaunang tugisin ng mga
sinaunang Pilipino ang walang-patawad nilang pananakop sa lupang
sinilangan.
Samakatuwid, noong isinulat ni Quito ang kanyang dalawang
pangunahing obra noong 1970s at 1980s, mayroon lamang 30 hanggang 40 na
taong tiyansa upang malayang umunlad mula sa banyagang kaisipan ang
Pilosopiyang Pilipino. Ngunit kahit na natamo na ang politikal na “kalayaan”
mula sa mga mananakop, hindi pa rin garantiya ang kalayaan sa kaisipan
sapagkat nanatili ang mga Pilipino sa kolonyal na diskurso ng Eskolastisismo
at Tomismo, at nagkaroon pa ng pagsesensor sa akademikong publikasyon
mula 1970s hanggang sa unang bahagi ng 1980s.6
Sa kultural na aspekto, nabatid ni Quito na karaniwang nakaangkla
ang konsepto ng pilosopiya sa maling konotasyon sa imahen ni Don
Anastacio, kilala bilang “Pilosopo Tasyo” sa nobelang Noli Me Tangere ni Jose
Rizal.7 Gayunman, sa halip na ipakahulugan ang pilosopiya sa matapang na
panlipunang kritisismo ni Tasyo at pagsasawalang-bahala sa mga
mapanlupig na kaugaliang kolonyal na lipunan, mas ikinakabit ang
terminong pilosopiya sa pinagtatawanang imahen ng kabaliwan ng naturang
karakter.
Sa mas espesipikong tagpuan ng mga unibersidad at kolehiyo sa
Pilipinas, tinukoy ni Quito ang iba pang salik na nakapipinsala sa pag-unlad
ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino. Kung ikukumpara sa pamantayan ng Europa, hindi
nakauudyok ang mababang sweldo ng mga Pilipinong akademiko para
magpursigi sa karera ang matatalinong mag-aaral na magturo sa kolehiyo at
manaliksik.8 Para sa mga sumabak naman sa akademya, mababatid na
nakagigipit ang karaniwang pagtatalaga ng dalawampu't apat na oras sa
isang linggo para sa isang propesor sa kolehiyo para sa marubdob na
pananaliksik at mas seryosong pamimilosopiya.9 Para sa masisipag at
6 (Cf. Quito, “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the Philippines” 713). Emerita
Quito, “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the Philippines,” in A Life of Philosophy:
Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 713. This is the
preliminary version of Quito’s The State of Philosophy in the Philippines (1983). Cf. Emerita Quito,
The State of Philosophy in the Philippines (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1983).
7 Quito, The State of Philosophy in the Philippines, 9. Translation mine.
8 Quito, “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the Philippines,” 710.
9 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 61
masisigasig sa pananaliksik at seryosong pamimilosopiya, gayong hindi

maikakatwa ang kakapusan sa oras, mapagtatantong kinakapos sa
imprastraktura para sa pag-aaral tulad ng grants, professorial chairs, at silid-
aklatan ang karamihan sa mga unibersidad at kolehiyo sa Pilipinas.10 Dagdag
dito, hindi sapat ang paghikayat o pagbibigay ng insentibo sa mga guro at
propesor ng mga unibersidad at kolehiyo sa Pilipinas para manaliksik at
maglathala para sa publikasyon.11
Sa mas partikular pa na konteksto sa propesyonal na kapasidad ng
mga Pilipinong guro at propesor sa Pilosopiya, tinukoy ni Quito ang iba pang
nakakaperhuwisyong salik. May kakapusan sa gradwadong pagsasanay ang
mga akademikong Pilipino gawa ng napakamahal na pag-aaral sa ibang
bansa o maging sa sariling bayan.12 Para sa mga nais ipagpatuloy ang
gradwadong programa sa sariling bansa, nasasadlak sila sa proseso ng
inbreeding kung saan matutunan nila ang masaklap na akademikong
kasanayang pagiging di-aktibo at di-produktubong propesor sa
pananaliksik.13
Nalaman din ni Quito ang inkapasidad ng mga Pilipinong guro at
propesor sa pilosopiya upang matutunan ang mga pangunahing lengguahe
sa Europa bilang malaking hadlang sa pag-unlad ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino,
dahil pipigilan nito ang direktang pag-unawa sa kaisipan ng mga
nangungunang non-Anglophone European na pantas.14 Dagdag dito, isang
kabalintunaan ang pirming paggamit ng Ingles imbis na sariling wika ng
mismong mga Pilipinong guro at propesor sa pilosopiya. Ito ang pumipigil
sa pag-unlad ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino sapagkat hindi ito sapat upang
ipaunawa ang diwang Pilipino at malilimitahan ang komunikasyon sa
pagitan ng mga mismong akademikong Pilipino at maging sa iba pang mga
Pilipino.15
Diskursibong Katayuan sa Pilosopiyang Pilipino ni Quito
Sa pagpapamalas ng diskursibong katayuan sa Pilosopiyang Pilipino

ni Quito, babalikan ang pag-aaral ni Demeterio na may titulong “Status of
and Directions for “Filipino Philosophy” ni Zialcita, Timbreza, Quito,
Abulad, Mabaquiao, Gripaldo, and Co na nagpapaliwanag sa taksonomiya at
10 Ibid., 709.
11 Ibid., 710.
12 Ibid., 711.
13 Ibid., 710-711.
14 Ibid., 710.
15 See number 10 of figure 3; Cf. Emerita Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino,”
in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990),
200.

ISSN 1908-7330
peryodisasyon ng anyo ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino gawa ng replektibo at

malalim na pananaliksik ukol dito.
Naging klaro para kay Demeterio na hindi posible ang pagsasagawa
ng isa lamang ngunit komprehensibong eskemang magbibigay ng kabuoang
taksonomiya at peryodisasyon ng bawat pantas, o maging ang pag-uugnay
ng isang taksonomiya sa iba pa. Kaya sa pamamagitan ng pagsasantabi ng
maliliit na kategorya (tinawag niyang “taxonomizer”) at kronolohikal na
tanda (tinawag na “periodizer”), at pagsasaayos ng mga anyo ng
Pilosopiyang Pilipino, may pagkakataong maisakatuparan ang enggrandeng
sintesis sa mukha ng isang dayagram upang mas makinita ang suma ng iba’t
iba ngunit magkakaugnay na kahulugan ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino.
First Level Second Level Third Level

Fourth Level Taxonomy
Taxonomy Taxonomy Taxonomy
Figure 1: Ang Labing-Anim na Diskurso ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino ni Demeterio

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 63
Bago ang lahat, minabuting isa-isahin ang paglalarawan ng mga

taksonomiya kaakibat ng pagsusuri ng diskursibong katayuan para sa
kaisipan ni Quito. Una, hindi nagmumula sa tekstwal na mga kaalaman ang
kalikasan ng Grassroots or Folk Philosophy na nakabatay kina Quito at
Gripaldo. Gayunman, magandang paksa ito sapagkat mauungkat ang
identidad ng mga Pilipino bilang mga mamamayan ng bansa. Ikalawa,
sinasakop ng Scholasticism and Thomism (lecture), na nakabatay kina Quito,
Abulad, at Co, ang mga pasimunong lektyur ng mga Pilipinong akademiko
sa Eskolastisismo at Tomismo. Makabuluhan ito bilang panimulang
pagsasanay sa pilosopiya, etika, at metapisika. Gayunman, nagiging hadlang
ang dogmatismo at di-tekstwal na kalikasan nito para sa kaunlaran ng
Pilosopiyang Pilipino.
Ikatlo, sinasaklaw ng Other Foreign Philosophical Systems (lecture), na
nakabatay pa rin kina Quito, Abulad, at Co, ang ilan sa mga punong-abalang
mga Pilipinong akademikong naglelektyur ukol sa pilosopikal na sistema ng
mga dayuhan. Kapaki-pakinabang ito sa pagkalusaw ng gahum ng
Eskolastisismo. Gayunman, sagabal ang pagiging di-tekstwal na kalikasan
nito sa kaunlaran ng pilosopiyang Pilipino. Ikaapat, ang Critical Philosophy as
Non-academic Discourse, na nakabatay kina Zialcita, Quito, Mabaquiao,
Timbreza, at Gripaldo, ay ukol sa praktika ng ilan sa mga intelektwal sa labas
ng grupo ng mga Pilipinong akademiko sa pilosopiya. Makabuluhan at may
kaugnayan sa konteksto ng Pilipinas na semi-pyudal, neo-kolonyal, at
burukratikong-kapitalistang estado. May pakinabang ito lalo na’t sentro nito
ang kritikal na pilosopikal na balangkas.
Ikalima, kaugnay ng praktika ng Logical Analysis, na nakabatay kina
Quito at Abulad, ang makapangyarihang metodo ng pamimilosopiyang
nakaayon sa orihinal na tekstong Ingles. Nilalayon nitong maresolba ang
pilosopikal na tunggalian sa pamamagitan ng pagbibigay-linaw sa wika at
pagsusuri ng mga pahayag na karaniwang iginigiit. Isang pilosopikal na
suliranin na may eksaktong lohikal na terminolohiya, mithiin nitong
maresolba ang mga problemang sumusulpot gawa ng kalituhan sa
lingguwistika. Maaaring magbukas ng iba pang pilosopikal na diskurso at
panulat ang positibismong oryentasyon nito. Ikaanim, ang
Phenomenology/Existentialism/Hermeneutics, na nakabatay pa rin kina Quito at
Abulad, ay hinggil sa subhektibong interpretasyon, kairalan, kamalayan,
kalayaan, pagpili ng tao upang magkaoon ng makapangyarihang pilosopikal
na diskurso. Pero isang kahinaan nito ang pagkakabase sa Aleman at Pranses
bilang mga paunang teksto ukol sa mga paksang ito.
Ikapito, ang Critical Philosophy, na nakabatay kina Zialcita, Timbreza,
Quito, Mabaquiao, at Gripaldo, ay tungkol sa repleksyon at kritikal na
pagsasapraktika ng ilang akademikong Pilipino sa larangan ng Pilosopiya.
Praktikal ang gamit nito sa konteksto ng bansa sa pamamagitan ng pagsusuri

ISSN 1908-7330
ng kalagayan gamit ang pilosopiya, kaya lamang makikita sa kasaysayang

naging sanhi ang Batas Militar sa Pilipinas upang mapayabong ang mga
pananaliksik hinggil dito.16 Ikawalo, sumasangguni ang Appropriation of
Foreign Philosophical Theories, na nakabatay kina Timbreza, Quito, Abulad, at
Gripaldo, sa kapaki-pakinabang at may katuturang diskursong lumilikha ng
intelektwal na dayalogo sa pilosopikal na teorya ng mga dayuhan at lokal na
sitwasyon ng bansa, datapwat mapagtatantong kakaunting mga Pilipinong
pantas ang sumusuong sa pilosopikal na diskursong ito. Nagagamit ito sa
kontektwalisasyon at malikhaing aplikasyon sa sariling kultura at identidad
ng mga nananahan sa partikular na tagpuan tulad ng Pilipinas.
Ikasiyam, pinag-uukulan ng Appropriation of Folk Philosophies, na
nakabatay kina Timbreza, Quito, Mabaquiao, at Gripaldo, ang apropriyasyon
ng katutubong pilosopiyang may layuning mapayaman ang lokal na mga
konsepto at teorya. Alinsunod dito, sumusulpot ang isyung sapilitang
paggamit ng pambansang wika sapagkat maraming Pilipinong pantas ang
hindi sanay sa pagsusulat sa Filipino. Gayunman, kakikitaan pa ito ng
bentahe gawa ng makabuluhang pagpapayabong ng konsepto at sistema ng
kaisipang Pilipino. Ikasampu, may kinalaman sa naunang taksonomiya ang
Philosophizing with the Use of the Filipino Language, na nakabatay kina Timbreza
at Mabaquiao, sapagkat itinutulak pa rin ang kontekstwalisasyon gamit ang
wika sa pamimilosopiyang nakaangkla sa karanasan ng Pilipinas. Sa kabilang
banda, nakitang kahinaan lamang ang limitasyon ng tiyansang mailathala sa
mga tanyag na abstraktong dyornal.
Ikalabing-isa, sinasakop ng Exposition of Foreign Philosophical Systems,
na nakabatay kina Quito, Abulad, Co, at Gripaldo, ang mainam na
panimulang punto ng tekstwal na kalikasan nito para sa apropriyasyon ng
mga teoryang dayuhan. Isinisiwalat nito ang mga pilosopikal na kaisipang
dayuhan upang kalaunang itulak sa pagsasakonteksto ng mga mababatid na
mga sistema. Gayunman, may limitasyon pa rin ito para sa mga Pilipinong
pantas sapagkat karamihan sa kanila, Ingles lamang ang nakakayang
maunawaang wika. Ikalabing-dalawa, sinasaklaw ng Revisionist Writings, na
nakabatay kay Gripaldo, ang mga pananaliksik na nagsasagawa ng
kontribusyon sa pamamagitan ng paglampas sa kaisipan ng mga tanyag ng
mga dayuhang pilosopo. Dahilan nito ang pagkakakilanlan at diskusyon ng
internasyonal na komunidad. Subalit sa kasawiang-palad, iilang Pilipino
lamang ang nakikipagsapalaran sa mga ganitong uri ng pilosopikal na pag-
aaral. Bukod dito, may akses lamang sila sa mga Ingles na panulat at hadlang
pa ang eksklusibidad ng ilang archives ng mga espesipikong pilosopo.17
16 Cf. F.P.A. Demeterio, “Status of and Directions for ‘Filipino Philosophy’ in Zialcita,
Timbreza, Quito, Abulad, Mabaquiao, Gripaldo, and Co,” in Philosophia: International Journal of
Philosophy, 14:2 (2013), 209. Translation mine.
17 Ibid., 210.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 65
Ikalabing-tatlo, umuukol ang the Interpretation of Filipino Worldview,

na nakabatay kina Zialcita, Quito, Timbreza, Co, Abulad, Mabaquiao, at
Gripaldo, sa pagpapalakas ng identidad ng mga Pilipinong pantas dahil sa
publikasyon ng ilan sa kanila sa ganitong anyo ng pilosopikal na diskurso.
Subalit karamihan mga Pilipino ang hindi nakauunawa sa katuturan at
direksyon ng ganitong moda ng pamimilosopiya. Hindi pa rin naman
katapusan ng mundo sapagkat ang mga obra at kontribusyon nina Zialcita at
Quito ang gabay sa kaisipan at direksyon ng modang nito. Ikalabing-apat,
kaugnay ng Research on Filipino Values and Ethics, na nakabatay kay
Mabaquiao, ang pananaliksik sa halagahan at etika ng mga Pilipino. May
kapakinabangan ito sa puntong nakahahalina ito sa gobyerno, relihiyon, at
sibikong organisasyon. Iilan lamang ang sumasabak sa ganitong moda ng
pamimilosopiya ngunit kung payayamanin at pagtutuunang-pansin,
makikita ang pagkakaroon nito ng praktikal na dimensyon.
Ikalabing-lima, may katuturan ang Identification of the Presuppositions
and Implications of Filipino Worldview, na nakabatay kina Zialcita at Gripaldo,
sapagkat may makabuluhang gampanin at direksyon ang Pilosopiyang
Pilipino bilang payak na interpretasyon ng pananaw sa mundo ng Pilipino
(Filipino worldview). Gayong malabo ang mithiin ng pilosopiyang ito,
mahalagang matapos na itanghal ang pananaw sa mundo ng Pilipino,
kailangang ipamalas niya pa kung paano magagamit ang Pilosopiyang
Pilipino sa kasalukuyan at sa hinaharap, kaya mas mabigat ang kanyang
magiging responsibilidad. Ikalabing-anim, may kinalaman ang Study on the
Filipino Pphilosophical Lluminaries, na nakabatay kina Timbreza at Gripaldo, sa
pagpapasikat ng Pilipinong pilosopikal na korpus sa pamamagitan ng
pagpaparaya sa mga Pilipinong magkaroon ng kanilang sariling tradisyon.
Sa kabilang bada, marami sa mga Pilipinong iskolar ang kumukuwestiyon sa
ingklusyon at ekslusyon ng ilang Pilipinong pantas sa listahan ng mga tunay
na pilosopo.18
Uumpisahan ang pagtuklas sa diskursibong katayuan ni Quito sa
pilosopiyang Pilipino sa pamamagitan ng pag-uuri ng kanyang tekstwal na
produksyon gamit ang iskema ng labing-anim na diskurso ng pilosopiyang
Pilipino ni Demeterio. Ngunit bago pa man gawin ang pag-uuri sa mga obra
ni Quito, maaari nang tanggalin ang unang apat na diskurso mula sa iskema
ni Demeterio: 1) ang grassroots o folk philosophy, dahil malinaw na bilang isang
propesor ng pilosopiya na walang kaugnayan ang diskursong ito sa mga obra
ni Quito; 2) ang panayam tungkol sa Eskolastisismo at Tomismo, dahil pinag-
uusapan dito ang mga nailathala nang obra; 3) ang panayam tungkol sa iba’t
ibang banyagang sistemang pilosopiya, batay sa parehong kababanggit pa
lamang na dahilan; at 4) kritikal na pilosopiya bilang hindi-akademikong
18 Ibid., 211.

ISSN 1908-7330
diskurso, dahil akademiko ang kabuoang konteksto ng pamimilosopiya ni

Quito. Kaya sa halip na labing-anim na diskurso, labing dalawang diskurso
na lamang ang gagamitin para sa pag-uuri sa mga obra ni Quito. Makikita sa
Table 2 kung ano at ilan ang porsyento ng mga obra ni Quito ang kabilang sa
nabanggit na labing-dalawang diskurso ng pilosopiyang Pilipino:
Bilang ng
Taksonomiya Titulo Percentage
mga Akda
Logical Analysis 0 0.0%
Phenomenology / “Existential Principles and Christian Morality,”
Existentialism / “Reflections on the Death of God,” at “An 3 9.1%
Hermeneutics Existential Approach to Ecumenism”
“Should Communism Be Taught in Our
Universities,” “The Role of the University in
Changing Women’s Consciousness,” “Ang
Kayamanan ng Wikang Filipino,” “Ang Pilosopiya:
Critical Philosophy 6 18.2%
Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,”
“Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the
Philippines,” at “Philosophy of Education for
Filipinos”
“Should Communism Be Taught in Our
Appropriation of
Universities,” at “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang 2 6.1%
Foreign Theories
Pilipino”
Appropriation of
0 0.0%
Folk Philosophy
“Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino,” “Kasaysayan
Philosophizing ng Pilosopiya,” “Ang Kayamanan ng Wikang
using the Filipino Filipino,” “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng 5 15.2%
Language Pambansang Kultura,” at “Isang Teoriya ng
Pagpapahalaga”
“A New Concept of Philosophy,” “La Notion de la
Liberte Participee dans la Philosophie de Louis
Lavelle,” “Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary
Society,” “The Philosophy of Henri Bergson,” “The
Symposium of Plato,” “The Phenomenology of
Edmund Husserl,” “The Theme of Absurdity in
Albert Camus,” “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang
Exposition of
Pilipino,” “Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya,” 22 66.7%
Foreign Systems
“Oriental Roots of Occidental Philosophy,” “Four
Essays in the History of Philosophy,” “Lectures on
Comparative Philosophy,” “Structuralism: A
General Introduction,” “Robert Ardrey: Scientist
and Philosopher,” “The Historical Concept of Being
and Truth,” “The Philosophy of the Renaissance:
Nicolas of Cusa,” “Yoga and Christian Spirituality,”

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 67
“Process Philosophy: An Introduction,” “Homage

to Jean-Paul Sartre,” “Three Women Philosophers,”
“Values as a Factor in Social Action,” at “Isang
Teoriya ng Pagpapahalaga”
Revisionist Writing 0 0.0%
“Lectures on Comparative Philosophy,” “ Ang
Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,”
Interpretation of “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the
5 15.2%
Filipino Worldview Philippines,” “ Structuralism and the Filipino
Volksgeist,” at “Philosophy of Education for
Filipinos”
“Lectures on Comparative Philosophy,” “Ang
Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,”
Research on Filipino “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the
6 18.2%
values and Ethics Philippines,” “Values as a Factor in Social Action,”
“Structuralism and the Filipino Volksgeist,” at
“Philosophy of Education for Filipinos”
Identification of the
Presuppositions &
0 0.0%
Implications of the
Filipino Worldview
Study on the
Filipino
0 0.0%
Philosophical
Luminaries
Table 2: Mga Titulo, Bilang at Percentage ng mga Akda ni Quito sa

Bawat Diskurso ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino ayon kay Demeterio
Ang nilalaman ng Table 2 ay biswal na ipinapakita ng radar chart sa

Figure 2:

ISSN 1908-7330
Figure 2: Radar Chart ng Porsyento ng mga Akda ni Quito sa

Bawat Diskurso ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino ayon kay Demeterio
Mula rito, makikita ang limang nangungunang diskurso ni Quito—

ang exposition of foreign systems (66.7%); critical philosophy (18.2%); research on
Filipino values and ethics (18.2%); philosophizing using the Filipino language
(15.2%); at interpretation of Filipino worldview (15.2%). Samantalang walang
nailathala si Quito na obra sa mga diskurso ng logical analysis, appropriation of
folk philosophy, revisionist writing, identification of the presuppositions and
implications of the Filipino worldview, at study on the Filipino philosophical
luminaries.
Metodo sa Pamimilosopiya ni Quito
Para alamin ang metodo sa pamimilosopiya ni Quito, sisipatin ng

papel na ito ang paraan na kanyang ginamit sa kanyang limang
nangungunang diskurso sa pilosopiyang Pilipino na natuklasan sa naunang
seksyon: ang exposition of foreign systems, critical philosophy, research on Filipino
values and ethics, philosophizing using the Filipino language, at interpretation of
Filipino worldview.
Hindi mga problem-based na akda ang mga obra ni Quito na
napabibilang sa diskursong exposition of foreign systems, marahil sa dahilang
dati na niyang mga panayam sa klase o sa mga okasyong inimbitahan siya ng
anomang organisasyong magsalita tungkol sa pilosopiya. Sa konteksto ng
kasalukuyang panahon, maaaring maliitin ng mga Pilipinong mananaliksik
ang ganitong uri ng mga obra, ngunit mahalaga ang mga ito kapag
isasakonteksto sila sa panahon kung kailan nilalabanan ng mga akademikong
tulad ni Quito ang hegemonya ng Eskolastisismo at Tomismo. Archival at
library research ang pangunahing metodo niya para sa mga akdang
napabibilang sa diskursong ito. Pinakinabangan niya nang husto ang
kanyang kaalaman sa iba’t ibang banyagang wika para sa pagkalap ng
kanyang mga teksto at ipinaliwanag niya ang mga banyagang sistema ng
pilosopiya sa paraang madaling maintindihan ng kanyang mga
mambabasang walang iba kundi ang mga Pilipinong mag-aaral at guro sa
pilosopiya.
Mga problem-based na akda naman ang mga obra ni Quito na
napabibilang sa diskursong critical philosophy. Bilang isang intelektuwal,
batid niya ang mga suliranin, mga institusyonal at kultural na pagkukulang
na bumabagabag sa lipunang Pilipino. Ginamit niya ang pilosopiya para
mailahad ang mga suliranin at pagkukulang na ito, masuri ang mga sanhi, at
madalumat ang mga hakbang na maaaring gawin para tugunan ang mga
nasabing suliranin at pagkukulang. Marxismo, feminismo, nasyonalismo, at

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 69
post-kolonyalismo ang malalawak na diskursong ginamit ni Quito bilang

kontekstuwal na balangkas ng kanyang critical philosophy.
Mga problem-based rin na akda ang mga obra ni Quito na napabibilang
sa diskursong research on Filipino values and ethics. Bilang isang propesor sa
pilosopiya, etika, axiolohiya, at bilang intelektuwal, batid ni Quito ang
malawak na puwang sa pagitan ng Kanluraning etika at axiolohiya sa isang
banda at ng Pilipinong etika at axiolohiya sa kabilang banda. Ginamit niya
ang pilosopiya para matalakay ang puwang na ito at mapag-usapan ang
posibilidad ng pagtatag ng isang artikuladong Pilipinong etika at axiolohiya
na silang tutugon sa mga pagkukulang ng mga Pilipino sa usapin ng
panlipunang moralidad at katarungan. Ginamit ni Quito sa kanyang mga
akdang napabibilang sa diskurso ng research on Filipino values and ethics ang
mga metodo at kontekstuwal na balangkas na komparatibong pag-aaral,
istrakturalismo, panlipunang kritisismo, at nasyonalismo.
Napabibilang rin sa una nang nabanggit na tatlong diskurso ang mga
obra ni Quito na napabibilang sa diskursong philosophizing using the Filipino
language, kaya iba’t iba ang metodong pinagbabatayan ng mga obrang ito.
Ngunit mahalagang banggitin na isang mahalagang metodo para kay Quito
ang paggamit sa wikang Filipino sa pamimilosopiya—para maging mas
makabuluhan ang pamimilosopiya sa mga Pilipino, para maging mas
malapit ang pamimilosopiya sa diwang Pilipino, at para magkaroon ng mas
malaking tiyansang tuluyang mabuo ang isang tunay na pilosopiyang
Pilipino.
Mga problem-based ring akda ang mga obra ni Quito na napabibilang
sa diskursong interpretation of the Filipino worldview. Bilang isang propesor sa
pilosopiya, sinabayan ni Quito ang pinauso ni Leonardo Mercado na
pagtatangkang bigyan ng sapat na pilosopikal na deskripsyon ang Pilipinong
identidad na pinagkakaabalahan rin ng ilang kilusan sa larangan ng agham
panlipunan tulad ng sikolohiyang Pilipino ni Virgilio Enriquez, pantayong
pananaw ni Zeus Salazar, at Pilipinolohiya ni Prospero Covar. Ginamit ni
Quito ang pilosopiya para matalakay ang saysay ng ganitong intelektuwal,
pang-akademikong gawain, at makapag-ambag ng ilang preliminaryong
pagbibigay deskripsyon sa Pilipinong identidad at pananaw sa mundo.
Ginamit ni Quito sa kanyang mga akdang napabibilang sa diskurso ng
interpretation of the Filipino worldview ang mga metodo at kontekstuwal na
balangkas na komparatibong pag-aaral, istrakturalismo, panlipunang
kritisismo, nasyonalismo, at post-kolonyalismo.
Praksiyolohiya ni Quito
Matapos maunsyami sa Tomismo ng UST at mabilad sa iba pang mga

kaisipan sa Europa, tatlong pangunahing obra ni Quito sa anyong aklat at

ISSN 1908-7330
monograph ang nailathala mula taong 1967 hanggang 1970—A New Concept
of Philosophy (1967), La Notion de la Liberte Participee dans la Philosophie de Louis
Lavelle (1969), at Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society (1970). Maituturing
na kontrobersyal ang huling nabanggit na panulat sa dahilang itinuturo itong
nagtulak ng ilang protesta ng mga mag-aaral sa UST noong rehimeng
Marcos.
Noong panahon ding iyon, naging bisitang propesor siya sa kursong
Pilosopiya sa Pamantasang Ateneo De Manila, Kolehiyo ng De La Salle
(Pamantasang De La Salle na ngayon), at Kolehiyo ng Asumsyon, kaya
naging mas malawak ang kanyang impluwensiya sa mga mag-aaral na nasa
kalagitnaan ng aktibong mobilisasyon.
Bilang pinuno ng Dibisyon ng Humanidades sa gradwadong
programa noong 1970 sa UST, ginising niya ang kamalayan ng akademya
kaakibat ang lekturang St. Thomas Moore kung saan kabilang si Marcuse, na
nagpasingaw ng ideya ukol sa the Great Refusal.19 Mula rito, madadalumat
ang pagiging radikal ni Quito sa nasabing unibersidad at nagsilbing
inspirasyon sa kabataang aktibista noong panahong kinakaharap ng Pilipinas
ang matinding panlipunang transpormasyon kung saan maliwanag na
nanindigan siya sa kapangyarihan ng pagbalikwas. Sa yugtong ito pa
nasaksihan ang agresibong bersyon ni Quito nang hamunin ang mga fakulti
ng UST at iba pang pamantasang tila walang pakialam sa panlipunan at
politikal na puwersang bumabalot sa bansa.20 Buhat dito, Abril ng taong iyon,
isang tanong niya ang gumimbal sa mga pader ng akademya—“Maaari bang
ituro ang komunismo sa mga unibersidad?”—na inilathala sa Horizon
magasin ng Pamantasang De La Salle.
Noong 1978, ang imbitasyon sa Asian Women’s Institute, India
upang basahin ang kanyang papel na “The Role of the University in Changing
Women’s Consiousness” at ang pagtungo sa Ewha Woman’s University, Korea
ang naging dahilan kung bakit nagkaroon ng ugnayan si Quito sa
pangkababaihang mga grupo at publikasyon ng monograph hinggil sa
kababaihang pilosopo.
Alinsunod dito ang kanyang pagiging mas pamilyar sa matatalas na
konseptwal na pamamamaraan ng Marxismo sa pamamagitan ng kanyang
malalim na kaalaman sa kaisipan nina Marcuse at Sartre. Panahon ng Batas
Militar nang mapailalim si Quito sa paghihikahos ng bansa mula sa paglabag
ng karapatang-pantao. Bilang tagasunod ng kaisipan ni Marcuse, naniwala si
Quito na kinakailangang siyasatin ang isyu ng karahasan sa lipunan.
Kinakailangang wasakin ng indibidwal ang sistema upang makamit ang
19 Marjorie Evasco, “Introduction to Part I: 1965-1970,” in Emerita Quito, A Life of
Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 3.

20 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 71
kalayaan. Kinakailangang lumabas siya mula sa Establisyamento liban na

lamang kung gusto niya talaga ang karanasan ng alienasyon.
Maituturing na konsepto ni Georg Hegel (1770–1831) at Karl Marx
(1818–1883) ang alienasyon. Dito nakapokus ang pilosopiya ni Marcuse na
naging sandigan ng kaisipan ni Quito. Buhat nito, walang-kailang
nananalaytay ang alienasyon sa larangan ng trabaho. Tinutukoy nito ang
indibidwal na sinusubukang punan ang kanyang pangangailangan sa
pamamagitan ng pagtatrabaho, pero ang totoo, makikitang nagiging kalakal
(commodity) siya sa mismong prosesong nito. Hindi nakapagtatakang gawa
ng pagsunod sa kaisipan ni Marx, sinabi ni Marcuse na isang anyo ng
dehumanisasyon ang pag-unlad, “nagdudulot pa rin ng kasalatan at
pagpapakasakit ang mataas na produktibong proseso ng pagtatrabaho,
nagiging sanhi ang pagtaas ng antas ng kasaganaan ng kahirapan.”21
Gayunman, kasabay ng masaganang panahon ng dekada sisenta at
mas lumalim pang praksiyolohiya ni Quito, mababanaag na naging
maamong iskolar siya at umatras siya sa pagkanti ng usaping politika.
Katunayan, ika–8 ng Pebrero, 2002 sa isang open forum ng symposium na may
temang “Philosophy as Critique of Society and Institutions” sa UST, nagkaroon
ng pambihirang pagkakataon si Demeterio upang tanungin si Quito kung
ano ang nangyari sa Pilosopiyang Pilipino noong panahon ng Batas Militar.
Hindi inaasahan ng mga kalahok ang kanyang kasagutan nang sabihing
nakonsiyensya siya sa pangyayari. Paglalahad niya, dumating pa sa puntong
isang ahente ng rehimeng Marcos ang sinadya siya upang alisin ang kritikal
na bahagi ng isa sa kanyang ililimbag na aklat. Mula noon, hindi na siya
muling nakipagsapalaran sa mapanuring kritisismo.
Bukod sa tumuon ito sa pagiging aktibo bilang Tagapangulo ng
Departamento ng Pilosopiya sa Pamantasang De La Salle at nagsagawa ng
apat na artikulo ukol sa Istrukturalismo, mas umikot na ang kanyang mga
panulat sa mga temang may kinalaman sa oryentalismo at oksidentalismo,
isipan, propagasyon ng Filipino sa akademya, diwang Pilipino, at ang
Diyos.22
Nakaangkla ang pagsasapraktika niya bilang intelektwal sa
paglalarawan ni Benda sapagkat akademiko si Quito, gayunman pinatahimik
siya ng sistemang tinutuligsa sapagkat nasa ilalim siya ng pamumuno ng
rehimeng Marcos. May pagtatangka si Quito na punan ang
pagpapakahulugan ni Said sa mga intelektwal na kinakailangang may
21 Emerita Quito, “Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society,” in A Life of Philosophy:
A Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 120-121.

22 Estrellita Gruenberg, “Introduction to Part II: 1971-1980,” in Emerita Quito, A Life of

ISSN 1908-7330
pagsalungat (defiance) upang magkaroon ng sariling paninindigan at boses

na nagpapamalas ng kalayaan at maibukod ang sarili mula sa nananaig na
puwersa sa lipunan, pero kalaunang naging tikom siya sa aktibong politikal
na pamimilosopiya. Hindi naman daw ito nakapagtataka ayon kay Timbreza
sapagkat may pinoprotektahang pamilya at mas nanaisin na lamang ang
kaligtasan ng bawat isa.23 Sa naging diskusyon ng intelektwal na talambuhay
ni Quito, makikitang pumasok siya sa pagtingin ni Bourdieu sa intelektwal
na batid dapat ang mga isyung kinakailangang pakialaman, nanahimik nga
lamang gawa ng dehadong politikal na sitwasyon ng bansa. May angking
kultural na kapital si Quito ayon kay Bourdieu gawa ng kanyang kaalamang
propesyonal, katatasan sa pagsasalita, at matagal na pinaggugulang panahon
sa pag-aaral at pananaliksik.
Pananaw sa Lipunang Pilipino
Mula sa malalimang pagbabasa ng kabuoang tekstwal na

produksyon ni Quito sa festschrift, makikita sa mga sumusunod na
pangunahing artikulo ang kanyang naging pagsusuri hinggil sa lipunang
Pilipino na may pagkakasunod-sunod sa naturang aklat: 1) “Ang Pilosopiya sa
Diwang Pilipino (1972)”; 2) “Lectures on Comparative Philosophy (1979)”; 3) “The
Role of the University in Changing Women’s Consciousness (1978)”; 4) “Ang
Kayamanan ng Wikang Pilipino (1977)”; at 5) “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng
Pambansang Kultura (1980).” Matingkad na makikita mula sa limang panulat
ang mga temang tumatalakay sa lipunang Pilipino tulad ng: a) kasarilinang
diwa bilang identidad; b) Kristiyanismo bilang relihiyon; c) liberasyon ng
kababaihan; at d) pananaw sa sariling wika.
Kasarilinang Diwa bilang Identidad ng Pilipino
Buhat ng mga inihaing diskurso at pagpapakahulugan sa

Pilosopiyang Pilipino, sinabi ni Quito na maaari ding maging tungkol ito sa
karaniwang pananaw, isang diwa, isang pagtingin na nangangahulugang
natatangi sa mga Pilipino. Masasaksihan ito sa panitikan at sining, mga
halagahan at kaugalian; sa isang salita—isang Weltanschauung.24 Mahalagang
23 F.P.A. Demeterio, “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late Twentieth
Century Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and Cultural Theory Page (April
2002), <https://sites.google.com/site/feorillodemeterio/thoughtandsocio-politics>, 1 February
2011, 12.
24 Emerita Quito, “Lectures on Comparative Philosophy,” in A Life of Philosophy:
Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 514. Translation
mine.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 73
makita ang kahalagahan ng pananaw (Weltanschauung) para maunawaan ang

diwa (Geist) na importante sa pagbubuo ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino.
Sa pananaw ni Quito, kakikitaan ng matinding sensitivity at pride na
may rason ang mga Pilipino. Ang nasyonalistikong katangiang ito ang
dahilan kung bakit matiisin at mapagpasensiya ang mga mamamayan ng
bansa. Matiisin na tipong hindi agarang nagtatangka ng hakbang para sa
pagbabago dahil takot sa kabiguan. Mas pipiliin na lamang ng mga
Pilipinong manahimik habang nagdudusa kaysa sa mabigong mabago ang
sistema. Kaya hindi nakapagtatakang ilang daang taon muna ang nakalipas
bago magrebolusyon ang mga sinaunang mamamayan ng bansa laban sa
mga mapagsamantalang mananakop.25
Marami pang mga manunulat ang nagsasabing may kakulangan sa
identidad ang mga Pilipino, pero senyales din ito ng nasyonalistikong pride
dahil sa labis na pag-aatubili para makabuo nito. Gayong batid ng mga
Pilipinong kakaiba sila sa lahat, nabigo pa rin ito sa pagbubuo ng tiyak na
identidad. Ngunit ani Quito, kahit na hindi lantaran, hindi pa rin masasabing
walang identidad ang lipunang Pilipino.26 Dagdag niya, mayroon tayong
identidad, pero hindi katulad ng mga Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Negro, o
Aryan na makikita sa pisikal na identidad. Makikita ang pagkakakilanlan ng
lipunang Pilipino sa kasarilinang diwa (o soul identity).
Sanhi ng sensitivity ng mga Pilipino ang pagiging personal sa lahat
ng bagay. Kapag may diskusyon o debate, panalo ang indibidwal, hindi ang
isyu. Kadalasang nauuwi pa sa pag-aaway ang mga ito. Tuwing eleksyon,
mas tinitingnan kung sino ang tatakbo kaysa sa kung ano ang plataporma ng
indibidwal.
Sa kabilang banda, may bentahe at kahanga-hanga rin ang pagiging
personal ng mga Pilipino.27 Hindi maitatatwa ito sa konsepto ng bayanihan
tuwing panahon ng kalamidad, kagipitan, o kahirapan sa buhay. May
kakayahang magbigay kahit pa ang pinakamahirap na Pilipino at maibahagi
ang sarili para sa kapwa. Dahilan ng sensitivity ng Pilipino kaya nagiging
emosyonal siya at eksplisit. Masasaksihan ito sa mga pinta, musika,
literatura, at kahit pa sa pagpapahayag ng pananampalataya. Hindi na
kinakailangan ng lubusang kilos o eksplanasyon; madaling mababatid ang
nais ipahayag ng bawat isa.
Sa kabilang banda, gawa ng pananakop ng iba’t ibang bansa sa
Pilipinas, nagkaroon ng katangiang flexibilidad ang mga Pilipino upang
makibagay maging sa puntong naikikintal na ang bawat kultura at kaugalian
ng dayuhan, habang nasasakripisyo at naisasaalang-alang ang sariling
kultura at identidad. Hanggang ngayon, hirap pa rin ang bawat isa upang
25 Ibid., 515.
26 Ibid., 516.
27 Ibid., 517.

ISSN 1908-7330
malaman kung ano nga ba ang identidad ng lipunang kinagisnan, dinakip, at

pinatay ng kolonisasyon ang pagbubuo ng sariling pagkakakilanlan bilang
Pilipino.
Gayunman, naninindigan si Quito na hindi pa rin tuwirang naiwaksi
ang kaibuturan ng pagiging isang Pilipino. Isapraktika man ng Pilipino ang
relihiyon ng dayuhan, o manamit man ng pandayuhan, nagsisilbi lamang ito
upang palakasin pa ang kanyang flexibilidad at mabuting kalikasan.
Kinailangan lamang ng Pilipinong matutunang pakinabangan ang naging
sitwasyon sa kasaysayan kung saan wala silang magagawa.28
Tatlo ang pinagmanahan ng kulturang Pilipino: relihiyon ng mga
Kastila, teknolohiya ng mga Amerikano, at diwa ng mga Asyatiko.29
Taglay ng Pilipino ang “utang na loob,” “hiya,” “amor propio,”
“pakikisama,” “ningas kugon,” “patigasan,” dahil sa labis na pagmamahal sa
sarili. Ayaw nating napapahiya, at dahil sa orgulyo, gumagawa tayo ng
marahas upang maibangon lamang ang ating puri. Nagmamatigas tayo
sapagkat malaki ang ating amor propio. Ayaw nating masabing naisahan
tayo. Kung minsan tumitigil tayo sa paghahangad ng isang magandang ideya
(ningas kugon) dahil sa baka tayo mapahiya.30
Walang kasarilinang Pilipino kung pisikal na katangian ang
hahanapin sa kanya. Bagkus mayroong kasarilinang diwa (soul identity) ang
Pilipino at hango ito sa pilosopiyang taglay ng bayang Pilipino.
Ang Kristiyanismo bilang Relihiyon
Bilang pilosopong intelektwal na nananahan sa ikalimang

pinakamalaking Kristiyanong bansa sa buong mundo, hindi itinanggi ni
Quito na mananatili ding Kristiyano ang diwa ng kanyang panulat.
Gayunpaman, hindi niya tuwirang itinakwil ang mga isipang taliwas sa pag-
iisip Kristiyano. Makikita sa isa sa kanyang artikulong pinamagatang
Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino ang tahasang nagsusuri ng iba pang kaisipan
upang malaman ang kagalingang loob nito. Naniniwala siya na may halaga
ang bawat teorya, gayong masama sa unang tingin. Makikita lamang ang
kabutihang nakapaloob sa mga ito kung magsusumigasig lamang sa pag-
aaral ng mga diskurso nito.31
Bukod sa hayagang paglalahad ni Quito ng kanyang
pananampalataya, hindi niya isinawalang-bahala ang katotohanang kabilang
siya sa lipunang napakalawak ng sakop ng Kristiyanismo bilang relihiyon.
28 Ibid., 522.
29 Emerita Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,” in A Life of
30 Ibid., 687.
31 Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino,” 202.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 75
Aniya, “sumasampalaya tayo sa isang Maykapal.” Mula rito, makikita na

ipinagpapalagay na niya na awtomatikong Pilipino-Kristiyano ang magiging
mambabasa ng kanyang akdang nakasulat sa wikang pambansa.
Para sa kanya, hinango ng lipunang Pilipino sa pag-iisip
Kristiyanong nagsasaad na mayroong Diyos na namamahala at nagpapasya
sa daigdig ang pananampalataya sa isang Maykapal. Naniniwala ang mga ito
sa isang Diyos Persona, isang Amang mahabagin, na sa kabila ng kasamaan,
mapapatawad pa rin. Nabilad sa kulturang Kristiyano at sa pag-iisip
Kristiyano ang mga Pilipino32 gawa ng matagal na pananakop ng mga
Espanyol sa Pilipinas. Bukod dito, ibinahagi ni Quito na naniniwala ang
lipunang Pilipino sa sinasabi ng pag-iisip Kristiyano na nilalang ng Diyos ang
tao at muli siyang tutungo sa Diyos. Ito aniya ang dahilan kung bakit anoman
ang gawin ng tao, hindi siya liligaya kung hindi sa piling lamang ng Diyos.
Liberasyon ng Kababaihan
Inamin ni Quito na napakahirap iwaksi at baguhin ang tradisyonal

na paniniwalang nararapat lamang nasa isang tahanan ang espasyo ng babae
at ang pangunahing tunguhin niya ang pagluluwal ng mga anak.
Napakatibay ng naging paniniwalang itong nakabaon sa sistema ng pag-iisip
at buhay sa lipunang Pilipino. Ang pinakamalala sa lahat ang implikasyon
na kapag itinuloy-tuloy ng babae ang kanyang karera sa pampublikong
espasyo, napakalaking kabawasan ito sa kanya bilang isang babae.33
Palagay niya, nakaangkla ito sa kasaysayan ng katutubong Pilipino
kung saan kinagisnang ang lalaki ang makikipagsapalaran sa labas upang
maghanap ng makakain, habang sa bahay mananahan ang babae upang
alagaan ang kanyang mga anak. Gayong dumating sa puntong lumipat at
permanente na ang pagtira nila sa bayan, nanatili pa rin ang babae sa
pribadong espasyo para sa mga gawaing-bahay. Dahilan ito upang mapirmi
siya at unti-unting mawalan ng puwang at importansiya sa publiko.
Masaklap ang naging tagpo sapagkat nauwi ito sa pagkakaroon ng
isteryotipo sa kaisipan ukol sa kababaihan. Tinrato ng kalalakihan ang
kanilang mga asawa na pawang mga tagasilbi lamang at tinitingnan ang
kanyang pagkababae bilang isang kahinaan. Sa paglipas ng panahon,
kasabay ng ganitong moda ng pag-iisip ang naging moda ng buhay na hindi
na kinuwestiyon kailanman.
32 Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,” 687.

33 Emerita Quito, “The Role of the University in Changing Women’s Consciousness,”
in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990),
588. Tranlsation mine.

ISSN 1908-7330
Sa pagkakaroon ng mga teknolohikal na pag-unlad, napagaan ang

mga gawaing-bahay ng kababaihan. Kahit paano, nagkaroon siya ng
kalayaan sa mabigat na gawaing-bahay at nagka-oras sa pagsapi sa ilang
grupo, mobilisasyon, mga parent-teacher organization, at maging ang
pagkakaroon ng posisyon sa gobyerno at karera sa unibersidad.
Matapos ang Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig, masasabing
nagkaroon ng paghalili ang posisyon ng kababaihan. Hindi naging sapat ang
kinikita ng kalalakihan upang matugunan ang pangangailangan ng pamilya
dahil sa tumagilid na estado ng ekonomiya. Kaya naging uso ang mga
nagtatrabahong nanay para makadagdag ng pantustos sa pang-araw-araw.34
Sa pagkakataon at maging hanggang sa panahong ito,
pinahintulutan ang liberasyon ng kababaihan upang maiangat at maitawid
ang estado ng pamilya, bukod pa rito ang kontribusyong naiaambag niya sa
kanyang bansa. Sa pananaw ni Quito, malaki ang maitutulong ng mga
unibersidad upang magkaroon ng kamalayan at pag-unawa ang kababaihan
sa kanilang karapatan, tungkulin, at kakayahan.
Pananaw sa Sariling Wika
Itinuturing na isang hiwaga ang larangan ng pilosopiya sa Pilipinas

sapagkat nahihirapang dalumatin ng karaniwang mamamayan ang
katuturan nito. Bagamat napakaraming artikulong nauukol sa pilosopiya,
hindi ito kayang sisirin ng mga Pilipino gawa ng suliranin sa wika. Para kay
Quito, hindi mangmang ang mga Pilipino datapwat lubos at natatangi ang
katutubong talino at likas na karunungan nito. Kung maitatawid lamang ang
mga ideya sa wikang mauunawaan ng lahat, tiyak ang kanyang
kadalubhasaan sa naturang larangan.35
Walang ibang wika ang makapagpapaliwanag sa kaibuturan ng nais
ipahayag ng Pilipino kundi ang kanyang sariling wika. Itinuturong dahilan
ni Quito ang katamaran at pag-aatubili ng tao kaya hindi lubusang nagagamit
ang wikang pambansa.36 Kalikasan ng tao ang magmahal sa sarili wika, pero
dito sa sariling bayan, tila taliwas ang nangyayari. Ibinahagi ni Quito na
“marahil dito lamang sa Pilipinas nagaganap ang mapait na pagtatalo
tungkol sa wikang pambansa.”37 Dumating pa raw sa puntong noong
kapanahunan niya, mas ipinagtatanggol ng mga intelektwal ang wikang
Ingles. Kung may pagkukusa, pagtulak, at pagsusumikap sana, hindi
malayong mapalalawak ang paggamit at pagmamahal sa sariling wika.
34 Ibid., 589.
35 Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino,” 200.
36 Ibid., 201.
37 Emerita Quito, “Ang Kayamanan ng Wikang Pilipino,” in A Life of Philosophy:
Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990), 600.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 77
Karaniwan sa mga kabataan ay hindi naiintindihang mabuti ang mga

wikang banyaga. Nakababasa man sila ng Ingles o Kastila, sila ay salat sa
kakayahang magsalita at humubog ng katuturan. Naroon sa mga diwa ang
ideya ngunit hindi mabigkas. Ang nakararaming Pilipino ay marunong mag-
Ingles, ngunit anong uri ng Ingles? Ano ang nasasabi at nasusulat ng
karaniwang Pilipino? Ipinagmamalaki natin na ang ating bansa ay “English-
speaking,” ngunit kadalasan ay baluktot at halos hindi maintindihan ang
ating pagbigkas. Ang Ingles ay hindi angkop sa ating diwa.38
Hindi layunin ni Quito na iwaksi sa kamalayan ang wikang Ingles.
Huwag lamang sanang dumating ang araw na dahil sa lubos na pagka-may-
bukas-pinto ng Pilipino sa ibang wika tulad ng Ingles, maibabaon na sa limot
ang sariling wika. Hindi sukatan ng kagalingan sa Ingles ang talino ng isang
tao. Hindi rin maitatanggi ang angking katalinuhan ng Pilipino. Katibayan
ang pagiging primera klase ng mga Pilipino kung talino ang pag-uusapan.
Pruweba ang mga naging tanyag na kababayan sa kanilang natatanging
imbensyon. Iminumungkahi ni Quito na bukod sa katotohanang ito,
magagawa pa rin ng bawat dalubhasang makapagsulat at makapaglimbag
ng mga sulatin gamit ang inang-wika na makatutulong ‘di lamang sa
kanilang disiplina, bagkus para sa kontribusyon ng karunungan maging sa
mga karaniwang Pilipino.
KONGKLUSYON
Umiinog ang pilosopikal na diskurso ni Quito sa pagsusuri ng mga

suliraning institusyonal, kultural, at politikal na kinakaharap ng larangan ng
pilosopiya sa Pilipinas. Sentro sa kanyang diskurso ang pagsisiwalat ng mga
dayuhang sistemang produkto ng kanyang kabihasaan sa iba’t ibang wika.
Gayunman, hindi pa rin nakalimot si Quito na maging katalista ng
pamimilosopiya gamit ang wikang Filipino. Naninindigan siyang ito lamang
ang makabubungkal ng kaibuturan ng nais ihayag at madaling mauunawaan
ng mga kapwa-Pilipinong wala pang kasanayan sa anomang antas ng
pamimilosopiya, kaya pinapatingkad na nararapat ang paglalathala ng mga
pag-aaral sa wikang pambansa. Sa pagpokus niya sa teoretikal na
pamimilosopiya sa akademya, winika niyang kailangang palusugin ang
pagsusuri sa diwang Pilipino sapagkat ito ang natatanging identidad na
maipagmamalaki ng bawat mamamayan sa buong mundo.
Para kay Quito, pinakapuso at susi ang wikang pambansa upang
mabatid ang katuturan ng pilosopiya. Buhat nito, hinihikayat ni Quito ang
paggamit ng inang-wika sa mga pag-aaral upang maipaabot ang kabuluhan
maging sa mga karaniwang Pilipino.
38 Quito, “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,” 688.

ISSN 1908-7330
Hayagan din ang kanyang pagkadismaya sa pagkakaroon ng

“Women’s Liberation Movement.” Aniya, lalong ipinapakita ng mga
samahang ito ang pagkaalipin ng kababaihan. Hindi nananaig ang
diskriminasyon sa kanilang kasarian. Kapag angkin ng mga babae ang
pagiging kwalipikado, nakukuha nila agad ang trabaho. Sa kabilang panig,
ipinaliwanag ni Quito na saksi ang Kristiyanong bibliya sa pagiging pantay
at likas na magkasangga ng dalawa. Mula sa tadyang ng lalaki ang babae
upang maipakita na walang nakatataas sa isa. Gayundin, ang kwento nina
Malakas at Maganda na sabay lumabas mula sa tinukang kawayan ng ibon.
Paglilinaw ni Quito, ayon sa tala ng kasaysayan, mababanaag ang
pagkakapantay ng mga lalaki at babae. Pareho ang pagkalinga sa sanggol na
babae at lalaki; sila ang bahala pumili sa kanilang magiging esposo o esposa;
pantay ang hatian sa mga mana at karapatan. Gayong nasa ilalim ng
pamumuno ng mga Espanyol, kakikitaan din ng katapangan sina Gabriela
Silang, Melchora Aquino, at Gregoria De Jesus.
Madaling-madali sa kanya ang diskursong exposition of foreign
systems dahil nakuha niyang suriin ang iba pang preliminaryong pagsusuri
gawa ng kabihasaan sa iba’t ibang wika. Tinitingala si Quito sa malalim na
teoretikal na pagsusuri kaya nakilala sa larangan ng pilosopiya. Dagdag dito,
maliwanag ang kontribusyon sa diskusyon sa identidad na pinalitaw ni
Quito kahit hindi pisikal na madedetermina sa mga Pilipino. Ipinagdiinan
niyang nananalaytay sa bawat isa ang diwang Pilipinong maipagmamalaki
sa buong mundo.
Hinggil sa usaping ito, madadalumat ang mga implikasyon ng mga
saysay na ito sa pilosopiyang Pilipino. Una, titingkad ang kani-kaniyang
pinahahalagahang prinsipyo sa oras na lumublob sa hinaharap na politikal
na estado ng lipunan. Ikalawa, walang ibang moda ng komunikasyon ang
makasisisid sa kaibuturan ng pilosopiya ng bayan kundi ang wikang
pambansa. Ikatlo, isang bentahe ang kabatiran sa samu’t saring wika upang
mahukay ang iba pang preliminaryong kaisipang dayuhan.
Ikaapat, may kaugnayan ang naunang implikasyon sapagkat
magiging matagumpay lamang ang paghuhukay ng ibang diskurso kung
nasagot ang tawag ng kontektwalisasyon. “Ginagamit ang panghihiram sa
mga paradaym at metodolohiya. Malayang nakahiram si Thomas Aquinas
mula sa Arabiko, at malaki ang naging kontribusyon sa pilosopiyang
Italyano. Humiram si Martin Heidegger mula kay Soren Kierkegaard, gaya
ng ginawa ni Hans-Georg Gadamer sa kanyang panghihiram mula sa mga
Griyego, pareho silang lubos ang naging ambag sa pagyabong ng ika-20 na
siglo ng pilosopiyang Aleman. Samakatuwid, walang rason upang maging
malaya ang pilosopiyang Pilipino mula sa panghihiram mula sa Kanluraning

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 79
kaisipan.”39 At ikalima, kinakailangan ang pagka-may-bukas-pinto sa ibang

kultura, tradisyon, at maging sa pilosopiyang taliwas sa sariling paniniwala
upang makita ang kagandahang-loob nito.
Madadalumat mula sa pag-aaral na ito ang pagiging dakilang
Pilipinong pilosopo ni Quito. Hindi siya nakuntento sa lokal at tradisyonal
na mukha ng pamimilosopiya. Bagkus lumabas siya ng Pilipinas upang
pagtuunan ang debosyon sa pagtamo ng malalimang kaalaman. Noong
matapos ito, bumalik si Quito sa bansa upang ibahagi ang produkto ng
kanyang puspusang pag-aaral sa larangan ng pilosopiya.
Gayong nananahan sa krusyal na estado si Quito, tinapos niya ang
pangangapa sa mga sinaunang pilosopo at nagbigay ng sapat na direksyon
para sa mga pantas sa hinaharap. Nakahahanga ang minsang naging
impluwensiya ni Quito sa kabataan upang mag-aklas laban sa mga anomalya
ng gobyerno, sa pamamagitan ng kanyang eksposisyon sa kaisipang
Marcuse. Naging instrumento si Quito upang maging malawak ang
kaalaman sa iba’t ibang mukha ng pilosopiya. Gayunman, ipinagdiinan
niyang iwasan ang pagkakaroon ng mababang pagtingin at pagtatatwa sa
sariling kultura, tradisyon, pilosopiya, o pananampalataya.
Mapagtatantong may limitasyon pa rin ang marangal at malaking
kontribusyon ni Quito sa pamimilosopiya sa Pilipinas. Kapag susuriing
mabuti ang radar chart ng bawat diskurso ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino, may
kahinaan si Quito at walang nailimbag na obra sa mga diskurso ng logical
analysis, appropriation of folk philosophy, revisionist writing, identification of the
presuppositions and implications of the Filipino worldview, at study on the Filipino
philosophical luminaries. Buhat ng pagkakatali sa mga hindi problem-based na
diskurso ukol sa exposition of foreign systems, ginamit na lamang niya ang mga
panayam sa klase o mga materyal sa mga imbitasyon sa pagsasalita ukol sa
pilosopiya.
May kahinaan si Quito mula sa nabanggit na kalakasan nang gamitin
ang kaisipan ni Marcuse noong panahon ng Batas Militar. Dumating ang
puntong unti-unti nang dumadami ang bilang ng mga nakikibakang mag-
aaral laban sa pamumuno ni Marcos. Naging sanhi ito upang mabahag-
buntot siya sa aktibong politikal na pagdidiskurso at pinili ang sariling
kaligtasan sa pagtuon sa mas ligtas na pamimilosopiya. Ayon sa mismong
personal na kuwento, nakapanayam ni Demeterio si Quito ukol dito at
inaming nagsisi sa kanyang naging hakbang. Makikita ring mula sa mga
problemang ihinain na kinapos siyang magkaroon ng aktibong
praksiyolohiya. Naging natatanging kaakibat ni Quito ang pagkakatali sa
39 F.P.A. Demetreio, “Rereading Emerita Quito’s Thoughts Concerning the
Underdevelopment of Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and Cultural Theory

Page (October 1998), <https://sites.google.com/site/feorillodemeterio/re-readingemeritaquito>, 1
Februay 2011, 17.

ISSN 1908-7330
teoretikal na pagsusuri gamit ang kanyang mga pag-aaral at panulat. Sa

kontemporanyong panahon, maaari nating suungin o punan ang mga
nailahad na pagkukulang na ito bilang mga iskolar ng pilosopiya sa bansa.
Datapwat makikita ang kanyang iilang mga pagkukulang,
mailalagom na mahalaga pa rin ang naging papel ni Quito sa paglalangkap
at kontektwalisasyon ng mga pilosopikal na kaisipan sa larangan ng
edukasyon tungo sa kasaganahan ng tektwal na proyekto ng mga susunod
pang henerasyon ng kabataan at mananaliksik.
Department of Filipino, De La Salle University, Philippines
References
Abulad, Romualdo, “Introduction,” in Emerita Quito, A Life of Philosophy:

Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University,
1990).
Demeterio, F.P.A. and Leslie Anne Liwanag, “Ang Pilosopiya ni Pierre
Bourdieu bilang Batayang Teoretikal sa Araling Pilipino,” Kritike: An
Online Journal of Philosophy, 8:2 (2014).
Demeterio, F.P.A., Assessing the Developmental Potentials of Some Twelve
Discourses of Filipino Philosophy,” in Philippiniana Sacra, 69:147
(May-August 2014).
___________, “Rereading Emerita Quito’s Thoughts Concerning the
Underdevelopment of Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s
Philosophy and Cultural Theory Page (October 1998),
<https://sites.google.com/site/feorillodemeterio/re-
readingemeritaquito>, 1 February 2011.
___________, “Status and Directions for ‘Filipino Philosophy’ in Zialcita,
Timbreza, Quito, Abulad, Mabaquiao, Gripaldo, and Co,” in
Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy, 14:2 (2013).
___________, “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late Twentieth
Century Filipino Philosophy,” in F.P.A. Demeterio’s Philosophy and
Cultural Theory Page (April 2002),
<https://sites.google.com/site/feorillodemeterio/thoughtandsocio-
politics>, 1 February 2011.
Evasco, Marjorie, “Introduction to Part I: 1965-1970,” in Emerita Quito, A Life
of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La
Salle University, 1990).
___________, “Introduction to Part III: 1981-1988,” in Emerita Quito, A Life of
Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle
University, 1990).

ISSN 1908-7330
L. LIWANAG 81
Gruenberg, Estrellita, “Introduction to Part II: 1971-1980,” in Emerita Quito,

A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De
La Salle University, 1990).
Jimenez, Janet, et. al., Ang Kaganapan ng Isang Dalubhasa sa Pilosopiya (Thesis,
Manila: De La Salle University, 1990).
Mahaguay, Jerwin, “Ang Pilosopiya ng Edukasyon para sa mga Pilipino ayon
kay Emerita S. Quito,” (Thesis, Manila: De La Salle University, 2013).
Quito, Emerita S., ed., “Pilosopiyang Pilipino,” in Ensayklopidya ng Pilosopiya
Quito, Emerita S., “A Filipino Volkgeist in Vernacular Literature,” in A Life of
University, 1990).
___________, “Ang Kayamanan ng Wikang Pilipino,” in A Life of Philosophy:
1990).
___________, “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura,” in A Life of
University, 1990).
___________, “Ang Pilosopiya sa Diwang Pilipino,” in A Life of Philosophy:
1990).
___________, “Existential Principles and Christian Morality,” in A Life of
University, 1990).
___________, “Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society,” in A Life of
University, 1990).
___________, “Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya,” in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in
Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990).
___________, “Lectures on Comparative Philosophy,” in A Life of Philosophy:
1990).
___________, “Philosophy of Education for Filipinos,” in A Life of Philosophy:
1990).
___________, “Should Communism Be Taught in our Universities,” in A Life
of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De La
Salle University, 1990).
___________, “Structuralism and the Filipino Volkgeist,” in A Life of
University, 1990).

ISSN 1908-7330
___________, “Teaching and Research of Philosophy in the Philippines,” in A

Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita S. Quito (Manila: De
La Salle University, 1990).
___________, “The Role of the University in Changing Women’s
Consciousness,” in A Life of Philosophy: Festschrift in Honor of Emerita
S. Quito (Manila: De La Salle University, 1990).
___________, The State of Philosophy in the Philippines (Manila: De La Salle

ISSN 1908-7330
Edukasyon bilang Tagpuan ng Katwirang

Lungsod at Katwirang Lalawigan
Noel L. Clemente
Abstract: The city-province distinction is usually construed in

economic terms: the city is the center of consumption and wealth, while
the province the center of production and raw materials. In this paper,
I propose that we can also draw the distinction epistemologically;
instead of distinguishing between city-dwellers and province-
dwellers, we can talk about city-minded and province-minded people.
In this perspective, we discover the crucial position of education as the
paradoxical interplay of the city mentality and province mentality.
After examining this “paradox of education” as witnessed in
Philippine history, especially during the Spanish and American
occupations, I suggest that we can resolve the paradox by developing
our system of education towards a more “nationalistic education,” as
per Renato Constantino.
Keywords: Constantino, Rodriguez, city, education
K
aramihan, kung hindi man lahat, ng mga lungsod sa kasaysayan ng
mundo ay naitaguyod bílang sentro ng kalakalan. Dahil may labis na
likás-yaman at produktong hindi kailangang gugulin agad-agad,
iniimpok ito, at ikinakalakal, at nagkakaroon ng kíta, na kailangang tipunin
sa isang kabisera: ang lungsod. Kayâ naman, maraming sosyologo ang
gumuguhit ng pagkakaiba ng lungsod at lalawigan sa ekonomikong batayan.
Subalit maaari rin nating pagtambisin ang lungsod at lalawigan
batay sa epistemolohikong perspektiba. Hindi natin maikakailang malaki
ang pagkakaiba ng uri ng pangangatwiran ng mga tagalungsod at
tagalalawigan. Kung tatanawin natin ang kalagayan ng mga lungsod ng
Filipinas sa ganitong pananaw, 1 matutuklasan nating edukasyon ang siyang
namamamagitan sa dalawang magkaibang katwiran.
1 Hindi ko sinasabing epistemolohiko ang angkop o mas tamang batayan ng
distinksiyon ng lungsod at lalawigan. Hindi ko pangunahing haka sa papel na ito ang paglapat
ng epistemolohikong lente, sa halip, isa itong palagáy ng aking punto: kung pagtatambisin natin
© 2016 Noel L. Clemente

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/clemente_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
84 EDUKASYON BILANG TAGPUAN
Sa papel na ito, nais kong suriin ang kabalintunaang kaakibat ng

edukasyon bílang tagpuan ng katwirang lungsod at katwirang lalawigan. Sa
unang bahagi, ipapaliwanag ko ang gamit ng katwiran bílang balangkas ng
pag-unawa ng isang tao, at ipapakita ang sapantaha kong magkasalungat nga
ang katwiran ng lungsod at lalawigan. Sa ikalawang bahagi, ilalatag ko ang
kabalintunaan ng edukasyon na kalakip ng pagiging tagpuan ng dalawang
katwiran, na matutunghayan natin sa kasaysayan hanggang kasalukuyan.
Bilang pagtatapos, magmumungkahi ako ng mga maaari nating gawin upang
samantalahin itong posibilidad ng edukasyon sa pagtawid sa dalawang
katwiran, tungo sa tinatawag ni Renato Constantino na “makabayang
edukasyon.”
Ang Lungsod at Lalawigan bílang Magkaibang Katwiran
Katwiran bílang Balangkas ng Pag-unawa
Karaniwang ginagamit ang salitang “katwiran” bílang paliwanag ng

isang bagay. Halimbawa, hinihingan ng mga guro ng katwiran ang mga mag-
aaral na lumiliban sa klase. Mas halata ang ganitong gamit ng katwiran sa
mga araling pang-akademiko: grabedad, halimbawa, ang katwiran ng
pagkahulog ng anumang bagay sa lupa matapos bitiwan sa ere. Kadalasan,
iniuuwi sa agham at matematika ang mga “makatwirang” pahayag:
makatwiran ang anumang maipapaliwanag ng pag-eeksperimento at
pagbibiláng. Samantala, hindi itinuturing na makatwiran ang mga pamahiin
at mga relihiyon, dahil wala silang siyentipikong batayan.
Higit na malawak ang saklaw ng “katwiran” na gagamitin ko sa
papel na ito. Ayon kay Agustin Rodriguez, ang katwiran ang siyang
“nagbabalangkas ng ating praktikal at teoretikal na pag-unawa sa mundo, sa
ating pagkilala ng mabuti sa nararapat.”2 Dalawang antas ang inilawak ng
ganitong depinisyon sa palasak na pag-unawa natin sa “katwiran” na
ipinaliwanag ko sa nakaraang talata. Una, hindi lámang yaong mga
siyentipikal at matematikal ang maituturing na makatwiran. Totoo namang
makatwiran ang agham at matematika, ngunit kailangang igiit na
makatwiran lámang ito para sa mga táong nakauunawa at nag-iisip sa
ganitong balangkas. At natural ding ituturing nilang hindi makatwiran
yaong mga hindi sumasang-ayon sa kanilang katwiran. Ngunit sa teoriya ni
Rodriguez, hindi lang agham at matematika ang makatwiran. Tingnan natin,
bílang halimbawa, ang mga pamahiin ng mga katutubong Filipino. Dahil
ang dalawa batay sa kanilang pag-iisip, kritikal ang edukasyon bílang tagpuan ng dalawang
katwiran.
2 Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez, May Laro ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014), 116.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 85
naniniwala sila sa iba’t ibang espirito at diyos, ipinapaliwanag nila ang

kanilang mga karanasan batay sa mga diyos na ito. Sa gayon, ang kanilang
relihiyon ang kanilang katwiran. Kung may nagkasakít na bata, halimbawa,
naniniwala silang may nagambala o napinsala silang espiritu, at bílang
parusa, isinumpa ng espiritu ang katawan ng bata. Ganito nila inuunawa ang
mga karamdaman. Hindi natin sila masisisi, dahil wala pa naman silang
kaalaman sa mga bacteria at virus, at ang tanging batayan ng mga hindi nila
maipaliwanag ay ang sobrenatural.
Ang ikalawang antas ng paglawak: hindi lamang intelektuwal o
teoretikal ang saklaw ng “katwiran” ayon sa gámit ni Rodriguez; kabilang
dito ang praktikal na dimensiyon. Kayâ naman, mahalagang aspekto ng
katwiran ang sistema ng pagpapahalaga ng mga tao. 3 Ginagabayan ng
balangkas ng pagpapaliwanag ng tao sa kaniyang kapaligiran ang kaniyang
pagpapasiya kung ano ang dapat at hindi dapat gawin. Dagdag sa
halimbawa ko sa nakaraang talata, dahil nga ipinapaliwanag nila ang
karamdaman bilang kaparusahan ng espiritung nagambala, nagbibigay sila
ng alay para sa espiritu bílang kabayaran sa kanilang paggambala rito. Kung
tatanggapin ng espiritu ang alay, naniniwala silang babawiin niya ang sumpa
sa katawan ng bata, na ikagagaling nito.
Bago ako tumungo sa paglalarawan ng katwiran ng mga
tagalungsod at ng mga tagalalawigan, nais kong banggitin ang isa pang
mahalagang punto: isinisilang tayo sa isang katwiran; hindi natin ito pinipili. 4
Sasabihin ni Martin Heidegger: itinapon tayo sa isang katwiran. Ipinanganak
táyong kabilang sa isang kultura na may nakatatag nang katwiran, at
minamana natin ang ganitong katwiran. At sapagkat nasanay táyong
tanawin ang mundo at ating mga karanasan sa ating katwiran, hindi natin
naiisip na may umiiral na ibang katwiran. Minsan, masaklap ngang kapag
tiningnan na natin ang ibang katwiran, itinuturing natin siláng mali, o mas
mababa kaysa ating katwiran.5
Bílang paglalagom, gagamitin ko ang “katwiran” sa papel na ito
bílang balangkas ng teoretikal at praktikal na pag-unawa ng isang tao sa
mundo. Itinatapon ang tao sa kaniyang katwiran, at sapagkat parati niyang
tinitingnan ang katalagahan ayon sa kaniyang katwiran, nakakaligtaan
niyang may umiiral na ibang katwiran, at kung makatagpo man siya ng ibang
katwiran, madalas, itinuturing niya itong depektibo, kung hindi man mali.
3 Ibid., 107-115. Ginamit ni Rodriguez ang pananaw ni Max Scheler ukol sa mga halaga
bílang bumubuo sa aspekto ng kalooban.

4 Ibid., 95. Igigiit ni Rodriguez na sa isang banda, pinipili rin natin ang ating katwiran,
kapag nagkaroon tayo ng karanasang magtutulak sa atin upang kuwestiyonin at tanggihan ang
nakagawiang katwiran. Hindi ko ikinakaila ang puntong ito, pero bílang paunang depinisyon sa
gamit ko ng “katwiran,” sapat na muna ang pagsabing hindi natin ito pinipili sa simula.
5 Ibid., 96.

ISSN 1908-7330
Dalawang Magkaibang Katwiran ng Lungsod at Lalawigan
Mas madaling mauunawaan ang “katwiran” ni Rodriguez sa mga

kongketong halimbawa. Sa kaniyang pagpapaliwanag, nagbigay siya ng
dalawang magkasalungat na katwiran na maaari nating ihalintulad mamaya
sa katwirang lungsod at katwirang lalawigan.
Malaki ang pagpapahalaga ng mga táong relihiyoso sa kabanalan.
Naniniwala siláng may (mga) umiiral na higit sa kanila, na mas
makapangyarihan at mas tumatagal kaysa mga mortal. Iginagalang nila ang
mga puwersang ito, kayâ naman naniniwala siláng hindi tao ang nagtatakda
ng kahulugan at katalagahan. Samantala, mataas naman ang tingin ng mga
táong sekular sa sangkatauhan. Para sa kanila, tao, at hindi mga diyos, anito,
at espirito, ang siyang nagdidikta ng kahulugan. Naniniwala silang malaya
ang tao na manipulahin ang kalikasan at panahon ayon sa kaniyang
pagpapasiya ng ano ang mahalaga. 6
Siyempre, hindi naman natin maiuuwi ang katwirang lungsod sa
katwirang sekular, at ang katwirang lalawigan sa katwirang relihiyoso; mas
malalim ang pagkakaiba sa pananaw sa kalawakan. Ngunit maaari nating
simulan ang pagguhit ng dalawang katwiran sa halimbawang ito ni
Rodriguez.7 Simulan natin sa katwirang lungsod. Bílang mga nakatira sa
sentro ng kalakalan, at sa gayon sa sentro ng paggawa at pananalapi, may
káya ang karaniwang tagalungsod. Minsan, higit pa sa may káya, maunlad
ang kaniyang katayuan sa búhay. Dahil dito sa kakayahan niyang kumita ng
pera at sa karanasan ng maginhawang búhay, malaki ang pagpapahalaga
niya sa mga materyal na bagay. Kayâ naman, palasak sa lungsod ang
kaisipang kumikiling sa kung ano ang mapagkakakitaan. Ito ang dahilan
kung bakit sikát at kaakit-akit sa lungsod ang pagiging maalam sa
pananalapi, sa medisina, o sa abogasya. Nakatuon sila sa pagkakaroon ng
sapat na yaman, hindi lang upang mabuhay, kundi para maging
“komportable” ang búhay: may sariling tirahan, kotse, at iba pang ari-arian.
Samakatwid, maiuugnay natin ang katwirang sekular sa mga tagalalawigan:
sapagkat hahamak sila upang kumita, naniniwala siláng tao—sila—ang may
kapangyarihan sa mundo.8
Kasalungat nito ang katwirang lalawigan. Malayo sa kasukdulan ng
impluwensiya ng ating mga mananakop, napanatili ng karamihan sa ating
mga tagalalawigan ang kanilang mga katutubong tradisyon. Sa gayon,
6 Ibid., 94.
7 Sa paglalarawan ng katwiran ng mga tagalungsod at ng mga tagalalawigan, hindi ko
sinasabing ganito ang katwiran ng bawat isang tagalungsod o tagalalawigan. Inilalarawan ko
lang ang nangingibabaw na uri ng pag-iisip ng dalawang pangkat ng taong nabanggit.
8 Hindi ko sinasabing magkatumbas ang katwirang lungsod at katwirang sekular;
sinasabi ko lang na magkaugnay sila; may mga aspektong magkakatulad, marahil.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 87
maipagpapalagay nating makakalikasan at relihiyoso ang karaniwang

tagalalawigan.9 Marami sa kanila ang tradisyonal na magsasaka o
mangingisda, kayâ malaki ang pagpapahalaga nila sa lupa at karagatan.
Payak ang kanilang materyal na búhay, at hindi sila nakikipagkumpetensiya
sa mga ari-arian. Ginagalang din nila ang kanilang diyos at mga ninuno, at
hitik ang kanilang kultura sa mga pamahiin.
Samakatwid, sa isang simplistikong pananaw, maaari nating
sabihing materyalistiko at indibidwalistiko ang katwirang lungsod,
samantalang relihiyoso at kolektibo ang katwirang lalawigan. Sa ganitong
perspektiba, maaaring may mga naninirahan sa lungsod na may katwirang
lalawigan (e.g., mga iskwater na namumuhay malapít sa mga pamilya at
kamag-anak at kumakapit pa rin sa mga katutubong paniniwala at tradisyon)
o mga tagalalawigang may katwirang lungsod (e.g., mga hacienderong
nagpapasiya batay sa materyal na pagsasaalang-alang). Sa gayon,
napagtatambis natin, hindi kung sino ang tagalungsod at tagalalawigan,
kundi sino ang isip-lungsod at isip-lalawigan.10
Hindi ko hahamaking magbigay ng komprehensibong paglalarawan
ng katwirang lungsod at katwirang lalawigan sa papel na ito.11 Sapat nang
makita nating may umiiral na dalawang magkaibang katwiran na humahati
sa kinikilala nating lungsod at lalawigan.
IAng Kabalintunaan ng Edukasyon, Mula Noon Hanggang Ngayon
Ngayong naipaliwag ko na ang epistemolohikong perspektiba ng

pagtingin sa lungsod at lalawigan, matatatap nating nagtatagpo itong
dalawang katwiran sa paaralan. 12 Dala ng isang karaniwang batà ang
katwirang lalawigan kapag pumasok siya sa paaralang nahubog na ng
9 Mas mailap ang ideya ng “karaniwang tagalalawigan” kaysa “karaniwang
tagalungsod” sapagkat marami táyong magkakaibang lalawigan sa bansa, ngunit sasapat na ang
ganitong paglalarawan sa pakay ng papel na ito.
10 Maaaring magtunog mapanghusga ang mga katagang “isip-lungsod” at “isip-
lalawigan” na para bang itong dalawa lang ang maaaring pagpilian at walang puwang sa
bahagya. Bagaman may mga kilos at salita na mailap tukuyin kung katwirang lungsod at
katwiran lalawigan ba ang pinagmulan, igigiit kong sa pangkalahatan, nakikilala naman natin
ang pagkakaiba ng dalawang kaisipang ito.
11 Maaaring palawigin ang pagtatambis ng katwirang lungsod at katwirang lalawigan
kung titingnan ang kaibhan ng katwirang postmoderno na laganap sa Kanluran, at ang

katwirang premoderno na umiiral sa bansa, ayon sa argumento ni Demeterio. See F.P.A.
Demeterio III, “Our Premodernity and Their Tokens of Postmodernity: Reflections on the
Philippine Condition,” in Academia, < https://www.academia.edu/7340227/Our_Premodernity_
and_their_Tokens_of_Postmodernity_Reflections_on_the_Philippine_Condition>, 21 March
2016.
12 Yaong mga pormal na paaralan, na sumasailalim sa DepEd at CHED ang tinutukoy
ko rito. Kung tutuusin, hindi natin matatawag na “pormal na edukasyon” ang pag-aaral sa bahay
dahil hindi estandardisado ang kaniyang inaaral doon.

ISSN 1908-7330
katwirang lungsod, sa tulong ng pagkakaroon ng standard curriculum ng

DepEd at CHEd para sa lahat ng paaralan ng bansa. Sa gayon, tinuturuan ang
mga isip-lalawigan na maging isip-lungsod, at dito nagkakaroon ng
tunggalian ang dalawang katwiran.
Higit kong maipaliliwanag ang ganitong kabalintunaan ng
edukasyon kung tutunghayan natin ang ebolusyon ng edukasyon mula ng
itatag ito ng mga Kastila, hanggang samantalahin ito ng mga Amerikano, at
hanggang sa kasalukuyang sistema ng edukasyon.
Edukasyon bílang Panangga sa Pang-aabuso ng mga Kastila
Karamihan ng mga lungsod sa Asya at mga bansang nasakop ng mga

Europeo, kasama na ang Kamaynilaan, ay itinatag bilang sentro ng kalakalan
ng kanilang mga mananakop.13 Upang tustusan ng mga Kastila ang
pamamahala sa kanilang mga kolonya, pati na rin ang sari-saring digmaang
kinasangkutan nila, kinailangan nilang kamkamin ang mga likas na yaman
ng bansa. Pagkatapos pagtipon-tipunin ang mga katutubong Filipino mula
sa kanilang barangay tungo sa mga reduccion, inalis nila ang karapatan ng
mga katutubo sa lupa, at pinatawan nila ng malalaking buwis ang pagsasaka
sa mga ito. Sapilitan din nilang binibili ang mga produkto ng mga indio 14—
bansag nila sa mga Filipino—sa mas mababang halaga. Idagdag pa rito ang
polo y servicios o 40 araw ng sapilitang paggawa kada taon, at ang buwis na
hinihingi ng simbahan. Ganap na naitatag ang Maynila bilang lungsod nang
gawin itong sentro ng kalakalan sa Kalakalang Galleon. 15 Unti-unting nasira
ang katutubong kultura ng mga Filipino, at tuluyang naihanay sa interes ng
mga dayuhang Kastila ang itinatag na lungsod. 16 Samakatwid, ang Maynila
ay nasa teritoryong katutubo ngunit may katwirang dayuhan.
Kayâ naman, natatakot pag-aralin ng mga Kastila ang mga indio
sapagkat natatakot siláng matuklasan ng mga ito ang kanilang kapalaluan.
Wika ni Apolinario Mabini, “Kung ibig palagiin ng mga Español ang
kanilang paghahari, kailangang pamalagiin nila ang kamangmangan at
13 Alan Gilbert and Joseph Gugler, Cities, Poverty and Development: Urbanization in the
Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 17.

14 Malalim ang epekto nitong derogatoryong bansag sa katwiran ng mga Filipino; dahil
sa negatibo nitong kahulugan, bumaba ang tingin ng Filipino sa kaniyang sarili at tumaas ang
kaniyang paghahangad na maging katulad ng kaniyang mananakop. See F.P.A. Demeterio III,
“The Primitivization of the Indio Mind and the Explosion of Rationalities: The Politics of
Knowledge in the Spanish Colonial Philippines,” in Academia,
<https://www.academia.edu/7340242/The_Primitivization_of_the_Indio_Mind_and_the_Explos
ion_of_Rationalities_the_Politics_of_Knowledge_in_the_Spanish_Colonial_Philippines>, 21
March 2016.
15 Patricio N. Abinales at Donna J. Amoroso, State and Society in the Philippines
(Mandaluyong City: Anvil Press, 2005), 60-62.

16 Gilbert and Gugler, Cities, Poverty and Development, 18.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 89
kahinaan ng mga Filipino.”17 Taglay ang karunungang nakukuha sa

paaralan, mas batid ng isang tao ang kaniyang mga karapatan at magiging
maláy siya sakaling may nananamantala sa kaniya. Manapa, kung maalam
ang mga indio sa sistemang ekonomiko o politikal ng mga banyaga, bakâ
magkaroon pa sila ng pagkakataong makipagsabayan sa mga ito at
makapamuhay nang matiwasay sa lungsod. Kung gayon, mas may dahilan
ang mga katutubong mag-alsa laban sa mga mananakop, na siyang ayaw
mangyari ng mga Kastila. Edukasyon ang nagsisilbing panangga laban sa
pang-aabuso ng mga Kastila—dahil mamumulat ang indio sa katwirang
dayuhan—kayâ naman hangga’t maaari, hindi nila hinahayaang makapag-
aral ang mga indio.
Siyempre, hindi naman mapipigilan ng mga Kastila ang mga
mayayamang indio na may kakayahang magbayad ng pangmatrikula, kung
hindi man sa bansa, sa Europa. Maraming kabataan, kasama na si Dr. Jose
Rizal, ang tumungo sa Europa nang makapag-aral sa pag-asang makamit ang
susi mula sa kahirapan at kamangmangan. Ngunit mapapansing hindi nais
nitong mga “propagandista” na mahiwalay ang Filipinas sa Espanya. Sa
halip, isinusulong nilang maging opisyal na lalawigan ng Espanya ang bansa,
nang sa gayon, magkaroon ng pantay na karapatan ang mga indio at Kastila
sa teritoryo ng Filipinas. Asimilasyon, hindi kalayaan, ang hinihiling nila.
Dito natin mapupuna ang isa pang bunga ng edukasyon—sapagkat
nauunawaan ang katwiran ng banyaga, bahagya ring nagiging kabilang ang
mga edukado sa katwirang hindi nauunawaan ng kanilang mga kababayang
hindi edukado.18 Isipin mo na lang kung paano ipapaliwanag ng mga
propagandista sa mga mahihirap nilang kababayan ang kanilang pagkiling
sa asimilasyon, sa halip na ganap na kalayaan. Makikita ng huli ang nauna
bílang kasapi na rin ng mga Kastila.
Bílang paglalagom, naging mahirap ang mga buhay ng mga Filipino
sa pananakop ng mga Kastila dahil naging dayuhan sa kanila ang sistemang
ginagalawan nila—hindi nila nauunawaan ang katwirang Kastila. Yaong
mga may kakayahang pinansiyal ay nakapag-aral sa mga lungsod (maging
sa mga lungsod ng Europa), upang makasabay sila sa sistemang dayuhan.
Lulan ng edukasyon, naunawaan nga nila ang katwirang banyaga, na
patúloy na banyaga sa kanilang mga kababayang hindi edukado.
Samakatwid, may kaakibat na paglayo sa mga katutubo itong paglapit sa
17 Apolinario Mabini, Ang Rebolusyong Filipino, trans. by Michael M. Coroza (Manila:

Pambansang Komisyon sa Kultura at mga Sining, 2015), 12.
18 Hindi ko sinasabing tama ang isa—sa asimilasyon at kalayaan—at mali ang isa pa.
Sa halip, mahihiwatig sa dalawang ito ang kaibhan ng katwiran ng mga edukado at di-edukado.
Kalayaan ang nanaisin ng mga isip-lalawigan na nakararanas ng marahas na pananamantala ng
mga dayuhan, samantalang asimilasyon ang pipiliin niyong mga isip-lungsod na may
kayamanan at karunungan, at nauunawaan na may posibilidad ng mapayapang pag-aareglo ng
pamamahala.

ISSN 1908-7330
katwiran ng mga dayuhan.
Edukasyon bílang Kasangkapan ng Pananakop ng mga

Amerikano
Makikita natin lalò ang ganitong balintunang kalakip ng edukasyon

sa panahon ng mga Amerikano. Sa kasalukuyan, mapapansin nating mas
malaki ang naging impluwensiya ng mga Amerikano kaysa mga Kastila sa
ating pamumuhay; masdan mo pa lang ang wikang namamayani sa paaralan.
Ano ang nagawa ng mga Amerikano sa apat na dekada na hindi nagawa ng
mga Kastila sa mahigit tatlo’t kalahating siglo? Edukasyon para sa lahat.
Kung ano ang ikinatakot ng mga Kastila sa pagpapaaral sa mga
Filipino, ganoon ang ikinasigasig ng mga Amerikano sa pagtatatag ng mga
pampublikong paaralan. Nagbalatkayo ang mga Amerikano bilang mga
kaibigan, at nililok ang katwiran ng kabataang Filipino ayon sa Kanluraning
agham, wika, at mga pagpapahalaga ng mga katutubo.19 Nag-aral ang mga
katutubo hindi bílang Filipino, ngunit bilang kolonisado, na kailangang
umayon sa interes ng mga “kaibigang” mananakop. 20 Ang pinakamahalaga
marahil na kasangkapan ng mga Amerikano ay ang pagturo sa kanilang
wika; sa pagsasanay makinig, magbasa, magsalita, at magsulat sa Ingles,
nagkaroon ng malinaw na pagtatambis sa mga edukado at sa mga masa. 21
Lalòng naging maigting ang kabalintunaan ng edukasyon. Sa isang
banda, malaya nang nakakapagtalastas at nakakasabay ang mga arál sa
buong mundo, lalò na ang mundo ng Kanluran, dahil nauunawaan na nila
ang Kanluraning katwiran.22 Sa kabilang banda, lalòng lumapad ang
kalayuan ng mga edukado sa mga di-edukado, na kapuwa mga Filipino;
naging dayuhan na sa masa ang mga arál. Higit pang napalalâ itong agwat
ng komersiyalisasyon ng edukasyon. Bumaba kalaunan ang antas ng
edukasyon sa mga pampublikong paaralan, samantalang naipon ang kalidad
sa mga pribadong paaralan sa malaking halaga, na karaniwang nasa
lungsod.23 Naging ginto na ang susi sa kahirapan; yaong mga masalapi lang
ang may tiket sa magandang edukasyon, at sa banyaga at mas “maunlad” na
katwiran.
Bukod sa intelektuwal na pagsasadayuhang nagaganap sa paaralan,
nagkaroon din ng pagpapalaganap ng mga pagpapahalagang Amerikano sa
tulong ng telebisyon at radyo. Nahawa ang mga Filipino pati na rin ang ibang
19 Renato Constantino, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” in Journal of Contemporary
Asia, 1:1 (1970), 22.

20 Ibid., 24.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 23.
23 Ibid., 34.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 91
mga kolonisado sa panlasa sa pananamit, pagkain, at paraan ng pamumuhay

ng kanilang mga mananakop. Naging magkakamukha ang mga gusali,
manggagawa, at mga kasangkapan, saanman sa mundo.24 Masisilayan natin
ito sa kasalukuyan: halos lahat ay may mga smartphone na, o di kaya tablet
at laptop. Sa pamamagitan ng mga bagay na ito, nakikibahagi táyo sa
katwirang lungsod.
Sa kasamaang palad, hindi kasíng unibersal ng konsumerismong
pagpapahalaga ang kakayahang magkaroon ng ganitong mga modernong
kasangkapang. Samantalang namana ng lahat ang panlasa ng makabagong
daigdig, kasama at lalò na ang mga nasa mahihirap na bansa, wala namang
sapat na yaman ang mga mahihirap para maatim ang pamumuhay na
ibinabandera ng mga mayayamang lungsod.25 Yaong mga walang pambili ng
smartphone ay walang kakayahang makibahagi sa katwirang lungsod,
halimbawa.
Malinaw na nagtagumpay ang mga Amerikano sa kanilang proyekto
ng edukasyon, sa loob at sa labas ng paaralan. Higit pa sa mga konsepto ng
agham at balarila ng Ingles, naturuan nila ang mga Filipino ng mga
pagpapahalagang taliwas sa katutubong pamumuhay. Mula sa pagiging
susing magsasalba sa kahirapan, naging mamahalin ang edukasyon na
lumilikha ng mga banyaga sa sariling lupa.
Edukasyon sa Kasalukuyan bílang Di-mabisang Tagpuan ng

Dalawang Katwiran
Umiiral magpasahanggang ngayon ang kabalintunaan ng

edukasyon. Ipinaliwanag ni Emerita S. Quito na ganito ang kaso hindi lang
sa Filipinas, kundi pati sa mga dating kolonya. Sapagkat nasanay ang mga
kolonisado sa katwiran ng kanilang mananakop, patúloy silang naaakit sa
katwirang dayuhan matapos makamtan ang kalayaan ng bayan, samantalang
ikinahihiya naman nila ang katutubong katwiran. 26 Kayâ naman, ang
edukasyong tagapagsalba sa kahirapan na nakapagtuturo ng katwirang
lungsod (na katwirang banyaga, kung tutuusin) ang siya ring
nakapagpapalayo sa katwirang lalawigan, na patúloy na dayuhan ang tingin
sa katwiran ng paaralan.
Sinasalamin itong tensiyon ng kasalukuyang pamamayani ng Ingles
sa paaralan. Samantalang ito ang pangunahing wika ng edukasyon, hindi
naman ito palasak na ginagamit sa pang-araw-araw na búhay. Puna ni
24 Gilbert and Gugler, Cities, Poverty and Development, 28-30.

25 Ibid., 30-31.
26 Emerita S. Quito, “Philosophy of Education for Filipinos,” in Philosophy of Education
Concerns: Purposes, Content, and Methods of Education, ed. by Celeste O. Botor at Aniceta M.
Ortinero (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 1994), 30.

ISSN 1908-7330
Constantino, magkaiba ang wika ng pagkatuto sa wika ng komunikasyon. 27

Sinusubok ng mag-aaral na matutuhan ang katwirang lungsod, samantalang
umiiral at nananaig pa rin ang katwirang lalawigan sa labas ng paaralan.
Dahil sa tunggaliang ito, hindi produktibo ang pagkatuto sa paaralan.
Nananatili ang mag-aaral sa pawang pagsasaulo at pagkakabisa ng
impormasyong inuulat ng paaralan. Nakukuntento na siyang masagot ang
mga tanong sa eksamen upang makapasa, at maituring na edukado. 28 Ni
hindi na nag-aabala ang mag-aaral na unawain ang mga leksiyon; hindi
naman niya nagagamit ang mga ito sa labas ng paaralan. Sa bansang hindi
naman makaagham, halimbawa, saan mo nga ba naman magagamit ang mga
kabatirang ito, kung di ka man nagbabalak maging siyentipiko?
Sinasaklaw ng ganitong kabalintunaan ang hanapbuhay pagkatapos
ng pormal na edukasyon. Sa mga nagtatrabaho na, nagtatalaban pa rin ang
katwirang lungsod—bílang lungsod ang pangunahing tagapagbigay ng
hanapbuhay—at ang katwirang lalawigan—na siyang inuuwian ng
manggagawa sa kaniyang tahanan. Anumang natututuhan sa trabaho ay
hindi naman nagagamit din pag-uwi sa bahay. Kung hindi pamilya ng mga
abogado, doktor, o negosyante, ni hindi kadalasang napag-uusapan sa bahay
ang mga nagaganap sa trabaho, sapagkat hindi rin naman nauunawaan ang
ganoong katwiran.
Napalalalâ ang sitwasyon sa tinatawag nating “brain drain,” o ang
paglíkas ng mga mahuhusay at matatalino nating kababayan patungo sa
ibang bansa, kung saan mas mapapakinabangan nila ang kanilang talento.
Nasasariwa lalò ang kabalintunaan ng edukasyon noong panahon ng mga
Kastila at Amerikano—sa pamamagitan ng pag-aaral, gumiginhawa ang
búhay ng Filipino dahil nagiging isip-lungsod, o isip-banyaga pa nga, kapalít
ng pagnanasà niyang lisanin ang báyang nagpaaral sa kaniya. Muli, hindi
kasi angkop ang natututuhan sa paaralan para sa katwirang kapaki-
pakinabang sa tahanan.
Samakatwid, namumuhay ang karaniwang estudyante at
manggagawa sa dalawang magkalayong katwiran. Pagpasok sa paaralan o
opisina, kailangang aralin at pairalin ang katwirang lungsod. Pag-uwi,
pansamantalang kinalilimutan ang katwirang ito para manaig ang katwirang
lalawigan sa bahay. At sa kasalukuyang estruktura, hindi produktibo ang
paggalaw sa dalawang katwirang ito.
27 Constantino, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” 33.

28 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 93
Pag-aangkop ng Dalawang Katwiran: Tungo sa Makabayang

Edukasyon
Namalas natin sa ikalawang bahagi ang kabalintunaan ng edukasyon

mula noon hanggang ngayon. Sa bahaging ito, tutuklasin natin ang
posibilidad ng produktibong interaksiyon ng dalawang katwiran, upang
sumaibayo ang edukasyon sa kabalintunaang iniiralan niya.
Pag-aangkop ng Magkaibang Katwiran: Katolisismo bílang

Halimbawa
Mapupuna nating wala tayong katutubong salita para sa

“edukasyon,” sagisag ng pagiging banyaga ng ganitong sistema. Marapat na
kilalanin natin ang pagkadayuhan nitong konsepto at gawaing ito, ngunit
maaari pa rin natin itong iangkop ayon sa pangangailangan ng bayan.
29Samakatwid, bakâ ang hinahanap natin ay yaong panukala ni Constantino
na “edukasyong Filipino,” isang makabayang edukasyon. 30

Maaari nating ihalintulad ang proyekto ng pag-aangkop ng
edukasyon sa naganap na pagpapalaganap ng Katolisismo ng mga Kastila.
Banyagang katwiran din ang relihiyong ito, ngunit makikita natin sa
kasalukuyan ang pagyakap ng malaking bahagdan ng mga Filipino (na may
katwirang katutubo) sa pagiging Katoliko. Samakatwid, masasabi natin,
kahit papaano, na matagumpay ang interaksiyon ng dalawang katwiran.
Malaking bahagi ng halagahang Filipino ang utang-na-loob at hiya.31
Dito nakasalalay ang ating etika. Kayâ mas naging bukás ang ating mga
ninuno sa pagtanggap ng Katolisismo nang isalin ito ng mga misyonero sa
“May utang-na-loob tayo sa Diyos” at “Kailangan nating magbigay-hiya sa
Kaniya.”32 Manapa, itinuturo ng pananampalatayong Katoliko na “alipin
táyo ng Panginoong Diyos,” kayâ napasunod ng mga fraile ang mga
Filipino.33 Naging kaakit-akit ang iisang Diyos na nagpapangako ng
29 Iminungkahi rin ni Demeterio ang ganitong pag-aangkop ng postmodernong
teoriyang minana natin sa mga dayuhan sa premodernong konteksto ng Filipinas. See

Demeterio, “Our Premodernity and Their Tokens of Postmodernity.”
30 May sariling problematiko ang konsepto ng “makabayan” sapagkat nakasalalay ito
sa konsepto ng “bayan,” na sa kaso ng Filipinas, ay hindi malinaw. Maaaring talakayin ito sa

ibang papel, ngunit ipagpapalagay natin sa papel na ito na ang “makabayan” ay yaong
pumapanig sa interes ng mga Filipino, sa halip na mga banyaga.
31 F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Value System: A Cultural Definition (Quezon City: Punlad
Research House, 1997).

32 Vicente L. Rafael, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in
Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1988),
121-135.
33 Ibid., 167-169.

ISSN 1908-7330
kaligtasan upang ibsan ang takot sa mga katutubong masasamang espiritu

(aswang, tikbalang, tiyanak).34
Sapagkat lampas na sa saklaw ng papel na ito ang pagpapalaganap
ng Katolisismo, sapat na itong maiikling halimbawang nagpapakita ng
posibilidad ng produktibong talaban ng dalawang katwiran. Layunin natin
sa papel na ito na maisagawa ang naturang pag-aangkop sa katwirang
lungsod at katwirang lalawigan na nagtatagpo sa paaralan.
Pag-aangkop ng Katwirang Lungsod at Lalawigan: Tungo sa

“Makabayang Edukasyon”
Siyempre, hindi naman natin agad-agad na maisasagawa ang

nasabing pag-aangkop sa kasalukuyang sistema ng edukasyon.
Pakatandaang nasa konteksto sila noon ng kolonisasyon; kailangang
maunawaan ng mga katutubo ang kanilang relihiyon upang tagumpay
nilang maipalaganap ito. Samakatwid, mulát ang mga Kastila sa
pagsasagawa ng nasabing pag-aangkop sa dalawang katwiran, na hindi natin
masasabi tungkol sa kasalukuyang edukador ng bansa.
Ni hindi nga yata maláy ang karamihan ng mga estudyante sa
marahas na talaban ng katwirang paaralan at katwirang tahanan. Maaari
nating sabihing bahagi ng katwirang ginagalawan nila ang
pangangailangang gumalaw sa dalawang katwirang ito. Tinuturuan táyo ng
ating kultura na kailangang mag-aral upang makapaghanapbuhay at kumita
at makapamuhay nang matiwasay, samantalang pinaaalalahanan din táyong
“lumingon sa pinanggalingan” at alalahanin ang ating mga katutubong
paniniwala at mga pampamilyang pagpapahalaga. Kayâ naman, ni hindi
natin napagtatantong hindi pala produktibo ang pamamangka natin sa
dalawang katwiran.
Samakatwid, ang unang hakbang tungo sa makabayang edukasyon
ay ang kamalayang hindi makabayan ang edukasyon natin ngayon.
Kailangang mamulat ang mga guro at mga mag-aaral na hindi lubusang
produktibo ang nagaganap sa paaralan. Kailangang maging maláy ang mga
tao sa ginagalawan nilang katwiran, nang sa gayon ay mapuna rin nila ang
marahas na tunggalian ng katwirang lungsod at katwirang lalawigan kung
saan sila nakikibahagi.
Nagsisimula ang kamalayan sa katwirang ginagalawan sa
kamalayan sa sariling katwiran bilang Filipino. Inilatag ni Quito ang tatlong
aspekto ng kamalayang ito na magsisilbing unang hakbang tungo sa
34 Ibid., 185-196.

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 95
pagrerepaso ng edukasyon.35 Una, kailangan ng kamalayan sa ating

kasaysayan bílang mga Filipino. Nararapat na maunawaan ng isang Filipino
ang pinagdaanan ng kaniyang mga kababayan, mula noong bago dumating
ang mga Kastila sa ating kapuluan, hanggang sa pananakop ng mga
dayuhan, hanggang sa iba’t ibang republikang namahala sa ating bayan
hanggang sa kasalukuyan. Ikalawa, kailangan ding maging maláy sa ating
pag-uugali, lalò sa yaong mga di-kanais-nais, upang matuklasan ang
posibilidad ng pagbabago: mula sa “kanya-kanya” tungo sa pagiging
makakapuwa, mula sa pagiging kontento sa “puwede na” tungo sa
paghangad ng kagalingan, mula sa “akala ko kasi …” tungo sa sigasig na
umalam. Ikatlo, kailangan ng kamalayan sa mga pagpapahalagang likás na
Filipino, tulad ng utang-na-loob, hiya, pakikisama, atbp. Kung babalikan
natin si Rodriguez, ang mga pagpapahalagang ito ang batayan ng praktikal
na aspekto ng ating katutubong katwiran.
Pagkatapos ng kamalayan sa ating pagka-Filipino, isa sa mga paraan
upang maging angkop ang edukasyon (ang katwirang lungsod) sa búhay
Filipino (katwirang lalawigan) ay ang paggamit ng katutubong wika. Ani
Constantino, “balakid sa pagkatuto ang banyagang wika.” 36 Paliwanag niya,
hindi nakapag-iisip nang maayos ang mga mag-aaral dahil kailangan pa
munang kabisaduhin ang talasalitaan at isalin sa Ingles ang mga konsepto,
kaya kadalasang napapako sa pagsasaulo at hindi na umuusad sa malikhaing
pag-iisip.37 Dahil sa kaibhan ng wika ng pangungusap at wika ng pagkatuto,
hindi napagkakasundo ang katwiran ng tahanan at katwiran ng paaralan. Sa
gayon, marahil makakatulong ang mother tongue-based education na
isinusulong ng K-12. Sanayin muna ang estudyanteng mag-isip sa kanilang
katutubong wika sa wikang kinagisnan nila bago ipakilala ang mga
banyagang konsepto.38 Maaari nating gawing huwaran dito ang edukasyong
Hapon. Kapansin-pansing isa na ang kanilang bansa sa mga nangungunang
kapangyarihang ekonomiko at teknolohikal sa daigdig, ngunit nananaig ang
kanilang pagkamakabayan.
Kailangan ding repasuhin ang nilalaman ng edukasyon, dahil hindi
rin naman kapaki-pakinabang ang ilan sa mga inaaral ng estudyante sa
kaniyang hanapbuhay kalaunan. Iba ang sitwasyon sa lalawigan o sa
katutubong kultura; nag-aaral ang kabataan ng pagsasaka, pangingisda,
35 Nakabatay itong tatlong aspektong nabanggit sa paliwanag ni Quito sa “historical,
behavioral, and axiological aspects of the Filipino,” na itinuturing niyang kailangang simulain
ng pagbabago sa edukasyon. See Quito, “Philosophy of Education,” 32-36.
36 Constanino, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” 32.
37 Ibid., 33.
38 Hindi maitatangging layunin ng K-12 na makisabay sa pandaigdigang edukasyon;
labingdalawang taon din ang pag-aaral sa karamihan ng mga mauunlad na bansa, kaya bakit
hindi natin sila tularan? Mahabang usapan ang pagsusuri sa lahat ng aspekto ng programang K-
12, ngunit ang interes lang natin sa ngayon ay ang paggamit ng katutubong wika sa pagtuturo.

ISSN 1908-7330
pangangaso, o kahit pangangarpintero, sapagkat ito ang magiging trabaho

nila. Sa nahuling kaso, inaaral nila ang katwirang lalawigan na siya ring
gagalawan nila sa pagtanda, kayâ walang kabalintunaan ng edukasyon. Sa
kaso ng edukasyon sa lungsod, maaaring sabihing mas makatwiran pa ang
pag-aaral ng bokasyonal o teknikal na kurso na magagamit sa
paghahanapbuhay kaysa ang pag-aaral sa pamantasan kahit na hindi naman
talaga kapaki-pakinabang sa trabaho. Sa ibayo ng usapin ng pawang
pangangailangan, bakâ maaari ring ituro ang mga alamat at kuwentong
katutubo pati na rin makabagong panitikang Filipino, na mas angkop alamin
ng mga Filipino kaysa mga klasikong Kanluranin, sapagkat bahagi ito ng
ating kultura bilang mga Filipino. Samakatwid, mainam na siyasatin ang
kasalukuyang mga kurikulum ng DepEd at CHEd, at tingnan kung akma pa
rin ba ang mga asignaturang itinuturo sa pangangailan at pagkakakilanlan
ng mga Filipino. Hindi maikakailang kailangan pa rin nilang matutuhan ang
agham, sipnayan, kasaysayan, atbp., ngunit bakâ kailangang din namang
ituon ang pansin at atensiyon sa mga asignaturang mas pang-Filipino.
Hulí, kailangan ding baguhin ang pamamaraan ng pagturo. Kalakip
ng pagkabanyaga ng katwirang lungsod ang pagkabanyaga ng sistema ng
edukasyong ipinapamalakad sa paaralan. Hango sa tinuro ng mga
Amerikano ang malaking papel na ginagampanan ng mga indibidwal na
marka ng mga estudyante sa ating edukasyon. Bukod sa pagsukat ng
kakayahan at progreso ng isang mag-aaral, hinihikayat din nito ang
kompetisyon—tungo sa isang indibidwalistikong katwiran, kung gayon.
Taliwas ito sa katwirang lalawigan na mas makapamilya at makakapuwa,
bahagi ng dahilan kung bakit hindi rin produktibo ang pagtakda ng mga
marka sa paaralan. Manapa, hinihikayat ang mga mataas na marka dahil
sagisag ito ng kagalingan ng isang mag-aaral, na siyang hinahanap ng mga
kompanya (ng lungsod, siyempre!). Samakatwid, lalòng pinahahalagahan
ang mataas na marka kaysa tunay na pagkatuto; marka ang nagiging batayan
ng natutuhan sa halip na tagagabay lámang nito. Makatutulong sa pag-
aangkop ng edukasyon sa pangangailangang Filipino ang pagbibigay ng
sistema ng ebalwasyon na mas angkop sa mga Filipino. Bakâ kahit mga
eksamen ay kailangan hubugin upang matingnan at masipat ang tunay na
antas ng pagkaunawa ng estudyante, sa halip na magsilbing paligsahan
lámang na kakalimutan ang nilalaman pagkatapos manalo.
Pangwakas
Batid kong hindi ganap na kongkreto ang mga iminungkahi kong

hakbang tungo sa makabayang edukasyon. Sa katunayan, marahil malayo pa
táyo sa pagsasaibayo sa kabalintunaan ng edukasyon. Masyadong malalim
ang mga ugat na naitanim ng mga Kastila at ng mga Amerikano, na lumilok

ISSN 1908-7330
N. CLEMENTE 97
sa isip-lungsod na pinapalaganap ng paaralan, kayâ kailangan din ng

panahon bago natin malampasan ang kanilang paggayuma sa ating kultura.
Gayunpaman, sa mga munting hakbang, tulad ng mga naimungkahi kong
kamalayan sa suliranin na susundan ng pagbabago sa wika, nilalaman, at
pamamaraan ng pagturo, marahan nating mabubunot ang mga ugat na ito,
tungo sa isang edukasyong angkop sa katwirang Filipino. Kung
matagumpay na magkasundo ang dalawang katwirang nagtatagpo sa
paaralan, magkakaroon tayo ng mga Filipinong bagaman nahasikan ng mga
dagta ng banyaga, ay nakaugat sa katutubo at Filipinong kaisipan. Manapa,
isang malaking hakbang itong pagkakasundo ng lungsod at lalawigan tungo
sa pagkakaisa ng mga Filipino bílang isang bayan. 39
Department of Philosophy, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
References
Abinales, Patricio N. and Donna J. Amoroso, State and Society in the Philippines
(Mandaluyong City: Anvil Press, 2005).
Demeterio, F.P.A. III, “Our Premodernity and Their Tokens of
Postmodernity: Reflections on the Philippine Condition,” in
Academia, <https://www.academia.edu/7340227/Our_Premodernity_
and_their_Tokens_of_Postmodernity_Reflections_on_the_Philippin
e_Condition>, 21 March 2016.
___________, “The Primitivization of the Indio Mind and the Explosion of
Rationalities: The Politics of Knowledge in the Spanish Colonial
Philippines,” in Academia, <https://www.academia.edu/7340242/
The_Primitivization_of_the_Indio_Mind_and_the_Explosion_of_Ra
tionalities_the_Politics_of_Knowledge_in_the_Spanish_Colonial_Ph
ilippines>, 21 March 2016.
Constantino, Renato, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” in Journal of
Contemporary Asia, 1:1 (1970).
Gilbert, Alan and Josef Gugler, Cities, Poverty and Development: Ubranization in
the Third World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Jocano, F. Landa, Filipino Value System: A Cultural Definition (Quezon City:
Punlad Research House, 1997).
Mabini, Apolinario, Ang Rebolusyong Filipino, trans. by Michael M. Coroza
(Manila: Pambansang Komisyon sa Kultura at Sining, 2015).
39 Nagpapasalamat ako kina Dr. Guss Rodriguez at Dr. Jack Cleofas sa kanilang mga
ideya na nakatulong sa pagsusulat at pagrerebisa ng papel na ito. Nais ko ring pasalamatan ang
patnugutan ng Kritike, pati na rin ang nag-referee sa aking manuskrito, na nagbigay ng mga
mahahalagang mungkahi upang linangin at paunlarin ang unang bersiyon ng aking papel.

ISSN 1908-7330
Quito, Emerita S., “Philosophy of Education for Filipinos,” in Philosophy of

Education Concerns: Purposes, Content, and Methods of Education, ed. by
Celeste O. Botor at Aniceta M. Ortinero (Manila: Rex Bookstore,
1994).
Rafael, Vicente L., Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion
in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule (Quezon City: Ateneo de
Manila University Press, 1988).
Rodriguez, Agustin Martin, May Laro Ang Diskurso ng Katarungan (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Bataille and Nietzsche on the Limits and

Ambiguities of Sovereignty and Power1
George Papandreopoulos
Abstract: This paper will argue that both Bataille and Nietzsche
embrace a rather idiosyncratic understanding of sovereignty (Bataille)
and power (Nietzsche), according to which the sovereign moment is to
be identified with a moment of profound loss. For both thinkers,
sovereignty and power do not stand alone but are absolutely
dependent on forces which threaten their integrity at every moment.
For both, the ultimate powerlessness of power, or the loss of
sovereignty, does not constitute weakness but precisely the opposite,
strength and vitality. Nietzsche occupies himself with the problem of
power through his examination of ancient agon, where he organises the
limitations of power; through his occupation with the Will to Power,
where he constructs an ontology of power; and finally through his
meditations on the thought of the return, where the power of time
manifests itself in the sovereignty of a moment which has liberated
itself from the demands of various cultural and social power structures
which have produced the human of the Christian Western civilisation:
a human solely occupied with productions and results. Ultimately, this
paper aims to elucidate that Bataille’s sovereignty and Nietzsche’s
power win nothing specific; but that their sovereignty lies in their
resistance to the Western cultural model of understanding life through
the optics of productions, wins, and results.
Keywords: sovereignty, power, unproduction, time
1 I would like to thank Professor Douglas Burnham for inviting me to present a first
draft of this paper at Staffordshire University and to his students for their valuable comments. I
would also like to thank the anonymous editor of KRITIKE for his much helpful comments.
© 2016 George Papandreopoulos

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/papandreopoulos_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
100 ON SOVEREIGNTY AND POWER
As you see, some defeats can be transformed into

victorious calamities
—António Lobo Antunes, The Land at the End of the World
‘Sovereignty’ in Bataille
I
n his magnum opus The Accursed Share (1949), Georges Bataille develops
a very interesting and fruitful concept, that of ‘sovereignty.’ Sovereignty
describes the process whereby human existence realigns itself to the
wasteful movement of the cosmos.2 Sovereignty is fundamentally directed
against the world of ‘projects,’ the world of utilitarian calculations and
capitalist production. It is the necessary outcome of ‘general economics,’ the
economic structure of societies around the notions of expenditure and
(economic) waste, and the completion of the type of human that ‘general
economics’ produces: a squanderer dedicated to nothing but the
(unintentional) disruption of life on earth as a productive enterprise. It is in
and through his loss (the squandered loses everything including himself),
though, that the sovereign individual achieves the summit of an experience
that overcomes the petty calculations of the productive-human machines. It
is because he wishes nothing more than the immediate enjoyment of the
experience of his existence (like the notorious child-murderer Gilles de Rais),
beyond the demands posed on him by institutions and ideologies, that the
sovereign individual becomes the master, the sovereign of his existence.
However, this is not to confuse sovereignty with idleness, however
spectacular and charming this idleness could be. Like ‘inner experience’
sovereignty also describes a process, which nevertheless culminates in the
experience of the dissolution of all processes. It is a ‘negative project,’ a project
that abolishes all projects.3 Thus the sovereign has to achieve his sovereignty4
and he has then to implicate himself in a project to oppose all earthly projects.
Hegelian Beginnings
Bataille’s exposition of the notion of sovereignty owes a lot to the

profound influence of the (anthropological) reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology
of the Spirit (1807) by Alexander Kojeve. In the much-discussed chapter on
‘Lordship and Bondage,’ self-consciousness, after having duplicated itself,
2 For Bataille the real economic problem of humanity lies not in a lack of resources, but
rather in the excess of energy radiating from the sun. It is not that we do not have enough; the
problem is that we have too much!
3 Georges Bataille, Inner Experience, trans. by Stuart Kendall (Albany: SUNY Press,
2014), 29.
4 He thus differs from the royal sovereigns who ‘find,’ or are offered, their sovereignty.

ISSN 1908-7330
G. PAPANDREOPOULOS 101
understands the need to be recognised by another self-consciousness which

is not going to be a mirror picture of itself but a free, independent self-
consciousness, since the fundamental presupposition of recognition is to set
the ‘other’ free, or else recognition is reduced to brute coercion. One is only
recognised by another which is wholly other and both self-consciousnesses
must mutually recognise each other which means to accept the other as free. 5
This is of course the final and much desired state of recognition, but before
that a battle has to take place between the two self-consciousnesses, a battle
where the opposing self-consciousnesses have to prove that they are not
attached to any particularity whatsoever, including life itself. They both have
to prove that they are completely and utterly free, which means they have no
commitments, no attachments to anything external to their own existence. A
self-consciousness which is attached to life is a self-consciousness which is
attached to something external to its own self. Hegel thinks that a self
(consciousness) is not characterised by its commitment to life, but by its
commitment to its independence; therefore, life (as a biological existence) is
treated as something accidental or in any case as something of no particular
importance to self-consciousness’s development. In Hegel’s words:
… it is only through staking one’s life that freedom is

won; only thus is it proved that for self-consciousness,
its essential being is not [just] being … but rather there is
nothing present in it which could not be regarded as a
vanishing moment, that it is pure being-for-self.6
Or, as Alexandre Kojeve puts it in his own anthropological terms: “...

to be for one self, or to be a man, is not to be bound to any determinate
existence, not to be bound to the universal isolated-particularity of existence
as such, not to be bound to life.”7 The problem arising from the struggle for
recognition is obvious. Both self-consciousnesses want their freedom, i.e. they
wish to express their contempt for every attachment, including ‘my’ life and
‘your’ life. But however much each wishes to be recognised by the other, if
the outcome of the battle is to be the death of one or the other of the parties
involved, then recognition cannot take place. Self-consciousness finds itself
in the paradoxical condition of being compelled to preserve the other in life in
5 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), §184. See also Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of
Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1980), 36-44.
6 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §187.
7 Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 12.

ISSN 1908-7330
order to render ‘him’ able to be participant in a relation where both members

have to recognise each other.
Thus, the precondition of the mastery of the master becomes for
Hegel the willingness to dissociate self-consciousness from the ‘animal need’
for biological preservation. Bataille agrees that “to struggle without having
the satisfaction of animal needs as an object is above all in itself sovereign; it
expresses a sovereignty.”8 Bataille speaks, then, for a mastery which is
master-full only insofar as it is master-less, only insofar as it “lets itself go.” But
the less of mastery rather than expressing, what Nietzsche has called “passive
Nihilism,”9 the state of the decline of power that stands “at the door” of
modernity, rather expresses Nietzsche’s second suggestion regarding
nihilism, which he calls “activer Nihilism,”10 and refers to a “violent force of
destruction” [gewaltthätige Kraft der Zestörung].11 This force is able to bring the
process of the taming of the human animal12 to its ultimate consequences and
thus to the ultimate and much-desired agon between the healthy and the
unhealthy forces in man. Bataille understands that Nietzsche’s activer Nihilism
is taken over by Hegelian negativity and that negativity is made to
correspond, through Kojeve, to action13 which opposes the world of animal
desire and thus inaugurates man’s participation in human history. Bataille
never tires of repeating this Kojevean lesson: “Action is Negativity and
Negativity, Action.”14 The master-less-ness of mastery, then, rather than
indicating a vacuum, indicates an active participation in the project of
abolishing all projects. Bataille’s master, like Hegel’s, by negating his own life
and the conditions of his existence, achieves what Hegel calls mastery and
what Bataille would call sovereignty.
Sovereign Uselessness
Sovereignty disrupts in a profound15 way the world of utility. Its

birthplace is neither the petty calculations of the everyday nor the protestant
8 Georges Bataille, “Hegel, Mankind and History,” in Georges Bataille: Essential
Writings, ed. and trans. by Michael Richardson (London: Sage Publications, 1998), 123.
9 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15
Einzelbänden, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch
Verlag, 1988), 12: 9[35]. Hereafter cited as KSA.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 What Nietzsche calls culture- Kultur. See Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the
Genealogy of Morality, trans. by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1998), 1, II. Hereafter cited as GM.
13 Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, 4.
14 Bataille, “Hegel, Mankind and History,” 123.
15 ‘Profound’ because it is a movement of negativity, therefore of action.

ISSN 1908-7330
ethic of accumulation, but rather the limitless energy of the universe. 16 The
source of energy is, for Bataille, the sun: “Solar energy is the source of life’s
exuberant development. The origin and essence of our wealth are given in the
radiation of the sun, which dispenses energy – wealth – without any return.
The sun gives without ever receiving.”17 Consequently, Bataille parts ways
from classical political economy in that he considers sources as excessive and
not as scarce. The fundamental economic problem then becomes, for him, the
management of the excessive energy of the universe, not the accumulation of
capital to counteract scarcity. Following Marcel Mauss’ anthropological
readings on the nature of gift in archaic societies, Bataille creates his own
version of the Nietzschean Rangordung, in which the highest value is awarded
to the imprudent consumer of the excessive universal wealth, whereas the
lowest value is awarded to the prudent slaves who “reduce their
consumption to the necessities.”18 The imprudent consumer occupies the
highest place in the ladder of this social system, which turns upside down the
accumulative ethic of capitalism in the Christian West. The task is to upset
the bourgeois values of safety and utility. At the end there is nothing left, Bataille
tells us, because everything has been gloriously consumed in what resembles
Mauss’ potlatch, the celebrations of exuberant consumption in which social
value depends on the amount of wealth which is wasted. 19 Bataille believes
that life can only properly begin when the realm of slave (utilitarian) values
has been left behind: “life beyond utility is the domain of sovereignty.”20
Like Bataille, Nietzsche also considers life to be an event of excessive
energy and this ‘excessiveness’ will be called will to power. In Twilight of the
Idols (1889) we read: “life as a whole is not a state of crisis or hunger, but rather
a richness, a luxuriance, even an absurd extravagance [absurde
Verschwendung].”21 Following the findings of William Rolph and Wilhelm
Roux, who believed that organisms strive for growth and expansion over self-
preservation, Nietzsche associates life with the will to power, which is
understood variously as growth, expansion, appropriation, or
16 Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. II, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York:
Zone Books, 1989), 187.

17 Ibid., Vol. I, 28.
18 Ibid., Vol. II, 198.
19 Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. by W.D. Halls (Oxon: Routledge, 1990), 47.
20 Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. II, 198.
21 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by Duncan Large (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), Recon. 14. Hereafter cited as TI. In similar fashion, he notes: “in
nature, it is not distress which rules, but rather abundance [Ueberfluss], squandering – even to the
point of absurdity [sogar bis in’s Unsinnige].” See Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science,
trans. by Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 349. Hereafter
cited as GS.

ISSN 1908-7330
incorporation.22 What is of interest to us is Nietzsche’s determination to

separate the will to power from the will to preservation. He does so because these
opposing wills23 produce correspondingly differing anthropological types.
The will to preservation he considers to be a sign of weak, to the point of
unnatural, natures. “To wish to preserve oneself is a sign of distress, of a
limitation of the truly basic life-instinct, which aims at the expansion of power
and in so doing often enough risks and sacrifices self-preservation.”24 Weak
natures, like the bourgeoisie, are solely interested in preserving their type, in
preserving the sickness that generates them; they are foreign to life as an
event of growth or creativity. Nietzsche is adamant: “The herd strives to
maintain a type … The tendency of the herd is toward standstill and
preservation. There is nothing creative in it.”25 On the opposite side stand the
strong natures. Their strength is drawn from their ability to control the great
number of contrary drives that constitutes them. 26 Yet this strength has no
guarantees of endurance. It is because the strong nature encompasses great
battles and is the expression of great but competing powers that it is also
always on the verge of collapse. Unlike the weak nature, whose one-
sidedness protects it from breaking down, the strong type’s multifariousness
leaves it exposed. “The higher type represents an incomparably greater
complexity—a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: so its disintegration is
also incomparably more likely. The ‘genius’ is the sublimest machine there
is—consequently the most fragile.”27
On Sovereign Time
What is the time of unproductive activity? What is the time of the

sovereign, of the one who has liberated himself from the demands of utility
and has thoroughly embraced the value of the present? Bataille’s response is
that it has to be a time which aims at nothing, a time which is defined by no
future teloi but only by the sovereignty of the moment, which becomes
infinitely valuable. “We don’t see the sovereign moment arrive, when
22 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Judith Norman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 259. Hereafter cited as BGE.

23 Which themselves are nothing but unitary, since every will is a union of antithetical
forces. See BGE: 19.

24 GS: 349.
25 KSA: 11: 27[17]. My translation.
26 See Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 966. Hereafter cited as WP. See also KSA: 11:
27[59]. This strength has nothing to do with the strength of the pre-internalised masters of GM’s
First Essay. There, and Nietzsche is clear on this, the masters live the one-sided instinctual life of
animals. This has nothing to do with the human ‘proper,’ which comes into existence with the
first struggle among antithetical forces. On the masters’ externalising power see GM: 1, 10-11.
27 WP: 363, KSA: 13: 15[118].

ISSN 1908-7330
nothing counts but the moment itself. What is sovereign in fact is to enjoy the
present time without having anything else in view but this present time.”28 A
future-orientated time is for Bataille a servile time, a time that is in the service
of production, and in extension of capitalism itself. Servile time demands (but
also produces) a certain anthropological type, the same type whose
conditions of existence Nietzsche had scrutinised in On the Genealogy of
Morality (1887). That human type, who will control the future for the sake of
production, will have to be able to anticipate that future. Anticipation is a key
notion since it demands a high degree of calculability, which becomes
possible through the reduction of the once-unknown future to something
predictable which can be calculated with precision. Like in factory
production, products and productive activity are measured, calculated,
carefully planned, and executed. The future is thoroughly known. There are
no surprises lying ahead. Nietzsche notes that before the rendering of the
future as thoroughly known, man has to train himself into becoming “reliable,
regular, necessary.”29 Only this anthropological type will be able to align
himself into a future in the service of production. Production requires
regularity, which also means that irregularity (and the corresponding
anthropological type) must be the synonym of unproduction.
Bataille notes: “In efficacious activity man becomes the equivalent of
a tool, which produces; he is like the thing the tool is, being itself a product.
The implication of these facts is quite clear: the tool’s meaning is given by the
future, in what the tool will produce, in the future utilisation of the product;
like the tool, he who serves—who works—has the value of that which will be
later not of that which is.”30 The prioritisation of a future thoroughly
associated with productive activity reduces man to the status of the tool.
Man’s value is extracted from the transcendent source of an imagined future.
Because of that, man lives in a constant state of anguish which comes to be
completed by death. Bataille maintains that death only exists insofar as man
lives in anticipation of a future ‘attainment’ of oneself. It is because we have
placed the value of our individual existence on an imagined projection, which
we call ‘future,’ that we die. If we were to live thoroughly in the present,
deriving our value solely from what is, we would be able to live without
death, escaping the anguish of death. A sovereign existence “escapes death,
in that he lives in the moment.”31 This moment is the moment of the liberation
of time from the demands of the future, not only from a productive future but
from all future. Bataille stresses that it is the anticipatory structure of human
existence that confines man into the logic of productive time and thus also of
28 Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. III, 199.

29 GM: II, 2.
30 Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vol. III, 218.
31 Ibid., 219.

ISSN 1908-7330
death as that which lies at the end of the process of production. “The
sovereign man lives and dies like an animal,”32 he lives only in the
sovereignty of the moment which has liberated itself from all teloi.
The Complications of Will
The ambiguities of Bataille’s notion of sovereignty, a type of power

which is powerful as long as it is willing to let itself go, help us to understand
better the usually misunderstood notion of will to power. We have seen, above,
Nietzsche’s aversion to the bourgeois idolisation of preservation, which he
considers to be not a natural characteristic of human and non-human animals
but rather the pernicious effect of culture. In reality, as he notes,
“physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-
preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living
thing wants to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power …”33 This
power comes to refer to a notorious series of “appropriation, injuring,
overpowering, oppressing, imposing, exploiting …”34 Even if the kind of
power for which Nietzsche speaks here is what interpreters call
“metaphysical,”35 one cannot help but observe that even within the
metaphysical model, someone, or rather something (a force), is to oppress and
something else is to be oppressed. However necessary Nietzsche thinks that
that is for life, it is certainly not particularly pleasant, not only for the one
which gets oppressed but also for the one which oppresses.36 The stultifying
effect of power does not only affect political actors37 but also forces, which, by
overpowering other forces and exterminating opposition, ‘unwittingly’ come
to remove the reason of their existence as forces within the greater game of
power in which they are implicated.38 Despite power’s notoriety, and
Nietzsche’s own inflamed rhetoric, in what follows I would like to argue that
Nietzsche had experimented throughout his career with the possibility not
only of setting limits to power but also with the prospect of abolishing it
altogether, not because of caprice or weakness, but because it is in the very
32 Ibid.
33 BGE: 13.
34 Ibid., 259.
35 Metaphysical power denotes the ‘being’ of the world, what the world ultimately is.
36 In TI: “What the Germans Lack,” 1. Nietzsche had observed that “power stultifies [die
Macht verdummt].”
37 The TI quote refers to political power, particularly the tendency of Germans to
dominate, which, as Nietzsche believes, is what ultimately makes them stupid (verdummt).
38 In the most characteristic of the passages supporting the metaphysical interpretation
of the will to power, Nietzsche describes power as “a play of forces [Spiel von Kräften] and waves
of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there;
a sea of forces flowing and rushing together …” WP: 1067, KSA: 11:38[12].

ISSN 1908-7330
nature of power, as I will shortly argue, to flirt with what threatens to annihilate
it.39 Nietzsche’s endeavour to restrict power takes place for reasons internal
to the dynamic of the will to power and for reasons external to it. The internal
reasons are related to the constitution of will and the constitution of power.
The external reasons are related to the two major steps in which Nietzsche
deals with power. The first step describes Nietzsche’s early struggle with the
notion of agon, the typical case of restricting power, and the second step
describes Nietzsche’s meditations on the problem of the eternal return, which
I read as Nietzsche’s attempt to deconstruct the linearity of Christian-
productive time and thus also to deconstruct the power-structures that have
produced the domesticated animal which we have been trained to call ‘man.’
Ultimately, the thought of the return is a thought concerning the possibility
of power to exist through that which perennially opposes it and is Nietzsche’s
final40 step in dealing with power.
Let me now briefly examine the internal reasons for the inevitable
powerlessness of power. Rather than expressing powerfulness, simple and
clear, the notion of the will to power is ambiguous. Its ambiguity rests
primarily in the obscurities of its constitution as will, and secondly in
Nietzsche’s own idiosyncratic definition of power. To begin with, and strictly
speaking, the very utterance of the word ‘will’ is only a sign of the human
need to falsify the world by simplifying it, which means by reducing it to the
categories of the one and the many, which, however helpful they are for
orienting humans in the world, remain nevertheless the expression of
prejudices exacerbated by the help of popularising philosophers like
Schopenhauer.41 There is nothing simple or unified in the ‘will:’ “will” is
“complicated.”42 Nietzsche believed that the notion of unity [Einheit] is only
something fictional that humans derive from their own psychic experience.
In reality, unities are multiplicities structured around hierarchical principles
and finding themselves in dynamic antagonism. Interestingly, in his own
copy of Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus (1866), Nietzsche had found and
marked the following passage from Goethe: “Every living thing, is not a
single thing, but a plurality; even insofar as it appears to us as an individual,
39 Any other conception of power, e.g. as an annihilating force, belongs to either a Nazi-
influenced reading (present on Heidegger’s ‘Nietzsche’ but gradually fading away on his later
“What is called Thinking?”) or to popular selective readings of Nietzsche’s vast oeuvre.
40 The eternal return is the final step of Nietzsche’s meditations on power both
chronologically but also, most importantly, in terms of quality and finesse.

41 On the subject of falsification see Peter Bornedal, The Surface and the Abyss: Nietzsche
as Philosopher of Mind and Knowledge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 195-196.

42 BGE: 19. In reality ‘will’ does not even exist (as a unity). In WP: 488, KSA: 12: 9[98]
Nietzsche declares that: “Aber es giebt keinen Willen.” Also: “There is no will: there are treaty drafts
of will that are constantly increasing or losing their power.” WP: 715, KSA: 13: 11[73].

ISSN 1908-7330
it still remains a collection of living independent beings.”43 That we need

unities is not an argument for the existence of such unities, it is only a
testament to the various failures of our psychic apparatus. In a revealing
Nachlass note, Nietzsche states: “We need ‘unities’ in order to be able to
reckon: that does not mean we must suppose that such unities exist. We have
borrowed the concept of unity from our ‘ego’ concept—our oldest article of
faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unities, we would never have formed
the concept ‘thing.’ Now, somewhat late, we are firmly convinced that our
conception of the ego does not guarantee any actual unity.”44 Willing is
“something unified only in a word”45 while in reality it describes a battlefield
of forces which command and forces which obey, in eternity. This willing, at
once one and many, is the outcome of the “synthetic concept of the ‘I,’”46
what, only out of habit, we call ‘I,’ ‘subject,’ ‘ego,’ or soul, all grammatical
unities utilised though to express eine tausendfache Complexität.47 Nietzsche
recognises the stalemate to which language drives him. For lack of a better
word, he speaks of a something [Etwas] which expresses “the center of [a]
system constantly shifting.”48 The will of the will to power, then, rather than
articulating the determination of the one, expresses a unity only as
organisation49 of the opposing forces which seek to express themselves within
the system of powers which we call body [Leib] and resembles a society in
that it is constructed by many “souls,”50 which is to say by many unified
multiplicities manifesting their oneness only in the popularised superficiality
of the grammatical level.
We have seen that the ‘will’ that wills power is anything but
determinate. And yet will is still directed toward something (Macht). The fact
of the directionality of the will should not be confused with some kind of
authoritarian determinedness in the heart of the will. The will is directed
toward something, because everything is directed toward something, in the
sense of moving,51 without implying that movement ever reaches a final
43 Albert Frederick Lange, The History of Materialism, Vol. III, trans. by E.C.T. Paul
Kegan (Trench: Trübner & Co Ltd., 1925), 38. The information about Nietzsche’s marking of the
Goethe passage is provided by Gregory Moore, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 35.
44 WP: 635, KSA: 13:14[79].
45 BGE: 19.
46 Ibid.
47 KSA: 13, 14[145].
48 WP: 488, KSA: 12:9[98].
49 WP: 561, KSA: 12:2[87].
50 BGE: 19. Nietzsche refers here to the notion of the cell-state.
51 “We cannot imagine becoming other than as the transition from one persisting ‘dead’
state to another persisting ‘dead’ state.” KSA: 9, 11[150], trans. by Robin Small in Robin Small,
Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought (London: Continuum, 2010), 4.

ISSN 1908-7330
state.52 Yet the will is not moving toward any direction but specifically toward
Macht. Why is that? I would like to argue that the will moves toward what
mostly resembles it and that is Nietzsche’s own version of power. Will and
power are related by their internal structure, which is none other than that of
ambiguity. On the one hand, will is certainly the will to overpower
something, even when simultaneously will also ‘knows’ that it cannot
overpower the opposing force since that would bring the ‘game of forces’ to
an unforeseen end. The flux of forces is eternal and will remain so. On the
other hand, will is internally related to Macht, because there it sees the mirror
image of itself. It is attracted by what is ambiguous, as will itself is.
Power Bound
The question of power53 is certainly one of the most important

subjects in Nietzsche's bibliography. Here I am not interested in examining
power as a psychological motivator or as a political principle, but solely in
shedding light to some aspects of the internal dynamic of power (or the
ontology of power), specifically those which will support my claim for the
ultimate powerfulness of power. There is no question that power refers to a
force of appropriation and overcoming, otherwise Nietzsche would not use
the very word “power.” However, Nietzsche makes a distinction which goes
usually unnoticed, that between Kraft and Macht. Kraft is essentially a leftover
of the “mechanistic view of the world,”54 itself an anthropomorphisation of
nature whereby we assign relations of causes and effects to the world in order
to comprehend it.55 Kraft is supposed to express a “primitive energy”56 which
originally creates and sustains nature through relations of regularity and
necessity. However, these relations simply do not exist. The only things that
exist are relations of power that behave irregularly, unpredictably, and in an
undisciplined manner. This ‘power-will’ is not, rather it ‘radiates’ [diese
Strahlung von Machtwillen] through the whole of being [das ganze Sein], and as
52 “If the motion of the world aimed at a final state, that state would have been reached.
The sole fundamental fact, however, is that it does not aim at a final state …” WP: 708, KSA: 13:
11[72].
53 We owe much of our understanding of power to the tireless efforts of Jacob Golomb.
See: Jacob Golomb, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power (Ames: Iowa State University Press,
1989), see also Jacob Golomb, “How to De-Nazify Nietzsche’s Philosophical Anthropology,” in
Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? ed. by Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich (Princeton and
Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 19-46, and Jacob Golomb, “Will to Power: Does it Lead
to the ‘Coldest of All Cold Monsters’?” in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, ed. Ken Gemes and
John Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 525-550.
54 WP: 618, KSA: 11, 36[34].
55 WP: 624, KSA: 12:7[56].
56 Golomb, “Will to Power: Does it Lead to the ‘Coldest of All Cold Monsters’?”, 527.

ISSN 1908-7330
radiation eventually escapes the ‘mechanistic order’ which cannot capture

it.57
Because the world does not behave in a mechanical and regular way,
Kraft is an inappropriate concept to describe the relations permeating nature.
“The victorious concept ‘force’ [Kraft], by means of which our physicists have
created God and the world, still needs to be completed: an inner will must be
ascribed to it, which I designate as ‘will to power,’ i.e. as an insatiable desire
to manifest power [Macht] …”58 This ‘will to power,’ which expresses “the
degree of resistance and the degree of superior power,”59 is what is left over
after we have extracted from the world our successive layers of
anthropomorphisms.
If we eliminate these additions [number, thing, activity,

motion], no things remain but only dynamic quanta, in
a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta: their
essence lies in their relation to all other quanta, in their
‘effect’ upon the same. The will to power not a being, not
a becoming but a pathos—the most elemental fact from
which a becoming and effecting emerge. 60
Nietzsche believes, then, that being or becoming can be grounded in

something elemental, which, however, is not a being. The etymological
richness of the word pathos does not help to clarify its relation to power. Is
power a quality of things, or perhaps an unfortunate accident? Is power a
sensation or a calamity and a defeat?61 Certainly Nietzsche seems to prioritise
the elemental character of pathos, yet as a distinguished classical philologist
and passionate anti-Christian could not remain oblivious to the strong
connotations of ‘internal suffering’ that befalls the mind, nor to the later
Christianised long history of explicating pathoi as the evil and lustful wishes
of the soul that have to be eradicated.62
If power suffers, then, it is because power is, and never was, too sure
of itself. My argument concerning power is that it is unstable from the very
moment of its constitution as power, because the forces which constitute it are
in a constant antagonism with each other, which does not allow for one force
to overpower the other. The agon in power is eternal. But before explaining
57 KSA: 13: 14[79].

58 WP: 619, KSA: 11:36[31].
59 WP: 634, KSA: 13:14[79].
60 WP: 635, KSA: 13:14[79].
61 Some of the meaning of pathos in George Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-
English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1285. See also Γιώργος Μπαμπινιώτης,
Ετυμολογικό Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας (Αθήνα: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, 2010), 1019.
62 See Romans 1:26, Colossians 3:5.1, Thessalonians 4:5.

ISSN 1908-7330
the hydraulics of power, let us take a step back toward describing the
sublimating character of power in relation to force. In one of the most
interesting passages on the problem of power, Nietzsche notes:
We are still on our knees before strength [Kraft] after the

ancient custom of slaves – and yet when the degree of
worthiness to be revered is fixed, only the degree of
rationality in strength is decisive: we must access to what
extent precisely strength has been overcome by
something higher, in the service of which it now stands
as means and instrument!
He concludes the aphorism by noting that the characteristic of the

“great human being” is his “victory over strength.”63 The aphorism makes
clear that the distinctive mark of the human, over its pre-human, animalistic
past, is its capacity to sublate the physicality of force by transfiguring it into
something higher, namely power. Force is appropriate to slaves because it is
something simple, it is only a matter of ‘mechanics,’ whereas power, like will,
is complicated.
The complicated character of power arises from its agonistic
constitution. In an illuminating Nachlass note, Nietzsche gives his most
precise definition of power: “The will to power can manifest itself only
against resistances [Widerständen]; therefore, it seeks that which resists it.”64
We have to be clear on how we interpret this crucial passage. Nietzsche says
that the precondition for the very existence of power is resistance. Resistance
is what generates power. Power only exists because, and for as long as, there
is resistance. This makes clear that power does not and cannot stand alone
but needs another in order to constitute it as power. Not just any other, but
another which actively opposes it. Resistance and power are the two poles
that constitute the thing Nietzsche calls Macht. In a similar fashion, in Ecce
Homo (1908), where Nietzsche explicates the rules under which one is to
launch and conduct war, he notes: “The strength of an attacker can in a way
be gauged by the opposition he requires; all growth makes itself manifest by
searching out a more powerful opponent.”65 Equally, in a Nachlass note from
Spring 1888, he writes: “A quantum of power is designated by the effect it
produces and that which it resists. The adiaphorous state is missing …”66
63 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 548. Hereafter cited as D.

64 WP: 656, KSA: 12:9[151]
65 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, “Why Am I So Wise?” in Ecce Homo, trans. by Duncan
Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7. Hereafter cited as EH.

66 WP: 634, KSA: 13: 14[79].

ISSN 1908-7330
Power is dynamic since it always strives for more, for a maximum feeling of
power,67 and is structurally relational. Ciano Aydin stresses the following:
Nietzsche’s principle of the will to power implies that

relation is not an additional element of things but, rather,
something that constitutes in a fundamental way what a
thing is. In other words, there are no first things, which
then have relations with each other; rather, things are
what they are by virtue of their relations.68
The structural relationality of what Aydin calls the ‘thing’, or the

nature of reality, produces a dynamic relation of power(s) and resistance(s)
which motivates a process where powers, or the drives which constitute
power (whose intrinsic characteristic is growth), always “lust for more”69
through their unbreakable relation. John Richardson has developed the
interesting line of reasoning whereby drives, through their striving toward
the maximisation of their potency, always aim to achieve some state of power.
Yet this state is never actually reached since this would signpost the coming
of what Nietzsche has called a state of adiaphoria. If the overcoming of
resistances is the principal characteristic of the will to power, then the
overcoming of drives brings about a non-state of perennial overcoming, and
that will mean that it brings about the overcoming of power itself.70 As
Richardson notes, “To be a will to power, it must already want something
other than power.”71 Due to its internal constitution, as an agonistic
interrelation of forces which always strive to rule, will to power brings about
its self-overcoming and becomes indeed something other than power, which
is to say it becomes what it already was: overcoming. Nietzsche, then,
through his building of a paradoxical core-inhabiting power, subverts the
traditional understanding of power as achievement, possession, control, or
capacity, and turns it on its head. The controlling or possessive power is the
power which will eventually overcome control or possession and will become
potentiality instead of actuality. Thus, the will to power signifies not the will
to this or that end, but rather the will to an end which overcomes itself, to a
passage through which the will to power will continue to grow as potentiality.
To put it briefly, Nietzschean power is not there to win anything, but to lose
itself, as actuality; and through that act of profound losing, to gain itself as
67 KSA: 13: 14[82].

68 Ciano Aydin, “Nietzsche on Reality as Will to Power: Toward an ‘Organization–
Struggle’ Model,” in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 33 (2007), 26.
69 WP: 481, KSA: 12: 7[60].
70 John Richardson, Nietzsche’s System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 22-23.
71 Ibid., 23.

ISSN 1908-7330
potentiality. This is why Nietzsche prescribes to his readers to exercise the

principle of ‘great suffering,’ which is great insofar as it does not consume
itself into masochistic self-flagellation for the benefit of a narcissistic
occupation with the self.72 Great suffering, as the practice of great losing,
becomes the precondition for the enhancement of the whole human species.
Paradoxically, Nietzsche seems to suggest, the greatest exercise of power is
for the power to be incorporated,73 because by this act of incorporation it
comes to be transformed into something greater and stronger than it was.
Eternal Return or Sovereignty in Ruins
Notoriously, there are as many interpretations of Nietzsche’s

infamous thought concerning eternal return as there are readers of
Nietzsche’s oeuvre, perhaps even more. Here I am interested in clarifying
solely the following aspect of the thought of the return. I wish to argue that
this thought is a thought that continuous and completes Nietzsche’s
meditations on power. I have shown before that Nietzsche promoted a power
which becomes sovereign only after its acceptance of the inevitability of its
powerlessness. In a similar fashion, I wish to argue that Nietzsche believes
that in order to liberate time from the bonds of linearity74 time has to embrace
loss and unproduction. That can be done only by liberating time from the
bonds of the past, from the demands and the awards of the future, and from
a present that is only insofar as it serves something other than the sovereignty
of its moment, of the moment. Circular non-nihilistic time is a time directed
toward life: not life as a project to be completed in some ideal future time and
under certain prescriptions and demands, but rather life as the glorious
manifestation of the primordiality of the forces which constitute its eternal
flux. Eternal return is an experiment in a time which loses itself, loses the
projects of everydayness and the various authoritarianisms of social
structures aiming solely in a life concentrating in accumulation and
production.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) opens with Zarathustra’s remarkable
statement concerning the necessity of his going under [Ich muss …
72 “… for your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you, but immeasurably high
above you, or at least above that which you usually take yourself to be.” Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Untimely Meditations, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1. Hereafter cited as UM.
73 BGE: 259.
74 Linearity is guilty, since it has produced the docile human type depicted in GM, a
human type which is enslaved into a logic of production and future awards in the name of which
the present loses all its value. Ultimately, the thought of the return is the attempt to eternalise
the moment, to value the moment, against the eternal transitoriness of valueless moments.

ISSN 1908-7330
untergehen].75 Untergehen is a verb describing not only a descent (toward

something), but also destruction. In that sense, Ich muss … untergehen means:
“I must destroy [myself]” or “I must perish.” Commentators76 are right in
underlining the importance of Zarathustra’s descent as the antipode to
Platonic/ Christian culture which ascends toward [divine] light (or turns
toward light, as in Plato’s parable of the cave) in its attempt to approach the
transcendent truth. Zarathustra the teacher follows a different path. Instead
of ascending, and leaving behind what he finds unworthy of the
contemplation of the divine logos, he descends and takes with him
(incorporates) everything that has been neglected by the Platonic/ Christian
culture: the data of experience, the experience of the body, senses, etc. All of
the above is certainly true. However, one must not lose sight of Zarathustra’s
literal use of untergehen. Zarathustra really has to perish, really has to destroy
himself, really has to beat himself to the ground, so to speak, if he is to be
worthy of his vocation as the teacher of the one who goes over, the
Overhuman.77 This literal use of untergehen is reinforced further in the text,
when Zarathustra makes an even more remarkable calling to one’s self-
destruction: “I love those who do not know how to live except by going under
[als Untergehende], for they are those who go over and across.”78 Here
Zarathustra makes a rather powerful claim: he tells us that, unfortunately,
and despite the plethora of self-help literature, ultimately there does not exist
a guidebook in life, something that can guide us around this mystery of our
lives. But Zarathustra further suggests that he will give all his love only to
those who will live by destroying themselves. To be able to live beyond life,
beyond the burden of self-preservation, is to want to perish. Ultimately the
sovereign, the Overhuman, is going to be the human willing to abandon
himself so that he can find himself.79 This is what characterises the
75 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, “Prologue” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by Graham
Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1. Hereafter cited as TSZ.

76 Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 16. See also Stanley Rosen, The Mask of
Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 28.
77 Burnham & Jesinghausen successfully spot this literal and yet neglected use of
untergehen. Douglas Burnham and Martin Jesinghausen, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 16.
78 TSZ: Prologue, 4.
79 Here the idea of self-sacrifice is prevalent. The Christian-sounding formulation of the
sentence is indeed provocative and urges us to clarify the kind of sacrifice Nietzsche speaks
about. Does Nietzsche rightly sound ‘too Christian’ with his idolisation of self-sacrifice, or does
he speak for something other than what a Christian will understand? In her outstanding essay
“Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra” Vanessa Lemm attempts to provide an answer
to the above-mentioned problem. Lemm maintains that the practice of gift-giving in Zarathustra
is to be differentiated from that of charity and alms, since while the former promotes the distance
between the one and the other, acknowledging thus the “other’s irreducible singularity,” the
latter promotes “a hierarchical relationship of domination which not only reinforces dependency

ISSN 1908-7330
Overhuman. He is not the power that dominates, but rather the power that
sacrifices [itself] so that he can further live as power.
In a Nachlass note from 1883, Nietzsche notes: “The absolute necessity
of a total liberation from ends: otherwise we should not be permitted to try
to sacrifice ourselves and let ourselves go. Only the innocence of becoming
gives us the greatest courage and the greatest freedom!”80 The note is interesting
for many reasons and it can be argued that it paves the way to my reading of
the thought of the return. The note’s compelling claim is the link between the
exigency of man’s disengagement from any logic of teloi and the prospect of
absolute freedom which this liberation promises. Improvement is a key
notion in Christian religion, and ascetic practices necessarily accompany a life
dedicated to self-cultivation with regard to transcendental aims. In his GM,
Nietzsche has shown how the ascetic life that the priest imposes as a value
upon the masses of the heteronomous slaves has hindered their realisation of
the immensity of the forces which constitute them and has forever sealed
them in a protective cocoon against the threat of nihilism, i.e. the threat of
having to ‘dare’ to create their own meaning of their existence. But Nietzsche
makes also another, perhaps more audacious, claim. He asserts that the
freedom one gets from the innocence of becoming is not so much a freedom
from X or Y, but rather a freedom to something very specific, namely self-
sacrifice.81 He insists that the alternative vision to the current Western model
of living life according to a project is the utter disassociation of human
existence from the bounds of existence itself. Nietzsche’s abhorrence of a life
of mere survival is well-known, but on this note he calls for something more.
Man is not to be the animal fighting for his ‘right’ to existence (to be is a
privilege anyway); as long as he does that he dedicates his life to something
and injustice but also stirs feelings of resentment and revenge.” Lemm further argues that the
crucial difference between Nietzschean and Christian sacrifice is the selflessness/ egoism
dichotomy. Christian sacrifice is only superficially selfless. In reality, it is the result of an
impoverished will. The ‘love for one’s neighbour’ only shows an absence of a self and someone
who cannot ‘stand himself.’ Love for the neighbour is a compensation for the absence of the love
to one’s self. It is an attempt to “compensate for one’s own interior emptiness.” On the contrary,
the Nietzschean squanderer’s self-sacrifice is an expression of an ‘overflowing of the self;’ the
squanderer gives (he gives himself not objects) because he is too ‘full of him,’ he is too much and
thus he has to give away. Lemm notes that “Nietzsche compares the overflowing of the self …
to the natural movement of a river overflowing its banks. Both movements are ‘involuntary
(unfreiwillig):’ they illustrate the idea that gift-giving is not an act which can be traced back to an
intentional subject, a conscious decision, or a willful act. Gift-giving occurs inevitably, fatefully,
involuntary. The giver of gifts gives him- or herself over to the other not because they are free to
give, but because he or she is not free not to give.” See Vanessa Lemm, “Justice and Gift-Giving
in Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, ed. by James
Luchte (London: Continuum, 2008), 165-181.
80 WP: 787. KSA: 10:8[19].
81 TSZ: On Bestowing Virtue.

ISSN 1908-7330
petty, i.e. to himself. Man is the animal who is ready, at all times, to let himself
go, to sacrifice himself.
We have seen above how Zarathustra’s inaugural speech conveys the
ambivalence of a movement that has to be a going under so that it can
eventually be also a going over. Transitions and movements of this sort are
prevalent throughout TSZ and they reach their peak at every mention of the
thought of ‘the return.’ The chapter “The Convalescent” is one of those
characteristic moments of Nietzschean dialectics where opposites meet only
to be melted into a whole which is going to move the narrative forward. The
chapter is concerned with the fate of the lowest, of that which does not
deserve existence since all it can do is to accuse and debase it. Zarathustra is
horrified at the idea that he may himself have to be what he loathes most: an
accuser of humanity. Why does Zarathustra even dare to contemplate such a
defeatist thought? How could he, the eulogist of all joy that comes from
attending to the needs of the earth and of those who live according to nature’s
(chaotic) demands, turn against his own mission? Yet Zarathustra confesses
to his animals, life’s enigmatic teaching: “Ah, my animals, this alone have I
learned so far, that for the human, its most evil is necessary for its best” and
that the human “must become better and more evil.”82 The West has advanced
so far by a process of exclusion, which was originally based on the Platonic
teaching concerning the contemplation of the Forms. Nietzsche wishes to
overturn the Platonic/ Christian model of exclusion by advancing an
interpretation of the human which is based on incorporation. The new type
of the human advanced by Nietzsche is not going to exclude the other but
incorporate it; that is the meaning of Zarathustra’s advice to become more
evil. We have to welcome what until now has been deemed unworthy, evil,
inferior; only by this process of incorporation eventually we are going to learn;
the rest is cowardice, in the most Kantian sense. Naturally, the process is not
going to be easy. In a note from 1887 Nietzsche observes: “The time has come
when we have to pay for having been Christians for two thousand years.”83
The thought of incorporation is difficult to swallow even for Zarathustra. He
literally chokes at the idea of a “great loathing for the human.” And yet he
has to accept the greatest of all thoughts, that the love of his fate and the
eternal return of all things demands also the return of the most despicable, of
the most nauseating form of human animal, the return of the lowest: the last
human, the complacent bourgeois, the Christian, the socialist, the democrat,
the cultural philistine. “Ah, disgust! disgust! disgust!” cries Zarathustra at the
realisation of the necessity of the eternal return of the smallest human being.84
82 TSZ: The Convalescent.

83 WP: 30. KSA: 13:11[148].
84 TSZ: The Convalescent.

ISSN 1908-7330
To be sure, Zarathustra does not endorse the return of something

changed, but the return of the same conditions that bring about life as a
possibility of growth and incorporation. A few lines further, Zarathustra
insists that he will eternally return to “this self-same life [zu diesem gleichen
und selbigen Leben] … not to a new life or a better life or a similar life.”85 Is this
equivalent with the return of the identical?86 Nietzsche clearly believes that
the life which returns is the same as the life already lived. Yet his rhetoric gets
ahead of him, since it promotes something qualitatively different to what
even Nietzsche believes that he endorses. The typical example is “The
Drunken Song” from the fourth part of TSZ. There Zarathustra praises Joy,
for it wants all eternity. A life of joy seeks to incorporate in it everything that
up to now has been left outside the corpus of ‘approved’ life for the humans.
Joy wants all that life has to offer, beyond judgments and exclusions. Indeed,
“so rich is joy that she thirsts for woe, for Hell, for hate, for disgrace, for the
cripple, for world … You superior humans, it is for you that she yearns, this
85 Ibid.
86 The matter concerning the return of the same as identical is famously much
discussed by Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze argued that the eternal return does not refer to a return of
identical events, but rather on the event of the return itself. What returns in the return is not
‘facts’ but the very act of returning, which returns as eternally differing since being and becoming
are intertwined: “That everything returns is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to
a world of being …” That Deleuze heavily relied on mistaken French translations for his
undoubtedly original exposition of the return is now well-known. (For more on this issue see:
Paolo D’Iorio, “Nietzsche et l’éternel retour. Genèse et interprétation”, in Nietzsche. Cahiers de
l’Herne (Paris : L’Herne, 2000), 361-389. For an English: translation, see Paolo D'Iorio, “The
Eternal Return: Genesis and Interpretation,” trans. by Frank Chouraqui, in Nietzsche Circle: A
Philosophical Community (April 2011), <http://www.nietzschecircle.com/Pdf
/Diorio_Chouraqui-FINAL_APRIL_2011.pdf>, 4 April 2016. However, this does not minimize his
contribution to efforts to provide Nietzsche with a way out of the deadlock that his apparent
insistence on the sameness of the same in which returns had trapped him. Deleuze was certainly
right in insisting that a type of identical sameness would remove from Nietzsche his right to an
educational philosophy of overcomings, which is something that we still ought to safeguard
today. But Deleuze makes also another, rather problematic, move in two steps. First, he invents
a dichotomy that is highly unlikely to ever have existed in Nietzsche’s work, that between active
and reactive forces, and in a second step he understands what he calls ‘reactive forces’ as
essentially nihilistic . This requires him to deny the eternal return of ‘the reactive’ as inconsistent
and contradictory to Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy. On the first step: “Neither the word
nor the concept of ‘reactive forces’ ever appears in Nietzsche’s philosophy.” See D’Iorio,
“Nietzsche et l’éternel retour. Genèse et interprétation.” Cf. Marco Brusotti, “Die
'Selbstverkleinerung des Menschen' in der Moderne : Studie zu Nietzsches 'Zur Genealogie der
Moral,” in Nietzsche-Studien, 21 (1992), 83, 102-103; Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1962
ed., trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (London: Continuum, 1986), 46-47 passim. To be sure Nietzsche
does speak for reactive affects or reactive men, as in GM: II, 11, but this has nothing to do with
the concept of a reactive force. Rather than reactive [Kraft] Nietzsche utilizes the concept of
resistance [Wiederstehen] in order to express the antithetical and yet interrelated life of the Macht,
as in KSA: 13: 14[79] and 12: 9[151]. On the second step, see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 64-
65.

ISSN 1908-7330
joy, intractable, blissful for your woe, you that have failed! For failures does
all eternal joy yearn.”87 The passage raises many problems in relation to the
thought of the return. What does it precisely mean that joy seeks the return of
hate? It possibly means that joy, which wishes the return of all things, wishes
also the incorporation of such a fundamental source of human knowledge as
hate. According to Nietzsche’s agonistic model of life (power), one (one
person, one culture) is the locus of antithetical forces fighting for victory. The
‘victory’ of a force is the recognition of the power of the other force. Joy, then,
would not be a joy at all if it didn’t seek the other which completes it. It needs
the other the same way the master in Hegel’s Phenomenology needs the slave
in order to recognise him. However, Nietzsche goes one step further. Joy also
needs Hell [Hölle]! Is the mention of hell made in order to exaggerate the
conditions of resistance that joy needs in order to express itself, or as a
premonition of the Christian condemnation that awaits this overfull joy
which seeks all eternity? What does it mean precisely to suggest that, through
the thought of the return, humanity should wish also the return of hell? Does
it mean that humanity should seek the return of the conditions that will bring
her [humanity] down?
The next line further complicates the matter. Zarathustra, turning to
the ‘superior humans’ (those who pave the way to the Overhuman but who
are not yet Overhumans themselves), warns them that “it is for you that she
yearns this joy … for your woe, you that have failed! For failures does all
eternal joy yearns.”88 What does it precisely mean to say that joy, which wants
all eternity, seeks also the eternal return of failures? According to the
agonistic model of power, a force, as long as it resists, can maintain itself both
in life and in the agon. But what about failures? What about those who have
simply failed to maintain themselves in the agon? Do they disappear? Here
Nietzsche seems to suggest that even the most nauseating element in life will
return also, because the joy of life, the willingness to incorporate the whole
range of human experience, is so great that joy will not exclude anything.
Nietzsche is on thin ice here. On the one hand he has repeatedly asserted the
return to this ‘self-same’ life which is not going to be either ‘new’ or ‘similar,’
and on the other hand he declares the return of failures as if what has failed
is not going to change the kind of life that one lives! To seek the return of all
woe and all hell is not simply to seek the return of conditions of resistance as
the agonistic model of power would demand; it is to actively seek that which
can potentially fundamentally upset the very conditions of life as an agonistic
relation of powers. It is not the case that the return wishes the return of an
opposite. The return here seeks that which will perhaps challenge the very
87 TSZ: The Drunken Song.

88Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
conditions of the return itself. Otherwise a ‘hell’ is not hell, but something
simply unpleasant.
As we have seen above89 Nietzsche believes that the will to preserve
something signifies a weak nature, it is a sign of a declining life that resists
the possibility of coming in contact with what can fundamentally challenge
it. Nietzsche seems to suggest that a life that is too full of itself should not be
afraid to prepare or even to welcome the conditions of its self-annihilation.
The chapter “The Drunken Song” is Heraclitean in the most precise fashion,
because it upsets every rule of logic;90 and yet it wants its central suggestion
to be taken seriously: that joy, a life beyond the exclusions of the Western/
Christian paradigm, is not afraid to seek its own failure as well.
But the above cannot be a declaration of pessimism and a testimony
of defeat. If it were that, then Silenus would have had to be right after all, and
man’s short sojourn upon the earth would be in vain. On another occasion,
Nietzsche has warned all those who tend to spend themselves extravagantly
(the ‘higher types’) that they should learn to conserve themselves, since this
is the “greatest test of independence.”91 To say that one has to be ready to
wish failure is not the same as saying that one has to wish the eternal return
of the conditions of failure. The former is getting ready to accept defeat while
the latter wishes to incorporate the whole of life back to the cultural paradigm
of the present. But Nietzsche is also telling us something else: that the wish
of the return of the conditions of failure brings back the issue of the agonistic
relation not only to one’s own self but also to one’s contemporaries.
Ultimately one has to conserve himself against the fashions and the
clamouring crowds of his times so that he can be ready to throw himself
toward the right sort of agon. To be sure, there are competitions of all kinds,
and then there are agons. Competitions are what the Roman crowds in the
Colosseum (and their contemporary equivalents in public arenas) craved: in
some cases, an exhibition of sheer power, in other cases, exhibitions of (so-
called) beauty, possessiveness of things, etc. The end of competition is the
annihilation of the other. In agonistic contests, on the other hand, the aim is
the consolidation of the power of the one through the consolidation of the
power of the other. There is a dialectic of forces at work here aiming again at
an eternal overcoming, not at a final stage of closure. “And all the people
laughed at Zarathustra.”92 Zarathustra comes to learn to conserve himself and
89 See footnotes 23, 24.

90 See this typical Heraclitean formulation: “Pain is also joy, curse is also a blessing,
night is also a sun –be gone! or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool.” TSZ: The Drunken Song,
10. Famously Aristotle himself had accused Heraclitus for violating the law of contradiction.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Vol. II., trans. by
W.D. Ross (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), Γ 1005, b 17-20.
91 BGE: 41.
92 TSZ: Zarathustra’s Prologue, 3.

ISSN 1908-7330
not be wasted in pointless competitions. The crowds will never be ready to

hear his message. He has thus to conserve himself for those who are ready (if
any is), he has to prepare himself for the right sort of agons, for worthy
opponents,93 whose opposition to him will ultimately honour him.
Conclusion
Zarathustra comes to the people with the sole purpose of presenting

them with the gift of the possible arrival of that which will overcome the
human without though leaving behind the human. Among the characteristics
of this human of the future is its fundamental disregard for the preservation
of its type. In order to go over the human of the future has first to go under, and
this is where his overcoming lies. “I love him whose soul squanders itself,
who wants no thanks and does not give back again: for he always bestows
and would not preserve himself.”94 The Overhuman is a sovereign, but a
sovereign without dominion. He has urged his disciples to abandon him 95
and he keeps nothing to himself: “I, a squanderer with a thousand hands …96
He knows that his sovereignty is his failure to persevere. He is not of the kind
which endures. It is because higher types are concentrations of extreme
contradictory forces that are pulling the centre apart that they are not meant
to last.97
In this paper I have argued that Nietzsche, and his disciple Bataille,
embrace an understanding of power that temporarily establishes itself
through its willingness to ‘let itself go.’ Bataille develops his notion of
sovereignty based on the Hegelian suggestion of a life that counts only to the
extent that is willing to dissociate itself from the bounds of biological
preservation. Bataille further suggests that it is because the cosmos is fully
charged with excessive energy and lacks nothing that humans and their
societies can exist in a state of permanent consumption, something that
naturally upsets the laws of political economy and the current global spread
of capitalist/ accumulative logic. I have argued that this move by Bataille was
anticipated by Nietzsche. Rather than a type of power which imposes and
dominates, Nietzschean power serves only the sovereignty of a moment
which escapes the utilitarian calculations of the present. Inevitably, this
power belongs wholly to the future; it belongs to “the Zarathustra-realm of a
93 EH: Why I Am So Wise, 7.

94 TSZ: Zarathustra’s Prologue, 4.
95 TSZ: On the Bestowing Virtue, 3.
96 TSZ: The Honey Offering.
97 WP: 684, KSA: 13:14[133], see also TSZ: On the Superior Human, 15.

ISSN 1908-7330
thousand years.”98 In contrast, the present belongs to the rabble,99 which

understands sovereignty and power solely in the context of wins and losses,
of ‘stuff’ which one accumulates as one marches forward. Bataille, with his
development of the idea of excessive energy, and Nietzsche, with his idea of
the eternal return, have both resisted the teleological, and for both of them
also moralistic, structure of history in favour of a perennially self-consuming
and self-generating model that originates itself in the primordial battle of
forces constituting the agon. Through my analysis of Bataille’s and
Nietzsche’s views I have shown that the type of power they are
contemplating opposes the type which was cultivated by the Western
historical paradigm. Bataille’s sovereignty and Nietzschean power demand
the cultivation of conditions of resistance 100 and thus render themselves
ambiguous, complicated, and multifarious.
English and Creative Writing Department,

Staffordshire University, United Kingdom
References
Antunes, Lobo Antonio, The Land at the End of the World, trans. by Margaret
Jull Costa (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011).
Aristotle, Metaphysics, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes,
Vol. II., trans. by W.D. Ross (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984).
Aydin, Ciano, “Nietzsche on Reality as Will to Power: Toward an
‘Organization–Struggle’ Model,” in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 33
(2007).
Μπαμπινιώτης, Γιώργος, Ετυμολογικό Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής
Γλώσσας (Αθήνα: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας, 2010).
Bataille, Georges, “Hegel, Mankind and History,” in Georges Bataille Essential
Writings, ed. & trans. by Michael Richardson (London: Sage
___________, Inner Experience, trans. by Stuart Kendall (Albany: SUNY Press,
2014).
___________, The Accursed Share, Vol. I-III, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Zone Books, 1989).
Bornedal, Peter, The Surface and the Abyss: Nietzsche as Philosopher of Mind and
Knowledge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010).
98 TSZ: The Honey Offering.

99 TSZ: The Sorcerer, 2.
100 WP: 704, KSA: 13:11[111].

ISSN 1908-7330
Brusotti, Marco, “Die 'Selbstverkleinerung des Menschen' in der Moderne.

Studie zu Nietzsches 'Zur Genealogie der Moral,’” in Nietzsche-
Studien, 21 (1992).
Burnham, D. and Jesinghausen, M., Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).
Deleuze, Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (London:
Continuum, 1986).
D’Iorio, Paolo, “Nietzsche et l’éternel retour. Genèse et interprétation”, in
Nietzsche. Cahiers de l’Herne (Paris: L’Herne, 2000).
Golomb, Jacob, “How to De-Nazify Nietzsche’s Philosophical
Anthropology,” in Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? ed. by Robert S.
Wistrich and Jacob Golomb (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton
___________, Nietzsche’s Enticing Psychology of Power (Ames: Iowa State
___________, “Will to Power: Does it Lead to the ‘Coldest of All Cold
Monsters’?”, in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, ed. by K. Gemes and
J. Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
Kojeve, Alexandre, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the
Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1980).
Lampert, Laurence, Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986).
Lange, Albert Frederick, The History of Materialism, Vol. III, trans. by E.C.T.
Paul Kegan (Trench: Trübner & Co Ltd., 1925).
Lemm, Vanessa, “Justice and Gift-Giving in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in
Luchte, James, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise, ed.
by James Luchte (London: Continuum, 2008).
Liddell, G. H., and Scott, R., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996).
Mauss, Marcel, The Gift, trans. by W.D. Halls (Oxon: Routledge, 1990).
Moore, Gregory, Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor (Cambridge: Cambridge
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Judith Norman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Abbreviated as
BGE.
___________, Daybreak, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997). Abbreviated as D.
___________, Ecce Homo, trans. by Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007). Abbreviated as EH.

ISSN 1908-7330
___________, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. by Maudemarie Clark and

Alan J. Swensen (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.,
1998). Abbreviated as GM.
___________, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden,
edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (München:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988). Abbreviated as KSA.
___________, The Gay Science, trans. by Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001). Abbreviated as GS.
___________, The Will to Power, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J.
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968). Abbreviated as WP.
___________, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by Graham Parkes (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005). Abbreviated as TSZ.
___________, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998). Abbreviated as TI.
___________, Untimely Meditations, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997). Abbreviated as UM.
Richardson, John, Nietzsche’s System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Rosen, Stanley, The Mask of Enlightenment – Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Small, Robin, Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought (London: Continuum,
2010).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
The Ethics of Engaged Pedagogy:

A Comparative Study
of Watsuji Tetsurô and bell hooks
Anton Luis Sevilla
Abstract: This article is a comparative study of bell hooks’s “engaged

pedagogy” with Watsuji Tetsurô’s systematic ethics. The purpose of
this comparison is twofold. The first reason is to examine the relational
view of ethics that underlies hooks’s thought in order to explore her
deliberately “un-academic” work in a philosophically rigorous way.
The second reason is to examine the fundamental connections of
Watsuji’s ethics of human existence to an education for human becoming.
This comparison will be carried out in two stages. First, I will examine
the connections of hooks and Watsuji on the level of society and
relational structures. Second, I will delve deeper into the
existential/spiritual level in the ethics/education of emptiness.
Keywords: Hooks, Watsuji, bell hooks, critical pedagogy, Buddhism
Introduction
I
n this article, I shall be exploring the “engaged pedagogy” of bell hooks
and the “ethics of emptiness” of Watsuji Tetsurô through a comparative
study of key themes that appear in their work. This serves two purposes:
The first purpose is to clarify the theoretical and philosophical grounds of
hooks’s astute but casual (and deliberately “un-academic”) critique of
contemporary educational trends, and in so doing highlight the importance
of engaged pedagogy in more scholarly domains. I think this cannot be
accomplished using a primarily individualist or universal mode of ethics (as
is common with most readings of deontology or utilitarianism) but is better
served by a relational form of ethics that stresses concrete relationships as the
site of ethical character and behavior. I think Watsuji’s ethics is particularly
well suited for this task.
Second, while clarifying hooks’s pedagogy via Watsuji, this article
© 2016 Anton Luis Sevilla

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/sevilla_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 125
also examines the fundamental connection between Watsuji’s ethics and

education—the human becoming (Jp. ningen seisei) necessary in order to realize
Watsuji’s vision for human being (Jp. ningen sonzai). This will both highlight
Watsuji’s practical applications as well as develop them further.
However, allow me to point out the practical context behind these
theoretical concerns. While this situation is likely shared by other former
colonies in Asia and the Americas, the Philippines is in the difficult position
of having a culture with both individualist as well as group-centric
(pakikisama) elements. It also has a political situation that requires the
development of both individual criticality as well as improved national
consciousness and solidarity.1 This situation is perhaps further complicated
by an overwhelming focus on the individual and the universal in
philosophical discourse, often to the neglect of intermediary elements like the
family, the ethnic group, or the state.2 Many philosophers and pedagogues
have been working to address this one-sidedness, and this article is part of
the broader project of suggesting an ethical and educational model that
accounts for and addresses both the individualist (liberal) and collective
(communitarian) aspects needed for our flourishing.
I will begin this article by introducing the two thinkers. I will then
proceed to do an analysis of their ideas. First, on the level of the structures that
govern the relationship between individuals and groups, I will examine
hooks’s view of nurturing criticality through the mutual recognition of
subjects. Then, I will compare this to Watsuji’s notion of the double-negation
of individuality and totality, and suggest points in which each system of
thought can contribute to the other. Second, I will proceed deeper to the
murkier domain of spiritual/existential depth. There, I will discuss hooks’s
idea of “engagement” as a spiritual, healing relationship. I will analyze this
through Watsuji’s view of emptiness, and what it means to share in emptiness
via culture.
The Structure of Education and Ethics
These two thinkers may seem to have very little in common, and as
far as I know there is no research connecting the two.3 But I argue that upon
1 For example, see Agustin Martin G. Rodriguez, Governing the Other: Exploring the
Discourse of Democracy in a Multiverse of Reason (Metro Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press,
2009).
2 This cultural schizophrenia is discussed in Anton Luis Sevilla, “Gaijin Philosophy
and the Problems of Universality and Culture: Conversations with Kasulis, Watsuji, and Sakai,”
Hakusan Furusato Bungakushô Dai 29 kai Akegarasu Haya Shô nyûsen ronbun (Ishikawa, Japan:
Hakusanshi kyôiku iinkai, 2013), 29-58.
3 However, I owe the connection between bell hooks and Watsuji Tetsurô to the
following, which mentions but does not develop this connection: Erin McCarthy, Ethics Embodied:

ISSN 1908-7330
126 ETHICS OF ENGAGED PEDAGOGY
closer examination, they can mutually reinforce each other in many ways.
Here, I focus on two main issues. First is the “double-negative” movement as
it occurs in the structure of education.
bell hooks’s Vision for Education
In Teaching to Transgress (1994), bell hooks begins with her experience

of racially segregated education. She grew up right during the turning point
of racial integration policies in the apartheid South (of the United States of
America), and went through her elementary and middle school years in an
all-black environment. In schools like Booker T. Washington, her experience
of education was one that was as personal as it was political. Almost all her
teachers were black women, and as members of a marginalized race, they
taught their students with a passionate sense of purpose in hopes of liberating
black America from its oppression. “We learned early that our devotion to
learning, to a life of the mind, was a counter-hegemonic act, a fundamental
way to resist every strategy of white racist colonization.”4 And in order to
teach their students in such a liberatory manner, these teachers engaged their
students: got to know the students and their families, and responded to them
on the basis of that singular recognition.
With racial integration, this engaged and liberatory sort of teaching
disappeared. Bussed to white schools, studying under mostly white teachers
and alongside white classmates, black students were exposed to a very
different notion of education. According to hooks, education became merely
about transmitting information, with no real sense of concern for, nor
cultivation of the students themselves. hooks describes this kind of education
as the “banking system of education,”5 where education is characterized by
knowledge as mere information, which is simply memorized by students and
regurgitated come examination time. She describes this education as acritical
and remarkably boring—not due to a lack of entertainment but due to the
absence of any attempt to make it connect to the inner lives of each student.
This terminology (“banking”) shows her debt to the founder of
critical pedagogy, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire,6 who opposed the
“banking system of education” because he believed it was primarily a tool for
maintaining systems of oppression. The method of lecturing to docile
Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese, and Feminist Philosophies (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2010), 97-99.
4 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York:
Routledge, 1994), 2.
5 Ibid., 5.
6 For a brief introduction to Freire, see Madonna M. Murphy, “Paulo Freire (1921-
1997),” in The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers (New Jersey:
Pearson, 2006), 383-391.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 127
students acknowledges only the subjectivity of the teachers, and thus

reinforces a sense of subservience on the part of the students. This allows
oppression to go unchecked. Against this banking method, Freire suggested
a “problem posing method,” where the teacher presents problems, which
students try to solve together with the teacher through multi-directional
communication and dialogue. Here, the object and method of learning is open
to negotiation. In this way, students learn not mere information, but
knowledge connected to their own subjectivity and their lived praxis.
hooks, who studied with, collaborated with, and critiqued Paulo
Freire,7 was deeply influenced by his theory of education. However, her
approach to critical pedagogy has a slight twist. In her version, which she
refers to as “engaged pedagogy,” there is a much stronger focus on emotional
elements of a classroom:
The first paradigm that shaped my pedagogy was the

idea that the classroom should be an exciting place,
never boring. And if boredom should prevail, then
pedagogical strategies were needed that would
intervene, alter, even disrupt the atmosphere. Neither
Freire’s work nor feminist pedagogy examined the
notion of pleasure in the classroom.8
Her books all suggest, from different angles, how to make pedagogy
more exciting, and thus more engaged—emotionally, intellectually, and even
spiritually—with students and their experiences. There are four main
elements she suggests here.9 First, an exciting class cannot be stuck to a set
agenda. Rather, it must have the flexibility to respond to the changing needs
of the class, to dwell on things as is necessary, and to even skip over other
things when they are deemed to lack a real connection with the class. This,
thus, depends on a second element, that each student be seen not merely as
an individual but as a singularity.10 Because each student has a different
context and trajectory, a class that is truly interesting must be flexible in
responding to this singularity. However, no matter how much the teacher
tries to respond to each student, if the students resist this and content
themselves with desiring “mere information,” it is impossible for the class to
7 See hooks, “Chapter 4: Paulo Freire,” in Teaching to Transgress.

8 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 7.
9 Ibid., 7-11.
10 I use “singularity” in the way used by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, in order
to indicate the individual that, while radically relational, is unique and irreplaceable, and hence
irreducible to the “individual” that is merely a unit of something universal (like reason or utility
or biological existence).

ISSN 1908-7330
be exciting. This shows a third element, that the responsibility for an exciting
class is not located merely in an individual but between individuals. This
connects to a fourth element: an exciting class must be a place of the mutual
recognition of subjects, where each person learns to value the other and to
respond as one subject to another.
Only when these four elements—flexibility, responsiveness to
singularities, mutual responsibility, and mutual recognition—are present can
a class be truly engaging. Thus, hooks’s vision for exciting education is not a
call for entertainment or “emotional labor,” but rather of authentic
intersubjective connection in a manner that mutually cultivates criticality.
Watsuji and Relational Ethics
The idea of a class that is engaging and engaged seems intuitively

appealing, but a closer look at it shows that it is rather complex, if not
confusing. What does it mean to be responsive to a student as a singularity?
What does it mean for responsibility to be shared in a pedagogic situation?
How can one have mutual recognition between singularities? These elements
can be clarified by examining the structure of human relationships in hooks’s
view of how education should be. But hooks does not directly discuss such a
structure.
In order to examine this structure, I wish to turn to Watsuji Tetsurô,
and suggest features of his ethics that might reveal the underlying structure
to the relationships hooks argues for.
1. The Dual-Structure. hooks’s vision of pedagogy demands a curious

interlinking of both individuality and totality, of criticality and solidarity.
hooks sees that students need to learn to be critical, to get beyond the
established ways of thinking of the group, and to think for themselves.
However, this does not imply that students become anti-social monads,
concerned only for themselves. Rather, she tries to create a connection
between people as creative members of society.
One of Watsuji’s insights is to point out that while both individuality
and totality are necessary for human existence, it is no simple matter putting
these two together. What does it mean to combine these two incongruous
elements, as hooks seems to do?
The relationship with the other that is now under

consideration is a negative relationship in both cases.
The essential feature characteristic of the independence
of an individual lies in rebelling against the whole, and
the essential feature characteristic of the wholeness of

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 129
the whole lies in its negating the independence of an

individual. Hence, an individual is one whose
individuality should be negated for the sake of the whole
that is to be established, and the whole is that ground
against which an individual rebels to establish itself.11
The only way one can learn to think for oneself is to be able to gain
some distance from the collective, which is why children leave home and why
ascetics move into the mountains. However, the only way to realize solidarity
is to suspend one’s individual differences, at least to a certain extent. In other
words, if one insists on speaking a language not shared by others, or if one
refuses to adjust to shared cultural or even moral codes, that is, if one insists
on one’s difference (Fil. ayaw makisama12), then solidarity becomes impossible.
How then is creative solidarity possible? For Watsuji, such a creative
solidarity is only possible through the tensional but productive relationship
of individuality and totality, where one distances oneself from society in
order to see the demands of the totality that other members might not realize,
then negating one’s separateness by trying to integrate this individual
realization with the group. This cycle between individuation and
recommitment continues infinitely as we try to dynamically realize a society
of togetherness that at the same time makes space for the individual’s creative
capacities. However, this cycle can often be difficult, and pioneers can be
ostracized and martyred in the course of trying to integrate their ideas into
the whole.13
I suggest we can understand hooks’s view of engaged pedagogy as
calling for such a “dual-negative structure,” where individuals are given
room to individuate and realize their unique perspectives, but are called to
return to challenge the whole, in an endless process of critical individuation
and creative solidarity.
However, hooks’s discussions suggest the need for a social basis of
criticality itself, which Watsuji tends to lack. During Watsuji’s time, one strong
tradition in education was to devote a long period of time adhering to set
forms (kata). It is only after having perfected the form that a student could
11 Watsuji Tetsurô, Watsuji Tetsurô’s Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan, trans. by Robert E. Carter
and Yamamoto Seisaku (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 101-102.
12 The Filipino translations show an emotional nuance that the English tends to lack.
Insisting on difference seems almost a virtue in English. But ayaw makisama means a refusal to
partake in togetherness by insisting on one’s difference. The same nuance is seen in the Japanese
phrase jibun katte.
13 For more on the idea of creative solidarity and the tension of individual and group,
see Anton Luis Sevilla, “Watsuji’s Balancing Act: Changes in His Understanding of Individuality
and Totality from 1937 to 1949,” in Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 2:1 (2014), 105-134.

ISSN 1908-7330
dare to go beyond the form.14 This made it very difficult for all except the
most established experts to individuate and try to creatively contribute to the
whole without risking social backlash and even martyrdom.
What hooks suggests is that without the support of the community
itself, most individuals will not even have the strength to turn away from
their group on their own, with the exception of a few rebels (and pioneers).
In order to create a society that allows for self-criticism and growth, we need
to be able to educate criticality (and not just hope that it appears somehow).
We need to teach the young that it is acceptable to think differently, that it is
good to criticize.
This inter-subjective education requires a much deeper sort of bond
than mere pakikisama (Jp. nakayoshi, En. getting-along). Rather, it requires a
deep connection between singularities that creates a space of trust that allows
for difference.
2. Trust and Truth. This brings us to the second point of contact

between Watsuji and hooks: trust and the truth. Part of Watsuji’s attempt to
free ethical theory from its one-sided individualism was to show how ethical
acts are not merely responses to some remote ideal (like a categorical
imperative or to an axiological system) or to one’s own utilitarian needs, but
a truthful response to the trust of a concrete other.15 However, one of
Watsuji’s innovations with this idea of trust and truthfulness was to see it as
not grounded merely in individual goodness nor in social convention, but in
the dynamic interplay of both. This is clear, for instance, when one makes
promises to another. While in general, one trusts on a social level that the
other will do what he or she promises, there are times when the circumstances
change, and doing what one promised actually harms the other party. (A
classic Greek example is when a friend lends you a weapon on the condition
that you return it when he needs it, and comes to take it back while clearly in
a fit of rage.) While many might see this as a failure of the trust relationship,
Watsuji sees this as the very unfolding of a deeper form of trust: Not “I trust
that you will do as you promised (social convention),” nor “I trust that you
will do what is right, regardless of your promises,” but “I trust that you will
bring your conscience to bear upon the very promises that bind us, that you
will respond to me both as a thou, and as part of ‘we.’”
hooks’s vision of educating criticality is, thus, a concrete expression
of this “dual-structure of trust,” where the teacher trusts that the student will
learn, but at the same time learn for him/herself in a critical manner. The
14 Japan Ministry of Education, Kokutai no Hongi: Cardinal Principles of the National Entity
of Japan, trans. by John Ownen Gauntlett, ed. by Robert King Hall (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1949), 157. Note too that Watsuji himself was involved in this publication.
15 See Watsuji, “Trust and Truth,” in Ethics in Japan, 265-282.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 131
truthful response of a student then includes both the receptive openness to

the demand to learn and the active criticality of taking that learning beyond
its given state.
3. Relational Responsibility. Furthermore, for Watsuji, truthfulness is a

response to trust, which means that without trust, truthfulness is not even
possible. This is what makes Watsuji’s ethical system radically relational. In
such a model, “good” cannot be accomplished by the good will standing
alone before the categorical imperative, nor the virtuous person realizing the
values of society. Rather, good happens “between” people, the first step
through trust and the second step through truthfulness. Watsuji gives the
concrete example of the parent-child relationship: If a child does not trust
his/her parents, the parents will not have the opportunity to raise their
children filially (Jp. kô). In the same way, if the parents do not trust that the
child has learned from his/her upbringing, the child will not have the
opportunity to mature and show filial piety (Jp. oyakôkô) to his/her parents.
Thus, filial piety is not a virtue of a child or of a parent but between parents
and children.16
In the same way, one cannot account for the virtue of “engaged
teaching” in the subjectivity of the teacher alone. No matter how much a
teacher may pour his/her heart out to the students, if they do not open up to
the teacher and allow themselves to be moved, to share in the journey offered,
then “engaged pedagogy” remains unrealized. There is no “good teacher”
without good students. In many western theories (like deontology, virtue
ethics, or even some readings of Levinas), this may seem like an abdication of
responsibility. But from the point of view of Watsuji and hooks, the insistence
that responsibility should be shouldered by an “I” faced with a “thou”
already presumes that the I-ness of the I can exist without its relationship with
the thou, and thus prematurely closes the singularity unto itself. Through the
discourse of mutual responsibility, one does not abandon one’s
responsibility, but rather recognizes its fundamentally relational character,
and the contingency and tragedy that such a relationality might entail.
The Unity of Ethics and Education
Above, we have seen how bell hooks’s engaged pedagogy can be

understood through Watsuji’s radically relational ethics, particularly in the
ideas of the dual-negative structure, trust, and truth. But at the same time, it
suggests that education is indispensable for ethics. In Watsuji’s view, ethics is
16 See Watsuji Tetsurô, Watsuji Tetsurô zenshû, vol. 10 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten), 399-
402.

ISSN 1908-7330
something that is impossible without community. By bringing ethics home to

concrete communities like families, towns, and nations, he not only tries to
cure ethical theory of its abstractness, but also tries to rescue relationality
from its blindness to its own worth. Every relationship bears the possibility
of being the ground for the realization of the good. Each and every
relationship can be a space for self-emptying (Jap. jiko o kûzuru), for love.
However, can there be community without education? In Democracy
and Education (1916), John Dewey writes:
Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by

communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in
transmission, in communication. There is more than a
verbal tie between the words common, community, and
communication. Men live in a community in virtue of
the things which they have in common; and
communication is the way in which they come to possess
things in common.17
Not only is social life identical with communication, but

all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is
educative. To be a recipient of a communication is to
have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in
what another has thought and felt and in so far,
meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified.18
To put it simply, education creates continuity and builds connections

amongst human beings. In its broadest sense, it is the sharing (Fr. partage)19 of
people that creates togetherness; it is communication as “communification.”
Society lives in this communication, in the simple education that occurs
between friends, between siblings, between parent and child. The educational
system, in all its complexity, has grown from this fundamental need for life
and experience to be shared.
This has radical implications for Watsuji’s thought, for that means
that ningen (the human as both individual and social) is inseparable from
education. Education is that which makes community possible, and hence
what makes ethics possible. And thus, each educative space—from the
17 John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916), 5.

18 Ibid., 6.
19 As in Jean-Luc Nancy’s idea of the sharing of singularities in their being-singular-
plural. See Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus,
Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 133
classroom to the home to the internet—bears the possibility of being the space
for cultivating the dual-structure of criticality and solidarity, of the trust
between subjects that makes space for truth.
Emptiness and Engagement
Above, we have examined the connections between Watsuji and

hooks on the level of structure, as seen in the interaction between
individuality and totality. However, interwoven within hooks’s engaged
pedagogy are various ideas such as the sacredness of teaching, care for the
soul, spiritual community, and so forth. These are ideas that are not easily
discussed within the ambit of secularist structural discourses. Rather, they
require a depth dimension, one that we might call the “spiritual” or
“existential” dimension.
Engaged Pedagogy
In the chapter on “Engaged Pedagogy,” bell hooks opens with the

following words:
To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of

teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process
comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe
that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who
believe that our work is not merely to share information
but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of
our students. To teach in a manner that respects and
cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to
provide the necessary conditions where learning can
most deeply and intimately begin.20
Where does this vision of education come from? If hooks’s vision of

“exciting education” as a resistance to the tedium of the banking system of
education comes from Paulo Freire, the notion of education as “engaged,” as
a spiritual relationship between teacher-students and student-teachers,
comes from her reading of Thich Nhat Hanh.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Thích Nhất Hạnh, 1926- ) is a Vietnamese Zen
Buddhist monk who became one of the most famous figures in the struggle
to end the Vietnam War. He coined the term “Engaged Buddhism” to refer to
a Buddhism that, in every aspect of its contemplative practice, is engaged with

ISSN 1908-7330
the suffering of all human beings as they go through their everyday lives.21
He thus tried to heal the gap between the spiritual practices of household-
leavers with the compassion for householders.
I see three core elements to hooks’s appropriation of Engaged
Buddhism: First, the notion of healing in education; second, the notion of the
wholeness and well-being of the teacher; and third, the unity of theory and
praxis that founds these.
1. Healing Education. If a teacher is not merely giving information but

opening up real problems shared by both teacher and student and creating a
space to cultivate criticality, then the teacher is not merely connecting with
the intellectual life of the student but with the entire human being he/she is
faced with. The teacher is caring for the whole student as he/she wrestles with
reality, a dynamic of the spirit that has corporeal, volitional, and affective
components in addition to mere cognitive ones. This “intimate learning” is
what requires hooks’s (weighty) demand for the “care of the soul” and of
“spiritual growth”: by soul/spirit, she is not referring to an isolated part of the
human psyche, but rather to the human being in its wholeness.
Caring for the student as a whole person is thus something closer to
“healing.” She writes, “In his work, Thich Nhat Hanh always speaks of the
teacher as a healer …. Thich Nhat Hanh offered a way of thinking about
pedagogy which emphasized wholeness, a union of mind, body, and spirit.”
Education heals the brokenness of an individual in his/her imagined
separation from the world, the fractures of experience. It heals the
fragmentation of mind, body, and spirit by cultivating an environment
wherein the questioning of the mind is unified with the needs and
movements of the body and the spirit. And it heals the division of self and
other by creating an environment where restoration of one’s own integrity is
shared with others through communal learning and discussion. In Teaching
Critical Thinking (2009), hooks refers to this as “sharing one’s inner light,” a
process in which people share their process of spiritual growth in a space of
radical openness and mutual learning.22 (This wholeness and communality is
something that Dewey’s theory of interest and educational epistemology
suggests but does not explicitly develop.)
In Teaching Community (2003), hooks’s view is succinctly captured in
her citation of Parker Palmer:
21 Sallie B. King, Socially Engaged Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

2009), 5-6.
22 bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (New York: Routledge, 2010),
20.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 135
Education is about healing and wholeness. It is about

empowerment, liberation, transcendence, and renewing
the vitality of life. It is about finding and claiming
ourselves and our place in the world …. I want to
explore what it might mean to reclaim the sacred at the
heart of knowing, teaching, and learning—to reclaim it
from an essentially depressive mode of knowing that
honors only data, logic, analysis, and a systematic
disconnection of self from world, self from others.23
We see here the connection of her critique of the banking system of

education (as something that fragments the knowing self from the
experiencing self) and the stress on the “sacred” foundation of education.
2. The Wholeness of Teachers. What demands are made on teachers, if

they are to participate in this sort of education? hooks writes, “Thich Nhat
Hanh emphasized that ‘the practice of a healer, therapist, teacher or any
helping professional should be directed toward his/herself first, because if the
helper is unhappy, he or she cannot help many people.’”24 If a professor has
psychological blocks surrounding particular academic issues (for instance, if
a sexist teacher is teaching a class on feminism), it will be difficult for the
professor to help students approach these issues with a sense of openness
(and the tendency will be to talk about the topic in as detached and objective
a manner possible, or distort it in order to cover up the professor’s own guilt).
While this does not require that an educator be fully healed of all issues, it
requires that the educator at least be honestly engaged in dealing with these
blocks. This is similar to the practice of psychotherapy, wherein the person of
the counselor and his/her wholeness and willingness to deal with his/her own
psychological issues play a decisive role in his/her ability to deal effectively
with the problems of a patient.25
On one hand, the thought of being accountable not only for the
information one carries but for one’s very personhood can weigh heavily on
the minds of professors. hooks writes:
Part of the luxury and privilege of the role of

teacher/professor today is the absence of any
requirement that we be self-actualized. Not surprisingly,
23 Quoted in bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (New York: Routledge,
2003), 179-180.
25 See Gerald Corey, “The Counselor: Person and Professional,” in Theory and Practice
of Counseling and Psychotherapy, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2009), 16-35.

ISSN 1908-7330
professors who are not concerned with inner well-being

are the most threatened by the demand on the part of
students for liberatory education, for pedagogical
processes that will aid them in their own struggle for
self-actualization.26
But while it may be difficult for those who have “sacrificed their
humanity for tenure” to respond to the demand to cultivate humanity via
their own humanness, engaged pedagogy is not only for the sake of students.
Just as the banking system of education tends to “objectify” students into
mere repositories for information, it objectifies teachers as well into mere
sources of information and implementers of curricula, making it difficult for
the vocation of teaching to be a path of inner growth.
hooks writes, “The objectification of the teacher within bourgeois
educational structures seemed to denigrate notions of wholeness and uphold
the idea of a mind/body split, one that promotes and supports
compartmentalization.”27 Perhaps even more than students, teachers-in-
training and graduate students are often forced into a massively competitive
environment, with unhealthy work hours, where they barely have time to
digest the information they learned due to the speed in which they have to
assimilate information. This can result in an academic culture that tends to
denigrate any clear personal connection and sense of value-judgment in one’s
research, for the sake of maintaining “objectivity.” Conversely, this can lead
to very personal theories (like black feminist theory made by a black woman)
as being relegated to the realm of the particular—as mere personal narratives
that have nothing to do with “universal theory.”28
Recently, there has been a spate of news articles on the rates of suicide
and psychological disorders in graduate school. While this needs to be
supported with empirical studies, perhaps one can hypothesize that engaged
pedagogy’s bridging of personal life and theory might prevent the former
from being sacrificed for the latter and improve the well-being of teachers
and future teachers as well.
3. The Unity of Theory and Praxis. A third point we see here is that
“healing education” and the wholeness and well-being of teachers point to
the unity of theory and practice. In hooks, we see there are only two logical
explanations for why the banking system of education would teach

27 Ibid., 16.
28 These examples can be seen in various stories shared by hooks all throughout the
teaching trilogy. These stories show, in a personal fashion, hooks’s own experience of
discrimination, and the forcible separation of the personal and the “universal.”

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 137
information and theory alone, without connecting them to real life. The first
is the idea that information and theory can be learned independently from
real life, and then applied to real life situations in the future. Dewey’s
Democracy and Education is almost entirely dedicated to debunking this on the
basis of educational epistemology and psychology. The second possibility is
that the educational system does not intend to help students become self-
actualized individuals. Rather, information is merely a convenient and
arbitrary tool to have students compete with each other and thus allow for
stratification (or a reproduction of preexisting strata) by sorting the wheat
from the chaff.29 This is the very “oppression” that Paulo Freire tries to
address in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968).
The separation of theory from praxis is thus either epistemologically
mistaken or a tool for domination. hooks argues against this separation,
asserting that theory is something that is born from life and is inseparable
from praxis. She writes,
I came to theory because I was hurting—the pain within

me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to
theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp
what was happening around and within me. Most
importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw
in theory then a location for healing.30
For hooks, theory is a path to allow the self to find its home in the
world through understanding. There is thus an essential connection between
hooks’s idea of theory and the idea of contemplation in Thich Nhat Hanh:
Both theory and contemplation are responses to the fundamental human
situation of suffering and separation, and are attempts to recover the original
unity of self and world.
In Thich Nhat Hanh, the realization of the true nature of self as
“empty” necessarily results in compassion: One sees one’s connection to
other people and their suffering, and tries to help them be free from suffering
as well.31 Thus contemplation is tied to compassion. In the same way, in
Freire, the theoretical understanding of the human condition of oppression
and the resulting alienation of both the oppressor and the oppressed is
inseparable from the praxis of overcoming this alienation.32 hooks takes both
these elements and thus argues for a view of theory that is both inspired by
liberation and that tries to realize liberation both individually and

30 Ibid., 59.
31 King, Socially Engaged Buddhism, 8-9.

ISSN 1908-7330
collectively.
The Culture of Emptiness
Watsuji’s brief remarks on the idea of education are found

interspersed amongst his discussions of culture. People who share in culture
are a cultural community, or a “spiritual community” (seishinteki kyôdôtai) in
the German sense of geistliche: anyone who shares in my Geist is my friend. 33
This is important because cultural community is the most inclusive: Unlike
blood relations or growing up together, culture, the Geist of a community can
be learned. Thus in Ethics III, this spiritual community plays a key role in
bridging even the gaps between nations, in an attempt to form an
international order. The most inclusive sense of community—and
correlatively, the most inclusive space for realizing ethics—relies on the
mediation of culture.
Watsuji talks about four aspects of culture: language, art, scholarship,
and religion. There is nothing abstract or “high-culture” about these
aspects—by learning these, an individual acquires the capacity to
communicate and to share in the sensibilities, knowledge, and beliefs of a
group, allowing for a sense of shared identification with others. These four
elements are learned in every aspect of social life, but the institution that takes
the transmission of these as its goal is, of course, the educational system.34 He
writes,
In this way, these days, the people around us who call

each other friends (yûjin) are usually acquaintances from
“school.” … Even though schools may not truly realize
a community of love for wisdom (chie no ai), people are
still inculcated with the same knowledge and the same
way of thinking as well as the same spiritual training
(seishinteki kunren) in school. Though it may remain at
this level, it is still the foundation for spiritual
community. In other words, it is only on the basis of this
33 Geist and seishin are nearly identical, but both are difficult to translate into English.
They are translated as “mind” or “spirit,” but can lead to misunderstandings. For example,
geistliche and seishinteki mean “spiritual,” but not in the religious sense of spirituality. It is closer
to the use of Geist in geisteswissenschaft—literally, spiritual science, that includes philosophy,
history, philology, social science, etc. So spiritual community means any community bound not
merely physically but with these elements related to meaningfulness and mind.
34 Some may argue that the school does not or should not teach religion. However,
post-secularism has critiqued the idea that liberal democracy is religiously neutral. It has its own
“beliefs” and values, which are taught by supposedly “secular” education systems. hooks also
discusses these issues, but I leave this to another paper.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 139
that people can arrive at the possibility of being friends. 35
From the actual circle of people we call friends to the very possibility
of spiritual community, education plays a key role in the propagation of a
shared culture. However, Watsuji’s view of culture has three key
qualifications that would alter any idea of education that seeks to transmit it.
1. Returning to the Absolute. First, Watsuji sees culture as a return to

the absolute. For instance, Watsuji does not see art as mere arbitrary
expressions that are eventually canonized as a culture’s aesthetic ideals.
Rather, when an artist makes art, he or she is expressing “formless form”
(katachi naki katachi) as form. As an expression in form, art is unique and
singular, bearing the stamps of both the individual artist as well as his/her
accumulated experiences of art. But as expressing formless form, art is
grounded in something universal, something absolute. What is this formless
form? Watsuji explains:
We must grasp this at the most foundational layer of

human existence. Therein, humanity is originally one
and transcends all distinctions (sabetsu). However, there
too is the origin of all distinctions, and at the same time
is all distinctions themselves. Because of this, human
existence is, in its extreme, emptiness, and develops
itself as a movement of return (kirai). Emptiness is the
dynamic of emptying emptiness and becoming being
(yû), and emptying being and returning to emptiness.36
Formless form is none other than emptiness, which expresses both

the fundamental unity of humankind—a unity captured by mystical
experiences of Buddhist monks, Christian mystics, and Sufis alike—and at
the same time the self-articulation of this unity as difference. The beauty of
art comes from its attempt to express this dynamic through form. Similarly,
scholarship (be it in the sciences or in the humanities) is an attempt to
understand the absolute as truth, that is cognitively/epistemologically (rather
than aesthetically). And religion is an attempt to directly return to this in
terms of feeling and experience.37
The implication for this is that each element of culture has a certain
depth. When teaching each subject of the curriculum—from Pythagorean
geometry to Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532)—one is teaching how individuals
35 Watsuji, Zenshû, vol. 10, 575. Translation by the author.

36 Ibid., 544. Translation by the author.
37 Ibid., 540-560.

ISSN 1908-7330
and communities tried to grasp the foundations of human existence, the truth
beneath it all. Thus, learning too ought to have the spiritual character proper
to the content. It is not a mere abstract gathering of information but, in a sense,
a coming home to the foundation of human existence, guided by those who
came before us. This task, as hooks argues, has a clearly sacred character.
2. The Unity of Culture in Emptiness. This brings us to a second point:

The various facets of culture connect with each other at the root, and thus
cannot be abstracted from each other without reducing them to a mere
superficial resemblance of what they originally are. In Watsuji’s view, art,
science, and religion are fundamentally one (and language is a common
element they all share) in that they are all attempts to express the absolute
(which he refers to as emptiness) in taste, thought, emotion, and experience.
And if one recalls, this “emptiness” is not only the ground of culture but the
ground of ethics as well. This implies that the various factors of cultural
experience and thus of human experience—cognitive, aesthetic, affective,
volitional—are not separate, but are one as expressions of emptiness.
The implication of this for education is that first, the various subjects
of the curriculum are united in this depth. If we are to communicate these
subjects with this in mind, we must be careful not to lose the essential
connectedness of the various specializations of the curriculum. Second, this
unity is not merely within the curriculum, but between the curriculum and
human life. Theory (the science of human life) cannot be separated from
praxis (ethics), nor from the affective and aesthetic elements of human life
(excitement, pain, etc.).
Finally, a unified curriculum that is rooted in the human yearning for
the absolute cannot be merely for a loosely-knit “profit society,” but must be
committed to a deeper engagement between human beings. This is in line with
Watsuji’s critique of Gesellschaft as a “state of privation” of community.
Influenced by Ferdinand Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Watsuji
argues that a truly ethical community cannot merely be a “profit society”
wherein individuals band together in order to secure their egoistic interests.
Ningen sonzai makes its appearance in a defective form

of solidarity. Here, societies of mutual interest arise
(Gesellschaft), or what could be called egoistically
connected societies. These societies, although drawing
lessons concerning communal structure from the
community of sonzai, do not make sonzai communal.
Here, trust, sincerity, service, responsibility, obligation,
and so forth are made use of formally but have no
substance. That is to say, they are systems of social

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 141
ethics, without thereby being socially ethical. For this

reason, they can be called deprived forms of social ethics.38
This is something Watsuji found in the utilitarian, liberal, and

capitalist view of society. He also saw its negative influence on schools.
The schools at present are extremely deficient in many

things [in order to be a] community in scholarship
(gakumon ni okeru kyôdôtai). Rather, they can be said to
betray a strong Gesellschaft character. Scholarship is
becoming a means for livelihood, and school is
becoming a place for business (shokugyô). Rather than
trying to come together (gôitsu) for the sake of scholarly
inquiry, researchers compete for that position. Rather
than trying to collaborate in their pursuit of knowledge,
students do everything they can to get jobs. As a result,
schools are even administered as profit-making
enterprises. However, this shows that schools have lost
their original meaning, and not that schools are
originally as above.39
While Watsuji did not directly discuss the ethical imperative of

schooling in detail, we see that it plays an essential role in building an ethical
community of shared tastes, beliefs, knowledge, and values—one that is lost
with the degeneration of education into a mere means for capitalist society.
3. The Dual-Negative Structure in Culture. However, with the

discussion of education’s role in building cultural community as
Gemeinschaft, one may worry that education is thus a form of indoctrination,
wherein the individual is subjugated to the shared mindset of the whole.
Wouldn’t this be the very politics of domination that Freire and hooks clearly
denounce? This is clearly not the case, however, if we examine a third point:
For Watsuji, sharing in culture is dynamic—a constant re-expression of the
inexpressible—that thus requires that one maintains the tension between
creativity and solidarity.
This can be seen in Watsuji’s idea of cultural products and cultural
production. For Watsuji, cultural life is mediated by preexisting cultural
products: books, novels, sculptures, theological treatises, and so forth.
However, these are not shared in a static manner but are constantly
38 Watsuji, Ethics in Japan, 25.

39 Watsuji, Zenshû, vol. 10, 575.

ISSN 1908-7330
reinvigorated through cultural production in which language, art, science,

and religion are made anew. In this act of production, a singular individual,
bearing the influences of the culture around him/her, tries to return directly
to the absolute—the one, the true, the good, the beautiful. It is this personal
insight that he/she tries to express and communicate in a way that connects
but creatively reconstructs preexisting cultural products. Thus, new art is
made, new theories are discovered, and fresh life enters even the traditional
world of religion.40
What we see here then is that the sharing in cultural life is dynamic,
and involves both individual creativity and solidarity with others. It does not
reduce the individual to the collective, as the Gemeinschaft theory might make
it seem.
The view of culture we have seen above can help us understand the
spiritual/existential side of hooks’s engaged pedagogy. Education conveys
culture. But culture is not merely a special domain of “cultured people” but
the means by which we connect with others in communities. It has to do with
how we communicate, how we share in feelings and tastes, and how we
coordinate our volitional lives with each other. Thus, there can be no
separation between theory and praxis—everything we learn (theory) ought
to be a means for life (praxis). But this “life” is not merely cognitive or
economic. Rather, it has to do with how we relate with others with the
entirety of our being. As such, education is involved with the entirety of the
students’ being. And this holism has a depth, in that all of these facets of
culture are different ways of expressing the inexpressible, the very
foundation of our being in emptiness. Thus, education becomes inseparable
from an involvement with the soul, a nurturing and a healing of the entire
person. (And while Watsuji fails to examine this point, such a holistic
engagement would involve not only the whole student, but the whole teacher
as well!)
However, this cultivation of the entire person cannot be one-sided. If
our engagement with culture involves critique and creativity through each
person’s realization of emptiness, then culture must be conveyed in a way
that it can be accepted, explored, and then critiqued and creatively
transformed. This allows us to pull together both strands of hooks’s engaged
pedagogy—the critical communality she derives from Freire and the focus on
wholeness and healing she derives from Thich Nhat Hanh. We engage the
spiritual depths of human persons in a way that allows them to engage the
culture they share from the depths of their being, and thus participate in a
critical and creative way. It is only through this engagement that we can build
a genuinely spiritual community, rather than a mere society of mutual self-
40 For examples of this, see Watsuji, Zenshû, vol. 10, 520, 551, 560.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 143
benefit.
Conclusion
In this article, we have examined two levels of bell hooks’s vision of

“Engaged Pedagogy.” The first was the structural level, primarily influenced
by Paulo Freire. It entailed four main elements in order to make a truly
exciting and engaged education possible: flexibility, responsivity to
singularities, mutual responsibility, and mutual recognition. We have seen
how the structure of this relationship can best be understood via Watsuji
Tetsurô’s ethical theory, wherein ethics is seen as a realization of the dual-
negative structure of individuality and totality, where truth is seen as a
response to trust, and where goodness is realized in a purely relational
manner. Individualist or universalist accounts of ethics as found in
deontology, utilitarianism, or even virtue ethics (insofar as virtue is seen as
an individual’s virtue) would not be able to account for the relational
structure hooks demands.41
The second level was spiritual/existential, this time largely
influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh. It entailed three main elements: education
as healing, the wholeness of the teacher, and the unity of theory and praxis.
This too can be best understood through Watsuji’s notion of culture (and
education as the communication of culture). As the medium of human
connections, culture is seen as tying together theory and practice.
Furthermore, culture is seen as having a depth aspect, wherein all forms of
culture are expressions of emptiness. Thus, an education that communicates
such a culture would be a total involvement between student and teacher,
including this sense of spiritual depth. And this culture, being something that
is dynamically transformed, once again requires both criticality and
solidarity—bridging the spiritual level to the structural.
Through this we have seen that while bell hooks may not articulate a
metaphysics or a systematic theory of ethics, her view of education presumes
a sophisticated relational ethics. Furthermore, we have seen that while
concepts like “double-negation” and “emptiness” in Watsuji’s ethics may
seem ambiguous, this ambiguity is a direct response to the paradoxical
challenges of becoming human. By examining them side-by-side, we can see
that hooks’s pedagogy is as astute as Watsuji’s ethics is concrete.
However, this is not to say that these two thinkers are identical.
Watsuji was not a feminist. At times, he was dangerously nationalistic and an
41 It is also possible to link hooks’s pedagogy with the ethics of care. However, I
question the ability of care ethics, at least in the form Noddings presents it, to respond to
existential crises and spiritual concerns, due to the overwhelming focus on “natural care” and
forms of pain that are easily understood. I will leave this to another paper.

ISSN 1908-7330
enemy of multiculturalism. hooks would probably be uncomfortable with

this, and her views of the “neutrality” of spirituality would probably be
rejected by Watsuji. But what I wish to argue is that at the core of their projects
lies the view of the human being, of reality, and of education that is
characterized by a profound sense of relationality and depth, which is more
than relevant today.
Faculty of Arts and Sciences,

Graduate School of Human Environment Studies (Education)
Kyushu University, Japan
References
Corey, Gerald, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, 8th ed.
(Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2009).
Davidson, Maria del Guadalupe and George Yancy, Critical Perspectives on bell
hooks (New York: Routledge, 2009).
Dewey, John, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Education (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916).
Florence, Namulundah, bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy: A Transgressive Education
for Critical Consciousness (Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey,
1998).
hooks, bell, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (New York: Routledge,
2003.
___________, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (New York:
Routledge, 2010).
___________, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New
York: Routledge, 1994).
Japan Ministry of Education, Kokutai no Hongi: Cardinal Principles of the
National Entity of Japan, trans. by John Ownen Gauntlett, ed. by Robert
King Hall (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949).
Kincheloe, Joe L., Critical Pedagogy Primer (New York: P. Lang, 2004).
King, Sallie B., Socially Engaged Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2009).
McCarthy, Erin, Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental,
Japanese, and Feminist Philosophies (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010).
Murphy, Madonna M., The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of
Educational Pioneers (New Jersey: Pearson, 2006).
Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Inoperative Community, trans. by Peter Connor, Lisa
Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1991).

ISSN 1908-7330
A. SEVILLA 145
Rodriguez, Agustin Martin G., Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of
Democracy in a Multiverse of Reason (Metro Manila: Ateneo de Manila
Sevilla, Anton Luis, “Concretizing an Ethics of Emptiness: The Succeeding
Volumes of Watsuji Tetsurô’s Ethics,” in Asian Philosophy, 24:1 (2014).
___________, “Education and Empty Relationality: Thoughts on Education
and the Kyoto School of Philosophy,” in Journal of Philosophy of
Education [early view].
___________, “Gaijin Philosophy and the Problems of Universality and
Culture: Conversations with Kasulis, Watsuji, and Sakai,” in Hakusan
Furusato Bungakushô Dai 29 kai Akegarasu Haya Shô nyûsen ronbun 白
山ふるさと文学賞第二十九回暁烏敏賞入選論文 (Ishikawa, Japan:
Hakusanshi kyôiku iinkai, 2013).
___________, “The Buddhist Roots of Watsuji Tetsurô’s Ethics of Emptiness,”
Journal of Religious Ethics [forthcoming].
___________, “Watsuji’s Balancing Act: Changes in His Understanding of
Individuality and Totality from 1937 to 1949,” in Journal of Japanese
Philosophy, 2 (2014).
Standish, Paul and Saito Naoko, eds., Education and the Kyoto School of
Philosophy: Pedagogy for Human Transformation (Dordrecht: Springer,
2012).
Watsuji Tetsurô 和辻哲郎, Fûdo: Ningengakuteki kôsatsu 風土―人間学的考察
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991).
___________, Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study, trans. by Geoffrey
Bownas (Tokyo: Yushodo co., ltd., 1961).
___________, “Japanese Literary Arts and Buddhist Philosophy,” trans. by
Hirano Umeyo, in The Eastern Buddhist, New Series, 4:1 (1971).
___________, Watsuji Tetsurô’s Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan, trans. by Robert
Carter and Yamamoto Seisaku (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1996).
___________, Watsuji Tetsurô zenshû 和辻哲郎全集, 27 volumes, edited by Abe
Yoshishige 安倍能成, et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991-1992).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Neoliberalism and the

Paralysis of Human Rationality
Ian Raymond B. Pacquing
Abstract: The neoliberal character rests on the credo—“There is no

alternative.” There is no alternative to deregulation, free trade,
individual entrepreneurship, and competition. This is believed by
economists and intellectuals as the only way for humanity to be
liberated from the feudal past. It is argued that this new economic
liberalism reclaims the lost humanity of man. It is therefore through
neoliberal perspectives that freedom and human creativity are
realized. There is no other way but to engross oneself in this economic
mainstream as transnational companies, through the help of IMF and
the WB, continuously occupy the social sphere. Economically, as
individuals adapt to this capitalist mainstream, they assimilate their
environment in accordance to the character matrix predominantly
enforced by neoliberal apologists. Consequently, human potentialities
are being absorbed into a system controlled by the very socio-economic
apparatuses of modern society. Human reason becomes its very
instrument as it is refashioned into a reified system of thinking. Human
consciousness is captured in a single dimensional space propagated by
this liberal economy. Individual growth, creativity, spontaneity, and
productivity are all incorporated and hobbled in order to transmit the
structures of neoliberal paradigm.
Keywords: Neoliberalism, autonomy, freedom, reification
T
he 16th and 17th century British thinking propagated by Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, and Adam Smith presented a kind of liberalism
that celebrated the unique nature of being human.1 Their insightful
1 Cf. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Peter Laslett (London: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 412. On a similar note, Adam Smith arguing for man’s liberty alluded to
respect of equals in the social hierarchy. He argues that this respect depends on men who
possessed that fundamental right of freedom and liberty. Cf. Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral
Sentiments, ed. by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie, vol. I of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and
Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 231. In On Sympathy, Smith
© 2016 Ian Raymond B. Pacquing

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/pacquing_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 147
discourses dealt with the inherent quality of human individuals, which

centered on freedom and liberty. However, this type of philosophy was
transformed into a kind of liberalism, which is grounded on the market
economy. Liberalism then follows an economic model that behaved
according to a peculiar kind of rationality, which we may refer to as the
“capitalist” rationality. Such economic model is based on the assumption that
a free market of various capitalist competitors maximizes consumers’
satisfaction.2 This model purports to liberate human beings from the shackles
of the feudal past. In fact, this was also the thought of Mises and Hayek who
embraced neoliberal thinking 3 Both of them argued that the meaning of
human freedom is to engage the individual at the level of the economic
mainstream. It is to allow human potentiality to grow and nourish as the
individual immerses himself in the market economy. As a matter of fact, the
famous economist Amartya Sen argues that freedom and liberty is nothing
but the upliftment of human life through capitalist constructs. Though
economic efficiency speaks about income and utility, human freedom would
be nothing if the government does not focus on individual entitlement,
capabilities, and rights. Even if these same economic theories deal with civil
liberties without emphasizing economic security for the people, it becomes
just a theory.4 Moreover, the onslaught of capitalist mentality compelled
reiterated the classical adage that men should not be used as a means towards an end. Whatever
happens to one ought to be viewed in the light in which any other citizen would view us.
Commentators on Smith would say that the surpluses as a result of his entrepreneurial prowess
would rather benefit the rest of the community instead of being pocketed for material affluence.
The surplus of the entrepreneur should rather enhance the growth of the community instead of
enriching the entrepreneur himself. Cf. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 12-13. Further, the
negative notion of freedom as the absence from regulatory arm of the government finds its
expression in the thought of Thomas Hobbes who argued that individual liberty is the absence
of any form of coercion, force, or control that would impede the active participation and
cooperation of man in his society. Cf. Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan, ed. by J.C.A Gaskin (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 139.
2 Cf. Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity (Manila, Philippines: IBON Books, 2004), 3. Further,
the work of Irving Kristol argues that in a capitalist economy, all individuals are endowed with
the same political rights. However, as far as economic rights are concerned, the individual
depends on economic factors that ultimately determine winners and losers in the market
competition. This is the reason why some professional courses, according to Kristol, are paid
better than others. Economically, the standard for success depends on what capitalist society
projects and not what the individual wants. See Irving Kristol, “A Capitalist Conception of
Justice,” in Business Ethics, 3rd ed., ed. by W. Michael Hoffman and Robert E. Frederick (New
York: McGraw Hills, Inc., 1995), 68
3 Cf. F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978), 3. On the other hand, Von Mises argues that freedom means to involve one’s autonomy
and individuality into the market enterprise. Cf. Ludwig von Mises, Preface to Liberalism, trans.
by Ralph Raico (California: Cobden Press, 1985), xvi.
4 Cf. Amartya Sen, “Welfare, Preference, and Freedom” in Journal of Econometrics, 50
(1991), 18

ISSN 1908-7330
148 NEOLIBERALISM
Fukuyama to argue that ideological battles in the distant past have ended,
and we have to accept that freedom and liberty, which is a fundamental
faculty of the individual, must be enshrined within the realm of capitalism.
In fact, Fukuyama says that the liberal market economy, which is the basis of
capitalist enterprise, is the final arrangement of modernity.5
Since the early 1930s, liberalism has acquired a new dimension,
which is now anchored on an economic liberal rationality. Modernity
acquires a rational behavior, which centers on one axiom, i.e., freedom of the
market means freedom for everybody to achieve the dream of fulfilling
human individuality and autonomy.6 It emphasizes on this peculiar human
quality, which allows every individual to pursue what is beneficial for his
growth and survival. In this context then the free market assumes that the
economic sphere is a conditio sine qua non for the fulfillment of human life.
Traditional liberalism has been transformed into an inherent feature of a
globalized market economy. At this outset, the capitalist strategy is to allow
transnational companies to be incorporated into the global market. It is here
that human freedom is redirected and takes its course towards global
corporate governance.7 This so-called global corporate governance is a
characteristic of 21st century capitalism. Capitalism deals with the free
enterprise where economic experts meet together to enforce, control, and
regulate certain economic plans and programs by particular institutions that
share a common ideology.8 This liberal economic paradigm is otherwise
known as neoliberal economy. It is an ideology that tries to incorporate
human modes of productions into one global economy.9 As such, the
5 Cf. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press,
1992), ix
6 Cf. Peet, Unholy Trinity, 3. The apologists of neoliberalism argue that the philosophy
of Adam Smith is based on his view that human nature is actually striving for peace, and this is
achieved through economics. The dream of a peaceful society embarks the role of economics as
part of the moral dimension of humanity. It is through economic principles that human
individuals facilitate the peaceful exchange among all of the goods necessary for life. See also
Raquel Lazaro, “Adam Smith: Anthropology and Moral Philosophy,” in Revista Empresa y
Humanismo, 13:1 (2010), 145-184.
7 Cf. John Madeley, A People’s World (Manila: IBON Books, 2003), 112
8 Cf. Peet, Unholy Trinity, 3. This global governance is the result of what transpired in
the Bretton Wood Agreement in 1944. It must be remembered that the world suffered from two
world wars. It is the purpose of this agreement to avoid international conflicts to happen again.
Anup Shah, “A Primer on Neoliberalism” in Global Issues (22 August 2010),
<http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism>, 8.
9 Cf. Peet, Unholy Trinity, 3. Neoliberalism was conceived by Mises in the early 1930s.
However, it was Hayek and Friedman who managed to bring it into fruition when the so-called
Bretton Woods Agreement happened just after the end of WWII. The Agreement resulted in a
global-based policy that would help war-torn countries to economically develop. Cf. Michel
Beaud, Introduction to The History of Capitalism, trans. by Tom Dickman and Anny Lefebvre
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 214. Geuss describes ideology this way: “In addition

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 149
freedom and liberty of every individual follows this economic compass for
growth and productivity. In fact, Mises says that the neoliberal agenda, which
is based on individual liberty, must be put into action in order to achieve “free
trade in a peaceful world of free nations.”10 Modern capitalist thinking
believes so much on the capacity of the individual as the architect of history
and, thus, the agent of modernity.11 For neoliberals, freedom and the market
become so inseparable that the realization of one depends on the other. Paul
Treanor argues:
Liberals believe that the form of society should be the

outcome of processes. These processes should be
interactive and involve all members of society. The
market is an example, probably the best example, of
what liberals mean by process. Liberals are generally
hostile to any 'interference with process.' Specifically,
liberals claim that the distribution of wealth as a result
of the market is, in itself, just.12
to such basic existential needs, human agents and groups have more mundane needs, wants, and
interests which a given set of habits, beliefs, and attitudes, a given ‘culture’ can satisfy more or
less adequately. Starting, then, from the wants, needs, interests, and the objective situation of a
given human group, we can set ourselves in the task of determining what kind of socio-cultural
system or what world-view would be most appropriate for that group, i.e., what ‘ideology’ … is
most likely to enable the members of the group to satisfy their wants and needs and further their
interests.” Cf. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of Critical Theory (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 22
10 Mises, Preface to Liberalism, xvi
11 Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom, (U.S: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942), 26. Hereafter cited as
FF.
12 Cf. Paul Treanor, “Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, and Definition,” in Document
Index (Paul Treanor Archive), <http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html>.

The free will and liberty to enter into an agreement with one’s fellows constitutes what
he calls the political economy. Cf. Beaud, The History of Capitalism, 33.
On the other hand, some political and economic theorists distinguish political from
economic liberalism. Political liberalism refers to the fundamental rights of the individual as he
actively participates in the social process. On the other hand, economic liberalism refers to the
active engagement of the individual in the market to uplift his material sustenance. It is
progressively improving his material situation within the ambit of trade and commerce.
However, the distinction of the two cannot be separated in reality. There are political decisions
that affect the individual’s economic life in the same way that we cannot talk of an economic
right without taking into consideration the individual’s political rights. Cf. Edwin van de Haar,
Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory (New York: Pelgrave MacMillan, 2009), 18.
Further, the negative notion of freedom as the absence of the regulatory arm of the government
finds its expression in the thought of Thomas Hobbes, who argued that individual liberty is the
absence of any form of coercion, force, or control that would impede the active participation and
cooperation of man in his society. Cf. Hobbes, The Leviathan 139. Fromm commented on this
negative aspect of freedom. Modernity for Fromm has not achieved its goals for the intention is
always geared towards freedom from which is the absence of coercion or control. However,

ISSN 1908-7330
150 NEOLIBERALISM
Traditionally, liberalism could be construed as imbibing political,

social, or even religious human expressions. However, with the Great
Depression in 1939, the notion of liberalism was gradually altered to include
the economic aspect of society. The very purpose was to jack up employment
under the guise of freedom and liberty.13 Furthermore, freedom and liberty
serve as the cornerstone of uplifting the material aspect of human life. It is in
this context that this economic liberalism prioritizes modes of production as
sources for improving the material welfare of society. It champions the
entrepreneurial individual and the organizational efficiency of the market.14
Because of the structures of this economic liberalism,15 Margaret
Thatcher strongly believed that there is no such thing as society, and
everything must be reduced to and for the individual, private property,
personal responsibility, and family values.16 It is only the individual with all
the capacities rooted in him that matters in neoliberal paradigm.
Consequently, the market economy, which anchors its beliefs on ‘ideals,’
becomes exemplary, says Žižek, since the market enterprise considers human
nature to be egotistic.17 It is egotistic in a sense that the individual may create
and produce anything under the domain of neoliberal agenda. Nothing
Fromm asserts that freedom also entails the freedom to, i.e., the freedom to march towards the
vision of the human race. Cf. Fromm, FF, 33-38.
13 Cf. Elizabeth Martinez and Arnaldo Garcia “What is Neoliberalism: A Brief
Definition for Activist,” in CorpWatch, <http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376>.

Moreover, economic liberalism was enshrined by intellectuals, says Foucault, because the state
was in need of “the requirement of reconstruction, that is to say, the conversion of a war economy
back into a peace economy, the reconstruction of destroyed economic potential … of new
technological information which appeared during the war, and new demographic and
geopolitical facts.” Cf. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at College de France 1978-
1979, ed. by Michel Senellart, trans. by Graham Burchell (New York: Pelgrave Macmillan, 2008),
79.
14 Cf. Peet, Unholy Trinity, 4.
15 Harvey described this nature of neoliberal paradigm as embedded economic
liberalism. As such, it becomes a strategy for economic and industrial proficiency. Cf. David
Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 11
16 Cf. Ibid., 23. However if we look at the motives behind the implementation of
neoliberal agenda under the guise of human freedom and liberty, there is a collusion between
government and corporations to engage themselves in amassing profit at the expense of liberty
and individuality. In other words, there is a deceit that is hidden behind every good intention in
the neoliberal dream. Birch and Mykhnenko commented that, “The very idea that markets are
self-organizing, efficient, and liberating is no longer credible, but illustrates the extent to which
neoliberalism—as shorthand for market-like rule—is an economic, political, and ideological
project pursued by certain groups (such as governments and corporations) to construct a reality
that is perceived to be founded in the inherent properties of economic markets.” Kean Birch and
Vlad Mykhnenko, “Introduction: A World Turned Right Way Up,” in The Rise and Fall of
Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order, ed. by Kean Birch and Vlad Mykhnenko (New
York: Zed Books, 2010), 2.
17 Cf. Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010), 36.

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 151
prevents the individual from expressing his humanity as long as it is done

within the market enterprise.18 Further, as the individual becomes the
epitome of this market ideology, more are craving for and claiming
governmental protection of their rights disguised under the name of freedom
and liberty. However, as Perelman argued, though the individual is protected
by the government, his rights must be subsumed into trade and commerce as
sources of power and social mobility.19 As a matter of fact, even Erich Fromm
recognizes the fact that through the capital, the individual sees himself as the
subject and agent of social mobility.20 The capital is seen as one among the
necessary factors for individualizing freedom and liberty. Through the
capital, neoliberal agenda moves towards the empowerment of the individual
through economic growth and welfare. As Stanley Fischer, Deputy Managing
Director of the International Monetary Fund, argues: “free capital movements
facilitate a more efficient global allocation of saving and helping channel
resources into their most productive uses, thus, increasing economic growth
and welfare.”21 In fact, the noted economist Joseph Stiglitz observes that in
order to achieve economic growth and welfare, the global market should be
free from any governmental control, and to realize this, the only role given to
the state is to enforce policies and contracts, which are beneficial to the
market.22
The Bretton Wood Agreement of 1944 signals the conception of
neoliberal thinking. This agreement among nations became crucial in
realizing the vision of neoliberal philosophy. It has to be noted that the brutal
and relentless expansion of Europe and America ceded when 44 nations
agreed to institutionalize the market economy.23 In order to maintain peace,
equality, and regional stability, the agreement wanted to restore the
structures of capitalism and at this time, it must be done with a ‘human face.’
However, it was in the early 1980 that neoliberal structures came into full
force declaring that There is No Alternative (TINA) to this economic system
18 Hayek argues that the “object of most Western thinkers has been to establish a
society in which every individual, with a minimum dependence on discretionary authority of

his rulers, would enjoy the privileges and responsibility of determining his own conduct within
a previously defined framework of rights and duties.” Cf. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 3.
19 Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism (London: Duke University Press, 2000),
15.
20 Cf. Fromm, FF, 38
21 Cf. Kavaljit Singh, Questioning Globalization (Manila: IBON Books, 2004), 18.
22 Cf. Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Allen Lane/ Penguin
Books, 2002), 74.

23 Joyce Appleby, A Relentless Revolution: History of Capitalism (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2010), 165.

ISSN 1908-7330
152 NEOLIBERALISM
that modernity has to offer.24 Everything falls under the name of freedom and
liberty. Although the market is the ‘venue,’ neoliberal thinking adheres to
freedom as the fundamental political value.25 Leys asserts that the purpose of
this economic restructuring is something material, i.e., “radical
transformation in both the structure and the management of the world
economy … creating for the first time in history a truly unified global
capitalist economy … reflecting the interests of transnational capital.”26
Nevertheless, considering these modern economic structures, I
maintain that with this ideology of neoliberalism,27 humanity is pushed
further towards abstrafication and quantification of its potential. The human
regression towards reification is brought about by the fortification of the
internal structures of the economic policies of neoliberal ideology. Its
homogenizing and hegemonizing factors, psychoanalytically speaking,
dislodge human rationality because its historical reference is transformed
into a reified discursive system of thinking. It is implicitly expressing that the
only measure to live freely and humanely is to engage oneself in the market
enterprise. Hence, human thoughts, actions, and feelings are swayed and
instrumentalized into this economic paradigm. In fact, the psychologization
of humanity through the embedded neoliberal economy “has reduced human
beings to fungible, commensurable values, expunging what makes them
particular or unique.”28 It attracts individual psychic energies to imbibe an
economy which is thought of as liberating and thus humanizing. It builds a
character where humans are cajoled into believing that they will all the more
be free. Human freedom is actualized when one allows oneself to engage in
the market economy. Hence, a person allures himself in the exchange of
commodities that takes place within the market sphere. With digital
24 Cf. Jason Hickel, “A Short History of Neoliberalism (And How We Can Fix It)” in
New Left Project (09 April 2012), <http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/

article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it>, 1.
25 Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (U.S.: Duke University Press,
2009), 51.
26 Collin Leys, “The Rise and Fall of Development Theory,” in The Anthropology of
Development and Globalization, ed. by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud (U.S.: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005), 114.
27 Neoliberal ideology is actually a reversion to the old capitalistic thinking advocated
by Adam Smith. In the works of Harvey, Hardt, and Negri, they argued that neoliberalism is
actually a continuation of Smith’s capitalist enunciation of economic life. However, this
neoliberal concept was extended into a globalized economy where participant nations should
abide by the rules and policies of a global corporate structure, which in return is protected by the
laws and policies of the state. Cf. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 5-10. This collusion
between the state and corporation forms what is called corporate empire where the economic,
social, political, and cultural aspects of life overlap. Cf. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire
(London: Harvard University Press, 2000), xiii.
28 Deborah Cook, Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for A Rational Society (London:

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 153
technology within everybody’s reach, every individual becomes the master

of himself. Anybody who criticizes this way of living is not ‘identical’ to the
normative apparatus of neoliberalism. In fact, its mythological aspect would
denounce any critical stance that would conceal its exploitative and
dominative agenda. Further, with the neoliberal thinking, and although
freedom and liberty serve as the core of this economic system, human
individuality is annihilated and reified by the production of commodities.29
While it is a fact that modernity moves towards human freedom from the old
feudal system and a renewal of human individuality and independence, the
neoliberal paradigm has unconsciously restrained human beings,
engendering fear, anxiety, and compulsion.30 We experience ourselves as
29 Cf. Georg Lukacs “History and Class Consciousness, 1920,” in History and Class
Consciousness, ed. by Andy Blunden, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1967),
12.
30 According to Chomsky, the dialectic between these industrial corporations and the
U.S. “activist” foreign policies fortify and extend U.S. power through subversion, international
terrorism, and aggression. This dialectic is a way to ‘Americanize’ human life. Cf. Noam
Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (London: Pluto Press, 1989),
12. As far as the political situation is concerned, Martha Sieburth also observes, “This first decade
of the 21st century, we have experienced instead extremely unstable global situations, with
terrorism since September 11, 2001, becoming even more widespread. Train bombs exploded in
Madrid on March 11, 2004, and in London in 2005. In September 2008, the ETA Basque separatist
movement resumed bombings after having signed a peace ceasefire in 2006. The wars in Iraq and
the incursion of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have dramatically weakened the U.S. economy,
and the continued saga between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East … violence has
become an accepted way of life and global destabilization is becoming more and more
“normalized.” Martha Seiburg, Foreword to Revolutionizing Pedagogy: Education for Social Justice
Within and Beyond Global Neo-liberalism, ed. by Sheila Macrine, Peter McLaren, and Dave Hill
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), x. According to Stiglitz, the principles of neoliberal
politics needed to be rethought because they cater no longer to the less developed people of the
world but to the interest of those people who are in power. See Joseph Stiglitz, Preface to
Globalization and Its Discontents, (New York: Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 2002), ix-xii. The fact that
the ‘Uruguay Round’ in 1995 collapsed because of the imbalanced distribution of goods and
services especially in agricultural products to developing countries, which now indicate that the
ruling elite, which belongs to U.S.-based transnational companies, gets the better share. (For
further discussion why U.S. and EU had unresolved trade conflicts and needed to come up with
a resolution in terms of agricultural products, see “Understanding the WTO,” in World Trade
Organization, <http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm1_e.htm>.) The effects
of these economic inequalities are best described in the riot in Genoa, which led to bloodshed.
See Cf. David Schweickart, After Capitalism (US: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), 6.
Further, Schweickart adds, “In the face of massive and violent police retaliation, they shut down
the World Trade Organization's (WTO) opening ceremony, prevented President Clinton from
addressing the WTO delegates, and compelled the WTO to cancel its closing ceremonies and
adjourn in disorder and confusion. Since then, protests, self-consciously linked to the Seattle
upheaval and to each other, have erupted in Quito, Ecuador (January 2000), Washington, D.C.
(April 2000), Bangkok (May 2000), South Africa (May 2000), Buenos Aires (May 2000),
Windsor/Detroit and Calgary June 2000), Millau, France (June 2000), Okinawa (July 2000),
Colombia (August 2000), Melbourne (September 2000), Prague (September 2000), Seoul (October
2000), Davos, Switzerland (January 2001), Quebec City (April 2001), and most recently (as of this

ISSN 1908-7330
154 NEOLIBERALISM
inhabited and driven by forces that are mysterious to us. These mysterious
forces include economic forces that structure our lives as beings who must
writing—there will have been others by the time you read this) Genoa (July 2001). [Post
September 11 update: A sizable contingent of protestors trekked to far-off Qatar in November
2001, where nervous WTO ministers decided to hold their post-Seattle meeting, while tens of
thousands more rallied in their own countries—some thirty countries in all—to analyze and
criticize the WTO agenda. In New York City in February 2002, some fifteen thousand rallied
against the World Economic Forum being held there, while thousands more went to Porto
Alegre, Brazil, for a "World Social Forum," which billed itself as a counter-WEE. Despite media
pronouncements to the contrary and despite the fact that governments are using the "threat of
terrorism" to make protest more difficult, the events of September 11 have not derailed this
"movement for global justice." In the Philippines, when the Ramos-Macapagal regimes, through
Roberto de Ocampo as Secretary of Finance and NEDA Chief Cielito Habito, made the country
a party to the ASEAN Free Trade Area and eventually joined the World Trade Organization in
1995, domestic casualties occurred. Bello says, “The list of industrial casualties included paper
products, textiles, ceramics, rubber products, furniture and fixtures, petrochemicals, beverage,
wood, shoes, petroleum oils, clothing accessories, and leather goods. By the early years of this
decade, the country’s textile industry had shrunk from 200 to less than 10 firms.” See Walden
Bello, “Neoliberalism as Hegemonic Ideology in the Philippines: Rise, Apogee, and Crisis”
(Plenary Paper presented at the National Conference of the Philippine Sociological Society, Philippine
Social Science Center (PSSC) Building, Quezon City, Metro Manila, 16 October 2009. See also
Walden Bello, “Neoliberalism as Hegemonic Ideology in the Philippines: Rise, Apogee, and
Crisis,” in Focus on the Global South, <http://focusweb.org/node/1534>, 3. Although neoliberalism
has globalized the world, there are other vital dimensions: global climate change, the decay of
the ozone layer, and the pollution of the oceans all bring the world’s people closer together, if
only because decisions made in one place shape other places. The result is an odd and novel
situation. See Geoff Mulgan, “The Age of Connexity,” A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics,
Politics, 2nd ed., ed. by David Held (London: Routledge, 2004), 11. If one does not conform to the
demands of neoliberal thinking, political and cultural consequences follow. Perkins says, in
addition to this, the effects of this imperial status drip to those countries which have been
promised infrastructures, health, education, and military partnership. As a superpower and
through WTO, IMF, and WB, the U.S. offers loans to developing countries. These loans are given
to help infrastructure projects, which developing countries cannot financially sustain. Foreign
contractors and engineers go and help build airports, highways, parks, electric plants, etc. What
these developing countries do not know is that the loans are pegged in the U.S. dollar. It is then
coursed through different U.S transnational companies, which help build these infrastructure
projects. In other words, U.S. promises aids through these transnational companies.
Consequently, the amount of dollars that leaves the U.S. treasury reverts to them immediately
through these mighty corporations. Moreover, the loans that come through foreign aids are now
being paid with collateral and interest. Now, this is the rub—U.S. knows very well that these
countries cannot pay and thus declared to default on their payments. The longer they cannot
pay, the better since the interests grow. This economic and political strategy in the international
scene is a deception in order to build an empire. As more and more countries are ensnared in
debt, the more they become loyal to the U.S. economic hegemony. Thus, U.S. democratic terms
expand as a matter of its political sovereignty. Those countries, which cannot pay their debts, are
obliged to kowtow to the dictates of U.S. hegemony. Hence, they have to open their natural
resources for U.S. control, their votes in the U.N. are stricken over in favor of the U.S., and U.S.
military base are installed—these are just among the many consequences of this loyalty. Cf. John
Perkins, Prologue to The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, (California: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers, Inc, 2004), xiii,

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 155
sell labor power to others.31 Consequently, this ideology entails a twisted

notion of freedom characterized by the accentuation and internalization of
dependency, as opposed to integrity and autonomy.32 The engagement of
modernity in these economic structures involves a mouse trap where
humanity acquires freedom from the old structures yet caged in a new system
where human individuality is lost.33 As it was pointed out by Mark Blyth,
neoliberal thinking with its own material monetary base as developed by
Friedman34 isolates human nature from its real vocation: activity and
productivity.35
In this context, I agree with what Marx said in his The Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,36 and later on developed by Fromm in his
Beyond the Chain of Illusion37—that human consciousness is affected by the
internal logic of the material base of society. According to Fromm, while
human beings emancipated themselves from the shackles of the past, their
31 Cf. Ian Parker, Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation (London: Pluto

Press, 2007), 5.
32 Cf. Fromm, FF, 92. One can also see this argument in the book review of Frank
Knight. See Frank H. Knight, Review of Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, in American Journal of
Sociology, 48:2 (1942), 299.
33 Fromm argues that although industrial capitalism was a freedom from, it does not
answer the freedom to. Cf. Fromm, FF, 33. On the same breadth, Schmidtz and Brennan argue that
although freedom, from its classical connotation, would always entail freedom from, what
liberals have forgotten is the freedom to. Cf. David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, A Brief History
of Liberty (London: Wiley and Blackwell, 2010), 7
34 Cf. Peet, Unholy Trinity, 4
35 Cf. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: George Allen and Unwin Publishers,
1957), 7. Hereafter cited as AOL.

36 Marx says, “Capital is, therefore, the power to command labor, and its products. The
capitalist possesses this power not on account of his personal or human properties but insofar as
he is an owner of capital. His power is the purchasing power of his capital, which nothing can
withstand.” Cf. Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, trans. by Gregor Benton,
transcribed by Andy Blunden, in Marxist Internet Archive (1993), <
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/1st.htm#s2>, 17. Further Marx laments
that the industrial or neoliberal construct pushes the worker into such condition, i.e., the working
class who is made to subordinate himself to the capitalist. The more capital is invested, the more
amount of labor is extracted from the worker. Consequently, the more he has to sacrifice his time
and freedom and work as a slave. Cf. Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 7. On the
contrary, the more capital means there are, the more labor is imputed, and the more workers
there are, the more division of labor is demanded. For Marx, it is only the capitalist who is at a
better advantage in this kind of situation. Under these existing working conditions,
remunerations and benefits do not remove the fact that structures of capitalism make the worker
regress to inhuman situations. Psychologically, Fromm says, “increase in wages does not restore
their lost human significance and worth.” Cf. Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (London:
Continuum, 1961), 34.
37 It is not only in the Beyond the Chain of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud
(1962); we can also read the arguments of Fromm from his other monumental works like Fear of
Freedom (1941), Sane Society (1956), Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947),
Art of Loving (1956), and Revolution of Hope (1968).

ISSN 1908-7330
156 NEOLIBERALISM
lives have, however, become more quantitative and, as such, individuality

and autonomy are undermined. While the cornerstone of capitalist agenda
was the promise of freedom, this is challenged by how the capitalist mind
frame has taken over human lives. Humanity is now threatened by the vast
monopoly and superior strength of capital and, thus, the more an individual
becomes isolated and aggravated.38 The very faculties which are supposed to
deliver humanity towards a better society have been reified by the very
characterology of modernity. How the material productions of society are
restructured to achieve a common end affects how human beings view
themselves, others, and their world. It must be noted that the dialectic
between the substructure and the superstructure of which the modern
individual is a part psychologically sways human energy to follow the inner
logic enunciated by neoliberalism. As individuals recreate society, their
creativity manifests itself in their own human productivity. However,
through their own production and creativity, the effects of neoliberal thinking
commercialize everyday life so that human and individual relationships
“interact with a lifeless object without a trace of inner sentiment or any
attempt at understanding the other’s point of view.”39 Individuality has
become instrumentalized at the service of this economic paradigm. The
conscious elements of human adaptation and assimilation to his or her
immediate environment have yielded to the commodification of life. The
38 The neurotic symptoms of contradictory strivings from what Freud called sexual
libido and the need for human survival positioned Fromm to call modern society as the pathos of
normalcy. The conflict between human necessities arising from acts of survival and necessities
arising from the postponement of pleasure lead humanity to insanity for the reason that “all
behave irrationally in this irrational world.” In his study of modern capitalism, Fromm found
out that the economic modes of productions would force us to behave irrationally and thus
neurotically. This neurotic behavior leads humanity towards the formation of automaton—
beings which are abstracted and quantified by forces of the modern industrial capitalism. Cf.
Erich Fromm, “Method and Function of an Analytic Social Psychology,” in The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader, ed. by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: Continuum Publishing
Company, 2002), 477. This comment is also seen in Fromm’s Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970). See
Erich Fromm, “Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology,” in
Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, ed. by Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner (London:
39 Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, ed. by Martin Jay (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 18. However, Honneth argues that an objective understanding
of person and of the world is possible without gearing towards reification. Objectification is a
prerequisite in an emphatic engagement of the individual with the world for there is already, in
the process of assimilation, an antecedent act of recognition between the infant and his
surrounding world. For Honneth, the antecedent recognition is an objectification process without
falling within the realm of reification. Honneth comments, “If everything within a society is
reified just because it urges the adoption of an objectifying attitude, then human sociality must
have vanished complete.” Thus, Honneth would redefine reification as an amnesia which forces
us the ability to understand the behavioral expression of others as making demands of us. Cf.
Honneth, Reification, 50-70.

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 157
moral and ethical aspects of human relationships are objectified and

commodified.40 In the observation of Chomsky, the systematic use of
capitalist propaganda in order to alter and regiment the consciousness of the
people is a mark of the neoliberal agenda.41 Further, while these assimilation
and adaptation are products of the individual conscious actions, there lies in
the unconscious libidinal structure of society hidden motivations which are
enunciated by neoliberal thinking. Though the objects that modernity
produce do affect human consciousness, we cannot disregard the fact that the
world that the consciousness perceives is a world that has already been
changed by a ‘capitalist’ consciousness. The dialectic between the material
modes of productions and the productive and creative faculty of human
individuals cannot be discounted. As Wiggerhaus argues, “What connections
there are between the social development of humanity, particularly its
economic and technical development and the development of its mental
faculty, particularly the ego-organization of the human being?”42 It is for these
reasons that I contend, following Frommian philosophy,43 that the socio-
economic foundations of modernity accentuate a particular characterology
that redirects the social psychic apparatuses towards dependency,
submission, conformity, and paralysis of human rationality.44 The structures
40 Cf. Ibid., 19.

41 Cf. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over the People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (New
York: Seven Stories Press, 1999), 53.
42 Rolf Wiggerhaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance,
trans. by Michael Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 5.

43 Introduced by Lowenthal, Erich Fromm became the most prominent figure as he
headed the division of social psychology of the Institute from 1934 up to 1939. It was through
him that the Institute first attempted to fuse the psychoanalysis of Freud and the social
philosophy of Marx. Cf. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (London: Heinemann Educational
Books, Ltd., 1973), 88. According to Kellner, Fromm was trained in sociology and psychoanalysis
and was able to develop a Marxian social psychology. Cf. Douglas Kellner, “Erich Fromm,
Judaism, and the Frankfurt School,” in Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project,
<https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell24.htm>. It is through his
training that he was hired by Horkheimer as the psychologist of the Institute for Social Research.
Horkheimer saw the need to have a critical social psychology and this was to fuse the works of
Marx and Freud. Cf. Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner, Introduction to Critical Theory and
Society: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1989), 4; Cf. Wiggerhaus, The Frankfurt School, 51. The
Frommian psycho-social philosophy speaks of determining the false ideologies that sway human
energies towards the pathologies of society. Further, Kellner says that in the mixture of Marx and
Freud, Fromm rejects any transcendental dimension of life and believes that intellectual
responses to life are derivative of material needs and social experiences. Cf. Kellner, “Erich
Fromm, Feminism, and the Frankfurt School: Reflection on Patricial Mills’ Woman, Nature, and
Psyche,” in Illuminations: The Critical Theory Project,
<https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell27.htm>.
44 Fromm says, “We are concerned with instrumentalities—with how we are doing
things; we are no longer concerned with why we are doing things. We build machines that act
like men and we want to produce men who act like machines.” Erich Fromm, “Freedom in the

ISSN 1908-7330
158 NEOLIBERALISM
of neoliberalism attract individual impulses to acquire a dependent character

of which modernity is unconscious.45 As a matter of fact, the individual
conscious action speaks of the great humanist values, such as love, freedom,
and equality; however, unconsciously, one is motivated to act in accordance
with the conditions of those material forces articulated by neoliberal
philosophy. There is then a contradiction between the humanistic desire that
gears towards human growth and the socio-economic foundation from which
the survival of society rests. As Lawrence Freidman observes, neoliberal
thinking has “paralyzed human rationality to the point where the pride in a
common humanity had subsided.”46
The inner logic of the material forces of society becomes, what
Fromm calls, the “bedrock of man’s social character.” A social character leads
to particular behavioral traits of society. The interaction between the social
character and the collective unconscious results in how human beings think
and act to achieve the goals which society aspires. The psychic energy of
society is redirected to follow the social economic pattern, and in return,
human consciousness becomes hobbled and reified. Human reason, which
could have led modernity towards human potentials, is paralyzed as a result
of a characterology built within the ambit of neoliberal philosophy.47 The
Work Situation,” in Arbeit – Entfremdung – Charakter, vol. 3 of The Yearbook of the International Erich
Fromm Society (Münster: LIT Verlag, 1994).
45 In fact, many commentators like Giddens argue that the neoliberal construct is the
‘Americanization’ of human life to the extent that transnational companies that come to dominate
the socio-cultural lifeworld of individual localities are based in the U.S. and in the North. We
take for instance McDonalds and Coca-Cola dominating the local mainstream. This would show
that it is really an affair of the North where the South doesn’t have any active role. That is why
Giddens argues that globalization (neoliberalism) “would see it as destroying local cultures,
widening world inequalities, and worsening the lot of the impoverished. Globalisation, some
argue, creates a world of winners and losers, a few on the fast track to prosperity, the majority
condemned to a life of misery and despair …” Anthony Giddens, "Lecture 1," in Runaway World
(London: Profile Books, 1999), as cited in Allan Cochrane and Kathy Pain, "A Globalizing
Society," in A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics, Politics, ed. by David Held (London:
46 Lawrence Friedman, The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2013), 228.

47 One needs to know that global finance, for instance, is regulated and controlled by
the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It is in these two institutions that the financial
infrastructures of the global market are coursed through. On the other hand, the United Nation’s
assistance to developing and war-torn countries like Iraq and Israel must be aligned with the
policies of these two institutions. However, the fortifications of these lie in the modes of
communication that we have. Considering that global telecommunication companies like Google
and Microsoft are based in the U.S., the power to regulate and control world economy, politics,
and culture is still dependent on the dictates of the sole superpower of the world, i.e., the U.S.
This is the reason why each locality, or even regional city, is at the mercy of these powerful
institutions, which have powerful structural effects severely affecting the sovereignty of nation
states. See Cochrane and Pain, “A Globalizing Society,” in A Globalizing World, 17.

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 159
ideology of neoliberalism is a product of an economic psychologization to the

extent that the oppression and exploitation in the world are camouflaged by
‘images and appearances,’ which seem so natural and normal for an ordinary
individual.48 I contend, therefore, that if we fail to understand both social
character and social unconscious, it is impossible to know and understand
social pathologies, which continuously affect human lives. Ignoring the social
character and the social unconscious, social pathologies are just considered
as the normal flow of social and human transactions. Social pathologies49
would just be transformed into social ‘common sense’ in which case
humanity acquires an irreversible pattern that leads to death and decay.50
References
Appleby, Joyce, A Relentless Revolution: History of Capitalism (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 2010)
Arato, Andrew, and Eike Gerhardt, The Essential Frankfurt School (New York:
Continuum Publishing Company, 2002),
Beaud, Michael, Introduction to The History of Capitalism, trans. Tom Dickman
and Anny Lefebvre (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001)
Birch, Kean and Vlad Mykhnenko, The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The
Collapse of an Economic Order (New York: Zed Books, 2010)
48 Cf. Parker, Revolution in Psychology, 48. It is in this process of ‘images and
appearances’ that an individual relates, transcends, and becomes rooted on images and
appearances. It is a character of 21st century man to repeat these ‘images and appearances’ as a
matter of reasoned arguments and carefully analyzed opinions until they are converted into
common sense. Consciously, the individual thinks, reasons, and argues as a matter of human
discourse. But with the internalized ideology, he is just replicating the falsity of this ideology. He
cannot see the contradictions that lie within because his personality is a reflection of that very
ideology that categorized him. The social characterology of this economic system has removed
his “I” as a form of self-identity. Fromm lamented this fact and he foretold decades ago that the
fate of the 21st century has already been sealed. If man cannot see the illusions or ideologies that
muster and control his energy, then he is doomed towards perdition. Cf. Fromm, Revolution of
Hope, 27.
49 Social pathology is the description used by Fromm to imply the illusions brought
about by an irrational social characterology as it reifies and hobbles the consciousness. Cf.
Fromm, Sane Society, 60-80. In his Revolution of Hope, he narrates how the social character of the
20th century capitalism ‘commodifies’ reason as an instrumentality of the modes of production
in order to perpetuate its legitimacy in the modern world. Cf. Fromm, Revolution of Hope, 55.
50 William Martin Kennedy, Implications for Counselling from Erich Fromm's View of
Man's Ethical Responsibility (Ph.D. Dissertation, Austin: University of Texas/ Erich Fromm
Document Center), 147.

ISSN 1908-7330
160 NEOLIBERALISM
Bello, Walden, “Neoliberalism as Hegemonic Ideology in the Philippines:

Rise, Apogee, and Crisis,” in Focus on the Global South,
<http://focusweb.org/node/1534>.
Bronner, Stephen, and Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory and Society: A Reader
(London: Routledge, 1989).
Chomsky, Noam, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
(London: Pluto Press, 1989).
___________, Profit Over the People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (New
York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).
Cook, Deborah, Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for A Rational Society
Dean, Jodie, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies (U.S.: Duke University
Press, 2009).
Foucault, Michelle, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at College de France 1978-
1979, ed. by Michel Senellart, trans. by Graham Burchell (New York:
Pelgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom (U.S: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942).
___________, “Freedom in the Work Situation,” in Arbeit – Entfremdung –
Charakter, vol. 3 of The Yearbook of the International Erich Fromm Society
(Münster: LIT Verlag, 1994).
___________, The Art of Loving, (London: George Allen and Unwin Publishers,
1957).
___________, The Revolution of Hope (New York: Rinehart and Holt, 1970).
Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free
Press, 1992).
Geuss, Raymond, The Idea of Critical Theory (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1981).
van de Haar, Edwin, Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory:
Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009).
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri, Empire (London: Harvard University
Press, 2000).
Harvey, David, Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005).
Hayek, F.A., The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978)
Held, David, ed., A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics, Politics, 2nd ed.
Hickel, Jason, “A Short History of Neoliberalism (And How We Can Fix It)”
in New Left Project (9 April 2012)
<http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_
short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it>.

ISSN 1908-7330
I. PACQUING 161
Hobbes, Thomas, The Leviathan, ed. by J.C.A. Gaskin (New York: Oxford
Honneth, Axel, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, edited and introduced
by Martin Jay (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Kristol, Irving, “A Capitalist Conception of Justice,” in Business Ethics, 3rd ed.,
ed. by W. Michael Hoffman and Robert E. Frederick (New York:
McGraw Hills, Inc., 1995)
Lazaro, Raquel, “Adam Smith: Anthropology and Moral Philosophy,” in
Revista Empresa y Humanismo, 13:1 (2010).
Leys, Collin, “The Rise and Fall of Development Theory,” in The Anthropology
of Development and Globalization, ed. by Marc Edelman and Angelique
Haugerud (U.S.: Blackwell Publishing, 2005)
Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Peter Laslett (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Lukacs, Georg, “History and Class Consciousness, 1920,” in History and Class
Consciousness, ed. by Andy Blunden, trans. by Rodney Livingstone
(London: Merlin Press, 1967).
Macrine, Shiela, Peter McLaren, and Davel Hill, eds., Revolutionizing
Pedagogy: Education for Social Justice Within and Beyond Global Neo-
liberalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Madeley, John, A People’s World (Manila: IBON Books, 2003)
Martinez, Elizabeth and Arnaldo Garcia “What is Neoliberalism: A Brief
Definition for Activist,” in CorpWatch,
<http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376>.
Marx, Karl The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, trans. by Gregor
Benton, transcribed by Andy Blunden, in Marxist Internet Archive
(1993), <
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/1st.htm#s
2>.
von Mises, Ludwig, Liberalism, trans. by Ralph Raico (California: Cobden
Press, 1985).
Parker, Ian, Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation, (London:
Pluto Press, 2007).
Peet, Richard, Unholy Trinity (Philippines: IBON Books, 2004).
Perelman, Michael, The Invention of Capitalism, (London: Duke University
Press, 2000).
Schmidtz, David, and Jason Brennan, A Brief History of Liberty (London: Wiley
and Blackwell, 2010).
Schweickart, David, After Capitalism (U.S.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2002).
Sen, Amartya “Welfare, Preference, and Freedom” in Journal of Econometrics,
50 (1991).

ISSN 1908-7330
162 NEOLIBERALISM
Shah, Anup, “A Primer on Neoliberalism” in Global Issues (22 August 2010),

<http://www.globalissues.org/article/39/a-primer-on-neoliberalism>.
Singh, Kavaljit, Questioning Globalization (Manila: IBON Books, 2004).
Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. by D.D. Raphael and A.L.
Macfie, vol. I of The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of
Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982).
Stiglitz, Joseph, Globalization and Its Discontents, (New York: Allen
Lane/Penguin Books, 2002)
Treanor, Paul, “Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, and Definition,” in Document
Index (Paul Treanor Archive),
<http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html>.
Wiggerhaus, Rolf, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political
Significance, trans. by Michael Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1995).
Žižek, Slavoj, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Ontology or Ethics: The Case of Martin

Heidegger and Watsuji Tetsurô
Kelly Louise Rexzy P. Agra
Abstract: The title of this paper namely ‘Ontology or Ethics: The Case
of Martin Heidegger and Watsuji Tetsurô,’ in principle, if not in fact,
aims at shedding light on the relation between ethics and ontology. As
a thesis, this paper claims that their relation boils down to the question
of the being of the human being, which consequently and necessarily
serves as the departure point towards answering the problems of
ontology (i.e., the meaning of Being) and ethics (i.e., the rationale
behind human relations). In trying to divulge the presuppositions
underlying this claim, I will use Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological
hermeneutics beginning from his analytic of Dasein and Watsuji
Tetsurô’s ethics as the study of ningen (人間).
Keywords: Heidegger, Watsuji, ontology, ethics
Introduction
T
he title of this paper namely ‘Ontology or Ethics: The Case of Martin
Heidegger and Watsuji Tetsurô,’ in principle, if not in fact, aims at
shedding light on the relation between ethics and ontology. As a thesis,
this paper initially claims that their relation boils down to the question of the
being of the human being, which consequently and necessarily serves as the
departure point towards answering the problems of ontology (i.e., the
meaning of Being) and ethics (i.e., the rationale behind human relations). In
trying to divulge the presuppositions underlying this claim, I will use Martin
Heidegger’s phenomenological hermeneutics beginning from his analytic of
Dasein and Watsuji Tetsurô’s ethics as the study of ningen (人間).
Having delineated such a task, two important matters must be
addressed. First, what exactly do the terms ‘ontology’ and ‘ethics’ mean? The
answer to this is drawn from Heidegger’s take on ontology as the inquiry
© 2016 Kelly Louise Rexzy P. Agra

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/agra_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
164 HEIDEGGER AND WATSUJI
concerned in clarifying “the meaning of Being”1 for2 that entity—the

inquirer—whose “definite characteristic” involves an “understanding of
Being”3 and from Watsuji’s rendering of ethics as “the order or the pattern
through which the communal existence of human being is rendered
possible”4
From this horizon of discourse, the second concern could be
derived—Why Heidegger and Watsuji? This question is to be treated in its
three aspects: (a) a question of the individual significance of their discourses
in relation to ontology and ethics, (b) a question of the significance of the and
between Heidegger and Watsuji, or in other words, the question of the
relation of their thoughts to one another, and (c) a question of the merit of
comparing their thoughts as regards the question of the relation between
ontology and ethics.
The Heidegger-Watsuji Relation
In response to the question of the significance of Heidegger and

Watsuji’s thoughts on the basic trajectory of ontology and ethics, it is to be
said that the reason for choosing them is on one part historical (i.e., history of
philosophy), and another, cultural (i.e., they are coming from different
cultural orientations). The historical reason is focused on Heidegger’s
ontology as having been able to create a break within Western philosophy in
his delimitation of the question of Being. Heidegger, in his magnum opus
Being and Time, restructures the question as a question, which essentially
begins in the question of the being of the inquirer itself. This inquirer, whom
Heidegger calls Dasein, is for him the very condition for the possibility of any
conception or understanding of Being. Heidegger writes,
… to work out the question of Being adequately, we

must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his
1 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(USA: Harperperennial Modernthought, 2008), 19/1; 31/11. Hereafter cited as BT, followed by the
page number as found in the Maquarrie-Robinson translation, and the page number in the
German edition as indicated in the margins of the translation.
2 The italicization of the preposition for is in order to remain consistent to Heidegger’s
delimitation of Being as the category or the lens from which we experience or think about
anything. It is not an abstract autonomous concept that makes possible existence, but rather
something like a transcendental category of thought used to designate or refer to that which
exists, or to existence in general. As a category of thought, it is of major importance to stress that
for Heidegger, Being necessarily becomes an always and already Being for an inquirer.
3 Heidegger, BT, 32/12.
4 Watsuji Tetsuro, Watsuji Tetsuro’s Rinrigaku, trans. by Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert
E. Carter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 11. Hereafter cited as WTR followed
by the page number.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 165
own being. The very asking of this question is an entity’s

mode of being; and as such it gets its essential character
from what is inquired about—namely, Being. This entity
which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring
as one of the possibilities of its being, we shall denote by
the term Dasein.5
The being (way of existence) of this Dasein which Heidegger refers to

as the being (entity, existent) whose being (way of existence) involves
inquiring about Being (category of thought referring to that which exists), is
for Heidegger, what must first be elaborated as a preliminary step before one
can go on and inquire about Being in general. He points out, that “the
ontological analytic of Dasein in general is what makes up fundamental
ontology, so that Dasein functions as that entity which in principle is to be
interrogated beforehand as to its being.”6 This delimitation of Heidegger about
this foundational concept of Metaphysics is in itself a breakthrough in
philosophy that it transformed what was known as Metaphysics into ‘onto-
logy.’7 It has re-appropriated the question of Being to that being only for
whom Being makes sense. In other words, the question of Being for
Heidegger becomes an anthropocentric question. It is in this way that
Heidegger’s thought as one of those philosophies, which directly confronted
the question of Being, receives a special place in ontology.
The choice of Watsuji, on the other hand, is cultural insofar as he is
an Eastern thinker who actually presented a systematic thesis and book on
ethics. Watsuji, a Japanese philosopher who, like his contemporaries, also
went to Germany to study philosophy, was likewise influenced by the
systematic approach of Western philosophy while embodying Eastern
values. Adopting Watsuji’s perspective is like taking an outsider’s point of

6 Ibid., 35/14.
7 This statement departs from the standpoint that at least for Heidegger, Metaphysics
had been pinned down to the idea of man as the ‘rational animal’. He writes in his book What is
called thinking, “Man conceived as the rational animal is the physical exceeding the physical”--
that is, man raising himself above the animal, the sensual, the physical that he is, through reason,-
-“in short: in the nature of man as the rational animal, there is the passing from the physical to
the non-physical, the supra-physical: thus man himself is the metaphysical.” Martin Heidegger,
What is Called Thinking? trans. by J. Glenn Gray (New York: Perennial, 2004), 58. Hereafter cited
as WT, followed by the page number.
On a side note, it must be pointed out that the relation of Heidegger to the
philosophical tradition that deals with ethics could be linked with the criticisms his philosophy
received, most particularly that of Levinas’ which is summed in the expression “ontological
imperialism,” and the fascist tendencies of his thinking which are often being connected to his
Nazi affiliation. However, since this is not the issue of the paper, the discussion on this topic is
suspended.

ISSN 1908-7330
view that is not simply critical towards Heidegger from within his tradition,
but rather from a different philosophical idiom.
Graham Mayeda, in her book Time, Space and Ethics in the Philosophy
of Watsuji Tetsurô, Kuki Shuzo, and Martin Heidegger, argues that although
already contained within Heidegger’s discussions in Being and Time, the
‘social nature’ of existence was less emphasized by Heidegger, and it is from
this that the extension of Heidegger’s discourse by Watsuji (and also by Kuki
Shuzo) comes with great significance.8 Mayeda adds that Watsuji was able to
pick up Heidegger’s tendency towards individualism and through his
critique, was able to stress the importance and primordiality of the social
dimension of existence.
To elucidate further the point of choosing Watsuji as the counterpart
of Heidegger, the second aspect of the question must be probed, namely: Why
Heidegger and Watsuji? Aside from direct references by Watsuji to
Heidegger’s philosophy in his work Rinrigaku (Ethics as the Study of Ningen),
the influence of Heidegger to Watsuji’s style of writing and method of
thinking and explaining could be greatly observed. 9 Given that Heidegger’s
hermeneutic and phenomenological approach to philosophy during that time
had been very prominent amongst the Japanese thinkers, Watsuji was not
spared from the Heideggerian influence. Such reception of Heidegger’s
philosophy of Dasein sat well with the developing philosophy of ningen sonzai
(人間存在) in Japan, and this is one of the main reasons why Watsuji, who
was one of the pioneering thinkers of this philosophy, receives special
attention when dealing with the ethical import of Heidegger’s philosophy.
Meanwhile, also in a very similar fashion to Heidegger’s philosophical career,
Watsuji was at the same time alleged to have committed to nationalistic
ideologies during the turbulent periods in Japan. The accusation was an effect
of his reactions against Western imperialism of East Asia and Japanese
imperialism and nationalism, which simultaneously occurred during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Japan. It is precisely because of such
allegation that Watsuji’s works on ethics10 had in way been questioned in the
same fashion that Heidegger’s Being and Time was stripped off of its merit at
the outbreak of the Heideggerian-Nazi controversy.
8 See Mayeda, Graham, Time, Space and Ethics in the Philosophy of Watsuji Tetsuro, Kuki
Shuzo, and Martin Heidegger (New York: Routledge, 2006).

9 During Watsuji’s time, Heidegger’s influence in Japan was wide ranging. His
hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches had been very influential to the Japanese
thinkers and Watsuji was included in such epochal disposition. In 1927, when Watsuji studied in
Germany, he also read the newly published Being and Time.
10 This includes an essay entitled Ethics, which he wrote in 1931, an expansion of such
treatise in Ethics as the Study of Ningen published in 1934, and a three-volume work also entitled
Ethics published in 1934, 1942, and 1949.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 167
Such direct influence between Watsuji and Heidegger; the ethical

import Watsuji was able to draw from Heidegger’s philosophy; the
divergence of Watsuji’s culture and thought tradition from Heidegger’s; and
their political issues are the very reasons why this paper picks up Watsuji as
a philosopher who could help give insights on the relation of ethics to
ontology, particularly to that of Heidegger’s ontology.
Heidegger: Ontology and the Analytic of Dasein
What is the structure of being of that being who “is in such a way as
to be something which understands something like Being”?11 This is the
overarching theme of the written and published portion of Martin
Heidegger’s Being and Time—a work intended to be of two parts but which
ended up completing only its preliminary task: “the interrogation of those
entities which have the character of Dasein.”12 As has been pointed out, for
Heidegger, the interrogation of Dasein’s way of being is in order to set
properly the grounds from which the inquiry about Being could be
undertaken. But what does Heidegger mean by the term Dasein?
Heidegger refers to the being of man as Dasein. The term is a
combination of two terms, da and sein, which literally means ‘being-there’ and
refers to the being of persons in contrast to the being of entities (of things). 13
For Heidegger the meaning of Dasein’s existence is “temporality.”14 This
simply means that its structural way of being is to be ‘in time.’15 At the very
onset, Heidegger already demarcates that time is the horizon for any
interpretation of Being. “Time,” he says, is “the horizon for all understanding
of Being and for any way of interpreting it.”16 Therefore, if Dasein means
‘being-there’ and being ‘in-time,’ the term acquires the meaning: ‘being-there-
in-time.’ It is under this sense that this paper approaches Heidegger’s
ontology of Dasein in terms of temporality. Insofar as his Being and Time is
concerned, this paper argues that Heidegger presented three dimensions of
temporal existence: being-in-the-world, being-with, and being-towards-death.
Being-in-the-world is the basic existential structure of Dasein. It
signifies that Dasein is “thrown into a there”17 within which he is born, is

12 Ibid., 65/41.
13 However, in traditional German philosophy, Dasein would generally refer to the
Being or existence of any thing. (See footnote 1 in Being and Time, Macquarrie-Robinson
translation, 27). The difference between being and entities is of prime distinction for Heidegger.
It is what scholars refer to as the ‘ontological difference.’
15 Ibid., 39/18.
16 Ibid., 39/17.
17 Ibid., 344/297.

ISSN 1908-7330
raised, dwells, and dies. This ‘there’ is the world. This ‘world,’ for Heidegger,
is not a physical place wherein one simply stands, moves, or wanders about,
but rather, a relational space ‘within which’ one encounters things in their
‘manipulability’ and ‘presence’18 and it is what gives them their
connectedness. Heidegger distinguishes this world from three other senses of
the world, namely: the world as “the totality of entities,” the world as “the
being of such totality,” and the world as “the general concept that embraces
all possible worlds.”19 In presenting Dasein as being-in-the-world, Heidegger
designates the world as the world of familiarity. It is the world wherein “the
factical Dasein can be said to live,”20 and from which Dasein derives its basic
intelligibility and sense of anything. It is the world closest to it, which it could
claim as its world, but which it has not created on its own. This signification
implies that beforehand, there is already a relational context of things and
individuals into which one can only be factically submitted. As Heidegger
writes, “Dasein, insofar as it is, has always submitted itself already to this
‘world’ which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its
being.”21 As such, it is only when one learns to participate within this “system
of relations”22 that one starts owning such world. In this sense, in Heidegger’s
perspective, as many as there are individual Daseins, so there shall be as many
worlds. And this world is the ‘within which’ that makes the coherence of our
experience possible.23 Heidegger argues: “Dasein’s understanding of Being
pertains with equal primordiality both to an understanding of something like
a ‘world,’ and to the understanding of the Being of those entities which
become accessible within the world.”24 This means that insofar as Dasein has
an understanding of Being, this understanding is always within the context
of a ‘world.’
As a being thrown in a world, Heidegger characterizes such ‘being-
in’ as a ‘being-with’ (the second dimension of temporality). This signifies that
as one lives in a world, one encounters things, but along with things, one
likewise encounters people. He writes,
18 In the Macquarrie-Robinson translation, ‘manipulability’ and ‘presence’ are
respectively translated as ‘readiness-to-hand’ and ‘presence-at-hand.’ However, for the sake of

clarity, I will use ‘manipulability’ and ‘presence’ in order to have a signification that is closer to
an English reader.
19 Heidegger’s discussion of the worldhood of the world is the theme of Being and
Time’s Division I, Chapter III. The four significations of the world are found in Section 14
Heidegger, BT, 93/64-65.
20 Ibid., 93/64-65,
21 Ibid., 120-121/87.
22 Ibid., 122/88.
23 Joan Stambaugh, “A Heidegger Primer,” in Philosophy Today, 19:2-4 (1975), 81.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 169
If [something] is manipulable, then there lies in the kind

of Being which belongs to it (that is, in its involvement)
an essential assignment or reference to possible wearers,
for instance, for whom it should be ‘cut to figure.’
Similarly, when material is put to use, we encounter its
producer or ‘supplier’ as one who ‘serves’ well or
badly.25
Heidegger, in trying to uncover the ‘who’ of Dasein, turns to who Dasein is

proximally and for the most part. For him, this is nothing but to ask: “Who is
it that Dasein is in its everydayness?”26
In laying bare the answer to this question, Heidegger presents that
the structure of Dasein’s being in its everydayness manifests as a ‘being-with’
(Mitsein) and ‘Dasein-with’ (Mitdasein). He discusses that these structural
items of being-in-the-world highlight the fact that along with the equipment
to be found when one is working on something, those others ‘for whom’ the
work is destined are encountered too.27 This dimension of Dasein’s existence
highlights the social belongingness of human life. The world, within which
we encounter things, is the same world within which we encounter others
who have the same kind of being as us (Dasein). It is not only things that are
present in this world but human beings as well. Dasein, in existing in the
world, is essentially with others. Dasein is a Dasein-with others. Heidegger
argues that “knowing oneself” is grounded in this “being-with.”28 As we are
always within a world-context, we also are always within a social-context. In
every conceptual and practical activity one engages into, one always already
participates within a social whole. He stresses: “even if the particular factical
Dasein does not turn to others, and supposes that it has no need of them or
manages to get along without them, it is in the way of being-with.”29 Under
this signification, Dasein can only come to know itself as someone who is
with-others and as such, that the world is disclosed to it as a “with-world”30—
it is always ‘with’ things, always ‘with’ people. The very reason why it can
have any conception of the world at all is because of this ‘with-ness.’ In
understanding the who of Dasein, one should not fall into the trap of
conceiving it as an isolated “I” in that it could be understood apart from its
relation with others. Understanding who one is, apart from one’s relation to
others with whom one is primarily socialized is impossible, for even isolation
25 Heidegger, BT, 153/117. Translation modified.

26 Ibid., 149/114.
27 Ibid., 153/117.
28 Ibid., 160/124.
29 Ibid., 160/125.
30 Ibid., 155/118.

ISSN 1908-7330
is still based on the understanding that one is initially ‘with’ others.

Heidegger stresses, “even Dasein’s Being-alone is Being-with; […] it is simply
a deficient mode of being-with.”31 For Heidegger, we are inescapably social
beings.
However, although this signifies our primordial embeddedness in a
society, it is also against this backdrop of being-with that Heidegger starts to
run through his distinction between the authentic self and the they-self (das
Man). He stresses that precisely because the world is always a world we share
with others, our being as individual Daseins can so easily be dissolved into
the kind of being of others, in such a way that we become simply inscribed in
the they and assume an inauthentic self which is the they-self. This they-self,
for Heidegger, is the kind of being we, in our everyday life, inhabit.32 In this
way of existing, we simply “take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take
pleasure; we read, see, and judge literature and art as they see and judge;
likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find
‘shocking’ what they find shocking.”33 In the they-self we become “lost in …
publicness”34 He writes,
Publicness proximally controls every way in which the

world and Dasein gets interpreted, and it is always right
… because it is insensitive to every difference of level
and of genuineness and thus never gets to the ‘heart of
the matter.’ By publicness everything gets obscured, and
what has thus been covered up gets passed off as
something familiar and accessible to everyone.35
Heidegger argues that, “Dasein always understands itself in terms of

its existence,” that is, “in terms of a possibility of itself; to be itself or not
itself.”36 In being itself, Dasein lives authentically. In not being itself, Dasein
lives inauthentically. As has been pointed out though, in its everydayness,
Dasein is a being-with. And as a being-with, Dasein exists just the way others
exist. The public way of doing and interpreting things by virtue of our being
thrown in a society we never choose becomes an integral aspect in shaping
our being, our decisions, actions, outlook; it shapes our life. Averagely, we
act according to standards or traditions. How people around us use and view
things will be the way we use and see things precisely because our being
31 Ibid., 156-7/120.
32 Ibid., 224/179.
33 Ibid., 164/126-127.
34 Ibid., 220/176.
35 Ibid., 165/127.
36 Ibid., 33/13.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 171
constitutes a certain kind of passivity with regard to the world and the society
we have grown in. Inauthenticity, characterized by our absorption in the
world when we engage in work, when we are busy, excited, or ready for
enjoyment, is what dominates how we are every day. In our everydayness we
exist as they-self.
In no case is a Dasein, untouched and unseduced by this

way in which things have been interpreted, set before
the open country of a ‘world-in-itself’ so that it just
beholds what it encounters. The dominance of the public
way in which things have been interpreted has already
been decisive even for the possibilities of having a
disposition – that is, for the basic way in which Dasein
lets the world “matter” to it. The they prescribes one’s
disposition and determines what and how one ‘sees.’ 37
In the public way of interpreting things, “Things are so, because the
they says so.”38 Here, it seems that the they is being signified by Heidegger in
a pejorative sense and gives the impression that Heidegger is altogether
hostile to public life.39 However, just like language is an essential aspect of
our life that is in itself a product of this sense of ‘public understanding,’ the
force of this anonymous public to which we belong and which we ourselves
constitute is something that is impossible to exist without. An average
understanding, as a result of this, is something that Dasein has grown in, with
no possibility of extrication.40 In it, out of it, and against it, all genuine
understanding, interpreting, and communicating, all re-discovering and
appropriating anew, are performed.41 This is the basic facticity into which
Dasein has been thrown42 and fallen43 Harrison Hall, explains this
phenomenon and writes:
37 Ibid., 213/169-170. Translation modified.

38 Ibid., 212/168.
39 Richard Polt, in his introductory book to Heidegger’s philosophy, makes a good
explanation for this confusion and differentiates the ‘they’ as an existential and the ‘they-self’ as
a modification of the ‘they.’ He argues that the ‘they’ is constant: the ‘they’ is always familiar with
a range of social expectations and interpretations that mark it as belonging to a culture.
Meanwhile, when one exists as the ‘they-self,’ as one would most of the time, one simply accepts
these expectations and interpretations, and lets one’s world be structured by them. From this
delineation, one could understand then that the ‘they’ as an existential is a mode of Dasein’s
existence and that the ‘they-self’ and the authentic self are but modifications of the ‘they.’ See
Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999).
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 223/179.
43 Ibid., 220/176.

ISSN 1908-7330
For Heidegger, we are always choosing from among the

cultural possibilities and against the cultural
background of intelligibility into which we have been
thrown. That is, we are always understanding (taking a
stand on) our being on the basis of our thrownness or
facticity. Human being is essentially self-interpreting
being (in-the-world). But for the most part this self-
interpreting is not only implicit – it is anonymous
(‘public’ in Kierkegaard’s sense). We choose, frequently
without realizing we are choosing to do ‘what they do’
… But when we choose to interpret our being in the
public way – living in the world of the they [das Man],
doing ‘what they do’ because it is either the ‘right’ or the
comfortable thing to do – we ‘fall’ into the inauthentic
way of being (BT 221-224).44
In this sense, although Dasein’s being-with implies our belongingness

to communal life, it also implies our sense of passivity to the community we
belong to. In being embedded in a social community, our tendency is to
simply assume the public way of doing and understanding things. This is
where the third dimension and ultimate form of temporality comes with great
significance—for it is here where Heidegger delineates how Dasein could
possibly and actually reclaim itself from its lostness—i.e., Dasein’s realization
of itself as a ‘being-towards-death.’
Being inscribed in time, Heidegger remarks, means that one is
already “old enough to die.”45 Death he says is “the possibility of no-longer-
being-able-to-be-there.”46 It is, as he writes, the “possibility of absolute
impossibility.”47 Heidegger furthers: “As possibility, death gives Dasein
nothing to be ‘actualized,’ nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It
is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself
towards anything, of every way of existing.”48 It is the end of existence and
as such, the end of projection and comportment. Heidegger, in presenting the
possibilities of existence in terms of ontical and ontological possibilities, 49
44 Harrison Hall, “Intentionality and World: Division I of Being and Time”, in The
Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Charles Guignon, (London: Cambridge University

Press, 1993), 137.
46 Ibid., 294/250.
47 Ibid., 294/250.
48 Ibid., 307/262.
49 Ontical possibilities are the social roles we assume in our particular lives as specific
individuals, i.e, as student, daughter, teacher, etc. The ontological possibilities, on the other hand,

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 173
uses two phenomena through which authenticity becomes possible, namely:

anxiety and death.
Anxiety and the ‘anticipation’ of an impending death are the very
keys, which Heidegger outlines as that which can be used against the
enveloping dominion of the they-self. Among the two, Heidegger first
presents anxiety as the kind of disposition that is capable of individualizing
Dasein. He argues that in anxiety, the world as a system of relations, a
network of significance, a world with others, simply shrinks away. Anxiety,
as an unease about one’s being-in-the-world, brings Dasein “face to face with
its being-free for the authenticity of its being, and for this authenticity as a
possibility which it always is.”50 He explains,
That which anxiety is anxious about is being-in-the-

world itself. In anxiety what is environmentally
manipulable sinks away and so, in general, do entities
within-the-world. The ‘world’ can offer nothing more,
and neither can the Dasein-with of others. Anxiety thus
takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding
itself, as it falls, in terms of the ‘world’ and the way
things have been publicly interpreted. Anxiety throws
Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about – its
authentic potentiality-for-being-in-the-world. Anxiety
individualizes Dasein for its ownmost being-in-the-
world, which as something that understands, projects
itself essentially upon possibilities.51
Meanwhile, the other phenomenon that opens the possibility for

Dasein to be its authentic self, i.e., anticipation, is that experience which for
him “one becomes free for one’s own death.”52 As it is in anxiety, the
uncanniness one feels in the experience of death, as the experience of being
face to face with oneself, is the very experience that individualizes man from
this social absorption. It opens the utter reality that existence is not an infinite
expansion and that in just one uncertain moment, it can be curtailed by death.
Such being-towards-death epitomizes how Dasein as being-in is a being-in-
time. Heidegger notes,
refer to a typology of Daseins’ way of being, which have been referred earlier as the authentic self
and the they or inauthentic self.
51 Ibid., 232/187.
52 Ibid., 308/264.

ISSN 1908-7330
Anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the ‘they

self,’ and brings it face to face with the possibility of
being itself, primarily unsupported by concernful
solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned
freedom towards death—a freedom which has been
released from the Illusions of the they, and which is
factical, certain of itself and anxious.53
This theme of death in relation to authenticity and inauthenticity is

very critical for Heidegger. Inauthenticity, which he describes as our
everyday way of being and constitutes our being-among-one-another,
including our absorption to the they-self, is our way of being simply
submitted to the general category of ‘society’ instead of being ‘members’ of a
society. It is then against this backdrop of inauthenticity that Heidegger
divulges the counter attitude or self-determination of Dasein that at once
makes Dasein authentic, i.e., resoluteness. “Resoluteness,” he says, “signifies
letting oneself be summoned out of one’s lostness in the they.”54 Through it,
Dasein projects towards its “ownmost Being-guilty” in being lost in the
publicness of the they.55 It is the counter approach to life, characterized by
being directed by an undying passion for something that is at the very core
for ‘one’s own life.’ In the experience of realizing death and anxiety, the they,
which we normally appeal to, but which is precisely ‘no one,’ cannot offer
any assistance. We are simply brought ‘face to face with ourselves’ and are at
once individuated. Heidegger makes it clear that no one can take our dying
away from us.56 At the moment of death, we alone shall face it, and this is
similar with life. Inasmuch as no one can die for us, no one could also live for
us. Such is the very root of his call for authenticity. As individuals, we must
be resolute enough to ‘free’ ourselves from the ‘illusory’ comforts of norms
and conventions, and ‘seize’ the possibilities provided for by our facticity. In
resoluteness, one is resolved to reaffirm and defend that which one resolves
at, against one’s tendency to fall back to irresoluteness and inauthenticity. To
be resolute in one moment, like the sense we get when one speaks of a New
Year’s resolution, is never enough. It is a constant struggle to become
someone you choose to. It is a battle of maintaining oneself in resolution,
ready and open for the possibilities of life; resolute in choosing one possibility
among the many with an understanding of one’s utmost capacities and
53 Ibid., 311/266.
54 Ibid., 346/299.
55 Ibid., 343/297.
56 Ibid., 284/240.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 175
potentialities. It involves an understanding of one’s Situation 57 as a thrown

and finite individual, who must seize and make the most out of one’s life.
Resoluteness is the way of being whereby we can embrace the finitude of our
existence and project towards what is significant for us, finally free to face,
with all uncanniness and anxiety, the being that is us, “a being in time.”
Resolution, however, is not rigid stubbornness.58 An authentic person
is free to change her mind—but she will do so only because she lucidly grasps
her Situation in relation to who she chooses to be, and not because of whim,
cowardice, or social pressures.59 To be resolute is not at all a kind of rebellious
decision to deviate from the average way of interpreting and dealing with
things. Although Heidegger’s writing gives the reader this impression, what
Heidegger aims to emphasize is one’s ability to be oneself and own one’s
actions, be responsible for it, even if one can never have the power over what
is initially given. It is not an empty decision to be different; even following
one’s tradition and having the same view of things with others are still
accounted for as authentic expressions of oneself as long as one understands
these practices, understands them in relation to one’s self-determination. It
requires a sense of assessment of the things one considers significant and a
kind of self-understanding of one’s potentialities-for-Being. Heidegger, in
this sense, affirms that resolutions remain dependent upon the they and its
world.60 Resoluteness, as an authentic being-one’s-Self, does not detach
Dasein from its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes a free-floating
“I.”61 The resolution Dasein asserts is precisely a disclosive projection of how
one uniquely and firmly assumes, appropriates, and co-determines one’s own
social, cultural, and historical determination. Dasein is an embodiment of the
society itself and is determined by it, but it is at the same time a singular being
capable of fashioning its own way of being a confluence of different forces of
influence.
Authentic being one’s self in the sense of resoluteness then does not
signify here an exceptional condition for Dasein that has been ‘detached’ from
the they. This means that since the they-self signifies not only our passive
absorption to the social whole but also our very belongingness to such
relational existence, being authentic means not simply succumbing to the
dictates of public life but instead, participating actively in the formation of
one’s own existence and life. Thus, Heidegger writes,
57 Situation with a capital “s” is contrasted with what Heidegger calls as ‘general
situation.’ In the latter, the inauthentic individual only sees what is general based on his average
understanding of things. The authentic Dasein, however, understands his Situation that he is a
thrown individual who can project and own up the possibilities provided for by his thrownness.
58 Heidegger, BT, 355/307-8.
59 Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction, 91.
60 Ibid., 345-6/299.
61 Ibid., 344/298.

ISSN 1908-7330
The term ‘irresoluteness’ merely expresses that

phenomenon which we have interpreted as a being-
surrendered to the way in which things have been
prevalently interpreted by the ‘they.’ Dasein as the they-
self, gets ‘lived’ by the common-sense ambiguity of that
publicness in which nobody resolves upon anything but
which has always made its decision. “Resoluteness”
signifies letting oneself be summoned out of one’s
lostness in the “they.”62
As such, resoluteness makes Dasein the Dasein that he is: a being

thrown in a world where he encounters things and people, who like him,
have as their way of being the capacity to make sense of their lives inasmuch
as existence is not an endless and pre-determined feat. It is under this sense
of ontology as first probing into human existence that Heidegger’s statement
in his later work gains relevance: “Every philosophical doctrine of man’s
essential nature is in itself a doctrine of the Being of beings. Every doctrine of
Being is in itself alone a doctrine of man’s essential nature.”63 The human
being, as the departure point in uncovering the meaning of Being, for
Heidegger, receives a very crucial place, and as such becomes the very
foundation of his fundamental ontology.
Watsuji: Ethics as the study of Ningen (人間)
The main problem that Watsuji undertakes in his philosophical

engagement is the question of ethics. In the beginning of his book Rinrigaku,
he argues that the problem of modern ethics is its tendency towards
individualism.64 For this, he claims that individuality constitutes only one
moment of the existence of human beings. Watsuji, in opening the vista for a
systematic conception of ethics, immediately pinned down the question of
ethics as precisely the question of the “laws of the social existence of ningen (
人間).”65 Ningen (人間), as the Japanese term for the human being, is the subject
who inquires precisely about the question of ethics, and is also that which is
itself being inquired about. For Watsuji, ethics, therefore, as primarily focused
on the being of the individual subject, is at the same time anchored on the
communal subject. Watsuji refers to this character of the human subject as
62 Ibid., 346/299.
63 Heidegger, WT, 79.
64 Watsuji, WTR, 9.
65 Ibid., 11.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 177
‘subjective community,’ which points to the human subject being an

embodiment of the interconnection of human acts within a community.
In his Rinrigaku, Watsuji begins with the statement: “The locus of
ethical problems lies not in the consciousness of the isolated individual, but
precisely in the in-betweenness of person and person. Because of this, ethics
is the study of ningen (人間).”66 Rinri (倫理), as Watsuji interprets, is the
Japanese term for ‘ethics.’ It is a compound term that is composed of the two
characters rin (倫) and ri (理). Rin (倫) refers to nakama, which means ‘fellows,’
and ri (理) signifies ‘order,’ literally: ‘order of fellowship.’
Nakama (仲間), for Watsuji, signifies ‘a body, or a system of relations’
that a definite group of persons have with one another, but not only that; it
also denotes the ‘individual persons’ within this system. He traces this to the
Chinese Five Relationships wherein he sees that the relationships ruler-
subject, husband-wife, senior brother-junior brother, senior friend-junior
friend, father-son all define a particular and unitary belongingness with one
another. For him, one can draw from the Five Relationships the signification
that a ‘relationship’ is constituted by persons, and that it is that which
constitutes the persons within the relationship. This means that, for instance,
in the father-son relation, their fellowship as two individuals forming a
unique kind of relationship (father-son) presents that every relationship
‘constitutes a being with another person’: a person being with another person.
Moreover, the fellowship ‘constitutes the individuals’ inasmuch as it is only
in that relationship that the father can actually be a father to a son, and the
son, be a son to a father. In this sense, as Watsuji explains, rin (倫, fellowship)
then signifies “the manner of interaction through which people have definite
practical connections with each other.”67 Rin (倫) is that which connotes
individuals’ ‘relatedness’ in a given social sphere.
In conceiving fellowship as such, one cannot discount the fact that
within that connection, there emerges a distinct manner of action which the
persons involved undertake. This is what is meant by the second character ri
(理). It signifies the ‘reason’ or ‘order’ or relational ‘pattern’ which appears as
a repeated and exclusive way of interacting with each other carried out by
persons within a particular relationship, and which varies from one
relationship to another.
From the combined senses of the two characters rin and ri, Watsuji
then defines rinri as “the order or the pattern through which the communal
existence of human beings is rendered possible.”68 As the Japanese term that
denotes ethics, rinri suggests the interconnectedness of people within a
society characterized by a dynamic relational pattern that governs human
66 Ibid., 10.
67 Ibid., 11.
68 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
existence. It is the given order of fellowship in a community, which manifests

a certain sense of being with one another.
It is exactly from this meaning of ethics that Watsuji draws his stand
as regards the connection of is and ought, or in Western paradigm, of
ontology and ethics. For him, “human existence as such infinitely aims at the
realization of communal existence by virtue of the fact that human beings are
ningen (人間).”69 The relational patterns involved in social existence, he
claims, are not to be treated simply as given laws that are fixed and complete
in themselves. They are rather to be ‘infinitely’ aimed at. Watsuji stresses that
although the pattern of practical connections is already realized, it is at the
same time “a pattern yet to be achieved.”70 Although ethics is already what
is, in the sense of what Watsuji calls ‘laws of social existence’ or our primary
way of relating with one another, it is also regarded as what should be
achieved ‘infinitely.’71 The derivation of this standpoint of Watsuji comes
from the fact that such ‘law’ is actually an unwritten law, whose sole support
lies in the mutual will of individuals within a relationship to act in such
manner repeatedly. Once one of them breaks off that sense of agreement, the
‘lawness’ of the relational pattern at the same time disintegrates. 72 Thus for
Watsuji, inasmuch as rinri (倫理) is what is, it is also what ought.
Rinri (倫理) without the human beings which it interconnects,
however, is not possible. This leads to another major term used by Watsuji in
his ethical system: ningen (人間). What precisely does he mean by ningen?
Ningen (人間) is also a compound term composed of two characters: hito (人)
meaning man, and gen or aida (間) meaning betweenness, literally ‘man-in-
betweenness.’ It was mentioned earlier that for Watsuji, ethics is at once a
‘study of ningen (人間).’ If we take the literal meaning of ningen (人間) it
would signify man, and the study of ningen (人間) or the study of man would
be anthropology. However, Watsuji emphasizes that this literal meaning does
not necessarily fully coincide with the Japanese connotation of the term. For
the Japanese and for him, the meaning of the term ningen (人間) presents a
very crucial dimension of the existence of man that is not immediately
implied by the English term ‘anthropology.’ This is the “betweenness of human
beings, that is, the ‘public.’”73 Watsuji points out that this sense of publicness
inscribed in the term is the connotation used in classic Japanese literature
most especially in Buddhist sutras. However, as time went by, this
signification also transformed and came to signify the ‘individual.’ From
69Ibid., 12.
70Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 This can be understood in the sense of a son disobeying his father, for instance, or a
broken marriage, or in the betrayal of loyalties between a ruler-subject relation.

73 Watsuji, WTR, 14.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 179
here, Watsuji then takes these two senses of the term as ‘public, social, or
communal,’ and ‘individual’ and uses them as the basis for what he states as
the dual-structure of the nature of ningen (人間): as both an individual and a
member of the society.74
It is in here that Watsuji makes a crucial distinction. He stresses that
ningen (人間) as an individual differs completely from society. As an
‘individual,’ ningen (人間) is truly the individual person that is within a
society. But, insofar as ningen (人間) also refers to the public, it is also the
‘community’ which exists between person and person, and thus signifying
‘society’ as well and not just isolated human beings.75 This complex nature of
ningen (人間) is what led Watsuji to assert that it refers not merely to an
individual ‘human being’ nor merely to ‘society’ but to both. Individuals are
basically different from the society and yet as they also constitute the society,
they also are the society. The term ningen (人間), insofar as it refers to
individuals singly, also refers to them generally, or better yet, publicly.
This dual structure of ningen (人間) as being both individual and
social is referred to by Watsuji as “the absolute totality of ningen (人間).”76 For
Watsuji, this double structure of ningen (人間) reveals that it is precisely “a
movement of negation”77 that is constitutive of two moments: the negation of
the totality of ningen (人間) in order to arrive at individuality, and the
negation of this individuality in order to return back to communal existence.
The first moment as the negation of the totality of ningen (人間) is, for Watsuji,
a negation aimed at establishing ‘individuality,’ that is, self-awareness.
However, this moment, by the time it reaches such awareness, is again
negated and returns to the totality of ningen (人間) which is properly
communal life. He explains that this double negation comes about precisely
because the moment one arrives at self-realization, one at the same time
realizes that one is already socially embedded and thus belongs to the totality
of ningen (人間).
This double negation that starts from the negation of totality if only
to return to it again is what Watsuji calls the movement of ‘absolute negation’
that leads to the derivation of the “true reality of an individual, as well as of
totality”—“emptiness.”78 Emptiness is the real feature of the totality of ningen
(人間) inasmuch as it is a continuous movement from totality to individuality
and then back to totality. Under this sense, the elements of this totality, that
74 Watsuji writes: “The Japanese language … possesses a very significant word,

namely, ningen (人間). On the basis of the evolved meaning of this word, we Japanese have
produced a distinctive conception of human being. According to it, ningen (人間) is the public
and, at the same time, the individual human beings living within it.” Watsuji, WTR, 15.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid., 23.
77 Ibid., 22.
78 Ibid., 23.

ISSN 1908-7330
is, the individuals and the social whole, “subsist not in themselves, but only
in the relationship of each with the other.”79 The individual’s individuality is
negated for the sake of the whole that is to be established, and the whole is
that ground against which an individual rebels to establish itself.80 Inasmuch
as this is a continuous self-negation; therefore, this negative structure is what
renders the continuous formation of human beings.81 If it is the case for
Watsuji that ethics is the study of ningen (人間), and if the absolute totality of
ningen (人間) is absolute negativity, then the basic principle of ethics for him
isthe realization of the absolute totality of ningen (人間)82 ‘as’ absolute
emptiness.83
In the process of uncovering this meaning of ningen (人間), Watsuji
elucidates his critique of Heidegger and begins with the question of whether
it is appropriate to immediately associate ‘publicness’ with the ‘society’ or the
‘community.’ In this, he stresses that the term ‘public’ is one of the central
problems of modern philosophy and points to Heidegger’s idea of the
‘world.’ He writes,
When Heidegger characterized human existence by

means of the phrase being in the world, he made use of the
concept of intentionality prevalent in phenomenology,
as the jumping-off point. He carried this structure a step
further, to transfer it to existence, and understood it as
having to do with tools. Therefore, we can say that he set
the pattern for explicating the subjective meaning of
what is called the world. But in his philosophy, the
relation between person and person lies hidden behind
the relation between person and tools.84
In this critique, Watsuji emphasizes that Heidegger overlooked the

‘person to person relation’ that composes the world and focused only on the
individual human person in its relation with things as tools.85 He goes on
stressing that it was only Karl Löwith who uncovered the hidden
anthropological dimension of Heidegger’s idea of ‘world’ that deals with
79 Ibid., 101.
80 Ibid., 101-102.
81 Ibid., 117.
82 Ibid., 23.
83 Ibid., 17.
84 Ibid.
85 This aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy had not been elaborated in the preceding
section for the fact that the writer is of the opinion that Heidegger’s philosophy does not take as
its central point this relation of human beings to things in terms of their presence and
manipulability but is only an aspect of the task to disclose human’s ways of being in the world.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 181
mutual relations. This was when Löwith clarified that in Heidegger’s

philosophy: “a human being is a person ‘together with others,’ and the world
is mit-Welt (with-World), that is, the public, whereas being in the world means
‘to relate with others.’”86 Watsuji continues that if this is the case, then this
kind of anthropology that deals with relation between oneself and the other,
as ‘mutual relations’ of persons instead of with ‘individual’ persons, is bound
to become “the basis for the framing and understanding of ethical
problems.”87 Because precisely for Watsuji:
… the essential feature of life consists in the fact that

persons assume an attitude of behaving themselves in
relation with one another, and this attitude includes
within itself the basic behaviour of human beings, that is
to say, their ethos.88
In conceding this way, Watsuji asserts that since such ethos is an ethos
of the human being, ethics as a study of the ethos of the human being becomes
a study of human existence as embedded in a world with others.
It is in following this clarification of Löwith about the idea of the
world that Watsuji links the Japanese term seken (世間), which means ‘the
public,’ and the term yonononaka (世の中), which means the world, to the
German word Welt. He argues that, “Welt is not just the world of nature, but
of community existence, namely, of a society in which persons are related to
each other.”89 He emphasizes that the analysis of in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-
the-world) is not only about the relation between persons and tools but
greatly, “an analysis of community life” itself.90 Welt which originally meant
‘a generation’ and a ‘group of people,’ is to a large extent similar with the
signification of the character se (世) in seken (世間) or yo (世) in yononaka (世の
中) which connotes something that is both temporal and spatial— temporal
in signifying ‘a generation,’ and spatial in signifying ‘a society.’91 Moreover,
in seken (世間), the characters ken92or aida (間), which pictographically shows
being ‘in between’ or betweenness, and naka (中) in yononaka (世の中) which
shows being ‘in’ or in-ness, also highlight the anthropological nature of the
world that is not only spatial but very importantly, deeply relational.
86Watsuji, WTR, 17.

87Ibid.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid., 17-18.
92 If one can notice, the character ken had been referred to earlier as gen in the term
ningen. This is so because the Romanization and pronunciation of Japanese characters differ
depending on how it is used in a compound term.

ISSN 1908-7330
Combining the terms’ spatio-temporal sense with their social dimension,

therefore, denotes that for Watsuji, the world itself implies a world of
someone characterized by what Watusji refers to as “living and dynamic
betweenness”93 with one’s fellow human beings in time and space.
As ethics then is concerned with ningen’s (人間) embeddedness in a
spatio-temporal-world-with-others, Watsuji goes on to explain a final term
that is fundamental to the groundwork of his ethics—the Japanese term for
existence—sonzai (存在). The compound term roughly means “the subjective
self-subsistence” of the self (son, 存) “within some place” (zai, 在).94 As has
been presented, ningen (人間) implies the dual structure of man as being in
between social existence and as an individual human being. For Watsuji,
what is referred to as the place the subject must stay in is precisely the human
relations which characterize the very being of the subject. If it is tenable to
hold that son (存) is the self-sustenance of the self and zai (在) as remaining
within human relations, he remarks that sonzai (存在) precisely means the
“self-sustenance of the self as betweenness.”95 Under this signification,
Watsuji interprets that because sonzai (存在) deals precisely with how ningen
(人間) is to sustain itself in human relations, sonzai (存在) represents the very
way of existence of ningen (人間).96 Therefore, if ningen (人間) signifies a dual
structure and if sonzai (人間) is a ‘remaining’ to this dual structure, ethics as a
study of ningen (人間) is aimed at safeguarding the possibility of ningen sonzai
(人間存在, human existence), which means the human being remaining
within the state of betweenness.
Having outlined the meaning of the four terms that consist the very
core of Watsuji’s discussions on ethics namely: rinri (倫理, ethics), ningen (人
間, human being), seken (世間, public) or yonononaka (世の中, world), and son-
zai (存在, existence), one can now proceed to ask—What characterizes ethics
for Watsuji? To this question, he singles out four features which basically
comprise his method: (1) Ethics is a study of ningen (人間) asking about ningen
(人間); (2) Ethics is the study of ningen (人間) conceived as the practical
interconnection of acts; (3) Ethics is a science that must translate practice into
a definite proposition, “… is …”; and (4) Ethics can only grasp subjective
reality if it proceeds through the study of the practical and concrete
expressions of ningen sonzai (人間存在).
The first characteristic of ethics that Watsuji mentions appears to be
in close affinity to Heidegger’s delimitation of the question of ontology, could
be said to project a very distinct resemblance. What Watsuji emphasizes when
he redoubles ningen (人間) in his statement “ethics is a study of ningen (人間)

94 Ibid., 20.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid., 21.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 183
asking about ningen (人間)”97 is similar to the Heideggerian Dasein that asks
about its own being as it asks about Being. Ethics, as the study of the human
being, is at once a study of this human being asking about its existence; ethics
asks about the “fundamental structure of the sonzai (存在) of ningen (人間).”98
He follows the Heideggerian statement that “inquiry is a cognizant seeking
for an entity both with regard to the fact that it is and with regard to its being
as it is”99 and reiterates: “first of all, learning in general, that is, to ‘ask’ already
belongs to the sonzai (存在) of ningen (人間).”100 Watsuji further writes:
“Questioning belongs to the sonzai (存在) of ningen (人間), to the way of being
of ningen (人間);”101 and concludes: “the primary characteristic of the method
of ethics consists in the point that the asking activity and what is asked are
one.”102
The second characteristic of ethics that Watsuji points out is “ethics
as the study of ningen (人間) conceived as the practical interconnection of
acts.”103 In this feature of ethics, Watsuji brings to the fore again the dual
structure of ningen (人間) inasmuch as he describes it as not only an
‘individual subject’ but at the same time, and very importantly, a ‘practical
interconnection of acts.’104 He says that “the sonzai (存在) of ningen (人間) is
from the beginning to end a practical acting subject, as well as subjective
interconnections.”105 This means that ethics inquires about subjectivity but
highlights that this subjectivity is subjectivity as betweenness. In this sense,
Watsuji emphasizes that in the study of ningen (人間), we are not dealing
simply with singular subjectivity, but rather a subjectivity made possible only
insofar as it has been a product of the interplay of an entire network of
relational everyday activity within a given social community.
The third feature of ethics for Watsuji that determines the method of
ethics is the fact that “ethics is a science that must translate practice into a
definite proposition, ‘… is …’”106 What Watsuji meant by this is that “ethics
is not a science that deals only with the objective meaning-content of noematic
objects” rather, “it is a science that deals with human reality.”107 However,
since human practical life is ‘not yet’ a science, ethics must transform it into
one. This is where Watsuji’s Western influence makes a distinct presence. His
97 Ibid., 31.
98 Ibid.
101 Ibid., 31.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid., 33.
104 Ibid.,
105 Ibid., 31.
106 Ibid., 37.
107 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
claim is that ethics can only be a science “by transforming human reality into
logos.”108 It must, he says, “translate practice into a definite proposition.”109
However, he tempers this direct theorization of ethics by asserting that even
if it is a logos or proposition, it must not be forgotten that these are still
“subjective realities” and “cannot really be absolutely objectified.”110 This
way, Watsuji affirms ethics (rinrigaku) as a science (gaku), but only a science
whose ‘absolute objectivity’ cannot be guaranteed by virtue of the fact that
the study is a study of ‘dynamic’ practical existence.
The last feature of ethics that Watsuji singles out is that “ethics can
only grasp subjective reality if it proceeds through the study of the practical
and concrete expressions of ningen sonzai (人間存在).”111 In following the third
characteristic as a science of the practical acts of ningen (人間), Watsuji stresses
out that such practical acts can only be derived from the “expressions of sonzai
(存在) already carried out within the realm of practice.”112 What mediates the
sonzai (存在) of ningen (人間) as subjective reality and its scientific
understanding are precisely these ‘expressions’ that are “expressions of
betweenness.”113 Watsuji, here, highlights the fact that these expressions are
the “things of daily life,” the “everyday experience of human beings,” and as
such constitute within themselves a certain sense of understanding, or logic,
or order, that makes it capable for a science to grasp subjective reality.114
Using these four characteristics that determine ethics, Watsuji sums
up how ethics must be viewed and understood. He writes,
As an inquiry to ningen (人間), ethics turns back to the

person inquiring (first). Hence, it must subjectively
grasp the subjective ningen (人間)(second). What is more,
the object of science is exclusively concerned with
meaning connections (third). Hence, the subjective grasp
must use as its medium “the expressions of ningen’s (人
間) sonzai (存在),” which expressions are like a melting
furnace through which subjective ningen (人間) is
transformed into its meaning connections (fourth).115
These four perspectives are for Watsuji what constitute rinrigaku. It is

an inquiry of the human being about itself which leads to the realization of
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid.
114 Ibid., 39.
115 Ibid., 40.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 185
its being as ‘subjective community.’ Watsuji’s idea of rinrigaku does not

‘draw’ judgments about human existence, but instead, ‘goes back’ to the very
expressions of subjective-communal life within which we always already live
in, and recognize how they express how we come to have any practical
understanding at all. In ethics, insofar as Watsuji is concerned, one is not
concerned in ‘creating’ a science of how we ought to relate within a society,
but in understanding how we ‘already’ relate and how we are to remain in
such relatedness. An ethical act is an act that is grounded in and triggered by
one’s historicity, not a principle that is yet to be realized.
The Heidegger-Watsuji Tension
What can now be singled out from this presentation of the two
philosophers’ views on ontology and ethics? Here, it has been laid out that
for Heidegger, ontology insofar as it is deals with the question of Being,
necessarily embarks on the question of the being of Dasein. In the same
manner, for Watsuji, inasmuch as ethics is the study of the laws of social
existence, it is hence a study of ningen (人間) within relational existence. What
this signifies to us is that intimately, both ontology and ethics take as their
foundational standpoint, the standpoint of the human being. This human
being is not like the traditional subject in Western philosophy which both
Heidegger and Watsuji were critical about, but instead a human being that is
living in a ‘world’ within which he encounters and relates with other beings
who share and express the same way of being as his.
The objects of ontology and ethics are Being and social existence,
respectively, and yet both embark on the point of elucidating first and
foremost the existence of Dasein and Ningen (人間). Towards the disclosure of
the basic existential structures of Dasein and Ningen (人間), it can be
recognized that Heidegger and Watsuji also share the recognition of our
primary embeddedness in a world and at that, the social existence which
constitutes us. The basic concepts of the human being, existence, the world,
and our being with others comprise a big chunk of their philosophies that one
is led to think that there is really no gap between their thoughts.
However, obvious as these similarities might be, it is to be noted that
the similar contention Heidegger and Watsuji share in this exposition of the
human individual seems to differ when Watsuji argues against Heidegger
when dealing with the concept of authenticity.
Watsuji interprets that if for Heidegger, death is the source of
authenticity insofar as it individualizes Dasein from the they-self, for him,
such authenticity is incomplete. His claim is that, “What Heidegger calls

ISSN 1908-7330
authenticity is, in reality, inauthenticity.”116 He further adds that authenticity

is only realized when the 'self,' that is arrived at in this individuation becomes
annihilated, that is, when “inauthenticity becomes further negated through
the non-dual relation of self and other.”117 Authenticity for Watsuji requires
not only breaking past the they-self through realizing oneself as a being-
towards-death, but in taking further another negation which basically leads
the self back to the totality from which it has been negated. In this sense,
Watsuji writes, “the finitude in question is no longer a finitude appearing in
'being in its death' but is rather a finitude of an individual that stands in
relation to others.”118 The totality of a human being is not the individual as
bounded by death, but the self-emptying individual that stands essentially
related to others. Totality lies not in individuality but rather in communality.
Thus Watsuji asks: “If one is concerned with only individual being, then how
significant can this preparedness for death be?” 119 The self-realization of the
finitude of an individual being is of no significance by itself, for it only
receives significance in its relation to others. Rather than affirming your
individuality, death should affirm your belongingness to a community
wherein your death has significance and makes sense. In one sense, it can be
said that this expresses the Japanese tendency to regard death as something
that is not to be feared but is even the source of honor. In dying for one’s
community, one does not become a completed ‘individual’ but becomes a
‘member’ of such community.
Although Watsuji’s critique of Heidegger seems convincing, Watsuji
seems to have missed a key element in Heidegger’s elucidation of
authenticity. Heidegger, when referring to the individuating power of death,
precisely indicated that death “individuates only in such a manner that, as
the possibility which is not to be outstripped, it makes Dasein, as being-with,
have some understanding of the potentiality-for-being of others”120 For
Heidegger, in death, one does not only realize one’s individuated self but also
the fundamental truth that such authentic self is grounded in one’s being-
with-others—the totality of Dasein lies in these two interdependent aspects of
its being. As he asserts: “It is only when people are resolute that they can
authentically be with one another.”121 It seems that when Watsuji singles out
how Heidegger’s conception of authenticity is incomplete, he is interpreting
the phenomenon of death as the physical curtailment of one’s life. For
Heidegger, death is not simply the end of one’s life. In death, life—as a life in
116 Ibid., 225.

117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., 227.
119 Ibid.
121 Ibid., 344/298.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 187
the world, as a life with things, as a life with others, as a life that is not an
infinite expansion—is at the very core affirmed. When Heidegger talks about
death, he is not concerned about a biological fact; he is referring instead to an
‘ontological disposition.’ Dasein relates to death as a ‘possibility’ that, once
fully affirmed, could radically change how Dasein understands and relates to
his present that will consequently reorient Dasein’s future choices and
interpretation of the past. It is in this line of thinking that Heidegger could be
interpreted to propose an identity-based ethics grounded in the affirmation
of one’s temporal existence. Death for Heidegger is the seal that the meaning
of Dasein’s being is temporality and that all of Dasein’s understanding of
Being is derived from temporality. In this way, Heidegger does not say that
because Dasein is individuated he is already authentic because the social
existence from which it first belongs makes it inauthentic, and then proceeds
on to live a life at a distance from everyone else. Rather, in being individuated,
Dasein at the same time realizes that it is, in its everyday living, a being-with-
others. Dasein’s authenticity does not lie on its being individuated and no
more, but in the fact that wholly, Dasein “realizes” his basic existential
structure as an individual ‘with’ others. As he says, “A lively mutual
acquaintanceship on the basis of being-with often depends upon how far
one’s own Dasein has understood itself at the time; but this means that it
depends only upon how far one’s essential being with others has made itself
transparent and has not disguised itself.”122 It is only in the acknowledgment
of Dasein’s groundedness to its historicity and temporal existence that
authenticity, rather than an extraction from inauthentic communal life, is
actually an affirmation of it as an ontological condition from which it will
never be able to extract itself. Inauthenticity is actually the very condition of
Dasein’s possibilities. So that it is not at all a question of authentic or
inauthentic existence, but rather, authenticity ‘within’ inauthenticity.
Epilogue: Ethics and Ontology
Given such proximity and divergence in Heidegger and Watsuji’s

philosophies, what has remained now is the question of the relation of ethics
and ontology. Seen from how Watsuji divulged the different aspects of ethics,
one can say that ethics is a question of values that are at the very core socially
embedded. How Watsuji battled with what he claims as the individualistic
tendencies of Heidegger’s thinking is very much reflected in how he argued
for the understanding of social reality as a tension between the values of
individualism and communality. If for him, Heidegger still has traces of
individualism, ethics must in its core strive to balance that with one’s
122 Ibid., 160/125.

ISSN 1908-7330
authentic social belongingness. In his perspective, ontology and ethics are

fused because what is studied in ontology is the existence of the human
individual-in-a-world-with-others, and by that very sense, it is already a
study of the ethos of the individual that is at the same time social. It is also a
study not only of is but also of ought because insofar as the meaning of
‘existence’ for him is ‘to remain,’ ‘to self-sustain’ within human relations, this
must be the sustenance in a balanced way of one’s dual nature as a self and
as someone belonging to a community. Given that this dual nature can be
easily overpowered by the domination of one of its elements over the other,
ethics and human existence as such are an infinite battle to keep the elements
in equilibrium. But apart from this, it has to be emphasized that the two, one’s
individual and communal existence, are not separated but are inter- or co-
dependent.
Meanwhile, if ethics is a tracing to the very end the practical
consequences of a conception of the structure of the human being’s existence,
in Heidegger’s case, ontology does not push it that far. It only describes the
basic structure of how values or practices emerge or are disclosed in the first
place. To uncover the ethical dimension of existence is for him not the task of
ontology. Its elucidation of human existence is only a preliminary task in
answering the main questions of ontology, namely, “What is the meaning of
Being?” Heidegger writes,
… the analytic of Dasein remains wholly oriented

towards the guiding task of working out the question of
Being … If our purpose is to make such an anthropology
possible, or to lay its ontological foundations, our
Interpretation will provide only some of the ‘pieces,’
even though they are by no means inessential ones. Our
analysis of Dasein, however, is not only incomplete; it is
also, in the first instance provisional. It merely brings out
the being of this entity, without Interpreting its meaning.
It is rather a preparatory procedure by which the horizon
for the most primordial way of interpreting Being may
be laid bare.123
If ontology uncovers in the process the being of Dasein, it may touch

upon ethics but that is not ontology’s goal. Ethics is a different field which
ontology cannot fail to intersect with insofar as both studies take the human
being as their departure point. This is the reason why Levinas, for instance,
criticizes Heidegger. Levinas thinks that Heidegger’s Being flattens out the
123 Ibid., 38/17.

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 189
dimensionality and dynamicity of Others.124 Levinas writes in Totality and

Infinity:
To affirm the principle of Being, over the existent, is to

already decide the essence of philosophy; it is to
subordinate the relation with someone who is an existent
(the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of the
existent, which, impersonal, permits the apprehension,
the domination of the existent (a relationship of
knowing) and subordinates justice to freedom.125
However, this is not the point of Heidegger; ontology is not about

Dasein’s particular ‘relation’ with others, but rather the ‘structure’ of its being
that describes how come it is in the first place related to others, or that it can
only understand itself in relation to others. It is not to make relationality
subordinate to the structure or to impersonalize it for the sake of
‘domination,’ but only to proximally make sense what makes ethics possible
in the first place. And although it tries to understand the structure of our
relations or how we are related to others, it does not however determine how
we ‘ought to relate’. This latter requirement is now the subject matter of ethics
not ontology. But since there are a lot of nuances and intricacies in this
philosophical debate between Heidegger and Levinas, and this paper is one
that is focused on Watsuji and Heidegger, the elucidation of this theme shall
be allotted for another research. 126
Overall, the sense this entire elucidation aims at is the reassertion of
the divergent objectives of ontology and ethics despite them having almost
similar preliminary content as presented in the case of Heidegger and
Watsuji. One of them describes human existence because only in doing so can
one understand that very thing which this human is concerned about: Being,
(ontology); while the other one is concerned in describing human existence
because in doing so, one sees that it is once and for all a social being and in
being such, this individual’s most important concern is how to remain in such
relational existence in order to be a true ningen (人間), that is at once social
and individual (ethics). Ontology is a description of the situation of the human
within a society. Ethics is the study of how humans can remain and live in
harmony within that social world.
124 See also Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics,” in Writing and Difference
trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge Classics, 2001).

125 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1969), 45; as cited in Steven Gans, “Ethics or Ontology: Levinas and
Heidegger,” in Philosophy Today, 16:2 (1972), 117.
126 See Gans, “Ethics or Ontology: Levinas or Heidegger,” 117-121.

ISSN 1908-7330
Having this as food for thought, can it really be said that apart from
the distinction of Heidegger and Watsuji on the category which they use in
summarizing their philosophical projects, their thoughts are actually
disjunct? I claim that they express close proximity. From this backdrop one
can also realize a possible insight about comparative engagement as an
approach to philosophy. Inasmuch as the difference between Heidegger and
Watsuji’s labelling of ontology and ethics is something that cannot be easily
reconciled for it requires another rigorous presentation of the signification of
ethics and ontology, this kind of difference can actually be said to offer a very
challenging feat to comparative philosophy. When comparative philosophy
is able to highlight the impasse of formalizations such as this, the distance
between ideas, and where incommensurability becomes a true
incommensurability, it is at the same time opening the possibility for the
expansion of philosophy and a brave attempt to figure out what might be
considered as universal. Comparative philosophy in highlighting
discontinuities in thought, at the same time highlights the ruptures, the cracks
in our cogitations and hence the opening for a new project for thinking. For it
is when we see where things do not follow, where exceptions exist, that
thought is once again summoned to choose, decide, and make a stand.
Department of History and Philosophy

University of the Philippines Baguio, Philippines
References
Derrida, Jaques, “Violence and Metaphysics,” in Writing and Difference trans.

by Alan Bass (London: Routledge Classics, 2001).
Gans, Steven, “Ethics or Ontology: Levinas and Heidegger,” in Philosophy
Today, 16:2 (1972).
Hall, Harrison, “Intentionality and World: Division I of Being and Time”, in
The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Charles Guignon,
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (USA: Harperperennial Modernthought, 2008).
___________, What is Called Thinking? trans. by J. Glenn Gray (New York:
Perennial, 2004).
Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alphonso Lingis
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969).
Mayeda, Graham, Time, Space and Ethics in the Philosophy of Watsuji Tetsurô,
Kuki Shuzo, and Martin Heidegger (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Polt, Richard, Heidegger: An Introduction (New York: Cornell University Press,
1999).

ISSN 1908-7330
K. AGRA 191
Stambaugh, Joan, “A Heidegger Primer,” in Philosophy Today, 19:2-4 (1975).

Watsuji, Tetsurô, Watsuji Tetsurô’s Rinrigaku trans. Yamamoto Seisaku and
Robert E. Carter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Virtù, Fortuna, and Statecraft:

A Dialectical analysis of Machiavelli
Anthony Lawrence A. Borja
Abstract: The issue of statecraft is central to the works of Machiavelli,

and his primary contribution to contemporary practice and theorizing
is an exposition of the inevitable complexities behind this human
endeavor. States rise and fall because of failures in leadership tied with
the moving contours of the political arena itself. Key to Machiavelli’s
analysis of statecraft is the internal relations between Virtù and Fortuna.
I intend to show that Machiavelli’s contribution to the modern notion
of state-building is not only an exposition of the innards of court
politics, but also a development of the classical notion of virtù-Fortuna
into a vital component that gave statecraft and, to an extent, politics in
general its spirit of eternal motion. Machiavelli paved the way for a
modern notion of statecraft by exposing the primary problem that
gives it meaning through its inherent irresolvability—statecraft as
determined by the convergence of virtù as a conscious effort with the
basket of constantly moving objective factors we call Fortuna.
Specifically, I argue that virtù and its dimensions seek to penetrate
Fortuna and expose its concrete components, hence, making these
factors recognizable, understandable, predictable, and eventually,
vulnerable to acts of establishing and sustaining control.
Keywords: Althusser, Machiavelli, leadership, state-building
T
he issue of statecraft is central to the works of Machiavelli and his
primary contribution to contemporary practice and theorizing is an
exposition of the inevitable complexities behind this human endeavor.
States rise and fall because of failures in leadership tied with the moving
contours of the political arena itself. Simply put, a leader can fail without
destroying his/her state, or he/she can succeed where others failed. Key to
Machiavelli’s analysis of statecraft is the internal relations between Virtù and
Fortuna. However, there is a lack of an organized schema that can explain the
different dimensions of the internal relationship between Virtù and Fortuna.
Formerly, an attempt was made by Wood to posit a reconstruction of
© 2016 Anthony Lawrence A. Borja

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/borja_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 193
Machiavelli’s virtù through two thrusts, namely, its relationship with

necessity and with war.1 He illustrated that, for Machiavelli, necessity
produces virtù through a cycle facilitated by the contradiction between
discipline as a keystone for virtù given by the necessities of survival, and
idleness/luxury as a result of a successful transition from stability to wealth. 2
Concerning war and the nature of virtù, Wood argued that reflective of
Machiavelli’s usage of ancient warrior-statesmen as illustrations, virtù
“therefore, is a set of qualities, or a pattern of behavior most distinctively
exhibited under what may be described as battlefield conditions” 3 in the
context of actual warfare or politics. What I would like to note from these
two thrusts is that virtù, when taken in isolation, often leads to fragmentary
reconstructions emphasizing some aspects at the expense of others.
Moreover, in relation to Wood, I note that, for Newell, disorder marks
Machiavelli’s originality in comparison to Christian theology and
Humanism. For him, Machiavelli saw disorder as fundamental to an
understanding and execution of statecraft, that is, statesmen must realize that
Fortuna’s unreliability should be harnessed through freeing selfish impulses
and acting in accordance, not to utopian delusions but to the reality of
political disorder.4
Simply put, disorder, instability, and unpredictability are necessary
factors in providing a more nuanced understanding of this concept’s passage
through Machiavelli. To elaborate, Machiavelli’s virtù, when understood
from a relational perspective, steers away from an atomistic conception of
individual will; one’s virtù is both insufficient in the constant struggle for
power and does not necessarily entail the abandonment of collective activities
as means of satisfying individual interests. Specifically, Fortuna as the
primary external factor facing virtù can be understood as a key in achieving
a more holistic understanding of Machiavelli’s framework.
Though insightful, Wood fell short in relating Fortuna as another
important concept utilized by Machiavelli in his analysis of virtù. For this
reason, I will extend Wood’s relational analysis towards virtù and Fortuna as
two central concepts within The Prince and the Discourses on Livy.
Furthermore, this goal is necessitated by later analyses that gave due weight
to the interaction between virtù and Fortuna in efforts to better understand
Machiavelli’s contribution to the modern concept of politics. 5 Hence, I will
1 Neal Wood, “Machiavelli’s concept of Virtù Reconsidered,” in Political Studies, 15

(1967), 160, 167-70.
2 Ibid., 166-8.
3 Ibid., 171.
4 W.R. Newell, “How Original Is Machiavelli? A Consideration of Skinner's
Interpretation of Virtue and Fortune,” in Political Theory, 15 (1987), 628-9.

5 I’m referring to the following: Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, trans. by Gregory
Elliot (London: Verso, 1999), 3-111; John Greville Agard Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment:

ISSN 1908-7330
194 VIRTÙ, FORTUNA, AND STATECRAFT
try to fabricate a framework for the internal relationship between

Machiavelli’s virtù and Fortuna. In trying to achieve this, I will pursue the
following goals, namely, to illustrate (1) that the varied dimensions of virtù
could be organized and synthesized in relation to Fortuna, and (2) that
Machiavelli’s notion of statecraft is founded on the eternal struggle caused by
the internal relations between virtù and Fortuna. For both objectives, I argue
that in exposing the concrete bases of Machiavelli’s Fortuna, I could provide
a more nuanced portrait of virtù and its dimensions; that is, when used in
both offence and defense, it seeks to penetrate Fortuna and expose its concrete
components, hence, making these factors recognizable, understandable,
predictable, and eventually, vulnerable to acts of establishing and sustaining
control. In line with these, I intend to show that Machiavelli’s contribution to
the modern notion of state-building is not only an exposition of the innards
of court politics, but also a development of the classical notion of virtù-Fortuna
into a vital component that gave statecraft and, to an extent, politics in general
its spirit of eternal motion. By juxtaposing the absence of guarantees and
absolute security with the urgency and principles of achieving a semblance
of these conditions, Machiavelli paved the way for a modern notion of
statecraft by exposing the primary problem that gives it meaning through its
inherent irresolvability—statecraft as determined by the convergence of virtù
as a conscious effort with the basket of constantly moving objective factors
we call Fortuna. Machiavelli’s contribution stands firm as the problems he
exposed remain and will probably remain unresolved.
Dialectics in Machiavelli
For a dialectical analysis of Machiavelli, we turn to Althusser who

illustrated in Machiavelli and Us that Machiavelli’s importance is based on his
analytical approach bent on dissecting political conjunctures and placing
political practice within such a framework deprived of any source of
guarantee and defined by over-determination; that is, the image of the
political arena that can be deduced from Machiavelli’s works is defined by
the absence of linear causality and the primacy of constant change and
struggle. Focusing on Althusser’s schema, I would like to note three basic
thrusts, namely, his arguments on Machiavelli as a theorist of the conjuncture,
his reconstruction of Machiavelli’s arguments on history, and lastly, his
discussion on the interplay between Fortuna and Virtù. Firstly, for Althusser,6
Machiavelli was the first to think within and of the historico-political
conjuncture that faced him. To be specific, Machiavelli’s approach to the
Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1975), 156-218.
6 Althusser, Machiavelli, 17-9.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 195
question of statecraft was to grasp the complexities facing it as based upon

the confrontation and constant struggle between the results of human forces.
Second, in extracting Machiavelli’s theoretical framework and
comparative approach, Althusser7 synthesized the former’s general theory on
history into three interacting theses, namely, the immutability of human and
natural things, the continual motion of human affairs, 8 and the cyclicality of
human affairs and the typology of governments driven to change by the
wheel of Fortune (i.e., the inevitability of corruption and the de/centralization
of power).9 For the first two theses, he argued that these were Machiavelli’s
philosophical assumptions that allowed him to conduct comparative
analysis; immutability allowed Machiavelli to isolate constants among cases
while the assumption on constancy of change facilitated the identification of
variations.10 Furthermore, while the first two theses pinpointed the
contradiction that Machiavelli stumbled upon and recognized in his analysis
of both the political arena and political practice, the third thesis was the
product of the contradiction between the first two that Machiavelli
accomplished by transforming the classical typology of governments into a
cycle of governments. This cycle is based on a pattern defined by an
incumbent’s descent into corruption and the contraction or expansion of the
number of rulers (i.e., distribution of power). Now from these theses,
Althusser extracted Machiavelli’s fourth thesis or his political position. For
him, Machiavelli was concerned with a state that transcends the cyclicality of
government so as to ensure its durability and endurance 11; that is, the
problem of a state’s duration (specifically that of achieving stability and order
in the omnipresence of external instabilities and disorders, and internal
threats to what was achieved) was central to Machiavelli’s discussion on the
cyclicality of history as the product of the constancy of change and man’s will
and struggle to survive or benefit from it.12 Simply put, Machiavelli wanted
a state that, through virtù, will endure despite the constancy of change in its
government, that is, a state similar to Rome that endured despite the drastic
transitions that took place in it.13
7 Ibid., 34-6.
8 On the link between audacity and Fortuna’s inherent uncertainty, see Timothy J.
Lukes, “Fortune Comes of Age in Machiavelli’s Literary Works,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 11
(1980), 33-50.
9 On Machiavelli’s adaptation of Polybius’ notion of the cyclicality of the Aristotelian
typology of governments, see Althusser, Machiavelli, 36-9.

10 Ibid., 34-5.
11 Ibid., 40-2.
12 Ibid., 41-2
13 I note that it is within the reason of state that Machiavelli’s arguments on state virtù
was expounded. For a review of the literature on Machiavelli’s contribution to this theoretical
trend, see Peter Breiner, “Machiavelli’s ‘New Prince’ and the Primordial Moment of
Acquisition,” in Political Theory, 36 (2008), 66-92; Harvey C. Mansfield, “On the Impersonality of

ISSN 1908-7330
Althusser ended his discussion by positing Machiavelli’s new prince

as the bearer of virtù as the capacity to harness change (i.e., Fortuna) in
establishing an enduring state. In relation to this, he discussed three
possibilities regarding the engagement between virtù (as the subjective
conditions) and Fortuna (as the objective conditions of the conjuncture) in the
context of Machiavelli’s new prince.14 First is a correspondence wherein the
material of favorable Fortuna finds a proper form in the virtù of an individual,
hence, allowing the establishment of a durable state. Second is a non-
correspondence wherein the absence of virtù gives Fortuna a free hand to take
and/or give an individual power. Lastly is a deferred correspondence
wherein the virtù of an individual could allow him/her to reclaim the power
that Fortuna might take. Regarding the latter, I would like to note that, for
Althusser, virtù draws its distinction from its inherent goal of mastering
Fortuna, that is, of transforming the material of Fortuna, specifically of
political conjunctions into the durability of a state by laying its foundations
through virtù in correspondence or non-correspondence with Fortuna. In
summary, Althusser opened two intertwined opportunities for a dialectical
reconstruction of Machiavelli’s framework, namely, the concrete factors
behind Fortuna and the inner-relatedness of virtù and Fortuna.15 However, his
analysis was limited by the fact that to answer how Fortuna manifests itself
does not completely answer what Fortuna is; a question, I believe, was already
answered implicitly by Machiavelli. For this reason, he was able not only to
dissect virtù in the proper context of a concretized sense of Fortuna, but also
to herald a modern conceptualization of statecraft that exposed both the
social bases of change and cyclicality, and its dynamic root in the struggle
between virtù and Fortuna. Hence, at the point where Althusser failed to
specify Fortuna’s concrete foundations, my reconstruction of Machiavelli
would come in to further shed light upon the roots of its engagement and
internal relations with virtù. Thus, I will illustrate that while virtù emerges
out of the political conditions shaped by Fortuna as a set of internalized
practices and principles, the latter’s human component is founded on the
interactions between those pursuing their own interests through their
expression or lack of virtù; Fortuna is as human as virtù.
the Modern State: A Comment on Machiavelli’s Use of Stato,” in The American Political Science
Review, 77 (1983), 849-57; Maurizio Viroli, “The Revolution in the Concept of Politics,” in Political
Theory, 20 (1992), 473-495.
14 Althusser, Machiavelli, 74-6.
15 I note that for the following authors, the internal relationship between virtù and
Fortuna could be defined as the latter providing conditions of chance, disorder, and instability
for the former’s expression as discipline, audacity, improvisation, and innovation: Newell, “How
Original Is Machiavelli?,” 628-9; Charles D. Tarlton, “Azioni in modo l’una dall’altra: action for
action's sake in Machiavelli's The Prince,” in History of European Ideas, 29 (2003), 126-7, 136; Wood,
“Virtù Reconsidered,” 169-70.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 197
On Virtù and Fortuna: A Conceptual Framework
Aligned with the literature reviewed, my analysis will have two

dimensions. First, I will illustrate how Machiavelli saw the struggle between
virtù and Fortuna as a form of socio-political relation. Second, through
Machiavelli’s political psychology,16 I would further shed light on the internal
relations between virtù and Fortuna by fabricating a framework categorizing
and synthesizing the different dimensions of virtù that could be found in
Machiavelli’s discussions on princes and citizens (on principalities and
republics). Regarding the first level of my analysis, I begin by distinguishing
Fortuna from necessity, with the former subsuming the latter as its bridge to
virtù. Virtù as acting towards Fortuna is about recognizing and reacting to
necessity; that is, virtù could either be an anticipation of Fortuna by foreseeing
future necessities or an adaptive reaction to it. The absence of virtù causes a
subject to be solely driven by necessity without understanding and
recognizing Fortuna as the factor and logic behind it (i.e., the constancy of
change).17 But what is it that must be recognized?
Here we arrive at my contention that Fortuna, for Machiavelli,
consists of both human and natural factors that are from a subject’s
perspective uncontrollable and unpredictable. This is aligned with the
current literature that takes Fortuna as an external factor facing virtù and an
elaboration of Kocis’ argument that Fortuna is mere literary or explanatory
device.18 Though I agree with the latter’s premises that led to such a
conclusion19 (specifically his illustration that it served the purpose of
establishing a notion of the world as being vulnerable to human exertions), I
contend, on the contrary, that for Machiavelli, Fortuna is an important concept
that referred to concrete factors. This is primarily based on my observation
that his discussions on Fortuna in both The Prince and the Discourses, as well
as in some letters,20 are situated before or after an examination of the activities
of others directly related to the subject. I argue that Machiavelli’s belief on
Fortuna is directed at the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the
16 Markus Fischer, “Machiavelli’s Political Psychology,” in The Review of Politics, 59

(1997), 789-829.
17 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, 2nd ed., trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1998), 96-97. Hereafter cited as Prince.

18 Robert A. Kocis, Machiavelli Redeemed: Retrieving his Humanist Perspectives on Equality,
Power, and Glory (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1998), 51.

19 Ibid., 46-52 for details on Machiavelli’s usage of Fortuna as a concept.
20 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Letters of Machiavelli: A Selection, trans. by Allan Gilbert
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), 97-9, 108-20. From this collection of
Machiavelli’s letters, I am referring to the following letters: No. 116 for Piero Soderini, Nos. 124,
128 for Francesco Vettori.

ISSN 1908-7330
cumulative effects of external factors.21 Focusing on its human component,

two arguments made by Machiavelli can illustrate my contention through
Fortuna’s capacity to give opportunities for the realization of virtù. First, for
Machiavelli, Fortuna could favor a prince by creating enemies that he could
crush, thus, elevating his status. Hence, in harnessing Fortuna, Machiavelli
stated “that a wise prince, when he has the opportunity for it, should astutely
nourish some enmity so that when he has crushed it, his greatness emerges
the more from it.”22
Second, in the Discourses, Machiavelli argued that virtù in its most
general sense has a quality of excellence and strength that passes from people
to people, from one state to another. He illustrated that in the interplay
between virtù and Fortuna, the dissolution of one’s virtù is the harbinger of
favorable Fortuna for another.23 This other (ex. neighbors of a falling state), in
facing the latter, is given the opportunity to internalize virtù, thus,
transferring to a new bearer who succeeds in internalizing and expressing it
to harness the favorable Fortuna. Simply put, the degradation of one is the
favorable Fortuna of another; the idleness of the Medes, the disunity of the
Athenians, and the slavery of the Hebrews all allowed their respective princes
in such conjunctions to emerge as anti-thetical entities that internalized what
was lost by their targets. Hence, I believe that for Machiavelli, Cyrus became
the epitome of the vigor lost by the Medes, Theseus sought the unity of a
divided people, and Moses embodied the autonomy and nationhood lost by
the Hebrews under captivity. 24
Regarding Fortuna’s malevolence, I argue that in relating Chapters
24, 25, and 26 of The Prince with each other, Machiavelli related the fall of the
princes of Italy with their lack of virtù or the inability to at least resist or
alleviate the damages of Fortuna embodied by the constant intrusion of
foreign powers tied and facilitated by their dependence on mercenaries (two
factors that aggravated the volatility of political and military affairs).25 Thus,
when Machiavelli urged the House of Medici to lead Italy 26 he was referring
not only to the political positions held by that family, but also to the
conjunction of external conditions calling for their leadership, that is, in
Althusserian terms, the possibility of a correspondence between Fortuna and
virtù.
21 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1996), 198-199. Hereafter cited as Discourses.

22 Machiavelli, Prince, 85.
23 Machiavelli, Discourses, 123-125.
24 Machiavelli, Prince, 22-24.
25 Ibid., 49, 96-97, 104.
26 Ibid., 102.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 199
From these examples I argue that, for Machiavelli, the concept of

Fortuna subsumes all these concrete and interacting factors under the general
characteristics of uncontrollability and unpredictability, hence, serving as a
vital concept defining the attributes of the socio-political environment that a
subject must deal with. At an aggregate level, these concrete factors for
Machiavelli, specifically their deliberate activities (including other
expressions of virtù), their interaction with each other, and their subsequent
impact on a subject could be summed up with the notions of instability and
insecurity. Fortuna, simply, is the weaving of the activities and characteristics
of external factors (both human and natural) that in the end will actively
subsume the subject as part of its web. This notion of Fortuna’s ontological
primacy over virtù was deduced from the eternity of Fortuna’s movement
against the mortality of man. To be specific, when taken as an aggregate in
motion, the concrete factors behind Fortuna surpass the temporality of the
same factors when taken as particulars.27 In line with this, I argue that virtù
for Machiavelli involves an effort to understand the patterns weaved before
by studying history, and by unweaving a specific conjunction in the web by
deducing what is deliberate (what was and what could be conducted by
others), and acting accordingly either as a response or an anticipation of what
was exposed.
Regarding virtù, I will now present a conceptual framework based on
the schema proposed by Fischer in his extraction of the political psychology
in Machiavelli’s work. Fischer argued that two categories could be deduced
to define the character of the Machiavellian man, namely, necessary or
natural properties, and accidental or contingent attributes. 28 The former was
defined as qualities inherent in men, which includes the following: (1) animo
as the motivation or energy behind actions, (2) the mind, which as a guide for
our actions includes memory, ingenuity, and imagination, (3) virtù that refers
to the higher degrees of the first two qualities, (4) man’s sense of
individuality, (5) desires, (6) humors, and lastly (7) ambition and license. 29
Furthermore, for Machiavelli, variations in the degrees and particulars of
these qualities would, on one hand, account for the different ideal types of
political actors ranging from the vulgar to the prince and, on the other,
contribute to the success or failure of a political entity. Concerning accidental
attributes, Fischer argued that these are acquired qualities that take external
forces into account (ex. the imposition of an other’s will). 30 This category
refers to the different habits that Machiavelli took into account in relation to
the issue of a collective’s virtù (i.e., cooperative habit) and eventual
27 See Lukes, “Fortune Comes of Age,” 33-50.

28 Fischer, “Machiavelli’s Political Psychology,” 794-797.
29 Ibid., 799-818.
30 Ibid., 797.

ISSN 1908-7330
corruption. This issue will be pursued by my analysis but, in summary,

Fischer provided a framework that could be utilized to give a systematic
exposition of the virtù-Fortuna issue at the level of the individual, a level that
Machiavelli shared in The Prince.
For the purposes of this paper, I found it necessary to distinguish
virtù from a subject’s inherent characteristics in order for the former to be
internally related with Fortuna without dragging the complexities of the
subject with it. I argue that, contrary to Fischer’s inclusion of virtù as an
internal and necessary quality, virtù could be considered as a set of principles
and practices (a mentality or mind-set, and behavior) that are internalized in
accordance to the demands of an external factor (i.e. Fortuna) and a subject’s
inherent attributes; the former, as would be discussed later on, determines
what should be internalized, while the latter determines whether the
internalization will be successful. One illustration of this distinction was
Machiavelli’s discussion on the manner of choosing ministers and handling
court politics (on advice and flattery) wherein he distinguished between a
ruler’s intelligence and two principles, namely, a balance between autonomy
and openness to advice in making decisions, and keeping ministers and
courtiers under one’s control (specifically for ministers whose interests must
be solely for service to their prince).31
In summary, Machiavelli portrayed intellectual capacity as a factor
that will determine whether such principles will be effectively internalized
and practiced, and whether the practice could lead to success indicating virtù
and resulting in survival of a prince. Moreover, I also contend that at the
center of Machiavelli’s separation of virtù from iniquity/ criminality/
wickedness is not the issue of amorality but that of the difference between
cruelty and inhumanity as personal characteristics, and as an expression of
virtù’s amoral dimension. From the perspective of social philosophy,
Machiavelli’s exposition on the amorality of virtù should be understood as
neither a conclusion nor a claim to an absolute truth, but as a door to a
perspective that takes social relations as interdependent with the question of
power, the latter being inherently amoral but inevitably shapes and is shaped
in turn by the political dimension of morality. Simply put, from the
discussion above I note that Machiavelli stands between social and political
philosophy by focusing on the processual relationship between social
behavior and political activities. We will again discuss Machiavelli’s case for
and against Agathocles, but for this part of our discussion, I note that for
Kahn,32 the case of Agathocles was a rhetorical strategy that destabilized the
idea of virtù for it to be aligned with the unstable political reality that

32 Victoria Kahn, “Virtù and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli’s Prince,” in
Representations, 13 (1986), 63-83.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 201
Machiavelli grasped and presented. I further contend that this strategy was
used to establish a distinction between the manifestation of raw personal
character supported by non-political virtù (for Machiavelli, Agathocles had
physical and mental virtù) and the manifestation of subjective conditions
within the framework of political virtù. Hence, as would be elaborated later
on, though the semblance of Agathocles’ savagery could be found in Cesare
Borgia’s career, Machiavelli portrayed the latter as a man of virtù because his
savagery was in accordance with political necessities and calculative
prudence.33
Thus, for the first level of my analysis I propose a framework built
upon four factors. The first two that could be placed under the category of
agency are the subject with its necessary attributes, and virtù as a set of
internalized principles and practices linked with the subject through
contingent attributes. The last two under the category of object are Fortuna
as the aggregate of all external concrete factors that are uncontrollable and
unpredictable, and necessity as the form Fortuna takes in close temporal
proximity to a subject. I would also like to note that in line with Althusser, it
is in the absence of absolutes that Machiavelli grasped the eternal motion
built on partiality. Hence, the focus of the second level of my analysis would
be the internal relationship between Machiavelli’s agency and object,
specifically, the constant interplay, struggle, conflict, and engagement
between virtù and Fortuna with the goal of achieving stability and durability.
Virtù: A Dissection through Fortuna
At this point I note that, for Machiavelli, though the Roman Empire
was said to be founded on good Fortuna and a strong military, he deemed
that “it ought to be perceived that where good discipline prevails there also
will good order prevail, and good fortune rarely fails to follow in their
train.”34 From this statement of his perspective in dissecting the foundations
of the Roman Empire, I deduced the notion of Fortuna being harnessed by
acting upon other political actors through an imposition of discipline and the
subsequent establishment of order (two results of virtù). Thus, moving to the
particulars of virtù-Fortuna I argue that the internal relationship between
these two can be defined in two ways. First, virtù is an imposition of a form
(i.e., order, stability, and duration for a state) upon the matter of Fortuna,35
and second, the latter’s contingent nature ensures that the process will be
partial in completion and continuous or cyclical in character. Though I am
33 Machiavelli, Prince, 26-30

34 Machiavelli, Discourses, 105.
35 See Althusser, Machiavelli, 75-76; Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 158-61. Their
discussions however are focused on the New Prince and innovation.

ISSN 1908-7330
convinced about the validity of these interpretations, attempts to go down the

ladder of generality through this path led to an overemphasis on certain
dimensions of virtù and incomplete reconstructions of Machiavelli’s
analytical framework, that is, an emphasis on the new prince and a portrayal
of Machiavelli as an early proponent of modern ideas ranging from
constitutionalism and liberal republicanism36 to radical populism.37 For these
reasons, I intend to provide a more detailed and systematic reconstruction of
Machiavelli’s analysis of virtù-Fortuna that would encompass both of these
factors and their engagements with each other.
For my reconstruction, I argue that first, Fortuna could only be
recognized as such via virtù as prudence/ foresight. To elaborate, a person must
have a relatively high degree of animo and mental capacity (memory,
imagination, and ingenuity) in order for him to attain and further develop
this aspect of virtù when he/she turns his/her attention to the outside world.
Furthermore, without recognizing Fortuna through virtù as prudence/ foresight,
Machiavelli argued in his case against the princes of Italy that a subject is
reduced to necessity and swept by it instead of preparing, resisting,
harnessing, and adapting to it. The absence or eventual exhaustion of virtù
as prudence/foresight ends with a subject’s slavery to necessities outside his/her
control and prediction, eventually losing power in the process; that is, in
Machiavelli’s medical terminology, he/she is shackled to the effects of a
sickness that matured and grew worse because of a his/her
shortsightedness.38 At this point, the internalization of Fortuna through virtù
takes another step because of the inevitable impact of Fortuna’s movements
upon a subject. If virtù as prudence/ foresight allows a subject to see the
principles and patterns behind necessity (i.e., Fortuna), virtù as control (the will
and capacity to attain and sustain control) allows him/her to target and act
towards the specific concrete factors constituting Fortuna. Thus, through
prudence/foresight, a subject recognizes problems and/or opportunities, and
through control, he/she will act accordingly with more specific targets in sight.
Second, I note that for Machiavelli, the dimensions of virtù
correspond to the characteristics of Fortuna because the former realizes itself
only through the latter, that is, the opportunities and/or problems provided
by nature and/or significant actors who are either directly or indirectly
attached to the subject. If his/her necessary properties are lacking, virtù will
36 Marcia L. Colish, “The Idea of Liberty in Machiavelli,” in Journal of the History of Ideas
32 (1971), 323-50; Kocis, Machiavelli Redeemed, 128-63, 193-218; Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 506-
52.
37 Althusser, Machiavelli, 62; John P. McCormick, “Machiavellian Democracy:
Controlling Elites with Ferocious Populism,” in The American Political Science Review, 95 (2001),
309-11

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 203
be deficient as was in Machiavelli’s portrayal of King Louis XII of France. 39

However, even if there is an alignment between inherent capacities and virtù,
or a high degree of necessary properties in Fischer’s terms, Machiavelli using
the case of Cesare Borgia’s fall, posited two interrelated arguments, namely,
that virtù will never be absolute and that Fortuna could exploit any
weakness.40 In summary, I contend that for Machiavelli, it is through the
activities of others (through their failures, successes, expressions of virtù, or
their lack of it) that a subject could manifest his own internalization of virtù,
or in other words, if virtù is understood as a set of principles then its practice
(as the result of its internalization and eventual expression) necessitates an
other that will both qualify and facilitate it. Virtù, as Machiavelli’s works
suggests, can neither be analyzed nor practiced without an other, and this
schema is central to his socio-political framework.
To illustrate this process of internalizing and expressing virtù, I
reiterate that a relatively high degree of the necessary properties exposed by
Fischer allows its bearer to be a worthy subject and see beyond necessity and
recognize his goals (i.e., ambition) in relation to the dynamics of Fortuna. To
be specific, along with an understanding of what he/she must face, a subject
also gains an insight on how he/she could face Fortuna as the imposing figure
of unpredictability and uncontrollability. Machiavelli sees in the subject, may
it be princes or citizens, a synthesis of Fortuna’s power with the will and
struggle to resist, if not overcome it, through prudence and foresight on one
hand, and the search, attainment, and maintenance of control on the other
and one’s self. Therefore, I contend that virtù as prudence/foresight
corresponds with the constant motion of Fortuna, while virtù as control is
concerned with shaping the behavior and/or character of its concrete factors.
The former could be illustrated through Machiavelli’s arguments on the need
to predict causes and address future problems. For him, “when recognized
in advance—a gift granted to prudent men only—illnesses appearing in a
state are quickly healed; but when they are not recognized and are allowed
to intensify so that everyone recognizes them, they can no longer be
remedied.”41 Moreover, prudence/foresight also finds material via the careful
study of history that Machiavelli advocated in both The Prince42 and
Discourses43; that is, in Althusserian terms, prudence/foresight is about having a
grasp of a present conjunction, understanding its possibilities, and studying
similar conjunctions and conditions faced by one’s predecessors.
39 Ibid., 15-16.
40 Ibid., 32.
41 Ibid., 12.
42 Ibid., 21-22, 58-60.

ISSN 1908-7330
For virtù as control, I contend that for Machiavelli, this dimension

consists of the will, capacity, and struggle to determine one’s own behavior
and the behavior of targeted others. An illustration of this dimension is the
need to determine the flow and benefit from the results of class conflict or the
contradictions between the interests/goals and perspectives of the nobility
and commoners, the former was portrayed by Machiavelli, as more devious,
ambitious, and aggressive than the latter with more simple/ordinary goals
tied to a more defensive behavior.44 For him “in every city these two diverse
humors are found, which arise from desire neither to be commanded nor
oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and oppress the
people.”45 Moreover, the latter sees themselves as equals to the prince, thus,
they present numerous dangers to a prince’s leadership especially if they are
greedy and resistant, if not rebellious.46 Hence, with virtù as the search for and
maintenance of control, a prince must impose upon these entities the identity
of subjects by protecting the commoners through institutions (i.e., legal
institutions that will protect the people and act as mediator between these
two conflicting classes), and by making the rich/nobility realize that he could
make, destroy, or replace them.47
Before moving on to its sub-dimensions, I note that first, virtù is
anticipative and responsive, reflective of the expression of prudence in
controlling. Second, its two primary dimensions (prudence/foresight and
control) are inseparable though distinct from each other; that is, these two
correspond to the ideal and practical aspects of human activity. Hence, these
two should also be considered as categories that, once made to engage
Fortuna in theorizing political practice, gain specificity in terms of other sub-
dimensions that are either anticipative or responsive, resulting from the
interaction between the two primary dimensions of virtù and the conditions
laid down by Fortuna. Lastly, an underlying theme in Machiavelli’s The
Prince and Discourses is the absence of guarantees or a cosmic fate for political
actors, and for this reason, he exposed how virtù could lead either to success
or failure in relation to Fortuna’s demands on the subject. I contend that
through Althusser’s notion of correspondence between Machiavelli’s virtù
and Fortuna, four secondary dimensions of the former’s engagement with the
latter could be deduced. Moreover, these four are expressions of the
interdependence of the two primary dimensions, and of virtù’s anticipative
and responsive (aggressive and defensive) natures.
The first one is virtù as adaptation and three points could be made as
an elaboration. First is that Machiavelli, in trying to explain the differences

45 Ibid., 39.
46 Ibid., 38-41.
47 Ibid., 74-75.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 205
in the results of similar policies, argued that a prince’s success or failure is

partially determined by his capacity to cope with the times instead of being
dependent on Fortuna.48 He stated that:
the prince who leans entirely on his fortune comes to

ruin as it varies. I believe, further, that he is happy who
adapts his mode of proceeding to the qualities of the
times; and similarly, he is unhappy whose procedure is
in disaccord with the times … for if one governs himself
with caution and patience, and the times and affairs turn
in such a way that his government is good, he comes out
happy; but if the times and affairs change, he is ruined
because he does not change his mode of proceeding.49
Second is that, for Machiavelli, a prince must not only understand

and recognize all possibilities brought in by Fortuna’s motion
(prudence/foresight), but also have the capacity and the will to make available
and utilize all possible means for the preservation of power. 50 He must be
both a lion and a fox for the former is strong but lacks prudence, while the
latter lacks strength but has keen senses, and must know how to use both law
and force.51 Also, it is in this sub-dimension that we find the capacity to
switch between anticipative and responsive mechanisms.
Lastly, Machiavelli expressed his distrust towards man’s capacity for
adaptation by pointing to a tendency for habits and inflexibility.52 He argued
that a man “cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to or also because,
when one has always flourished by walking on one path, he cannot be
persuaded to depart from it”53 thus, leading to his eventual fall once external
conditions change. I deduce two other possible interpretations of
Machiavelli’s perspective on adaptation, namely, that he posits a required
“unnatural” effort from the part of a prince, or that Machiavelli simply gives
the constant motion of politics (i.e., Fortuna) primacy over human efforts and
their results. Although for the latter, I note that despite Fortuna’s
impenetrability, Machiavelli counseled man to always “hope and, since they
hope, not to give up in whatever fortune and in whatever travail they may
find themselves.”54

50 Ibid., 68-69.
51 Ibid., 69.
52 Ibid., 100-101.
53 Ibid., 100.
54 Machiavelli, Discourses, 199.

ISSN 1908-7330
In relation to the first one, virtù as moral flexibility could be understood

in several ways. First is that for Machiavelli amorality is an attribute based
on a subject’s understanding, albeit a negative one of human nature. This in
turn facilitates his/her practice of prudence/foresight, specifically, his/her
identification of the possible actions that others might take in relation to
him/herself. To illustrate, Machiavelli argued that “a man who wants to make
a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who
are not good” and because of this a prince must “learn to be able not to be
good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity.” 55 Second, moral
flexibility allows a subject to effectively practice adaptation by having control
over the direction of one’s own actions instead of it being tied to, if not
weighed down by, the moral standards of others. Reflective of the distinction
made earlier between Fortuna and necessity, as well as the human component
of the former, another way to interpret this dimension of virtù is to recognize
the necessity for a subject to appear as an embodiment of publicly accepted
virtues. Behind this need is the common people whose power and interests
a prince must deal with. Chapters 15 until 19 of The Prince were dedicated to
this dimension of virtù and I would like to highlight two points. First is that
for Machiavelli, a prince must be prudent in adapting the distinction between
vice and virtue for the sake of sustaining control. A prince must appear to be
the bearer of virtues accepted by the public,56 albeit “one should not care
about incurring the fame of those vices without which it is difficult to save
one’s state.”57 However, he must avoid hatred emanating from acts of terror
or vices offending the private sphere of others. Second, in his discussion on
fear and love, Machiavelli emphasized the need to sustain control over
affected others, first by relying on fear as something one controls, and second
by emphasizing the need to avoid hatred. Machiavelli 58 illustrated that love,
unlike fear, is under the control of the one giving it and that hatred, unlike
fear, is an emotion that is controlled and could be utilized as a resource by
the affected other. The latter could also be illustrated by his warning that the
memory of freedom and liberties lost could be used to stir up hatred and
disorder in a newly conquered domain.59
Lastly, in relation to virtù as adaptation, moral flexibility allows a
subject to utilize all possible means to attain and sustain power in the context
of changing socio-political conditions. For Machiavelli, a subject must act in
accordance with two factors, namely, attaining and sustaining power as a
primary goal, and the inevitable attachment of public opinion with the

56 Ibid., 70.
57 Ibid., 62.
58 Ibid., 66-67.
59 Ibid., 20-21.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 207
effectiveness of means employed. Moreover, I reiterate that for Machiavelli

the use of force (violence and cruelty) must appeal to the idea of public good
(i.e., stability, order, and security) as was in the case of Remirro d’Orco and
the need to be swift and decisive in inflicting violence upon the acquisition of
power.60 Also, for Machiavelli, force must be replaced by institutions that
would safeguard the public good and sustain the power attained through
force and/or cunning.61 In summary, these interpretations could be
subsumed under the notion that virtù as adaptation and moral flexibility allows
a subject to be actively flexible in responding to an event or seizing an
opportunity it offers. Moreover, these two allow a subject to recognize
boundaries that would ensure that public opinion, as a component of Fortuna,
remains under his control, thus, depriving opponents of any moral
justification for conspiracies.62
Virtù as the search for glory63 embodies Machiavelli’s intimate
attachment to the idea of a new prince,64 his supposed adoption of an archaic
moral code of emulating excellence,65 and the anticipative aspect of virtù. For
my part, I highlight that the search for glory and prestige should be
understood as a form of control over the nobility and the commoners, and a
policy emerging from an anticipatory sense of prudence. Machiavelli, using
the case of King Ferdinand of Aragon, stated that as an upstart, great and
ambitious campaigns justified by religious claims allowed him not only to
give proof to his abilities, but also to express virtù as control over public
opinion and the activities of spectators by imposing a sense of predictability
over one’s subjects, first by providing a stimulus to public opinion instead of
allowing it to be absolutely spontaneous, and second by giving a direction to
the produce of one’s subjects.
Lastly, virtù as audacity,66 as an anticipative sub-dimension like the
previous one, represents Machiavelli’s attempt to posit a way to penetrate
Fortuna by advocating an aggressive stance (i.e., adopting an anticipatory
60 Ibid., 29, 39-40.

61 Ibid., 82.
62 Ibid., 72-73.
63 Ibid., 87-91.
64 Althusser, Machiavelli, 53-80; Breiner, “Machiavelli’s New Prince,” 83-89.
65 See Terence Ball, “The Picaresque Prince: Reflections On Machiavelli and Moral
Change,” in Political Theory, 12 (1984), 521-36. I note that, in isolating the concept of virtù for
analysis, he argued that neither Machiavelli nor his prince was amoral. Instead, similar to the
character of Don Quixote, Machiavelli’s prince embodied a moral code of heroism through
emulation.
66 See Tarlton, “Action for Action’s Sake,” 123-36 who highlighted the audacious
improvisations required from a prince. Though I disagree with his reduction of virtù into
audacity, I note that though Fortuna could require this mode of action, its unpredictable
movements for Machiavelli could also require the contrary, thus, necessitating a more
encompassing understanding of how a virtuoso should behave.

ISSN 1908-7330
strategy and offensive tactics). This was also attached by Machiavelli to

impetuosity as a necessary attribute inherent in actors like Julius II67 and the
Gauls,68 but it was in the former and in the Romans that such an attribute
became a virtù; that is, Julius used it to avoid a political impasse while the
Romans used it to complement their virtù as prudence/foresight.69 Now this
alignment was due to the fact that Machiavelli was convinced “that it is better
to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman … And one sees
that she lets herself be won more by the impetuous than by those who
proceed coldly. And so always, like a woman, she is the friend of the young,
because they … command her with more audacity.”70 This stance was due to
his positive interpretation of Fortuna’s inherent uncertainties as the bearer of
both opportunities and difficulties, tied with his disapproval of defeatist and
dependent policies.71 Moreover, virtù as audacity also satisfies the lion that a
prince must have as a part of his overall adaptability, that is, to use the ways
of man and beast, and to be both a lion and a fox. An illustration of this is
Machiavelli’s brief account of how Alexander VI, in trying to gain power and
territory in the Italian peninsula, facilitated the entry of the French that
subsequently destroyed an already fragile balance of power, thereby giving
himself the opportunity to utilize French forces to seize territories in the
context of an aggravated flux. 72 I see this as Machiavelli’s illustration of a
subject’s capacity not only to survive a wave of destruction but to initiate and
benefit from it, or in other words, invoke the destructive and usually
equalizing power of Fortuna instead of merely waiting for it.
In summary, the relationship between Fortuna and virtù is founded
on the latter as a set of principles and practices that allows internal capacities
(necessary properties) to be used effectively for the search and sustenance of
power, and on the former as an aggregate of both relatively static (i.e.,
nature/geography) and constantly moving (ex. the activities of others) factors
that serves as the objects of virtù as control, and the source of material (i.e.,
problems/worries and opportunities) for virtù as prudence. Virtù is
internalized through a study of history, that is, the patterns defining the rise
and fall of states, and the actions of great men within their respective
environments. However, its existence is not solely based on such principles
and practices. Virtù is also expressed as a combination of both responsive (as
adaptation and moral flexibility) and anticipative practices (as the search for
67 Ibid., 367-69; Machiavelli, Discourses, 240.

70 Ibid., 101; See Machiavelli, Discourses, 304-305.
71 See Timothy Lukes, “Lionizing Machiavelli,” in American Political Science Review, 95
(1984), 562-75 for a review of works that re-claimed and highlighted the Lion of Machiavelli’s
Prince.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 209
glory and audacity), and in these modes we find a reflection of the fickle
nature of Fortuna or, to be specific, the impact of the socio-political
environment (i.e., the absence of guarantees and absolute security, and the
constancy of change) on a subject’s modes of expressing virtù (i.e.,
engagements with Fortuna and its concrete components).
Virtù as Autonomy
I conclude this paper by synthesizing all the dimensions discussed

above into virtù as autonomy, or the will and capacity to attain and sustain self-
determination through both anticipative and responsive means. This could
be illustrated in two ways—first, through Machiavelli’s arguments on militias
and the strength of principalities and second, through his arguments on new
princes and the need to deal with class conflict. First, for Machiavelli,
mercenaries and their commanders are dangerous not only because of their
adverse practices but also because their loyalty lies not with the prince but
with money, and their commanders, if they have both military and political
virtù, could easily depose their employers.73 However, in using loyalty and
military virtù as standards, he concluded that auxiliaries or soldiers borrowed
from a foreign power “are much more dangerous than mercenary arms. For
with these, ruin is accomplished; they are all united, all resolved to obey
someone else.”74 Dependence on mercenaries and/or auxiliaries embodies the
lack of virtù that caused the subjugation of the Italian peninsula by foreigners;
mercenaries are anti-thetical to military prowess while the usage of
auxiliaries is a step towards being under the control of a foreign entity.
Hence, for Machiavelli, virtù as autonomy will eventually lead a subject
towards the use of militias because “without its own arms, no principality is
secure; indeed, it is wholly obliged to fortune since it does not have virtue to
defend itself in adversity.” 75 In relation to this, virtù as autonomy was also
implied in Machiavelli’s usage of self-sufficiency as an indicator of strength
for principalities.76 Furthermore, Machiavelli considered a state as strong if
it has enough resources and military capacity that a leader with virtù could
transform into cohesion during a crisis. In summary, a subject’s search for
autonomy must manifest itself in terms of resources and control over one’s
means of coercion.
Thus, upon its acquisition and to address the questions of durability
and stability, power must be secured through institutions (laws and policies)
that are either inherited or must be built upon the ashes of an old regime.
73 Ibid., 48-49.
74 Ibid., 55.
75 Ibid., 57.
76 Ibid., 42-3.

ISSN 1908-7330
Applied to both princes and republics is Machiavelli’s emphasis on the need

for institutions that will make them distinct from social/class forces; a prince
must strive to be autonomous from the nobility and the commoners, while a
republic must be built and sustained by neither of these classes but the results
of their constant conflicts.77 Machiavelli took the existence of these classes as
a given or a permanent fixture that provides material for the forms imposed
by the virtù of princes and leading citizens. 78 An example of this is
Machiavelli’s narration of how the office of Tribune emerged out of the
conflict between the nobility and the commoners. Tribunes eventually
contributed to the stability of the Roman Republic because it served as the
institutionalized power of the commoners that kept a balance between these
two classes, and mediated between the commoners and the institutionalized
power of the nobility embodied by the senate and the consuls.79 For a prince,
on the other hand, I note two of Machiavelli’s points elaborated in Chapters
9 and 19 of The Prince. First is that though the people are much less dangerous
than the nobility, Machiavelli made it clear that a prince could and should
never depend on either one.80
Second, for Machiavelli, domestic conflict among different sectors is
a given, and from it a state will always be vulnerable to disruptions that will
threaten the stability, duration, and autonomy of princes and republics.
Therefore, placed in the context of Fortuna, virtù as autonomy sums up what a
republic or prince should strive for and maintain through virtù in general.
Moreover, a lapse in the sub-dimensions of virtù will eventually end up in
Fortuna subjugating a subject’s autonomy; that is, a gap in one’s control over
others or a relapse into short-sightedness are, for Machiavelli, opportunities
for Fortuna to sweep princes and republics away and expose them to an
uncontrollable and unpredictable deluge driven by the will and virtù of
others.
Conclusion: Machiavelli and the Struggle for Autonomy
In placing the different dimensions of virtù in the context of Fortuna

as founded upon nature and the virtù/non-virtù of others, I contend that
Machiavelli’s contribution to the modern concept of politics is the notion of
the eternal struggle for autonomy as fundamental to statecraft. I argue that,
77 Machiavelli, Discourses, 15-26. Chapters 3 to 7 are preliminary examinations of

Machiavelli on the Roman Republic that examined how domestic conflict could result in the
sustenance of liberty and how the government, in order to achieve this result, should stand above
classes through representation on one hand, and separating such classes through mediating
institutions on the other.

ISSN 1908-7330
A. BORJA 211
for Machiavelli, this endeavor is comparable not to the act of stopping a river
but to exertions to remain afloat or control its direction. Furthermore, with
Fortuna as the overarching term used to tackle the grave and aleatory
character of the aggregate effects of these others’ activities and engagements
with the subject and with each other, Machiavelli concluded that a subject’s
drive and capacity to attain and sustain self-determination will always be at
the expense of others and for this reason such others will either surrender or
resist. Autonomy, control, and predictability are both goals of virtù and
results of others’ reaction to its expressions by a dominant subject, but this
virtù itself is framed in accordance to a grasp of control and predictability as
necessities posited by the nature of Fortuna.
Thus, I conclude that for Machiavelli, the eternal struggle for
autonomy is partially based on Fortuna as the constancy of uncertainty (i.e.,
the unpredictability of the actions of others in pursuing heterogeneous
interests through differing capacities) and as the embodiment of a mélange of
uncontrolled set of social relations with direct or indirect effects upon a
subject’s pursuit of his/her interests. For future inquiries, by establishing the
centrality of autonomy in the dialectical relationship between virtù and
Fortuna and recognizing the republican and democratic leanings of
Machiavelli (or at least ideals that can be extracted from his works), this study
would like to posit the possibility of conceptualizing freedom as a virtuoso
struggle that can be both collective and individual but necessarily social and
to an extent aleatory. Simply put, future inquiries can address how
Machiavelli’s conceptualization of virtù and Fortuna can inform us about the socio-
political dimension of freedom.
Department of Political Science,

De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
References
Althusser, Louis, Machiavelli and Us, trans. by Gregory Elliot (London: Verso,
1999).
Ball, Terence, “The Picaresque Prince: Reflections On Machiavelli and Moral
Change,” in Political Theory, 12 (1984).
Breiner, Peter, “Machiavelli’s ‘New Prince’ and the Primordial Moment of
Acquisition,” in Political Theory, 36 (2008).
Colish, Marcia L., “The Idea of Liberty in Machiavelli,” in Journal of the History
of Ideas, 32 (1971).
Fischer, Markus, “Machiavelli’s Political Psychology,” in The Review of Politics
59 (1997).

ISSN 1908-7330
Kahn, Victoria, “Virtù and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli’s

Prince,” in Representations, 13 (1986).
Kocis, Robert A., Machiavelli Redeemed: Retrieving his Humanist Perspectives on
Equality, Power, and Glory (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1998).
Lukes, Timothy J., “Fortune Comes of Age in Machiavelli’s Literary Works,”
in Sixteenth Century Journal, 11 (1980).
Machiavelli, Niccolò, Discourses on Livy, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).
___________, The Letters of Machiavelli: A Selection, trans. by Allan Gilbert
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961).
___________, The Prince, 2nd Edition, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1998).
Mansfield, Harvey C., “On the Impersonality of the Modern State: A
Comment on Machiavelli’s Use of Stato,” in The American Political
Science Review, 77 (1983).
McCormick, John P., “Machiavellian Democracy: Controlling Elites with
Ferocious Populism,” in The American Political Science Review, 95
(2001).
Newell, W.R., “How Original Is Machiavelli? A Consideration of Skinner's
Interpretation of Virtue and Fortune,” in Political Theory, 15 (1987).
Pocock, John G.A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1975).
Tarlton, Charles D., “Azioni in modo l’una dall’altra: Action for Action's Sake
in Machiavelli's The Prince,” in History of European Ideas, 29 (2003).
Viroli, Maurizio, “The Revolution in the Concept of Politics,” in Political
Theory, 20 (1992).
Wood, Neal, “Machiavelli’s Concept of Virtù Reconsidered,” in Political
Studies, 15 (1967).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article

Leander P. Marquez
Abstract: Wittgenstein’s exposition on aspect seeing (widely known as

“seeing as”) can be regarded as perhaps one of the least discussed
topics among his thoughts. In this light, this paper wishes to contribute
to the development of Wittgenstein’s notion of “seeing as.” The thesis
of this paper is that although “seeing as” can be normally understood
in two ways—as a visual experience and as an attitude—there is
another way in which “seeing as” can be understood, that is, as a belief.
In this sense, “seeing as” is not a distinct action from believing, that is,
believing is “seeing as.”
Keywords: Wittgenstein, Moore’s paradox, aspect seeing, seeing as

belief
Understanding the Concept of ‘Seeing As’
I
n Part II of the Philosophical Investigations,1 Wittgenstein begins his
exposition on “seeing as”2 by making a distinction between the two uses
of the word “see:”
The one: “What do you see there?”––“I see this” (and

then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see
a likeness between these two faces”––let the man I tell
this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.3
From this distinction, his succeeding discussion implies two notions

of “seeing as,” namely, “seeing as” as a visual experience and “seeing as” as
an attitude.
1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1953). Hereafter referred to as PI.

2 See Avner Baz, “What’s the Point of Seeing Aspects?” in Philosophical Investigations,
23:2 (2000), 97-121. See also John Churchill, “Rat and Mole’s Epiphany of Pan: Wittgenstein on
Seeing Aspects and Religious Experience,” in Philosophical Investigations, 21:2 (1998), 152-172.
3 Wittgenstein, PI, 193.
© 2016 Leander P. Marquez

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/marquez_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
214 BELIEF AS ‘SEEING AS’
However, before proceeding any further in the discussion of the

implications of this distinction, there is a need at this point to elucidate first
some very important items that will facilitate the flow of the discussion in this
paper. Hence, a clarification of terms is in order.
‘Seeing As’
“I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to

another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this
experience ‘noticing an aspect’.”4 Noticing an aspect is the experience generally
being referred to by the term aspect seeing or seeing an aspect. It can be
considered as a commonly occurring phenomenon although barely
recognizable. However, seeing an aspect is best manifested and readily
recognized when one encounters ambiguous figures like picture puzzles or
optical illusions such as in the image (“Facevase”)5 below:
In the image presented, at first glance, one can initially see a white
cup (chalice or vase), however, after a while, it may happen that one cannot
see the cup anymore, but instead, one sees two faces facing each other. Here,
it can be said that one initially saw the aspect that is the cup (Aspect A) and
later on saw the aspect that is the two faces (Aspect B).
4 Ibid.
5 “Facevase” (Public Domain), in Wikimedia Commons (21 October 2006),
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFacevase.JPG>, 23 January 2016.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 215
The phenomenon of seeing an aspect, such as when one saw Aspect

A, is referred to by Wittgenstein as the dawning of an aspect. For instance, is
the image6 below that of a duck or of a rabbit?
Wittgenstein used the image of the duck-rabbit in his discussion of

aspect-seeing in the PI. Years later, the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn,
who was introduced to the works of Wittgenstein by one of his colleagues in
UC Berkeley, used the duck-rabbit to explain his notion of “paradigm shift”
in the history of science, which he dubbed as “scientific revolution.”
The subject of a gestalt demonstration knows that his

perception has shifted because he can make it shift back
and forth repeatedly while he holds the same book or
piece of paper in his hands. Aware that nothing in his
environment has changed, he directs his attention
increasingly not to the figure (duck or rabbit) but to the
lines on the paper he is looking at. Ultimately he may
even learn to see those lines without seeing either of the
figures, and he may then say (what he could not
legitimately have said earlier) that it is these lines that he
really sees but that he sees them alternately as a duck
and as a rabbit … as in all similar psychological
experiments, the effectiveness of the demonstration
depends upon its being analyzable in this way. Unless
there were an external standard with respect to which a
6 “Duck-Rabbit Illusion,” in Joseph Jastrow, “The Mind's Eye,” in Popular Science
Monthly, 54 (1899), 299-312 as cited in “Duck-Rabbit Illusion,” in Wikimedia Commons (29 March
2006), <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg>, 23 January 2016.

ISSN 1908-7330
switch of vision could be demonstrated, no conclusion

about alternate perceptual possibilities could be drawn.7
However, in science, a paradigm shift leads to problems, problems

lead to crisis, and crisis results in revolution—a scientific revolution. For
Kuhn, a paradigm is an achievement that “was sufficiently unprecedented to
attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of
scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all
sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to
as ‘paradigms,’ …”8 Thus, a paradigm shift—or a scientific revolution—is a
revision of an existing scientific paradigm that is tantamount to the seeing of
another paradigm that was not seen before (e.g., the Copernican revolution).
However, unlike aspect-seeing, which begins with the dawning of an
aspect, Kuhn points out that paradigm shift does not involve seeing as but is
characterized by seeing it. Furthermore, he emphasized that it is also different
from Gestalt although the latter can be seen as a prototype.
The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one

from which a new tradition of normal science can
emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved
by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm.
Rather it is a reconstruction of the field from new
fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the
field’s most elementary theoretical generalizations as
well as many of its paradigm methods and applications.
During the transition period there will be a large but
never complete overlap between the problems that can
be solved by the old and by the new paradigm. But there
will also be a decisive difference in the modes of
solution. When the transition is complete, the profession
will have changed its view of the field, its methods, and
its goals … Others who have noted this aspect of
scientific advance have emphasized its similarity to a
change in visual gestalt: the marks on paper that were
first seen as a bird are now seen as an antelope, or vice
versa. That parallel can be misleading. Scientists do not
see something as something else; instead, they simply
7 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, vol. 2, no. 2 of International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 114.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 217
see it … In addition, the scientist does not preserve the

gestalt subject’s freedom to switch back and forth
between ways of seeing. Nevertheless, the switch of
gestalt, particularly because it is today so familiar, is a
useful elementary prototype for what occurs in full-scale
paradigm shift.9
Nonetheless, although essentially different from Gestalt, the

paradigm shift is similar to Gestalt in terms of the immediacy of the switch.
“Just because it is a transition between incommensurables, the transition
between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by
logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once
(though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.”10 Meanwhile, the
parallelism of Kuhn’s paradigm shift with the views of Wittgenstein on
aspect-seeing can only reach as far as the fact that from “the start they [both]
presuppose a paradigm”11— the duck or the rabbit or the old scientific
paradigm.
Going back, the dawning of an aspect is the immediate recognition of
an aspect, as the experience when one immediately recognized Aspect A.
When, for instance, one is presented with the image above and asked, “What
do you see here?”, one will always instantaneously see something and,
without thinking, respond, “A cup,” for instance, upon immediately seeing
Aspect A or more precisely, upon the dawning of Aspect A on the person.
This kind of response is what is referred to as the report of perception.
However, there are instances wherein one, upon saying that one sees a white
cup, might suddenly exclaim, “No wait, two faces facing each other!” At this
instance, it is clear that one has shifted from seeing Aspect A to Aspect B, but
this time, the utterance of the person is not anymore merely a report of
perception but it is already an exclamation or avowal. Although both report
and exclamation are expressions of perception, they are different in the sense
that an exclamation can be called as an expression of thought.
But since [exclamation] is the description of a

perception, it can also be called the expression of
thought.––If you are looking at the object, you need not
think of it; but if you are having the visual experience
expressed by the exclamation, you are also thinking of
what you see.12
9 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 84-85.

10 Ibid., 150.
11 Ibid., 127.

ISSN 1908-7330
In the second instance, one is not only having a visual experience of

Aspect B, but is also thinking about what is seen – one is “occupied” with
what he sees. This assertion by Wittgenstein will shed light on critical points
in the subsequent discussion of the notions of “seeing as.”
Meanwhile, in cases where one continues to see only Aspect A of the
image, Wittgenstein calls this experience as the continuous seeing of an aspect
or continuous aspect perception. If questioned further, one might explain the
features of Aspect A which are similar to the features of a real cup; or one
might draw another image of a cup to show how Aspect A resembles a cup;
or one might even get an actual cup and match it up to the image presented.
On the other hand, the experience of shifting from seeing Aspect A to seeing
Aspect B is called the phenomenon of changing of aspect or conversion. In this
instance, one will not refer to a cup anymore but might refer to pictures of
faces or even point to one’s own face.
One may point out that what has just been described is similar to the
propositions of Gestalt psychology. Conversely, it could never be more
different. It is precisely Gestalt psychology as represented by the work of
Wolfgang Köhler that Wittgenstein criticizes.13 In Gestalt psychology, one
sees things in segregated wholes, wherein certain aspects “belong together,” as
Gestalt advocates put it:
Consider the Rubin vase. You can see it either as a vase,

or as two proﬁles, but never as both at the same time.
That this is so is the consequence of the way in which
lines in the visual region ‘be-long’ to the area that is
perceived as ﬁgure. In current psychology this
phenomenon is often referred to as ‘border ownership’
or the ‘one sidedness of edges.’14
Köhler points out that in both experiences (in seeing the vase and in
seeing the profiles), one sees a new visual object each time. But Wittgenstein
questions this and argues that in seeing the aspects (of the vase at one time
and the profiles at another), there is no new visual object because the object
of perception has not changed. This is the paradox of aspect perception.
Further, Köhler argues:
13 It is important to note that Wittgenstein’s criticisms against Gestalt psychology
focused on the work of Köhler, aptly titled Gestalt Psychology (1929).

14 Naomi Eilan, “On the Paradox of Gestalt Switches: Wittgenstein’s Response to
Kohler,” in Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2:3 (2013), 4.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 219
Whenever we say to ourselves or others: ‘What may that

something be, at the foot of that hill, just to the right of
that tree, between those two houses, and so on?’ we ask
about the empirical meaning or use of a seen object and
demonstrate by our very question that as a matter of
principle, segregation of visual things is independent of
knowledge and meaning … it follows that my
knowledge about the practical significance of things
cannot be responsible for their existence as detached
visual units.15
In this sense, one initially sees objects as meaningless entities—like

blotches on paper—and attaches them with meaning. For instance, when one
looks at a “pen,” one perceives the “pen” not as a pen, but as an organized
whole. Only when one attaches a meaning to the “pen” can a pen be
perceived as a pen, that is, a tool used for writing. One, then, perceives the
pen in connection to its use and not just a meaningless object perceived. But
seeing and meaning are independent of each other. As Köhler puts it,
“segregation of visual things is independent of knowledge and meaning.” On
the other hand, Wittgenstein points out that seeing does not come without
meaning; that is, a purely visual experience sans meaning is not possible.
Rather, “we see things with their meaning.” 16 In the same way, when one
looks at blotches on a piece of paper, one does not see the blotches only in a
purely visual experience, but sees the blotches as meanings, for instance, “It
looks like a butterfly” or “I think I see a face.” Thus, it is “contrary to Köhler—
precisely a meaning that I see.”17
In another note, there are also cases wherein one is able see Aspect A
of the image but is unable to eventually see Aspect B and vice-versa. This is
what Wittgenstein refers to as aspect-blindedness. However, it is not a
possibility for a person to be completely aspect-blind because one always
recognizes an aspect. Even a person who is deprived of sight can recognize
an aspect through touch or hearing.
“Seeing As” as a Visual Experience
Earlier, it was mentioned that two notions of “seeing as” are implied
15 Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1929), 82.

16 Fiorenza Toccafondi, “Seeing the Meanings: Wittgenstein and Köhler,” in Gestalt
Theory, 34:3/4 (2012), 290.
17 Ludwig Wittgenstain, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. I (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1980), par. 869, p. 153 as cited in Toccafondi, “Seeing the Meanings: Wittgenstein and
Köhler,” 289.

ISSN 1908-7330
from Wittgenstein’s distinction of the two uses of the word “see.” One of
them, which shall be discussed in this section, is the notion of “seeing as” as
a visual experience. In the PI, Wittgenstein gave the following observation
about visual experience:
What is the criterion of the visual experience?––The

criterion?
What do you suppose?
The representation of “what is seen.”18
He further added that the “concept of representation of what is seen,

like that of a copy, is very elastic, and so together with it is the concept of what
is seen.”19 This can be taken to be a precise description of seeing an aspect. In
the case of the image presented above, when two people try to look at it and
one sees Aspect A while the other sees aspect B, it can be said that there is a
“sense in which they are seeing the same thing and another sense in which
they are not.”20 Indeed, this can be proven when one asks them to describe
what they see; surely they will come up with two totally different descriptions
although they are both looking at the same image. In other words, the
representation of what is seen follows what is “actually” seen.
The concept of “seeing as” as a visual experience is best captured in
the statement, “I see this”21 where this can stand for a cat, as in “I see a cat”; or
a tree as in “I see a tree”; or a man as in “I see a man”; and so on. In other
words, “seeing as” in the sense of a visual experience can be regarded as
merely “plain seeing.” Hence, one plainly sees a cup while another plainly
sees two faces facing each other. This also explains why in the instance of a
conversion, the person undergoes a new visual experience, despite the image
not changing. “If you search in a figure (1) for another figure (2), and then
find it, you see it (1) in a new way. Not only can you give a new kind of
description of it, but noticing the second figure was a new visual
experience.”22 Thus, one sees Aspect A during a particular visual experience
and Aspect B in another particular visual experience, but never at the same
instance since “the impression is not simultaneously of a picture-duck and a
picture-rabbit” (as in Wittgenstein’s example where the image used is that of
a duck-rabbit).23

19 Ibid.
20 Robert Fogelin, Wittgenstein, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1987), 202.
22 Ibid., 199.
23 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 221
“Seeing As” as an Attitude
The concept of “seeing as” as an attitude is the second of the two

notions of “seeing as” implied by Wittgenstein’s distinction of the two uses
of the word “see.” Wittgenstein illustrates the distinction between “seeing as”
as a visual experience and “seeing as” as an attitude through the following
remarks:
A wall covered with spots, and I occupy myself by

seeing faces on it; but not so that I can study the nature
of an aspect, but because those shapes interest me, and
so does the spell under which I can go from one to the
next.
The double cross and the duck-rabbit might be among

the spots and they could be seen like the figures and
together with them now one way, now another.24
In this case, when Wittgenstein speaks of “a wall covered with

spots,” he is, in fact, reporting a visual experience of seeing a wall covered
with spots. But when he speaks of seeing “the double cross and the duck-
rabbit ... among the spots,” he, at this point, is seeing in terms of a particular
attitude, which in that particular instance, influences what he sees. “The
apparent paradox of aspect seeing was at least in part generated by the fact
that what was seen in the usual sense had not altered but what was seen in
the sense of being allied to thinking had. Aspect change was not an alteration
of perception but of attitude.”25
John Hick attempts to describe the difference between these two
notions in simplified terms:
If I am looking at a picture, say the picture of a face, in

sense number one I see what is physically present on the
paper—mounds of ink, we might say, of a certain shape,
size, thickness and position. But in sense number two I
see the picture of a face. We could say that in this second
sense to see is to interpret or to find meaning or
24 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, ed. by G.H. von
Wright and Heikki Nyman, trans. by C.G. Luckhardt and Maximilian A.E. Aue (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 12. Hereafter referred to as LWPP.
25 Mark Addis, Wittgenstein: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York:

ISSN 1908-7330
significance on what is before us—we interpret and

perceive the mounds of ink as having the particular kind
of meaning that we describe as the picture of the face, a
meaning that mounds of ink, simply as such, do not
have.26
Thus for Hick, “seeing as” is partly a matter of plain seeing and partly
a matter of interpretation. I agree with Hick’s understanding of the first sense
of “seeing as”; however, I believe that he was somehow a bit off in his
understanding of its second sense. I have my doubts that it will be entirely
correct to say that Hick misunderstood the second notion of “seeing as”
because he associated it with interpretation. I think that he used the term
interpretation in a very loose sense. It cannot be blamed since Wittgenstein
himself employed the use of the term: “what about the double cross? Again,
it is seeing according to an interpretation. Seeing as.”27 Malcolm Budd shares
this view:
The notion of interpretation that Wittgenstein expounds

is too strong to do the work he intends it for. A better
conception would not restrict interpreting to the making
of a conjecture, but would allow in cases in which we are
only entertaining a supposition, merely imagining or
making-believe that a figure is intended a certain way
…28
Nevertheless, to set things straight and more clearly, unlike

interpretation which implies process, seeing in terms of an attitude is
instantaneous. One sees Aspect A (or Aspect B) in that same instance when
one looks at the image and not after a series of seeing and thereafter
interpreting the meaning of what is seen. Wittgenstein firmly established this
point: “Do I really see something different each time, or do I only interpret
what I see in a different way? I am inclined to say the former. But why?––To
interpret is to think, to do something; seeing is a state.” 29 To distinguish
between seeing and interpreting, Wittgenstein points out that “seeing has
genuine duration: one can ask for how long one saw the drawing as a duck
26 John Hick, “Seeing-as and Religious Experience,” in Philosophy of Religion: Proceedings
of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. by Wolfgang Gombocz (Vienna: Hölder-
Pichler-Tempsky, 1984), 47.
27 Wittgenstein, LWPP, 15.
28 Malcolm Budd, “Wittgenstein on Seeing Aspects,” in Mind: A Quarterly Review of
Philosophy, 96:381 (1987), 11.


ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 223
before it changed to a rabbit, whereas it sounds incongruous to ask for the

duration of an interpretation”30 But is it possible to see without thinking?
Does a baby think as it looks at its mother’s face? Does a person think as one
stares blankly outside the window? The science of sight is that the brain
processes the visual sense data to make them an organized whole so that one
may perceive the world as one ordinarily does. But this processing does not
require the person to do something, that is, to think. Thinking is an act that
one does voluntarily. It is doing something with what one sees. One can
analyze what is seen, remember it, memorize, or express it. This is thinking.
Seeing is different.
It was mentioned earlier that “if you are having the visual experience
expressed by the exclamation, you are also thinking of what you see.”31 This
is in direct connection with what Wittgenstein calls a well-known impression.32
In simple terms, it is more likely that one will not recognize an impression
that one does not know of. One might be looking at a cup, as in above, without
seeing it. “Does someone who doesn’t recognize a smile as a smile see it
differently than someone who does? He reacts to it differently.”33 Here, it
becomes quite clear that in “seeing as” as an attitude, seeing seems to be “half
visual experience, half thought.” 34
Moore’s Paradox
In one of his letters to G. E. Moore,35 Wittgenstein commented on the

“absurdity” of Moore’s assertion, “There is fire in this room and I don’t
believe there is,” which he later called “Moore’s Paradox.” He pointed out
that it “isn’t the only logically inadmissible form and it is, under certain
circumstances, admissible”36 and commended Moore for having made such a
discovery.
In the PI, Wittgenstein begins his discussion on the expression “I
believe” with an analysis of Moore’s Paradox. According to a commentator
on Wittgenstein, Garth Hallett, Wittgenstein has purposely “left [the
30 Severin Schroeder, “A Tale of Two Problems: Wittgenstein’s Discussion of Aspect
Perception,” in Mind, Method, and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny, ed. by J.
Cottingham and P.M.S. Hacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 358.
31 Ibid., 197.
33 Ibid.
35 See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters – Correspondence
with Russel, Keynes, Moore, Ramsey, and Sraffa, ed. by Brian McGuinness and G.H. von Wright
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 315ff.
36 Wittgenstein, Cambridge Letters, 317.

ISSN 1908-7330
discussion on] ‘I believe’ till [after his discussion on expression of emotions],

apparently because ‘Moore’s Paradox’ suggested the possibility of a fuller,
more complex development, one which could not conveniently be
incorporated in the earlier section.”37 However, apart from this explanation, I
believe Wittgenstein did this with the intention that his discussion on “I
believe” may serve as a guide in order to understand his discussion on the
following section, on “seeing as.” In other words, his thoughts on “seeing as”
need to be seen in the light of his thoughts on “I believe.” For such reason,
the only manner of proceeding is by clarifying what Wittgenstein thinks of
the expression “I believe” in relation to his analysis of Moore’s Paradox.
Moore’s paradox can be put like this: the expression “I

believe that this is the case” is used like the assertion
“This is the case”; and yet the hypothesis that I believe this
is the case is not used like the hypothesis that this is the
case.
So it looks as if the assertion “I believe” were not the

assertion of what is supposed in the hypothesis “I
believe!”38
Here, Wittgenstein distinguishes between two ways of

understanding the word “I believe,” which also clarifies how one should treat
the idea of “believing.” The first distinction shows that the “expression ‘I
believe that this is the case’ is used like the assertion ‘This is the case’” is an
assertion that corresponds to something that is true in reality, as in “I believe
that fire is hot” which is, of course, true, hence, the assertion can simply be
taken to be understood as “Fire is hot.” The second distinction, however,
which points out that “the hypothesis that ‘I believe this is the case’ is not used
like the hypothesis that ‘this is the case’” signifies that the speaker’s use of “I
believe …” is not to assert something that corresponds to something true in
reality, but is, in fact, stating one’s state of mind. Thus, an assertion that “I
believe that fire is cold” cannot simply be taken to be understood as “Fire is
cold” but as something that the speaker wishes to “believe” about the fire.
The distinction can be understood more easily when one tries to look
at the difference between the language-games of someone who works as a
chef, for instance, and someone who works in a circus—say someone who
walks over burning charcoals with bare feet—a fire walker. For the chef, the
37 See Garth Hallett, A Companion to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 655ff.

38 Wittgenstein, PI, p. 190.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 225
belief that fire or burning charcoal is hot is merely brought about by what he
usually experiences—the heat of the fire and of the burning charcoal.
However, in the situation of someone who works for the circus, in order to
perform the feat, he needs to “believe” that the burning charcoals are cold
and does so.39 Through believing that the charcoals are cold, he is able to walk
over the burning charcoals barefoot without feeling the heat. Here, it can be
said that “one can mistrust one’s own senses, but not one’s own belief.”40
Wittgenstein points out that “[t]he language-game of reporting can be given
such a turn that a report is not meant to inform the hearer about its subject
matter but about the person making the report.”41 Hence, when one says that
“I believe that fire is hot,” the assertion does not only convey that fire is hot
but also the internal disposition of the speaker who believes about the fire
being hot.
In essence, the paradox of Moore’s assertion that, “There is fire in this
room and I don’t believe there is” puts to light the characteristic of “I believe
…” to show a person’s state of mind. “‘I believe …’ throws light on my state.
Conclusions about my conduct can be drawn from this expression.”42
From this elucidation of how the expression “I believe …” should be
understood in Moore’s Paradox, Wittgenstein draws out his thoughts on
what believing is:
This is how I think of it: Believing is a state of mind. It

has duration; and that independently of the duration of
its expression in the sentence, for example. So it is a kind
of disposition of the believing person. This is shown me
in the case of someone else by his behaviour; and by his
words. And under this head, by the expression “I believe
…” as well as by the simple assertion.43
From this statement, we can draw out four characteristics of belief: a)

it is a state of mind; b) its duration is independent of the duration of the
expression in the sentence; c) it is a kind of disposition; and d) it is expressed
by words and behavior.
39 Notice that I wrote the word believe here in quotation marks, as in “believe.” The
reason is that I did not want to use the term “see as” in this paper this early because I am worried
that it might still be premature to do so and decided to use it later after the link between belief
and “seeing as” has been established. Nevertheless, what I mean in this sentence is that the fire
walker needs to see the burning charcoals as cold in order to perform his feat.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 191.
43 Ibid., 191–192.

ISSN 1908-7330
Since belief is a state of mind, Wittgenstein is able to assert that

Moore’s Paradox can be admissible under certain circumstances. The
circumstances, which Wittgenstein mentions here, seem to point to those
instances when one is asserting one’s personal state of mind. In saying that “I
believe that this is the case,” it may be that “this is not really the case,” but
the speaker’s state of mind is that of “this is the case” and not of “what is
really the case.” This is different from Austin’s Speech Act theory since the
belief does not necessarily need to be expressed in speech as Moore did in
pointing out his paradox, yet it may be expressed in behavior. The assertion
of the belief was only necessary in the case of Moore’s Paradox to clearly show
the paradox of asserting a belief statement different from what is seen. In this
sense, a person can believe that there is no fire in the room (since it is a mental
state) despite the fact that there is an actual fire burning in the room without
having to assert that “I believe that there is no fire in the room.” Thus, in this
scenario, the speech act is inexistent.
Furthermore, it is also different from Gettier’s point of view since his
discussions in his essay, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” (1963), raises
a question on whether justified true belief is a sufficient condition for
knowing, wherein he argues that a person can believe and is justified in
believing a false proposition, yet can it be called knowledge? This, however,
is different from the point raised by Wittgenstein regarding the admissibility
of Moore’s Paradox since knowledge is not the objective here (the person may
see that there is fire in the room, but does not believe that there is. Does this,
in effect, mean that the person does not know that there is a fire in the room?);
and Wittgenstein is not talking about the justification of belief, but its nature,
that is, it is a state of mind. With this in mind, this understanding of “I
believe” shall shed light on this paper’s thesis—belief as “seeing as.”
In light of the elaborations made above, there appears to be a third

concept of “seeing as” that one cannot help but notice since a “concept forces
itself on one.”44 And this concept is what this paper wishes to argue—belief
as “seeing as.”
There are those who may find the link between belief and “seeing as”
in discussions concerning religion, for instance, John Hick, who in his paper
“Seeing-as and Religious Experience” enlarged the concept of “seeing as” to
“experiencing as” in order to justify the validity of religious experiences and,
of course, the belief in God, which can be conveniently called faith. It is not
44 Ibid., 204.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 227
difficult to agree with Hick that interpreting, or more appropriately, finding

meaning is not purely visual but involves all our senses. However, this only
works when one speaks of “experiencing as” because in an experience, “the
finding of meaning does not occur only through sight.” 45 But speaking of
“seeing as” is entirely independent and different because in “seeing as,”
meaning is not sought; it is immediately recognized. Moreover, there exists a
link between belief and “seeing as” which does not require one to extend the
concept of “seeing as” in order to conveniently justify this connection. The
connection between belief and “seeing as” lies in Wittgenstein’s definition of
the term “belief” itself.
As previously mentioned, Wittgenstein’s thoughts on “seeing as”
need to be understood, bearing in mind his thoughts on “I believe.” “‘Seeing
as…’ is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again
not like.”46 When one takes this into consideration, it seems to appear that the
notion of “seeing as” as a visual experience will fall short of the characteristic
of “seeing as” not being a part of perception. Obviously, when one speaks of
“seeing as” as a visual experience, one is virtually talking about perception.
One must be careful, however, to think that Wittgenstein, in relation
to “seeing as” as a visual experience, is talking about pure perception. Pure
perception, as Husserl puts it, is achieved through the “narrowing of an
impure percept which throws out symbolic components [and] yields the pure
intuition which is immanent in it: a further reductive step then throws out
everything imagined, and yields the substance of pure perception.”47 In other
words, pure intuition (wherein all the properties of an object are fully
apparent) minus imaginative content results in pure perception, or that
“which completely depicts its object through its freedom from all signitive
[properties of an object that are not intuitively presented or are subject to
interpretation] additions, holds in its intuitively presentative content a
complete likeness of the object. This likeness can approach the object more or
less closely, to a limit of complete resemblance.”48
In this light, “seeing as”—even as a visual experience—is not strictly
a matter of pure perception; hence, as pointed out earlier, it is “precisely a
meaning that I see” and just recently, “it is like seeing and again not like.”
Conversely, to be “not part of perception” seems to suggest something that is
internal; something which is somewhat a state of mind, wherein the signitive
substance, “which corresponds to the sum total of the remaining, subsidiarily
45Hick, “Seeing-as and Religious Experience,” 47.

46Wittgenstein, PI, 197.
47 Edmund Husserl, The Shorter Logical Investigations, trans. by J.N. Findlay, (London
and New York: Routledge, 2001), 318.

48 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
given properties of the object, which do not themselves become apparent”49

is present. If this is the case, then we only have “seeing as” as an attitude left
to consider.
“Seeing as” as an attitude, on the other hand, seems to fulfill the said
requirement. But how? As mentioned earlier, the vital link here is the
definition that Wittgenstein gave to the term “belief.” It can be recalled that,
earlier, the discussion was able to derive four characteristics of belief from
Wittgenstein's definition:
a) It is a state of mind;
b) Its duration is independent of the duration of the
expression in the sentence;
c) It is a kind of disposition; and
d) It is expressed by words and behavior.
Let us now try to figure out how these characteristics will fit in our
discussion of “seeing as” as an attitude.
It was pointed out a while ago that “seeing is a state.” However, if
one takes a closer look at “seeing as” as an attitude, one can see that attitude
only gives “color” to what is seen. It merely influences what is seen so that a
person takes it to be one thing or another, but it seems that it is still part of
perception. One can perhaps consider it to be a notch higher than visual
experience or regard it to be some sort of “mental perception.” Ironically,
however, this description appears to point to the right direction. Isn’t it that
this kind of description—of “seeing as” as an attitude as a mental
perception—fits Wittgenstein's description of “seeing as” as “like seeing and
again not like”? One sees in the image above the aspect of a cup (or of the two
faces) and the experience can be described as truly “like seeing and again not
like.” If this is so, then we can say that, indeed, “seeing as” as an attitude is a
state—a state of mind. “‘To me it is an animal pierced by an arrow.’ That is
what I treat it as; this is my attitude to the figure. This is one meaning in calling
it a case of ‘seeing.’”50 With this, “seeing as” as an attitude has obviously met
the first characteristic of belief.
Meanwhile, as one tries to dig deeper into Wittgenstein’s thoughts,
one can notice that Wittgenstein’s remarks on conviction is the key in finding
the link between “seeing as” as an attitude and at least two of the other three
remaining characteristics of belief. What is conviction? In ordinary English
parlance, conviction is understood as a strong belief and is normally related
to the ideas of emotion and behavior. Simply, conviction derives from human
49 Ibid., 317.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 229
emotion and is manifested in human words and actions. These

characterizations also appear in Wittgenstein's thoughts; take for instance
Wittgenstein’s Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (1992), wherein he
says:
The belief, the certainty, a kind of feeling when uttering

a sentence. Well, there is a tone of conviction, of doubt,
etc. But the most important expression of conviction is
not this tone, but the way one behaves.
Ask not “What goes on in us when we are certain …?”,

but “How does it show?”51
Here, Wittgenstein mentions a certain feeling towards the utterance

of a sentence, which hints the presence of conviction as well as the importance
of behavior, which is the expression of the conviction. From this observation,
it is safe to assume that Wittgenstein treats conviction in the same manner
that was stated earlier—that it is related to the ideas of emotion and behavior.
By introducing the concept of conviction in the picture of the general
discussion of “seeing as” in the PI, Wittgenstein is trying to establish a
connection between “seeing as” and two other characteristics of belief,
namely, expression and duration, through the idea of conviction.
Conviction has two elements—behavior and emotion. On the one
hand, by setting a connection between “seeing as” and behavior, Wittgenstein
gives the impression that “seeing as” has the characteristic of expression as
does behavior. For instance, in the case of the image above, when asked
“What do you see?”—a person’s normal behavior when one sees, say, Aspect
A will be to respond, “I see a cup”. If asked further, “Why do you say it is a
cup?”—one will most likely point out the characteristics of a cup that is
similar to what one sees or maybe draw a picture of a cup and compare it
with the image or even, perhaps, get a real cup and explain the similar
features of the cup that the person is holding and the image that one sees.
Obviously, it can be seen from this person’s expression, both in words and
actions, that his behavior towards what he sees in the image is that of a
behavior that he would normally have towards a real cup.
On the other hand, by creating a link between “seeing as” and
emotion, Wittgenstein seems to imply the idea that “seeing as” has the
characteristic of duration which is independent from the duration of the
expression in a sentence as does emotion. For example, when a person is
angry, the duration of the emotion or the anger that he feels is independent

ISSN 1908-7330
from its duration in the expression, “I am angry at you!” Thus, even if he has
expressed what he feels, the emotion still lingers. The idea is the same with
“seeing as” that even if the expression, “I see a cup” has passed, the
experience of “seeing” the cup still persists. This appears to be a convenient
analysis if the idea of conviction perfectly fits the description of “seeing as”
as an attitude. So how does it fit the picture and what makes it fit?
“One feels conviction within oneself, one doesn’t infer it

from one’s own words or their tone.”––What is true here
is: one does not infer one’s own conviction from one’s
own words; nor yet the actions which arise from their
conviction.52
Here, Wittgenstein clearly points out that one’s conviction does not
originate from one’s words or actions. Rather, it is the other way around—
one's words and actions originate from one's convictions. Hence, there is
indeed a place for the element of conviction in the discussion of “seeing as”
and that position is, by nature, essential. With this clarified, we are still left
with the task of unveiling the connection between attitude and disposition.
I think that the notion of disposition is intimately intertwined with
the idea of attitude. Ordinarily, disposition relates to various terms such as
nature, character, temperament, temper, outlook, and personality. All these
terms are oftentimes used synonymously and interchangeably. But then, how
are disposition and attitude related? Let us examine the following statement:
… what I perceive in the dawning of an aspect is not a

property of the object, but an internal relation between
them.53
This means that to see the image above as an image of cup and not
merely ink smudges on a white background is not to see something other
than ink smudges on a white background. It is to see the image in relation to
pictures of a cup, in relation to real cups, in relation to other depictions of a
cup, and so forth. What, then, enables one to see this way? It is something
within a person—the tendency of a person to see things in relation to
something. The general term is “disposition” but, more precisely, “attitude.”
If the person’s attitude changes, the disposition of the person also changes
and vice versa. Does this mean that the terms “disposition” and “attitude”
carry the same meaning? I say yes. This can be better understood through the

53 Ibid., 212.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 231
help of another important idea in Wittgenstein's concept of “seeing as”—

physiognomy.
But the expression in one’s voice and gestures is the

same as if the object had altered and had ended by
becoming this or that.
I have a theme played to me several times and each time

in a slower tempo. In the end I say “Now it’s right”, or
“Now at last it’s a march”, “Now at last it’s a dance.”––
The same tone of voice expresses the dawning of an
aspect.54
A similar assertion is:
But if a sentence can strike me as like a painting in

words, and the very individual word in the sentence is
like a picture, then it is not such marvel that a word
uttered in isolation and without purpose can seem to
carry a particular meaning in itself.55
Remember that the “concept of an aspect is akin to the concept of an

image.”56 Physiognomy is a term used by Wittgenstein to refer to “images”
or “meanings” that can be recognized in the structure of words, music,
paintings, poetry, sarcasm, and so on. The first remark above describes this
concept wherein one is able to grasp the “aspect” or physiognomy of music
and identify whether it is a dance, or a march, or a chant, and so forth. The
second remark talks about meanings in particular sentences and words that
dawn on someone with the vividness of pictures (such as when one is able to
appreciate poems). Normally, these “images” can easily be grasped by most
people. However, there are cases wherein some people cannot grasp such
physiognomy. As discussed earlier in this paper, such instances are cases of
aspect-blindedness.
Wittgenstein defines aspect-blindedness as “lacking in the capacity
to see something as something”57 and adds further that it is “akin to the lack of
a ‘musical ear.’”58 However, this is not a physiological defect or a
psychological incapacity of some sort; I think it is a lack in the tendency of a
54 Ibid., 206.
55 Ibid., 215.
56 Ibid., 213.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 214.

ISSN 1908-7330
person to see something as something. A certain discrepancy in personal

attitudes among people exists here. Wittgenstein clearly articulates this point:
Is he supposed to be blind to the similarity between two

faces?––And so also to their identity or approximate
identity? I do not want to settle this. (He ought to be able
to execute such orders as “Bring me something that
looks like this.”)
Ought he to be unable to see the schematic cube as a

cube?––It would not follow from that that he could not
recognize it as a representation (a working drawing for
instance) of a cube. But for him it would not jump from
one aspect to the other.––Question: Ought he to be able
to take it as a cube in certain circumstances, as we do?––
If not, this could not very well be called a sort of
blindedness.
The “aspect-blind” will have an altogether different

relationship to pictures from ours.59
For instance, a person may see a cup in the image above but is unable
see the two faces because he lacks the disposition to see the faces. One who
reads a poem but cannot appreciate lacks the disposition to appreciate poems.
One cannot notice sarcasm because he lacks the disposition to notice such
nuance. In other words, a person may lack the attitude to grasp certain
aspects and, thus, treats some things differently than most people do.
Ultimately, when one is disposed or has the attitude to see a cup in the image
above, the aspect of the cup will dawn on him. Indeed, one sees a cup because
one’s disposition—one’s attitude—forces the image of the cup on him; as
Wittgenstein puts it, “it forced itself on me.”60 At this point, we can see that
“seeing as” has met all the characteristics of a belief and, thus, has adopted a
third notion, that is, “seeing as” as a belief. This brings our project of fully
establishing the notion of belief as “seeing as” to near completion.
The final step towards the completion of this project is to apply this
new-found understanding of “seeing as” as an attitude—or more
appropriately, belief as “seeing as.” Obviously, the best and most suitable
subject for this application is Moore's Paradox.
59 Ibid., 213–214.
60 Ibid.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 233
In the case of Moore’s Paradox, the assertion that “There is fire in this
room and I don’t believe there is” is a case of “seeing as” as an attitude—a
case of belief as “seeing as.” This claim can be proven by “the way one
behaves.”61 In this kind of situation, it is somehow difficult to deny the
existence of fire in the room; however, this is not impossible. Obviously, since
the assertion concerned is a belief statement, there is no doubt that we are
dealing with a state of mind—the belief that there is no fire in the room. Recall
that belief as “seeing as” is “like seeing and again not like” 62 because seeing
seems to be done by the “mind’s eye.” In other words, it is “seeing and
thinking in the aspect,”63 wherein the visual experience of seeing an aspect is
influenced by one’s attitude. Hence, in this case it is one’s attitude—or
disposition—that led the person to see that there is no fire in the room. It can
probably be said, in addition, that the circumstance wherein the assertion was
expressed might also supply the reasons why a person was able to express
such an utterance.
Nonetheless, apart from reason being unnecessary in belief as
“seeing as,” the important point here is that a person's mere utterance of such
statement is evidence enough to say that his attitude towards the fire in the
room is that it does not exist since his utterance is the expression of his
attitude towards the fire in the room. Unfortunately, since the only material
that is available for this paper to work on the application of belief as “seeing
as” is the statement of Moore’s Paradox, it is difficult to ascertain whether the
duration of the attitude is independent from that of the expression since this
can only be determined after the assertion has been expressed. Nevertheless,
assuming that the person continues to act as though there is no fire in the
room, then, it can be said that, indeed, the application of belief as “seeing as”
fits Moore’s Paradox perfectly like how a particular puzzle piece would fit on
a puzzle.
Thus, is “seeing as” a distinct action from believing? Given the
analysis above, the answer is no. In light of the foregoing discussions, the
conclusion reached is that “seeing as” is not a distinct action from believing,
that is, believing is “seeing as.”
Belief as “seeing as” is a commonly occurring phenomenon around
us. In fact, it seems that one of the most potent examples for this is that which
is dear to us—Philosophy. To use the words of Wittgenstein as quoted by
Russell Goodman, “Working in Philosophy—like working in architecture in
many respects—is really more a working on oneself …. on one’s way of

63 Ibid., 14.

ISSN 1908-7330
seeing things.”64 Indeed, working in Philosophy can be seen as working in a

hodgepodge of beliefs as “seeing as.” Philosophers argue for their respective
beliefs which are products of what they see in the world (“seeing as” as a
visual experience) that are influenced by how they see the world (“seeing as”
as an attitude). Simply put, Philosophy is an age-old enterprise of belief as
“seeing as.”
Department of Philosophy, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines
References
Addis, Mark, Wittgenstein: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York:
Continuum, 2006).
Baz, Abner “What’s the Point of Seeing Aspects?” in Philosophical
Investigations, 23:2 (2000).
Budd, Malcolm, “Wittgenstein on Seeing Aspects,” in Mind: A Quarterly
Review of Philosophy, 96:381 (1987).
Churchill, John, “Rat and Mole’s Epiphany of Pan: Wittgenstein on Seeing
Aspects and Religious Experience,” in Philosophical Investigations, 21:2
(1998).
“Duck-Rabbit Illusion,” in Wikimedia Commons (29 March 2006),
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DuckRabbit_illusion.jpg
>, 23 January 2016.
Naomi Eilan, “On the Paradox of Gestalt Switches: Wittgenstein’s Response
to Kohler,” in Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 2:3 (2013).
“Facevase” (Public Domain), in Wikimedia Commons (21 October 2006),
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFacevase.JPG>, 23
January 2016.
Fogelin, Robert Wittgenstein, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge,
1987).
Goodman, Russell, “Wittgenstein’s Conceptions of Truth,” in Epistemology
and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the 7th International Wittgenstein
Symposium, ed. by Paul Weingarter and Johannes Czermark (Vienna:
Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1983)
Hallett, Garth, A Companion to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1977).
Hick, John, “Seeing-as and Religious Experience,” in Philosophy of Religion:
Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. by
Wolfgang Gombocz (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1984).
64 Russell Goodman, “Wittgenstein’s Conceptions of Truth,” in Epistemology and
Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the 7th International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. by Paul
Weingarter and Johannes Czermark (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1983), 480.

ISSN 1908-7330
L. MARQUEZ 235
Husserl, Edmund, The Shorter Logical Investigations, trans. by J.N. Findlay,

(London and New York: Routledge, 2001).
Jastrow, Joseph, “Duck-Rabbit Illusion,” in “The Mind’s Eye,” in Popular
Science Monthly, 54 (1899).
Köhler, Wolfgang, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1929).
Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, vol. 2, no. 2 of
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1970).
Schroeder, Severin, “A Tale of Two Problems: Wittgenstein’s Discussion of
Aspect Perception,” in Mind, Method, and Morality: Essays in Honour
of Anthony Kenny, ed. by J. Cottingham and P.M.S. Hacker (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
Toccafondi, Fiorenza, “Seeing the Meanings: Wittgenstein and Köhler,” in
Gestalt Theory, 34:3/4 (2012).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, ed. by
G.H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, trans. by C.G. Luckhardt and
Maximilian A.E. Aue (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992).
___________, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters – Correspondence with
Russel, Keynes, Moore, Ramsey, and Sraffa, ed. by Brian McGuinness
and G.H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995).
___________, Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G.E.M. Anscombe, (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1953).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Authentic Historicality and National

Socialism in Being and Time
Saurabh Todariya
Abstract: This paper will explore ‘Heidegger’s controversy,’ which has

perplexed the scholars for a long time. We need to see whether we can
distinguish Heidegger, ‘the philosopher’ from Heidegger ‘the Nazi.’ I
would like to suggest that the notion of Geschistlichkeit in Being and Time
shows the intimate connections between the fundamental ontology of
Dasein and Heidegger’s sympathy for National Socialism. The paper
will argue that the analysis of ‘authentic historicality’ in Being and
Times shows the link between the authenticity of Dasein and
Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism.
Keywords: Dasein, Geschistlichkeit, historicality, repetition
Introduction
“H
eidegger Controversy” remains a perplexing issue for any
scholar who deals with the thoughts of Martin Heidegger. This
is so because Heidegger’s life shows us a confounding
combination of profound philosophical thoughts and questionable political
conduct. Heidegger’s brief engagement with National Socialism during
Second World War and his subsequent silence about the issue have baffled
the thinkers. ‘Heidegger Controversy’ fueled up this year again after the
publication of the controversial Black Notebooks. Heidegger Chair in Freiburg
University resigned on the moral ground, citing its allegedly anti-Semitic
content. Ever since Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism,
scholars heatedly debated his involvement with the ideology of National
Socialism. On the one hand, there are thinkers like Theodor Adorno, Jurgen
Habermas, Emmanuel Levinas, and Herbert Marcuse who argue that there is
a direct connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his conservative
political thoughts.1 On the other hand, scholars like Hannah Arendt, Richard
1 Adorno establishes the relationship between Heidegger’s political leanings and the
philosophical concepts in Being and Time. He argues that Heidegger’s emphasis on authenticity
© 2016 Saurabh Todariya

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/todariya_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 237
Rorty, and Jacques Derrida argue that we cannot reduce Heidegger’s

philosophical thoughts to his conservative political opinions and his brief
engagement with National Socialism should be seen as a ‘folly’ on the part of
the thinker who tried to involve in the political realm. We, therefore, need to
differentiate or even salvage Heidegger’s thinking from his occasional
political pitfalls.2
Heidegger’s sustained silence on this issue and his provocative
statement regarding the holocaust of Jews later in Question concerning the
Essence of Technology further complicates the matter. Given the complex and
controversial nature of the problem, the present paper will take the moderate
position regarding the “Heidegger Controversy.” I will try to show that
although Heidegger’s thoughts cannot be legitimately reduced into the Nazi
ideology; nevertheless, the fundamental ontology of Dasein in Being and Time
does have the political aim which could be churned out from the analysis of
authentic historicality. Hence, we cannot discard Heidegger’s involvement
with National Socialism as an aberration of a philosopher. His support for
National Socialism stems from his philosophical ideas, which are very clearly
evident in his infamous Rector Speech, along with works like Being and Truth,
Introduction to Metaphysics, and Black Notebooks. He saw National Socialism as
a historical possibility, which can make German people authentic. To
comprehend the connection between his philosophical and political ideas, we
need to analyze his notion of ‘authentic historicality’ in Being and Time. On
the basis of this analysis, we shall argue that the notion of co-historicality and
destiny does have the basis of a strong and exclusive community, which can
overcome the pitfalls of everydayness and can realize its historical essence.
Historicality and Care
Heidegger’s analysis of temporality in Being and Time finally
is basically a political category than a formal concept. See Theodor Adorno, Jargon of Authenticity,
trans. by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
Habermas’s take on Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics in Jurgen Habermas,
“Martin Heidegger: On the Publication of the Lectures of 1935,” trans. by William S. Lewis, in
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), 186-197.
Levinas takes Heidegger to task for not taking the question of the ‘Other’ into
consideration. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alpohnso Lingis (Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1969).
2 Hannah Arendt uses Heidegger’s notion of ‘thinking’ in relationship with the moral
responsibility. See Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment (New York: Schocken Books,
2003).
Jacques Derrida delves into Heidegger’s relationship with National Socialism by
taking up the question of Spirit in Heidegger. See Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the
Question, trans. by Geoffrey Benington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1989).

ISSN 1908-7330
238 AUTHENTIC HISTORICALITY AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM
culminates in the notion of Geschistlichkeit or Historicality.3 Historicality is a

technical term, which Heidegger defines in terms of fundamental ontology of
Dasein. In the earlier sections of Being and Time, Heidegger argues that the
ontology of Dasein should be understood with respect to temporality.
Heidegger defines the being of Dasein in terms of Care structure.4 Care is the
structural unity, which defines the existence of man as being-in-the-world.
The specific component of Care is ‘ahead-of-itself.’5 This structure of care as
‘ahead-of-itself’ specifically comes into picture when Heidegger discusses
anxiety as fundamental attunement. Heidegger brings in the issue of Care in
Being and Time after the discussion of anxiety.6 Anxiety is a specific type of
disclosure, which individuates Dasein. It makes possible for Dasein to
become authentic.7 In this way, Dasein realizes itself as the possible.
According to Heidegger, Dasein’s basic structure as possibility is because
Dasein is fundamentally ‘ahead-of-itself.’ The ‘ahead-of-itself’ has to be seen
in Dasein’s specific relationship with Death. Death is the non-relational
possibility which individuates Dasein and it projects itself as ‘ahead of itself’
in anticipation of ‘running its course,’ which Heidegger calls as Vorlaufenheit.8
Dasein is an entity for which, in its Being, that Being is

an issue. The phrase ‘is an issue’ has been made plain in
the state-of-being of understanding-of understanding as
self-projective Being towards its ownmost potentiality-
for-being. This potentiality is that for the sake of which
any Dasein is as it is … ontologically, Being towards
one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being means that in each
case Dasein is always ‘beyond itself’ … as Being towards
the potentiality-for-Being which it is itself. This structure
of Being, which belongs to the essential ‘is an issue,’ we
shall denote as Dasein’s Being-ahead-of-itself.9
‘Being-ahead-of-itself’ points towards the most fundamental
3 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 424.

4 Ibid., 227.
5 Ibid., 236.
6 Ibid., 228.
7 Heidegger defines anxiety as a distinctive way in which Dasein is disclosed. See
Heidegger, Being and Time, 228.

8 According to Heidegger, Dasein’s being is constituted by the ‘not yet’ because of its
relationship with death. Hence, it projects itself as ‘ahead-of-itself’ while ‘running its course’
(Vorlaufenheit). By including ‘ahead-of-itself’ in care structure of Dasein, Heidegger defines the
existence of Dasein in terms of possibility. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 287.
9 Ibid., 236.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 239
constituent of Dasein. Dasein is the only entity for whom its own being is an
issue; this is because it involves ‘ahead-of-itself’ in the care structure. That is
why anxiety becomes a specific kind of disclosure for Dasein in which it
realizes itself as ‘possibility.’ However, the ‘ahead-of-itself’ is not some kind
of exceptional capacity of Dasein; rather, it is the part of Dasein’s facticity as
Heidegger defines it as “ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world.” In his
words, ‘existentiality is essentially determined by facticity.’10 Heidegger tries
to show that the ontological constituent of Dasein as ‘ahead-of-itself’ can only
be grasped through taking the issue of temporality into account. Dasein can
be ‘ahead-of-itself’ because there is primacy of future in temporality. Hence,
Care is basically temporal in nature. Temporality reveals itself as the meaning
of authentic care.11
Care structure is the unity of the past, present, and future. However,
the past, present, and future are not used as mere modifications of time;
rather, they are defined in existential manner. Heidegger does not simply
mean that existence is temporal as it would have been naïve and
commonsensical. To be human means to exist in time. It is true not only for
humans but also for any other existing living forms. We cannot think of any
form of existence which is independent of time. Heidegger, however, gives
twist to this commonsensical understanding of time by calling it temporality.
Temporality is the way in which human existence relates itself to time.
Heidegger defines human existence as Care in order to show the relationship
between human existence and time. However, this relation is possible only
by understanding time in an ontological manner. In Care structure, time has
been described as an ecstatic unity of the past, present, and future, which has
the primacy of the future. According to Heidegger, it is only the future which
gives unity to the past, present, along with future. He says that, “The primary
phenomena of primordial and authentic temporality is the future.”12
Heidegger’s notion of temporality rejects the ordinary understanding
of time in which the primacy is accorded to the present. In ordinary
understanding of time, the past and the future are defined as no longer now
and the upcoming now. Hence, the past and the future become the
modifications of present. Heidegger, on the other hand, argues that in order
to grasp the real essence of time, we need to understand time as ecstatic
temporality. In ecstatic temporality, time is not understood as separate
moments of the past, present, and future; rather, time is understood in terms
of its unity of the past, present, and future. Here we need to understand what
Heidegger means by the term ‘unity.’ It is not just adding up of the three
moments of time together. The unity is basically ecstatic in nature in which
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 374.
12 Ibid., 378.

ISSN 1908-7330
each moment becomes itself only by flowing outside itself. According to

Heidegger, unity of time should be located in the care structure of Dasein.
Time flows from the future to the past and then to the present.
Temporality makes possible the unity of existence,

facticity, and falling, and in this way constitutes
primordially the totality of the structure of care. The
items of care have not been pieced together cumulatively
any more than the temporality itself has been put
together ‘in the course of time’ out of the future, the
having been and the Present. Temporality ‘is’ not an
entity at all … it temporalizes itself … Temporality is the
primordial ‘outside-of-itself’ in and for itself. We therefore
call the phenomena of the future, the character of
having-been, and the Present, the “ecstases” of
temporality … its essence is a process of temporalizing
in the unity of the ecstases.13
Of all entities, Dasein alone has relationship with the future, which
Heidegger defines as ‘being-ahead-of-itself.’ However, the projection of the
future is possible only through the ecstatic or its inherent unity with the
present and the future, which makes possible the phenomena of temporality
for humans. The projection towards the future brings Dasein to its facticity,
to its past; hence, only on the basis of the future and the past, it comes to have
the present as present. Hence, the present is not an isolated patch but is
stitched to the past and flows towards the future. Heidegger, therefore,
comes out of the abstract or formal notion of time by making it as the very
ground on which humans interpret themselves. The Da of Dasein, its ‘being-
there,’ is disclosed to Dasein because it is temporal in nature. The ‘there-ness’
of Dasein as the facticity, falleness, and projection is possible on the basis of
ecstatic temporality of Dasein. The world is disclosed to Dasein as the
network of possibilities because of the ecstatic unity of the past, present, and
future.
The temporal analysis of Dasein brings Heidegger to the problematic
of history. Since we do not relate to time in abstract manner but in existential
way, the question of history becomes of paramount importance. According
to Heidegger, History should be understood in relationship with
temporality.14
13 Ibid., 376-77.
14 In analyzing the historicality of Dasein, we shall try to show that this entity is not
‘temporal’ because it ‘stands in history,’ but that, on the contrary, it exists historically and can so
exist only because it is temporal in the very basis of its Being. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 428.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 241
In Being and Time, Heidegger starts from the common understanding

of ‘past’ in which past has been interpreted in terms of bygone, elapsed,
which is no longer present now. We call such past as dead.15 This notion of
past is based on the understanding of past as the modification of the present.
The past as such does not have any ontological status; its being is dependent
on the present. When a present moment passes away, the past comes into
existence. Heidegger questions such an understanding of past and tries to
understand past in its own terms. Humans never relate to the past as bygone
or dead; rather, for them the past is conceived in terms of tradition which
affects them. Therefore, they interpret themselves in terms of the past.
Bernard Stiegler elaborates this point in Time and Technics wherein he argues
that the notion of historicality in Heidegger should be understood in terms of
the non-lived past of the ancestors which ‘affects’ individuals.
Dasein is temporal: it has a past on the basis of which it

can anticipate and thereby be. Inherited, this past is
“historical”: my past is not my past; it is first that of my
ancestors, although it is in essential relation with the
heritage of a past already there before me that my own
past is established. This historical, non-lived past can be
inherited inauthentically: historicality is also a facticity.
The past harbors possibilities that Dasein may not
inherit as possibilities. The facticity implied by heritage
opens up a twofold possibility for self-understanding.
On the one hand, Dasein can comprehend itself on the
basis of an understanding of existence which is banal
and “opining” (subject to everyday opinion). On the
other hand, Dasein can “possibilize” this past, in that it
is not its own, insofar it has inherited it: it is then on the
basis of its possibility—such that its past is constituted
therein—that it inherits possibilities of “its” factical past.
Dasein is in the mode of “having-to-be” because it never
yet totally is; inasmuch as it exists, it is never finished, it
always already anticipates itself in the mode of “not
yet.” Between birth and death, existence is what extends
itself [Er-streckung] between “already” and “not yet.”16
Heidegger calls the understanding of past in terms of bygone or no

longer as inauthentic historicality. It understands past as the modification of
15Ibid., 430.
16 Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, vol. 1, trans. by Richard Beardsworth and
George Collins (Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1998),5.

ISSN 1908-7330
present. Historians study past in this way when they study fossils, artifacts,
or antique objects. These objects used to be the part of some civilization but
now they are no longer part of the present. Hence, they are called past or
antique objects. According to Heidegger, such an understanding of past does
not deal with the fundamental question of why history is important for
humans. History cannot be reduced to a discipline in which we study the
past. Rather, we need to analyze the question of what history has got to do
with the human existence. The objects do not become historical only because
they are old and outdated; rather, they become historical because through
them, the life-world of the earlier generation shows itself. Hence, the past can
be properly grasped through understanding its relationship with human
existence. Heidegger argues that we can understand history in an authentic
manner by relating it with the care structure of Dasein, which shows the
relationship between history and temporality. Heidegger calls this basic
relation between history and temporality ‘Historicality.’
Disclosing and interpreting belong essentially to

Dasein’s historizing. Out of this kind of Being of the
entity which exists historically, there arises the
existentiell possibility of disclosing history explicitly and
getting it in our grasp. The fact that we can make history
our theme—that is to say, disclose it historiologically—
isthe presupposition for the possibility of the way one
builds up the historical world in the human sciences.17
According to Heidegger, historicality belongs to the fundamental

nature of Dasein. It is because of the historicality of Dasein that history, as
such, has become the issue for it. We do not relate to past as simply gone and
lost in the time. Rather, past is interpreted as ‘having been.’ According to Paul
Ricouer, Heidegger differentiates between two kinds of pasts. One past is that
with which historiographer deals with; another past is what Heidegger calls
as ‘having-been’ and belongs to our existence as ‘care.’18 This ‘having been’ of
the past is possible because of the care structure of Dasein, which involves the
primacy of the future. Only because Dasein is futural in its constitution can it
have the past.
The past is not a present time that has passed by; rather,
the past’s being is set free only through its state of having
been. The past reveals itself as that definitive state of
17Heidegger, Being and Time, 428.

18Paul Ricouer, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David
Pellauer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 351.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 243
one’s having been that is characteristic of futuralness, a

futuralness which one resolves to embrace through
grappling with the past. Authentic historicity is not a
matter of presencing something, but that state of being
futural in which one readies oneself to receive the right
impetus from the past in order to open it up. In such
futuralness histriological investigation enters the
present; it becomes the critique of the present.19
Heidegger, therefore, is not interested in history as a discipline;

rather, his problem is why history does matter to humans and how they relate
to it. According to him, only when Dasein tries to live authentically does the
past become the storehouse of possibilities. Hence, the past becomes a living
past only with reference to the question of authenticity.
According to Heidegger, the authentic historicality for a Dasein can
only be possible when it finds out its authentic existence by pulling itself out
of Dasman, they. “They” or Dasman is the term Heidegger uses for the
‘average, public understanding.’20 ‘They’ provides average possibilities for a
Dasein to behave and think according to the prevalent social norms. Dasein’s
average behavior remains dominated by Dasman. It is the general
understanding or the intersubjectivity, which guides and controls the
individual values and choices. According to Heidegger, although such an
understanding is our ontological characteristic, it also makes us forget the
most important ontological question— “What does it mean to be?” Only
when the average everyday world of absorption in activities gets suspended
in the rare mood of ‘anxiety’ can we ask this question.21
The task of fundamental ontology in Being and Time, therefore, is
twofold; first, to analyze the humans in their average, public mode; second,
to explore the true meaning of existence other than the public mode of
existence. In the second division of Being and Time, the question of death,
authenticity, resoluteness, and historicality is discussed with regard to the
meaning of existence. The second division takes up the question of
authenticity in the face of Death.
However, we need to understand that for Heidegger, death does not
mean the physical death but the awareness of one’s own finitude. The
analysis of death shows that Dasein becomes aware of its facticity. Dasein
realizes its ‘mineness’ only when it is delivered to its finitude in the face of its
19Heidegger, Being and Time, 80.

20Ibid.,164.
21 Heidegger defines anxiety as a specific type of disclosure as it individuates Dasein
and makes manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of its Being. See

ISSN 1908-7330
inescapable mortality. Dasein either lulls itself again into the average public
life, being unable to face its individuation, or it may gather itself and become
resolute. This resoluteness, however, should not be confused as the ‘resolve’
to do something. It is not some practical action; rather, this is the ontological
mode in which Dasein becomes ready to own up oneself, which is the actual
meaning of being authentic, Eigentlichkleit.
While Heidegger defines resoluteness mostly in abstract terms, in the
sections on historicality, he explains the resoluteness as Repetition.22 Resolute
Dasein does not become a transcendental entity but realizes the truth of its
existence in terms of its falleness. It cannot dispense with its facticity, its
historicity. The being of Dasein is inextricably woven with the historicity to
which it belongs. When it becomes resolute, it chooses the past possibilities
which have not been realized. In this way, he ‘repeats’ the possibilities latent
in the tradition by not simply reproducing them but repeating them with the
futural projection. This is what Heidegger means by ‘authentic historicality.’
Only by relating with history in an authentic manner does Dasein become
authentic.
Heidegger, therefore, introduces the notion of “Repetition” in the
context of the authentic Historicality. The notion of Repetition becomes
crucial as it links Dasein’s resoluteness to the historical possibilities.
According to Heidegger, Repeating is going back into the possibilities of the
Dasein that has-been-there. Repetition, accordingly, is not a matter of making
actual again what has been previously actualized. Therefore, it is not
reduplication of a previous act. In Heidegger’s words, Repetition is not
‘bringing back again’ what is the old.
But when one has, by Repetition, handed down to

oneself a possibility that has been there, the Dasein that
has-been-there is not disclosed in order to be actualized
over again. The repeating of that which is possible does
not bring back again something that is ‘past,’ nor does it
bind the ‘present’ back to that which has already been
outstripped. Arising, as it does, from a resolute
projection of oneself, Repetition does not let itself be
persuaded of something by what is “past,” just in order
that it, as something which was formerly actual, may
recur.23
22Heidegger says, “the resoluteness which comes back to itself and hands itself down,
then becomes the Repetition of a possibility of existence that has come down to us.” See
23 Ibid., 437-38.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 245
Since the being of Dasein has been defined as possibility, Repetition

is always focused on the possible. Dasein is authentically itself inasmuch as
it projectively anticipates the possible. The simple reduplication which
reproduces something already actualized is precisely a movement away from
the origin, precisely the de-generation which is the source of the inauthentic,
the second-hand, the fallen. Repetition is always an originary operation by
means of which Dasein opens up possibilities latent in the tradition, bringing
forth something new.24 In Repetition, Dasein is productive of what it repeats;
it does not simply go over old ground. The self produces itself by Repetition.
In Repetition, Dasein discloses its own being and that of the historical
situation in which it belongs. Repetition is a first, a breakthrough, a retrieval
which pushes forward, which opens what was previously closed and held in
check. Repetition is a new beginning, which aims at the possible.25
Heidegger and Politics
The notion of authentic historicality is intimately connected with the

issue of Resoluteness in Being and Time. Resoluteness results from the
readiness of Dasein to face anxiety, which is its fundamental attunement.
Only in the readiness to face anxiety does Dasein become resolute. Resolution
should not be understood as the psychological capacity. As Heidegger
defines resoluteness as the ‘readiness to become anxious’, we need to see the
connection between resoluteness and anxiety.
According to Heidegger, in the mood of anxiety, what is
environmentally ready-to-hand sinks away and entities in the world lose
their significance. The ‘world’ could offer nothing more in the form of
‘present-to-hand’ and ‘ready-at-hand’ and nor can the Dasein-with of Others.
Anxiety, thus, takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself
in terms of the ‘world’ and the way things have been publicly interpreted.
24 In Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction can be seen the extension of Heidegger’s
Repetition. John Caputo makes the interesting comparison between Derrida’s deconstruction
and Heidegger’s Repetition. See John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and
the Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
25 John Caputo defines Repetition in the sense of Deconstruction which dismantles the
past. “Repetition ‘answers’ what is calling to it in what has been, ‘responds’ to what is possible,
makes a ‘rejoinder’ which consists in bringing forth something for which Dasein has up to now
only obscurely groped. The rejoinder (Erwiderung) is a rebuff (Widerruf) of the inertial weight of
the past. It is a living response which speaks against, protests, disavows the weight of a tradition
which has become leaden and lifeless; effecting the possible is ‘revolutionary,’ while clinging to
the past is conservative. There is thus a deconstructive moment in Repetition, a moment of
counter-movement, of rebuttal … Repetition aims at not the actual but the possible.” Caputo,
Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutics, 91.

ISSN 1908-7330
Anxiety, hence, makes impossible any comportment towards the world either
as present-to-hand or ready-to-hand.26
Heidegger links the concept of ‘Nothing’ with anxiety in order to
show the groundlessness of the human existence. In anxiety, Dasein faces the
Nothing. Nothing is encountered as its own finitude. It realizes that ‘nothing,’
which is available in the everyday world of Dasman, can ground its existence.
Dasein realizes that nothing but only it grounds its own existence. It gives
meaning to life and there is no meaning independent of its existence. This
makes Dasein resolute, and it ‘owns up’ its existence, which is called ‘being
authentic’ by Heidegger. That is why Heidegger says that in anxiety, Dasein
realizes that ‘it is the null basis of its nullity.’27
The issue of Repetition is intimately linked with the question of
authenticity. Only an authentic Dasein can repeat. For an inauthentic Dasein,
there would be no anxiety or resoluteness; hence, it cannot repeat.
Heidegger’s account of Repetition therefore calls for the productive
relationship with the past in which one dismantles the past in order to show
up the possibilities inherent in it.28 The hermeneutic engagement with the
past enables one to dismantle the fossilized structures and contexts of the past
and to see the past in terms of possibility. The source of this productive
relationship with the past has to be located in the ontological structure of
Dasein who relates with the past with reference to its existence.
However, what problematizes or at least questions the
‘deconstructive Heidegger’29 are the notion of ‘destiny,’ ‘people,’ and ‘co-
historizing’ in his account of authentic historicality. These notions show us
the conservative aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy and force us to see the
relationship with Heidegger’s philosophical ideas and his sympathy for
National Socialism. I will therefore try to show that the ‘Authentic
historicality’ does involve Heidegger’s passion for the German fatherland
and National Socialism.
26 However, the absence of comportment does not point towards solipsism; on the
contrary, in anxiety Dasein realizes its fundamental situation of ‘being there.’ Heidegger makes
it clear, “The utter insignificance which makes itself known in the “nothing and nowhere,” does
not signify that the world is absent, but tells us that the entities within-the-world are of so little
importance in themselves that on the basis of this insignificance of what is within-the-world, the
world in its world-hood is all that still obtrudes itself.” See Heidegger, Being and Time, 231.
27 Ibid., 330-31.
28 Dana Villa compares the notion of Repetition in Heidegger and Walter Benjamin by
analyzing it in relationship with the past. See Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the
Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
29The deconstructive or radical nature of Heidegger’s thinking is argued by Caputo.
Caputo argues that Heidegger’s notion of destruction dismantles the fossilized and rigid
structures of tradition. See Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the
Hermeneutics.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 247
What distinguishes Heidegger’s analysis of resoluteness from other

existentialist thinkers is the concept of fate, which he makes an essential ally
of resolution.30 Unlike Sartre and other existentialist thinkers who make
‘choice’ essential for the authentic existence, Heidegger defines resoluteness
as ‘giving up’ some definite resolution in accordance with the demands of
Situation.31
Resoluteness cannot be interpreted as autonomy. Heidegger’s
account of resoluteness should not be mistaken as being resolute to start a
new course of action, which is not available in the everyday world of Dasman.
For an authentic Dasein, the past is replete with the possibilities. However, it
does not mean that Dasein can make a random choice out of sheer caprice;
rather, in authenticity, Dasein comes to face its ‘there’; it realizes that it has
been thrown into the facticity or the historical situation which it cannot avoid.
This is what Heidegger means by ‘fate.’ Hence, being resolute, Dasein gives
itself up to fate. Hence, it discovers not some abstract freedom but a kind of
situated freedom in the specific historical context.32
Authentic Dasein sees the past as heritage; it does not forget the past
in the chattering of They. It realizes itself as a part of the community. Its fate
is inextricably interwoven with the fate of the community. Paul Ricouer
defines the notion of Repetition as the link between the individual and the
collective history. According to Ricouer, there is aporia in phenomenology
between the lived time of an individual and the historical time of the
ancestors. Only through the ‘narrativity’ in the form of stories or myths is the
individual able to own up the past of ancestors.33 Through the various
narrations in the form of myths and traditions, the lived time of the ancestors
becomes a part of the historicity of Dasein. Hence, we can argue that through
the concept of Repetition, fundamental ontology makes transition to
historicity. In inauthentic mode, Dasein is a part of They. He acts and behaves
as the everyday structure of Dasman requires of him. Only when he
individualizes himself in the face of death does he discover the truth about
its existence. As he says, in anxiety Dasein discovers its ‘thereness.’ The truth
30 Heidegger defines fate in terms of the ‘finitude of one’s existence.’ See Heidegger,
Being and Time, 435.

31 Heidegger defines Situation as ‘something which cannot be calculated in advance.’
See Heidegger, Being and Time, 355.

32 Throughout the explanation of Care in Being and Time, Heidegger interprets Freedom
as a kind of making choice in a specific situation. He defines Care structure as ‘being-ahead-of-

itself-being-in-the-world’. See Heidegger, Being and Time, 236.
33 Paul Ricouer tries to establish the relationship between the individual past and the
ancestral past through the concept of narrativity. He writes, “In this way, a bridge is constructed
between the historical past and memory by the ancestral narrative that serves as a relay station
for memory directed to the historical past, conceived of as the time of people now dead and the
time before my death.” See Ricouer, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 114.

ISSN 1908-7330
about his existence is his throwness and facticity. He becomes truly historical
when he realizes that the past is an inalienable part of his existence. However,
this past not only belongs to him and his lived experiences but also includes
the past of the ancestors, which is the past of the community. Hence, fate and
destiny are interlinked with each other. That is why, for an authentic Dasein,
the question of existence involves a historical choice where he has to choose
not only for himself but also for his community.
Therefore, the analysis of ontology in Being and Time ultimately boils
down to the question of making a historical choice for one’s community. This
makes the analysis of fundamental ontology inherently political. Hence, the
concept of Repetition is basically political in nature. Dasein stands in history
where it sees itself involved in the historical current, which is its fate, and it
responds authentically to its facticity by repeating the possibilities from the
collective past by which its community can realize its true essence.
The relationship between Heidegger’s thoughts and National
Socialism can therefore be analyzed through the notion of Historicality,
which shows the deep connections between his political views and
philosophical ideas. Heidegger invokes the community in his political
speeches. One of the most controversial of Heidegger’s acts is his taking up
the Rector’s position in Freiburg University in 1933. In his notorious Rectoral
Speech, “The Self Assertion of the German University,” he almost speaks up
like a Nazi ideologue who is urging his countrymen to work for the Fuhrer.34
What is more striking is that the various terminologies used by Heidegger in
his Rectoral address have been already deployed in Being and Time. Terms
like ‘Volk,’ ‘Destiny,’ ‘History,’ ‘Spirit,’ ‘Resoluteness,’ and ‘Strife’ were freely
used in connection with the spiritual mission of the German nation. The
interesting aspect is that Heidegger urges the students to fulfill the historical
mission, which is reserved for the German nation as only it only has the
spiritual strength to guide the world. He says, “But it is our will that our Volk
fulfills its historical mission.”35
In this regard, it is important to take up the issue of Black Notebooks
which again fueled up the Heidegger controversy. Black Notebooks reveals the
deep connection between Heidegger’s philosophy and his anti-Semitism. It is
not the case that the controversy regarding Black Notebooks conclusively
proves Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism, but it highlights
the fact that Heidegger cannot be read independently of his political views.
In Black Notebooks, Heidegger associates the spirit of calculation of modern
age with the Jewish worldview. The growing rootlessness of the modern age
can only be countered through the conception of the ‘homeland’ rooted in
34 Martin Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” trans. by William
S. Lewis, in The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, 29-39.

35 Ibid., 38.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 249
German tradition and language. Heidegger hoped to overcome the

rootlessness of the modern age or the inauthenticity of Dasman through
invoking the community, which would ground itself in the historicity.36
The usage of these terms suggests that the resoluteness of Dasein in
Being and Time is not merely a formal category but has to be understood in
the context of National Socialism. The kind of meaning Heidegger gives to
these terms while supporting National Socialism clearly shows the political
implications of these terms, which Heidegger may have had in his mind while
writing Being and Time. It can be argued that in Being and Time, Heidegger
must be looking up to National Socialism as a kind of a historical possibility
by which Germany could realize its historical mission. That is why the
question of Repetition holds so much importance for a resolute Dasein in
Being and Time. Heidegger defines Repetition as the historical possibilities,
which have been there but were not actualized. In the light of the Rectoral
address, we can say that Heidegger must have seen in the National Socialist
movement the possibility of Repetition of the historical destiny of the German
nation. It is true that Heidegger soon got disenchanted with the National
Socialism and its policy of racism, and he resigned from the rectorship after
one year. Yet his sympathy for the National Socialism remained unabated as
it is evident from his lectures Introduction to Metaphysics. In these lectures,
Heidegger while discussing the question of Being, makes reference to the
‘inner greatness’ of the National Socialism. He analyzes the condition of
Germany with reference to the ideologies prevalent at that time. According
to him, on the one hand, there is USSR and its communism. On the other,
there is USA and its consumerism. Heidegger was contemptuous of both of
these alternatives and made the case for a third alternative, which is only
possible by understanding the great cultural and spiritual wealth of
Germany.
Our people, as standing in the center, suffer the most

intense pressure—our people, the people richest in
neighbors and hence the most endangered people, and
for all that, the metaphysical people. We are sure of this
vocation; but this people will gain a fate from its
vocation only when it creates in itself a resonance, a
possibility of resonance for this vocation, and grasps its
tradition creatively. All this implies that this people, as a
historical people, must transpose itself—and with it the
36 For the discussion on Black Notebooks and Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, see Jesús
Adrián Escudero, “Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Question of Anti-Semitism,” in
Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 5 (2015), 21–49.

ISSN 1908-7330
history of the west—from the center of their future

happening into the originary realm of the powers of
Being.37
In various reflections on Black Notebooks, the issue of Germany

remains a central question where Heidegger repeatedly asks the question
“who are we?” Heidegger time and again gets back to the question of
historicity and culture which defines the essence of Dasein. In Black Notebooks,
Heidegger differentiates between Germans and Jews on the basis of their
homeland and groundlessness. Germans are rooted in their homeland
(Heimatland) and their native soil (Vaterland), while Jews are characterized by
diaspora, migration, and exodus, which Heidegger calls as groundlessness
(Bodenlosigkeit). The urban and ungrounded way of Jewish life represents a
danger for the people’s community. The homeland can only be secured by re-
connecting with the German culture and tradition and Heidegger saw this
possibility in National Socialism.38
The question of Being in Heidegger, therefore, seems to point
towards the historical struggle with which Dasein or more aptly German Dasein
is engaged. Heidegger’s notion of historicity suggests that the true essence of
Germany can only be realized through this struggle. In this struggle, the idea
of Repetition connects the individual fate with the destiny of the community
and he is able to relate with the historicality in an authentic manner.
Dasein and Violence
Heidegger defines struggle or violence as an essential feature of

Dasein through the analysis of the Greek Tragedy Antigone. Heidegger argues
that human beings are uncanny in nature and they are capable of doing
utmost violence and, thereby, capable of changing the established courses
and only in this strife the ‘political’ is born. Because of being uncanny,
humans run against the limits imposed on them. According to Heidegger, the
notion of political could be understood only with reference to this struggle.
Hence, the fundamental essence of humans is to be apolis, that is, to run
against the limits imposed by the State. Heidegger shows it through the
character of Antigone. Antigone defies the order of the King who decrees that
her brother should not be given burial as he waged the war against the State.
According to Heidegger, the defiant act of Antigone shows the true nature of
37 Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Gregory Fried and Richard
Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 41.

38Escudero analyzes Black Notebook’s anti-semitism and the idea of Historicity in Being
and Time by taking into account the notion of Destiny in Heidegger. See Escudero, “Heidegger’s
Black Notebooks and the Question of Anti-Semitism.”

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 251
humans as deinon, which is basically going against the limits imposed on it by

using violence. This violence is not physical violence but the violation of the
limits imposed by the polis.
Every violent taming of the violent is either victory or

defeat. Both throw one out of the homely, each in a
different way, and they first unfold, each in a different
way, the dangerousness of the Being that has been won
or lost … The one who is violence-doing, the creative
one, who sets out into the un-said, who breaks into the
un-thought, who compels what has never happened and
makes appear what is unseen, this violence-doing one
stands at all times in daring.39
The ‘violence’ inherent in Dasein struggles with the established

political course and makes it uncanny or uncomfortable with the established
political ethos. We can connect it with the notion of authenticity developed
by Heidegger in Being and Time. Authenticity also involves a kind of struggle
with the established norms of Dasman. This is evident when we analyze the
authenticity of Dasein with respect to the community. Authenticity requires
that one should be resolute to decide for oneself, not as one feels or desires
but with respect to the historical possibilities one has inherited. Only by
‘repeating’ the past can one own up the history in an authentic manner.
Hence, the authenticity of the existence demands that Dasein has to take into
account the historicity in which it is fallen and has to rescue itself from being
leveled down by the inauthentic life of Dasman. Heidegger saw the possibility
of authenticity in National Socialism and felt that it would let the true essence
of the people emerge. Dasein has to become resolute in order to actualize this
historical possibility.40
Dasein can either slip back into Dasman or become resolute.
However, as we have discussed earlier, this resoluteness does not make
Dasein solipsistic but rather makes him realize that its individual fate is
inextricably linked with the destiny of its community. Dasein, therefore,
becomes resolute by relating to the existence in an authentic manner.
Although Heidegger differentiates between existential and existentiell
aspects, he does not reduce resoluteness into some definite resolve. Therefore,
39Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 172.

40Ricahrd Wolin argues that the idea of authenticity in Being and Time totally dispenses
with the richness of everyday life. The usage of ‘call of conscience’, ‘reticence’ makes the
authenticity so mysterious that it could not be translated into the everyday, ontic life. See Richard
Wolin, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia

ISSN 1908-7330
resoluteness remains like an empty rule, devoid of content. Heidegger does

not prescribe what kinds of actions are resolute or irresolute. Hence,
resoluteness remains at the formal level. In order to give existentiell form to
this existential category, Dasein has to decide on the singularity of its
historical situation.
This authentic Dasein can only relate to the community in an
authentic way. However, Heidegger gives this existential interpretation a
somewhat existentiell dimension by introducing the notion of Repetition.
Repetition gives a particular direction to the resoluteness that it has to realize
the possibilities, which have been there in the past. Although open to ethical
interpretation, the notion of Repetition runs into trouble when we analyze it
in the light of Heidegger’s sympathy for National Socialism. Heidegger, in
many of his writings, has remained obsessed with German culture and hoped
for the realization of the German essence. In his Rectoral Speech, he calls
Nietzsche and not Edmund Husserl as the last German philosopher, which
shows his narrow notion of Germany.41 Hence, it is difficult to assume that
the notion of Repetition or destruction of tradition in Heidegger’s scheme
would result in a more comprehensive approach. Heidegger’s ontology
sought to find out the essence of man and culminates in the German man. It
does not mean that Heidegger’s thoughts can be reduced to Nazi ideology
and that he should be treated as a Nazi ideologue. Heidegger, in his thoughts
and actions, remained distant from the crude Nazi ideology and its official
biologism. However, his temptation to National Socialism is the failure of
understanding it as the historical possibility which can fulfill the ‘spiritual
mission’ of the Nation. Even after the debacle of Germany in Second World
War, Heidegger retained his fondness for German poets and the exclusive
greatness of German language. It seems that ‘thinking’ can take place only in
the German or Greek language42 and via the German poets or Greek
thinkers.43
41 Martin Heidegger, “The Self- Assertion of the German University,” 33.

42In response to the question of whether he believes that Germans have a special task,
he responds—“I am thinking of the special inner kinship between the German language and the
language of the Greeks and their thought. This is something that the French confirm for me again
and again today. When they begin to think, they speak German. They assure [me] that they do
not succeed with their own language.” Martin Heidegger, “Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel’s
Interview with Martin Heidegger (1966),” trans. by Maria D. Alter and John Caputo, in The
Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, 91-116.
43 Alain Badiou criticizes Heidegger’s constant reference to the German poets like
Trakl and Holderlin by calling it as poetic ontology, haunted by the loss of origin. See Alain
Badiou, Being and Event, trans. by Oliver Feltham (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 10.

ISSN 1908-7330
S. TODARIYA 253
Concluding Remarks
To conclude the paper, we can say that the notion of Geschistlichkeit

in Being and Time should be understood from the perspective of authenticity.
Heidegger’s emphasis on authentic existence is basically the attempt to find
the meaning of existence which remains forgotten in the everyday inauthentic
life. Heidegger’s differentiation between the authentic and inauthentic level
of existence is based on Dasein’s capacity to individuate itself from the
everyday world of Dasman. According to Heidegger, the everyday world of
Dasman reduces Dasein into the ‘nameless and faceless’ entity where
everyone can replace anyone. However, this tranquil world of Dasman is
broken by anxiety which individuates Dasein by jamming the comportment
towards the entities. Only a ‘resolute’ Dasein, who is ready to face anxiety,
can connect itself with the idea of ‘authentic historicality.’ The notion of
‘authentic historicality’ in Heidegger highlights the importance of the past in
terms of living tradition, which affects humans. However, the idea of
authentic historicality in Being and Time also shows that Heidegger’s thinking,
despite its radical nature, remains captive to the nostalgia for the German
nation and culture. Heidegger’s thoughts, while claiming to be formal, in
some way or another still responds to the situation of Germany of that time.
Heidegger’s notion of authentic historicality, therefore, could not be studied
independently of its political implications, which are evident from the
analysis of the concept of Repetition and Destiny in Being and Time.
Heidegger’s analysis of ‘authentic historicality,’ therefore, presents before us
a curious mixture of fundamental ontology and conservative politics.
Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
References
Adorno, Theodor, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. by Knut Tarnowski and

Frederic Will (Evanston: NorthWestern University Press, 1973).
Arendt, Hannah. Responsibility and Judgment (New York: Schocken Books,
2003).
Badiou, Alain, Being and Event trans. by Oliver Feltham (London:
Bloomsbury, 2013).
Caputo, John, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the
Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
Derrida, Jacques, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. by Geoffrey
Benington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1989).

ISSN 1908-7330
Escudero, Jesús Adrián, “Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and the Question of

Anti-Semitism,” in Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual, 5 (2015).
Habermas, Jurgen, “Martin Heidegger: On the Publication of the Lectures of
1935,” trans. by William S. Lewis, in The Heidegger Controversy: A
Critical Reader (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993).
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
___________, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by Gregory Fried and Richard
Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
___________, “Only a God Can Save Us: Der Spiegel’s Interview with Martin
Heidegger (1966),” trans. by Maria D. Alter and John Caputo, in The
Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge: The MIT Press,
1993).
___________, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” trans. by
William S. Lewis, in The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed.
by Richard Wolin (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1993).
___________, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York:
HarperCollins, 1982).
Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity, trans. by Alpohnso Lingis (Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1969).
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, Heidegger and “the jews”, trans. by Andreas Michel and
Mark S. Roberts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).
Ricouer, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. by Kathleen Blamey and David
Pellauer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Steigler, Bernard, Technics and Time, vol. 1, trans. by Richard Beardsworth and
George Collins (Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Villa, Dana, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton: Princeton
Wolin, Richard, ed. The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1993).
Wolin, Richard, The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
A Need for New Algebraic System of

Logic Based on Al-Ghazali’s Reasoning
Shaharir bin Mohamad Zain
Abstract: A qualitative nature of logic based on al-Ghazali’s teaching

is reviewed. It is shown that its structure is not the same as the well-
known two-valued logic which satisfies the well-known Boolean
algebra. Unfortunately, it is this classical logic that has been adopted
by those who discuss or use the nature of the al-Ghazali’s logic or
reasoning ever since. The more appropriate logic for the al-Ghazali’s
logic is the modal logic and hence the algebraic structure of this logic
is reviewed. However, it is shown that even this logic, which was
originally contributed substantially by Islamic scholars, in particular
Ibn Sinna, and further improved by twentieth century Western
scholars, is not yet fully suitable for the al-Ghazali’s logic. A new
algebraic system of logic is still very much needed for characterizing
the al-Ghazali’s reasoning.
Keywords: Al-Ghazali’s logical system, Islamic logic, algebra of logic,

modal logic
Introduction
I
t is well known that al-Ghazali (who lived in the year 450 H-505 H/1057
AD-1111 AD), known in Latin as Algazel/Algazelis, provides a new
system of reasoning, which requires a Muslim not to uphold determinism
in an absolute sense as such that the principle of natural causality (al-sabab al-
tabi‘iaht) is no longer governed by certainty (due to a situation whereby, using
al-Ghazali terminologies, the sunnaht or ‘aadaht is subjected to taqdyr or
dharuraht). This has been discussed by many especially after his well-known
Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) and Tahafut al-
Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) by his intellectual nemesis, Ibn
Rusyd (Averroes), and still attracted many recent scholars.1 There are more
1 See the following: B. Abrahamov, “Al-Ghazālī's Theory of Causality,” in Studia
Islamica, 67 (1969), 75-98; J. al-Haqq, “Al-Ghazālī on Causality, Induction, and Miracles,” in Al-
© 2016 Shaharir bin Mohamad Zain

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/shaharir_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
256 AL-GHAZALI AND A NEW ALGEBRAIC SYSTEM
than 60 PhD theses (in English) on various aspects of al-Ghazali’s scholarship

and at least six of them are directly on the al-Ghazali’s causality principle.2
The earliest is perhaps by Majid Fakhry in his 1949 PhD thesis (published in
1958). Al-Ghazali’s causality principle has also extended its application to the
quantum domain as several scholars have argued strongly for the
compatibility of the al-Ghazali’s causality principle with the indeterminism
and uncertainty in quantum theory. 3 In this paper, we show that this
extension is untenable. However, the gist of al-Ghazali’s reasoning has
already been accepted and practiced by most Muslims throughout the world
by adopting the expression “insya Allah” (God willing) in every implicative
statement.
As far as the claim that al-Ghazali’s reasoning is a new system of logic
(formally different from the logic inherited from the Greek, the Aristotelian
logic), it can be traced back to Rescher4 (1964, 1967, 2007), and the recognition
of al-Ghazali’s sophisticated criticism on induction (qiyas and istiqra’) in a way
Tawḥĩd, 3 (1986), 55-62; I. Alon, “Al-Ghazālī on Causality,” in Journal of the American Oriental
Society, 100 (1980), 397-405; L.E. Goodman, “Did al-Ghazâlî Deny Causality?” in Studia Islamica,
47 (1978), 83-120; K. Gyekye, “Al-Ghazali on Causation,” in Second Order, 2 (1973), 31-39; Z.
Hamid, Al-Ghazali’s Concept of Causality (Ph.D. Dissertation, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:
International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization [ISTAC], International Islamic
University Malaysia [UIAM], 2006); M.E. Marmura, “Al-Ghazālī's Second Causal Theory in the
17th Discussion of His Tahāfut,” in Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. by P. Morewedge
(Delmar, New York: Caravan Books, 1981), 85-112; M.E. Marmura, “Al-Ghazali on Bodily
Resurrection and Causality in Tahafut and the Iqtisad,” in Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought, 2
(1989), 46-75; M.E. Marmura, “Ghazali and Ash’arism Revisted,” in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy,
12 (2002), 91-110; Y. Rahman, “Causality and Occasionalism: A Study of the Theories of the
Philosophers, al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd,” in Hamdard Islamicus, 21 (1998), 23-31; S. Rayan, “Al-
Ghazâlî's Use of the Terms Ḍarûrah and ‘Âdah in His Theory of Natural Causality,” in Islamic
Culture: An English Quarterly, 78:3 (2004), 77-98; S. Rayan, “Al-Ghazali’s Use of the Terms
‘Necessity’ and ‘Habit’ in His Theory of Natural Causality,” in Theology and Science, 2:2 (2004),
255-268; H.A. Wolfson, “Nicolaus of Autrecourt and Ghazālī's Argument Against Causality,” in
Speculum, 44 (1969), 234-238.
2 For a list of select list of publications on Al-Ghazali, see M. Hozien, “Article and
Publications on al-Ghazālī,” in Ghazali: A Virtual Online Library (2009),

<http://www.ghazali.org/site/biblio-iicus.htm>, 26 January 2016. See also: M. Hozien, “A Modest
List of Theses on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in Serendipitious Order,” in Ghazali: A Virtual Online
Library (2013), <http://www.ghazali.org/site/dissert.htm>, 26 January 2016.
3 See the following: M. Golshani, “causality in the Islamic Outlook and in Modern
Physics,” in Studies in Science and Theology, vol. 8, ed. by N.H. Gregersen (Denmark: University
of Aarhus, 2001-2002); K. Harding, “Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazālī and Quantum Theory,”
in American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 10:2 (1993), 165-177; Ümit Yoksuloglu Devji, Al-
Ghazālī and Quantum Physics: A Comparative Analysis of the Seventeenth Discussion of Tahāfut al-
Falāsifa and Quantum Theory (M.A. Thesis, Canada: Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University,
2003).
4 N. Rescher, The Development of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1964); N. Rescher, Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1967); N.
Rescher, Studies in the History of Logic, vol. 10 of Nicholas Rescher Collected Papers (Heusenstamm,
Germany: Ontos Verlag, 2006).

ISSN 1908-7330
SHAHARIR b. M. Z. 257
very much similar to Hume, one of the celebrated British philosophers in the
18th century, is probably first discussed by Islamic Council of Europe (1982).
However, many subsequent authors such as Spade and Hintikka,5
Nakamura,6 Fauzi,7 Mas,8 Black,9 Zaidi,10 al-Haqq,11 and many anonymous
and undated authors in the internet have taken it for granted. More
importantly, none of them provide an explicit algebra, which could be seen
as actually different from the Boolean algebra or isomorphically to the naïve
set algebra which represents the classical logic (Greek logic or the Aristotelian
logic) and the classical modern-scientific logic, or a non-Boolean algebra such
as the von Neumann algebra or its improvements (each of which represents
supposedly a quantum logic, a non-classical modern-scientific logic). It is
interesting to note that even al-Ghazali himself seems to be self-contradictory
when one considers his opinion on the nature and role of logic during his
time as already mentioned by Shaharir12 and detailed by Griffel,13 and El
Bouazzati,14 particularly in believing, as understood by these authors, the
neutrality and universality of the Greek logic. The nature of logic as
understood, elaborated, and thought to be modified or extended by al-
Ghazali and studied by those writers mentioned above has not been
rigorously examined based on the algebraic structure of a system of logic. In
this paper we show what aspects of the Boolean logic, the quantum logic and
other algebras of logic, which are still incompatible with the al-Ghazali’s
logic. Thus, it shows (more explicitly than previously shown by Shaharir 15)
5 See P.V. Spade and J.J. Hintikka, “History of Logic,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
(2014), <http://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-logic>, 26 January 2016.
6 See Kojiro Nakamura, “al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058-1111),” in Ghazali: A Virtual
Online Library (2008), <http://www.ghazali.org/articles/gz1.htm>, 26 January 2016.

7 See M. b. H. Fauzi, Ketokohan al-Ghazali dalam Bidang Logic (Kuala Lumpur: Universiti
Malaya Press, 2005).

8 See R. Mas, “Quiyas: A Study in Islamic Logic,” in Folia Orientalia, 34 (1998), 113-128.
9 See D.L. Black, “Logic in Islamic Philosophy,” in Islamic Philosophy Online (1998),
<http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H017>, January 2016.

10 See M. b. I. Zaidi, “Logic in al-Ghazālī's Theory of Certitude,” in Al-Shajarah, 1:1-2
(1996), 95-125.
11 See Al-Haqq, “Al-Ghazālī on Causality, Induction, and Miracles.”
12 See Shaharir bin Mohamad Zain, Simbiosis antara Sistem Nilai dengan Matematik
(Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1990).

13 See F. Griffel, “Taqlīd of the Philosophers: Al-Ghazālī's Initial Accusation in His
Tahāfut,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought, 2 (1989): 46-75. Cf. F. Griffel, “Taqlīd of the
Philosophers: Al-Ghazālī's Initial Accusation in His Tahāfut,” in Ideas, Images, and Methods of
Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. by S. Gunther (Leiden: Brill
Academic Publishers, 2005), 273-296.
14 See B. El Bouzzati, “Al-Ghazali’s Theory of Reasoning and Argumentation” (Paper
presented at the International Conference on Al-Ghazali’s Legacy: Its Contemporary Relevance, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia, 24-27 October 2001).
15 See Shaharir bin Mohamad Zain., “Keperluan teori kebarangkalian baru yang lebih
serasi dengan sistem nilai sendiri,” in Prosiding Seminar Kebangsaan Sains Matematik Ke-15 -

ISSN 1908-7330
the non-uniqueness and the non-neutrality of logic and, more importantly

here, al-Ghazali’s logic is indeed a new paradigm of logic and needs for a new
algebra.
The Incompatibility of the Classical Logic with al-Ghazali’s

Reasoning
Even though the subject matters, the events, or the statements in al-
Ghazali’s universal discourse of logic can be considered as well defined to a
certain extent, their occurrences are subjected to some form of uncertainty.
Therefore, the classical logic (the usual logic or the traditional Greek logic) is
obviously not suitable for the al-Ghazali’s logic since all the statements in the
former logic involve certainty. Typical statements (involving statements A, B,
and C), which are of interest in any mathematical formulation of an algebra
in a system of logic, are as follows:
1. A and B, symbolically A∩B or A Λ B; and a statement which involves a

countably infinite number of “and”, i.e., (A 1 and A2 and… and An…),


symbolically  Ai or Ai .
i 1 i 1
2. A or B, symbolically A Λ B; and a statement which involves a countably

infinite number of “or”, i.e., (A 1 or A2 or… or An…), symbolically  Ai
i 1

or VAi
i 1
3. not A, symbolically Ac, C(A), Com(A), , ⌐A, or ~ A

4. (A and B) or C, symbolically (A ∩ B)  C or (A Λ B)  C
5. (A or B) and C, symbolically (A  B)∩C or (A  B) Λ C
6. If A then B, or A implies B; symbolically A→B or A B
For the classical logic (normal logic, Greek logic or the Aristotelian
logic) whose algebra is known as the Boolean algebra (after the inventor of
the algebra, Boole in the 19th century), the statements using “and” and “or,”
1 and 2 above, are assumed to be commutative, namely:
PERSAMA-UiTM, 5-7 June 2007 (Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia: Pusat Penerbitan Universiti
[UPENA], UiTM, 2007), 413-424.

ISSN 1908-7330
1’. “A and B” is surely/certainly/ definitely/deterministically well-defined

and surely/certainly/definitely/ deterministically is equal to “B and A”,
2’. “A or B” is surely/certainly/definitely/ deterministically well-defined
and equal to “B or A”;
whereas statements using a combination of “and” and “or”, 4 and 5

above, are distributive, namely:
4’. “(A and B) or C” is surely/certainly/definitely/ deterministically equal

to “(A or C) and (A or C)”; and
5’. “(A or B) and C” is surely/ certainly/definitely/deterministically equal
to “(A and C) or (A and C).”
Perhaps more importantly, especially with reference to the al-

Ghazali’s logic, as far as the classical logic is concerned, the implicative
statement or causal statement, statement 6 above, is understood as a “strong
then,” or “strong implication” which means “surely/certainly/ definitely/
deterministically then or implies” which in turn means a strong consequence
or a strong cause-and-effect principle. In other words, statement 6 means:
6’. “B is surely/ certainly/ definitely/deterministically caused by A” or “B

is surely/ certainly/ definitely/ deterministically a consequence of A”, or
“A necessarily causes B”.
Lastly, implicit in the negative statement, negation of a statement,

namely statement 3 above, it is assumed that:
3’. A statement and its negation are mutually exclusive, i.e., there is a law
known as the law of excluded middle. In other words, a statement can
only either true or false and, thus, the relevant system of logic is also
known as the two-valued logic in order to differentiate from other n-
valued logic (n=3,4,…), which was first developed by Tarski in the 1930’s,
infinite-valued logic in probability theory (rigourouly established in the
1930’s), and the possibility theory (first formulated by Zadeh in the
1960’s).
Now, in al-Ghazali’s reasoning or argumentation such strong

commutative, distributive, and consequential (causative) laws are not
allowed. Thus, the classical logic and its algebra (the Boolean algebra) briefly
described above are inappropriate and not applicable to the al-Ghazali’s
logic. But it seems that al-Ghazali and especially his followers until today still

ISSN 1908-7330
accept the Aristotelian logic (and its algebra) without any sign of serious
reservation except perhaps with a slight modification to a statement involved
by adding the word “insya Allah” (God willing) instead of surely, certainly,
definitely, or deterministically. In fact, more than a century ago, Homes
already had an opinion that al-Ghazali himself had tried to reconcile his faith
in Islam with the classical (the Greek/Aristotelian logic) through his other
well-known writing, al-Kimya al-Sa‘adaht (The Alchemy of Happiness).16 How
proper is this attitude? Is it mathematically valid? The problem is of course
the modeling of “insya Allah.” For a start, one would incline to interpret “insya
Allah” as possible or probable (perhaps the most common translation to the
original al-Ghazali’s word, mumkin), which means presumably to include that
of “possible” in the possibility theory (based on the fuzzy statements by
Zadeh in the 1960’s) and that “probable” in the classical probability theory
(based on the Boolean algebra rigorously formulated by Kolmogorov in the
1930’s although the relevant probability concept was first introduced by
Galileo in the 17th century) and for some even naively to include that of
“probable” in the quantum probability (in atomic physics as formulated by
Schroedinger in the 1920’s). However, it is well known that (since the early
twentieth century) the Aristotelian logic is no longer valid the moment that
the word “possible” is brought into the realm of the Aristotelian logic. In fact,
there is a new logic known as the modal logic, which has been developed to
replace it. Still another model for “insya Allah” is perhaps the expression “not
necessary” because it is said that al-Ghazali rejects “the principle of necessary
causal connection” in the Aristotelian logic17 and that al-Ghazali also used the
terms dharuraht (improperly translated as ‘necessity’) and ‘aadaht (habit) in
describing his theory of natural causality,18 whereas others may prefer the
term “contingent” as a better translation for mumkin.19 As far as the
“probable” in the sense of a quantum mechanical statement is concerned, the
situation is even worse since it is also well known that some quantum
statements actually do not satisfy the Boolean algebra, in particular
statements involving “and” and “or”. Hence, statement 4 and 5 above, do not
satisfy the Boolean distributive laws (statement 4’ and 5’ above) at all. So for
the moment let us exclude the quantum mechanical statements.
16 See H.A. Homes, Introduction to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness,
trans. by H.A. Homes (New York: Munsell, 1873).

17 See Mas, “Quiyas: A Study in Islamic Logic.”
18 See Rayan, “Al-Ghazâlî's Use of the Terms Ḍarûrah and ‘Âdah in His Theory of
Natural Causality.”
19 See F. Griffel, “Al-Ghazali,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014),
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/>, 26 January 2016.

ISSN 1908-7330
Let us examine the gist of the modal logic20 in order to see its
inappropriateness to the algebraic structure of the al-Ghazali’s reasoning for
the classical statements (the non-quantal mechanical statements), which was
first developed axiomatically by Lewis in 1913 but only became an acceptable
system of logic in the 1940’s, especially after the work of Kripke.
The Incompatibility of the Modal Logic with al-Ghazali’s

Reasoning
Modal logic is the study of the deductive behavior of the expressions

‘it is necessary that’ and ‘it is possible that’ and ‘it is probable that.’ Aristotle
put some thought on the logical nature of these statements and came to the
conclusion that “possible is neither necessary nor impossible” and brought
into his syllogism (known as modal syllogism) with some light into it but
proved to be impractical even after Theophrastus (after Aristotle, i.e., the end
of the third century BC) changed the meaning of “probable” into simply “not
impossible” so that Aristotle’s modal syllogism becomes simpler. Muslim
scholars during the Islamic Civilization, especially Ibn Sina, have
substantially contributed to the improvement of the Aristotelian modal logic
as it can be seen in one of his monumental works, al-Isyarat wa al-Tanbihdaht,
which was translated by Inati.21 Obviously, the modal logic formulated by Ibn
Sina was not fully understood by others during or even long after his time,
partly due to its incompleteness and partly due to his contradictory
conviction in his own theory in relation to his belief on the certainty of the
laws of nature. It is not known when the first Western scholars (and who they
were) realized that the Greek modal syllogism is of no use, but since
Lukasiewicz (a logician, died in 1956), it has been a common knowledge that
Aristotle's modal syllogism is “incomprehensible due to its many faults and
inconsistencies, and that there is no hope of finding a single consistent formal
model for it.”22 Obviously, they do not know the work of Ibn Sina mentioned
above, or they simply unjustly ignored it. This is another matter, which we
do not intend to discuss here. Meanwhile, al-Ghazali must have had
20 See the following: P. Blackburn, M. de Rijke, and Y. Venema, Modal Logic, reprinted
with corrections (Cambridge University Press, 2004); J. Garson, “Modal Logic,” in Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014), <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/>, 26 January
2016; J. McCarthy, “Modal Logic,” in Stanford University - Engineering (1996), <http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69/node22.html>, 26 January 2016; E.N. Zalta, Basic Concepts in
Modal Logic, in The Metaphysics Research Lab: Center for the Study of Language and Information,
Stanford University (1995), <http://mally.stanford.edu/notes.pdf>, 10 September 2014.
21 See Ibn Sina, Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic, trans. by S.C. Inati
(Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984).

22 See M. Malink, “A Reconstruction of Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic,” in History and
Philosophy of Logic, 27:2 (2006), 95-141.

ISSN 1908-7330
rigorously challenged the Greek modal syllogism with his new theory of
natural causality mentioned above. But however intense the concern of
Muslim scholars were with regard to the modal statements, hence, Arabic
grammar and logic,23 it looks as though the Muslims scholars were somehow
just happy to use the Greek logic simply with some reservations. The world
had to wait until early twentieth century before new axiomatic modal logic
emerged from the Western logicians who were apparently not challenged by
the al-Ghazali’s logic at all but simply reacted towards the state of the
(Western) mathematical logic itself which has many unsolved paradoxes in
particular “the problem of false premises imply many correct implications.”
With the new modal logic, a partial solution to this problem has been
obtained. However, in the present modal logic, the possibility and probability
modalities are regarded as of the same status even though linguistically there
is a subtle difference between the two terms and indeed different
mathematical models have been established for them (“possibility” is for a
fuzzy statement which is not an element of a Boolean algebra, whereas
“probability” is for a crisp statement or classical/Aristotelian statement which
is an element of a Boolean algebra).
Normally in modal logic, only two operators are introduced:
⁪ for Necessarily and ◊ for Possibly.

Thus the expression “necessarily p” or “it is necessary p”
is denoted by a prefixed “box” (⁪p); whereas a prefixed
“diamond” (◊p) denotes "possibly p" or “it is possible p.”
Further, it is assumed that:
“necessarily” is the same as the expression “not possible

that not”
“possibly” is the same as the expression “not necessarily
not”; or symbolically
⁪p is equivalent to
◊p is equivalent to
This is known as the Axiom 0 in the modal logic. This is obtained

from presumably a logical conclusion such as “It is possible that it will be an
accident today if and only if it is not necessary that it will not be an accident
today”. This axiom is also often stated in the following ways:
necessary is equivalent to not possibly false; and
23 See Gyekye, “Al-Ghazali on Causation.”

ISSN 1908-7330
possible is equivalent to not necessarily false (regardless

of whether it is actually true or actually false);
or (reading the axiom from right to left and replacing
“not p” by X)
“It is not possible that X” is logically equivalent to “It is
necessary that not X”; and “It is not necessary that X” is
logically equivalent to “It is possible that not X.”
Then it is found that several other axioms are needed to obtain a

reasonably good system of modal logic, now known as the normal modal
logic, such that one can prove that “If a statement is necessary that the
statement is true”; “If a statement is necessary, then it is necessary that the
statement is necessary”; and “If a statement is possible, then it is necessary
that the statement is possible”. This modal logic gives the nature of
“possible”, “necessary”, and “contingent” as follows:
contingent is equivalent to not necessarily false and not

necessarily true (i.e., possible but not necessarily true).
The words “possible” and “contingent” are considered
as the two sorts of truth. The normal modal logic also
gives the following important theorems:
T1.1. The necessity of A and the necessity of B are

strongly equivalent to the necessity of A and B, or
symbolically
(⁪A)۸(⁪B)↔⁪(A۸B).
T1.2. The possibility of A or the possibility of B is
strongly equivalent to the possibility of A or B, or
symbolically
(◊A) ۷ (◊B) ↔ ◊(A ۷ B).
T2.1. If A strongly implies B, then the necessity of A
strongly implies the necessity of B and the possibility of
A strongly implies the possibility of B, or symbolically
(A→B) →(⁪A→⁪B) and (◊A→◊B).
T2.2. If the necessity of A strongly implies B, then the
possibility of A strongly implies the possibility of B, or
symbolically
⁪(A→B) → (◊A→◊B).
T2.3. If the possibility of A strongly implies B, then the
necessity of A strongly implies the necessity of B, or
symbolically
◊(A→B) → (⁪A→⁪B).

ISSN 1908-7330
T3. It is not true that the necessity of A or B strongly

implies the necessity of A or the necessity of B; and
the possibility of A and the possibility of B strongly
imply the possibility of A and B.
Symbolically, these statements are as follows:
T
⁪(A ۷ B)  (⁪A ۷ ⁪B), and
T T
(◊A ۸ ◊B)  ◊(A ۸ B), where  denotes “not
strongly-implies.”
Now, it is clear that, as far as the algebraic structure of a known

modal logic is concerned, it is NOT just a Boolean algebra augmented with
the “modal algebra” of the “box” and the “diamond.” For example, even
though necessary statements are commutative with respect to (w.r.t) “and”
(Theorem T1.1) but not w.r.t. “or” (Theorem T3); whereas possible statements
are commutative w.r.t “or” (theorem T1.2) but not w.r.t “and” (theorem T3).
Similarly, with the “not necessary statements,” they are only commutative
w.r.t. “and” (by T1.1 and T3). Of course, the distributive laws in modal logic
are invalid as well. Contingent statements are also noncommutative. The
modal logic is a 3-valued logic because there is another state, the “contingent
state,” other than possible and necessary.
The non-Boolean nature of the present modal logic is unsatisfactory
especially since it is inconceivable to have the following with regard to the
possible, not necessary, or contingent as a model of insya Allah:
(insya Allah A) and/or (insya Allah B) ≠ (insya Allah B)

and/or (insya Allah A)
Many algebraists are happy to define a modal algebra as a Boolean

algebra of ordinary naïve sets with an operator “necessary” which preserves
“and” or also Boolean w.r.t “and” for “set of necessary sets of statements.”
But it does not solve our problem of identifying a correct modal algebra for
al-Ghazali’s logic.
More importantly, of course, we would like to have the “strict
implication” or “strong implication” to be replaced by the “insya Allah
implication” which the author was hoping to model by “possible” or “not
necessary,” viz. “possible implication” or “not necessary implication.”
However, none such statement is found in the present modal logic. The
nearest statement in the modal logic in this regard is an implicative statement
of the form given by “a possible statement strictly implies another possible
statement” such as in the theorem T2 above. This is, of course, not sufficiently
satisfactory.

ISSN 1908-7330
Conclusion
Based on the discussion above, it is necessary to examine the exact

meaning of mumkin (the Islamic possibility), dharuraht (the Islamic necessity),
taqdyr (the Islamic fate), and insya Allah (the Islamic will of God) so that a new
axiomatic modal logic could be formulated to improve or even replace the
present algebraic structure which would be most suited for al-Ghazali’s logic.
With regard to mumkin, there is an interesting Malay manuscript MS1659
(according to the code of the manuscript by Malaysian National Library,
elaborated in the References under the subheading Manuscript) believed to
be written by a well-known Malayonesian scholar in the 17th century ‘Abd
al-Ra’uf Singkel, entitled Mutiara yang Putih (White Pearl), on page 137-146,
in which the four types of mumkins namely mumkin mawjud, mumkin wajidwu
anqadhy, mumkin sayyuwajid, and mumkin innahu lam yuwajid are introduced
and explained.24 This manuscript, among other means, is perhaps relevant for
obtaining some ideas towards solving this problem, namely, the problem of
modelling the logical structure of insya Allah using mumkin.
Centre for Civilisational Dialogue,

Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
References
Abrahamov, B., “Al-Ghazālī's Theory of Causality,” in Studia Islamica, 67

(1969).
al-Haqq, J., “Al-Ghazālī on Causality, Induction, and Miracles,” in Al-Tawḥĩd,
3 (1986).
Alon, I., “Al-Ghazālī on Causality,” in Journal of the American Oriental Society,
100 (1980).
Azzam, S., ed., Islam and Contemporary Society (United Kingdom: Longman
Group, 1982).
Black, D.L., “Logic in Islamic Philosophy,” in Islamic Philosophy Online (1998),
<http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H017>, January 2016.
Blackburn, P., M. de Rijke, and Y. Venema, Modal Logic, reprinted with
corrections (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
El Bouzzati, B., “Al-Ghazali’s Theory of Reasoning and Argumentation”
(Paper presented at the International Conference on Al-Ghazali’s Legacy:
24 Malay Manuscript MS1659 (Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia, 17th Century).

ISSN 1908-7330
Its Contemporary Relevance, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 24-27 October

2001).
Devji, Ümit Yoksuloglu, Al-Ghazālī and Quantum Physics: A Comparative
Analysis of the Seventeenth Discussion of Tahāfut al-Falāsifa and Quantum
Theory (M.A. Thesis, Canada: Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill
University, 2003).
Fauzi, M. b. H., Ketokohan al-Ghazali dalam Bidang Logic (Kuala Lumpur:
Universiti Malaya Press, 2005).
Fikhry, M., Islamic Occasionalism and Its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas
(London: Unwin Brothers Ltd., 1958).
Garson, J., “Modal Logic,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014),
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/>, 26 January 2016
Golshani, M. “causality in the Islamic Outlook and in Modern Physics,” in
Studies in Science and Theology, vol. 8, ed. by N.H. Gregersen
(Denmark: University of Aarhus, 2001-2002).
Goodman, L.E., “Did al-Ghazâlî Deny Causality?” in Studia Islamica, 47
(1978).
Griffel, F., “Al-Ghazali,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014),
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/>, 26 January 2016.
___________, “Taqlīd of the Philosophers: Al-Ghazālī's Initial Accusation in
His Tahāfut,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought, 2 (1989).
___________, “Taqlīd of the Philosophers: Al-Ghazālī's Initial Accusation in
His Tahāfut,” in Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into
Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. by S. Gunther (Leiden: Brill
Academic Publishers, 2005).
Gyekye, K., “Al-Ghazali on Causation,” in Second Order, 2 (1973).
Hamid, H., Al-Ghazali’s Concept of Causality (Ph.D. Dissertation, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia: International Institute of Islamic Thought and
Civilization [ISTAC], International Islamic University Malaysia
[UIAM], 2006).
Harding, K. “Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazālī and Quantum Theory,” in
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 10:2 (1993).
Homes, H.A., Introduction to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of
Happiness, trans. by H.A. Homes (New York: Munsell, 1873).
Hozien, M., “A Modest List of Theses on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in
Serendipitious Order,” in Ghazali: A Virtual Online Library (2013),
<http://www.ghazali.org/site/dissert.htm>, 26 January 2016.
___________, “Article and Publications on al-Ghazālī,” in Ghazali: A Virtual
Online Library (2009), <http://www.ghazali.org/site/biblio-iicus.htm>,
26 January 2016.
Ibn Sina, Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic, trans. by S.C. Inati
(Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984).

ISSN 1908-7330
Malay Manuscript MS1659 (Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia,

17th Century).
Malink, M., “A Reconstruction of Aristotle’s Modal Syllogistic,” in History and
Philosophy of Logic, 27:2 (2006).
McCarthy, J., “Modal Logic,” in Stanford University - Engineering (1996),
<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69/node22.html>, 26
January 2016
Marmura, M.E., “Al-Ghazali on Bodily Resurrection and Causality in Tahafut
and the Iqtisad,” in Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought, 2 (1989).
___________, “Al-Ghazālī's Second Causal Theory in the 17th Discussion of
His Tahāfut,” in Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. by P.
Morewedge (Delmar, New York: Caravan Books, 1981).
___________, “Ghazali and Ash’arism Revisted,” in Arabic Sciences and
Philosophy, 12 (2002).
Mas, R., “Quiyas: A Study in Islamic Logic,” in Folia Orientalia, 34 (1998).
Nakamura Kojiro, “al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid (1058-1111),” in Ghazali: A Virtual
Online Library (2008), <http://www.ghazali.org/articles/gz1.htm>, 26
January 2016.
Rahman, Y., “Causality and Occasionalism: A Study of the Theories of the
Philosophers, al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd,” in Hamdard Islamicus, 21
(1998).
Rayan, S., “Al-Ghazâlî's Use of the Terms Ḍarûrah and ‘Âdah in His Theory
of Natural Causality,” in Islamic Culture: An English Quarterly, 78:3
(2004).
___________, “Al-Ghazali’s Use of the Terms ‘Necessity’ and ‘Habit’ in His
Theory of Natural Causality,” in Theology and Science, 2:2 (2004).
Rescher, N., Studies in the History of Logic, vol. 10 of Nicholas Rescher Collected
Papers (Heusenstamm, Germany: Ontos Verlag, 2006).
___________, Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1967).
___________, The Development of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1964).
Shaharir bin Mohamad Zain, “Keperluan teori kebarangkalian baru yang
lebih serasi dengan sistem nilai sendiri,” in Prosiding Seminar
Kebangsaan Sains Matematik Ke-15 - PERSAMA-UiTM, 5-7 June 2007
(Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia: Pusat Penerbitan Universiti
[UPENA], UiTM, 2007), 413-424.
___________, Simbiosis antara Sistem Nilai dengan Matematik (Bangi: Penerbit
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1990).
Shahidan, R., “Al-Ghazali dan teori quantum,” in Siri Wacana Sejarah dan
Falsafah Sains Jil 7, ed. by Mohd Yusof, Hj. O., et al. (Kuala Lumpur:
DBP, 1999).

ISSN 1908-7330
Spade, P.V. and J.J. Hintikka, “History of Logic,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica

Online (2014), <http://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-logic>,
26 January 2016.
Wolfson, H.A., “Nicolaus of Autrecourt and Ghazālī's Argument Against
Causality,” in Speculum, 44 (1969).
Zaidi, M. b. I., “Logic in al-Ghazālī's Theory of Certitude,” in Al-Shajarah, 1:1-
2 (1996).
Zalta, E.N., Basic Concepts in Modal Logic, in The Metaphysics Research Lab:
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University
(1995), <http://mally.stanford.edu/notes.pdf>, 10 September 2014.

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
‘No theme requires more pure logic than

love”: On Badiou’s Amorous Axiomatics
Jeremy De Chavez
Abstract: In thinking the relation of love and affect, one experiences a

strong intuition that they are locked in a passionate mutual embrace,
and that they carry out their clandestine coupling in the dark alleys of
the ineffable. The work of Alain Badiou, however, challenges such an
“anti-philosophical” position, and posits that the truly philosophical
way to approach love is through logic. In this essay I offer a timely
explication of Badiou's thoughts on love, which is occasioned by the
recent challenge posed by critical discourse to rethink love and is
animated by the conviction that such a rethinking entails locating love
in the domain of thought rather than in a domain beyond cognition
and representation. At a time when love is threatened by accusations
of being nothing more than a "cruel optimism," Badiou's thought is a
philosophical defense of love by underscoring its kinship to thought
and to truth.
Keywords: Badiou, love, affect, event
The Effect of that woman on me was as unpleasant as a

displaced irrational number that has accidentally crept into an equation.
—Yevgeny Zamyatin, We1
T
he concept of love has always been somewhat of an embarrassment for
Philosophy because it has displayed a persistent obliviousness to
demands for an account of itself. Whereas love is friendly to the poet,
the priest, and even the psychoanalyst, it has offered only mute resistance to
the cold interrogations of Philosophical inquiry. Indeed, one may observe
that when some philosophers speak of love they seem afflicted with the very
symptoms found so often in the love-struck: tongue-tied, confused, cryptic.
Regarding this poverty in the thinking of love, Jean-Luc Nancy observes that
“the impossibility of speaking about love” has already been “violently
1 Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, trans. by Natasha Randall (NY: Random House, 2006), 10.
© 2016 Jeremy De Chavez

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/de chavez_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
270 BADIOU’S AMOROUS AXIOMATICS
recognized.”2 Indeed, the universal consensus seems to be that love resides

in the domain beyond the thinkable, the “experience par excellence of a vague
ineffable intensity or confusion.”3 In refusing concession to that consensus,
we must ask: What is the relationship of love to thought?
As a way to initiate this discussion, let us turn to the film The Mirror
has Two Faces (1996), an academic love story that appears to suggest that if
academics pattern their love lives after their professional lives it could only
lead to bland and disengaged coupling; that is, the life of the mind is
diametrically opposed to a life of amorous intensity. 4 The film is about ugly
duckling Romantic Literature professor Rose Morgan (played by Barbra
Streisand) who, because she is convinced that she does not deserve the kind
of passionate love that she professes in her classes, hesitantly agrees to a
painfully rigid Platonic marriage with Mathematics professor Gregory Larkin
(played by Jeff Bridges). Allowing his profession to structure his personal life,
Gregory insists on a relationship that subtracts the unpredictable madness
that seems to always accompany the stirring of passions. It was only till Rose
loved herself enough to demand only pure and unfiltered passionate love
that advocate of risk-free love Gregory was transformed into a tweed jacket
wearing Romeo. In the end, as conventional love narratives go, they
supposedly lived happily ever after.
One is inclined to expect a profound lesson from The Mirror has Two
Faces—it is, after all, an academic love story; however, the film offers a rather
banal one: that knowledge is the hurdle lovers have to surmount to achieve
genuine amorous bliss. It is instructive to add that the tension between love
and knowledge stands in stark contrast to the rapport between love and
stupidity. Stupidity, writes Avital Ronell, is “linked to the most dangerous
failures of human endeavors;” yet, the only moment when the prohibitions
on stupidity are lifted is when one is in love, a moment in fact when stupidity
“sparkles with life.”5
This essay is an attempt to rethink the fraught relationship of love
and knowledge by offering a timely explication of Alain Badiou's thoughts
on love. This discourse on love is occasioned by the recent challenge posed
by critical theory to rethink love and is animated by the conviction that such
a rethinking entails locating love in the domain of thought rather than in a
domain beyond cognition and representation. At a time when love is
2 Jean-Luc Nancy, Inoperative Community, ed. by Peter Conner (Minneapolis and
Oxford: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 82.

3 Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2003), 185.

4 The Mirror has Two Faces, directed by Barbra Streisand (1996; NY: Sony Pictures, 1998),
DVD.
5 Avital Ronell, Stupidity (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 3.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 271
threatened by accusations of being nothing more than a cruel optimism,

Badiou's project offers a philosophical defense of love by underscoring its
kinship to thought and therefore to truth. It is important to mention, however,
that Badiou also redefines truth as a process generated by events that occur
within a situation. Further, events, as far as Badiou is concerned, occur only
in four fields: science, art, politics, and love. 6 In this essay, I begin by outlining
the general trajectory of Badiou’s philosophy while highlighting and
unpacking several crucial terms that are necessary for my explication of
Badiou’s amorous axiomatics.
Standard among critical expositions of Badiou’s work is the inclusion
of a tedious discussion of Mathematics, Set Theory in particular (which in
turn is often accompanied by some kind of apologetic gesture by the
explicator for his/her lack of expertise in Mathematics!). However, I shall
proceed with the rather audacious claim that most of Badiou’s ideas, even the
central ones, may be sufficiently explained with minimal reference to
mathematical theory. This gesture follows Alex Callinicos who claims that
Badiou’s “main philosophical claims can be stated and assessed without a
deep immersion in mathematical logic.”7 But why does Badiou use
mathematics as the privileged language of ontology in the first place? For
Badiou, “[Mathematics] pronounces what is expressible in being qua being” 8
for its transpositionality is able to describe the “general situation of all
conceivable situations, regardless of their particular contexts or contents.”9
Following the (sincere) gesture of humility of some of Badiou’s explicators, I
have to confess my discomfort (alarmingly close to being a phobia) with the
mathematics. However, if I may hazard an observation, another reason why
I think mathematics works well for Badiou is because its structure and logic
functions as a wonderful counterpoint to the unsystematically creative and
productively chaotic nature of the event. Although one could use
mathematics to formally describe the conditions of an event (i.e. love requires
a Two that is not a One plus a One but a One and another One), the evental
appearance of love itself cannot be measured (i.e. it is meaningless to ask
“How much love weighs?” or “What is the size of love?”). Putting math aside
6 Regarding those four fields, Badiou’s foremost explicator Peter Hallward writes:
“Because they mark out the possible instances of the subject as variously individual or collective
… Love affects only 'the individuals concerned …, and it is thus for them [alone that the one-
truth produced by their love is an indiscernible part of their existence.' Politics, on the other hand,
concerns only the collective dimension … 'And in 'mixed situations'—situations with an
individual vehicle but a collective import—art and science qualify as generic to the degree that
they effect a pure invention or discovery beyond the mere transmission of knowledges (L'Etre et
l'Evénement, 374 [Cited by Hallward]).” See Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, 181.
7 Alex Callinicos, Resources of Critique (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006), 96.
8 Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. by Oliver Feltham (NY: Continuum, 2005), 87.
9 Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, 57.

ISSN 1908-7330
(not to disregard but to occasionally refer to), let me begin my explication of

Badiou’s ontology.
On Alain Badiou
Many commentators have conferred the title of “Most Important

Living French Philosopher” to Alain Badiou.10 Indeed, the ability of his
thought to intervene in questions crucial to both the Analytic and Continental
Philosophical traditions displays its generative and enabling power. Yet, at
the core of Badiou’s philosophy is a straightforward directive: return to
Truth. It could be said that the idea that a subject’s ethico-political duty is to
sustain fidelity to the Truth does not seem strikingly radical or particularly
original. Does not Badiou’s position simply echo, albeit within the context of
advanced capitalism, the Platonic commitment to the Ideal?11 Even the
conceptual contours of his “philosophy of the event” bear an uncanny
structural similarity to Walter Benjamin’s “Theses” (where revolution comes
to being not as the conclusion of the logical unfolding of history but as a
“catastrophe”, a “Messianic cessation of happening”), 12 to Lacan’s concept of
the Real (which occasionally punctures socio-symbolic reality, disrupting its
fluid signifying operations), and even to Levinas’s concept of the ethical call
of the other (which takes the subject as hostage and binds the subject to a pre-
ontological ethical relationship with an absolute alterity that is the other). 13
It could be argued that part of Badiou’s appeal is the well-timed
appearance of his thought: his ideas are attractively polemical in a time when
dominant persuasions of thought seem restrictive rather than enabling of
praxis. Badiou is openly hostile to the dominant orientations in contemporary
Theory as well as to the apparently global consensus on matters such as
human rights and respect for cultural differences. He positions his work
against the three main orientations of contemporary philosophy; that is,
Hermeneutic, Poststructuralist/ Postmodern/ Deconstructionist, and
10 See Burhanuddin Baki, Badiou’s Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set Theory
(London and NY: Bloomsbery, 2014), 1. See also A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens, “Introduction:
Badiou’s Form,” in Alain Badiou: Key Concepts, ed. by A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens (NY and
London: Routledge, 2014), 1.
11 Badiou openly expresses his fidelity to Plato. He identifies three things in Plato that
directly interest him: (1) Plato’s belief that “philosophy begins thinking not in relation to itself
but in relation to another discipline (art, mathematics, etc.); (2) the Platonic commitment to the
Ideal and the True; and (3) Plato’s belief (according to Badiou) that the operation of truth is one
of immanence rather than transcendence. See Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding
of Evil (London: Verso, 2001). See also Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth.
12 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations: Essays and
Reflections, ed. by Hannah Arendt (NY: Schocken, 1988), 259-266.

13 For a brief survey and critical discussion of the “philosophy of the Event” see
Callinicos, Resources of Critique.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 273
Analytic/ Epistemological. For Badiou, those orientations of thought share

two malevolent characteristics: (1) “the theme of an end, of drawing to a
close” (“end of metaphysics”, “end of grand narratives”) and (2) the elevation
of language as the site of philosophical thought.14 Consequently, this leads to
a profound suspicion of the idea of truth: the former announces the end of
truth; the latter shifts the focus to the questions of meaning rather than the
“classical question of truth.”15 Badiou insists, “language is not the absolute
horizon of thought.”16 He further posits that the emerging moral vocabulary
developed within what he calls “ethical ideology” (a way of thinking about
relations to the other that is grounded in a “(vaguely) Kantian” universalism
and a “(vaguely) Levinasian” respect for difference) is politically
unproductive and intrinsically conservative. 17 He believes that Ethics has
come to replace (radical) politics: an essentially passive and non-intrusive
culture of respect for the other has become preferred over militant activism.
He passionately argues that this “ethics of difference,” what he mockingly
calls “good old-fashioned tolerance,” has “neither force nor truth.” 18 Ethics,
whether “consensual representation of Evil or as concern for the other,” is a
form of “resignation in the face of necessity” and “should be designated as
nihilism.”19 Indeed, given the shape of the contemporary world, one cannot
help but feel sympathetic to Badiou’s intuition that the now dominant moral
ideological formation cloaks a fundamental political impotence.
Ontology: Truth, Situation, Event, Subject
But if truth cannot be established via linguistic propositions, how is

it to be encountered?
Contrary to standard poststructuralist theory (and Christianity) that
mark the Beginning with the Word, for Badiou, in the beginning there is only
the inconsistent pure multiple. There is no structure in the pure multiple; it
is not an assemblage of objects because there is yet no concept of “One”—the
process of counting has yet to be initiated.20 And, as pure multiplicity, it has
no other predicate but its own multiplicity, founded on nothing (a void)
rather than on a “One.” This is because, as Slavoj Žižek points out, the pure
multiple is not a collection of Ones since “to have One the pure multiple must
14 Alain Badiou, “Philosophy and Desire,” in Infinite Thought, trans. by Oliver Feltham
and Justin Clemens (NY: Continuum, 2005), 34.

15 Ibid., 35.
16 Ibid., 37.
17 See Peter Hallward, Introduction to Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the
Understanding of Evil.
18 Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, 20.
19 Ibid., 30.
20 Badiou refers to this operation as the count-as-one.

ISSN 1908-7330
already be “counted as One.” It can thus only appear as nothing, a void:

“nothing is the name of Being prior to its symbolization.” 21 The purely
multiple is thus untouched by any process of unification.
For something to be, that is, for something to exist as an object in
(socio-symbolic) reality, it has to be counted as part of what Badiou calls a
“situation,” counted as an element of a set, for “all presentation is under the
law of the count.”22 For Badiou, a situation is “… a presentation of multiples
counted-as-one and brought to the form of a unity.” 23 The situation is thus a
“structured presentation” of the indifferent multiplicity. Being emerges
when pure multiplicity has undergone the operation of the “count-as-one”
and is thus made accessible to knowledge via categorization/ grouping based
on its properties, characteristics, and so on. Only elements of the situation
are accessible to knowledge because for Badiou “all thought supposes a
situation of the thinkable … a structure, a counting for one, whereby the
presented multiple is consistent, numerable.”24
The relationship of “nothing” or the “void,” which is the predicate of
purely inconsistent multiplicity, to the situation is a rather special one,
relative to the other elements of the situation. Although the void “belongs”
to the situation it is not presented as one of its elements; it is present but not
presented and consequently not represented. It is what Badiou refers to as
the “phantom remainder,” and is that which wanders in the situation in the
form of a subtraction of the count. 25 But this “phantom remainder” is not
merely an indifferent collection of elements passively waiting to be subjected
to the structuring operation of the situation. The void, as conceived within
Badiou’s “subtractive ontology” is the negative identity of the situation, and
“every situation is founded on the void”; it is “what is not there, but what is
necessary for anything to be there.”26 Badiou’s use of the term “phantom
remainder” does not only describe the uncanny spectral existence of the void
in the situation—the void being “the non-place of every place,” that is
“neither local nor global, but scattered everywhere, in no place and in every
place.”27 The term also calls attention to the way that the non-countable void
perpetually haunts the situation, challenging the regime of structured
presentation. Badiou writes:
21 Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology (London:
Verso, 1999), 129.
22 Badiou, Being and Event, 52.
23 Gabriel Riera, Alain Badiou: Philosophy and its Conditions (NY: SUNY Press, 2005), 8.
25 Ibid., 53.
26 Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens, Introduction to Infinite Thought, 16.
27 Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, 102.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 275
All multiple presentation is exposed to the danger of the

void … It is necessary to prohibit that catastrophe of
presentation which would be [the situation’s] encounter
with its own void, the presentational occurrence of
inconsistency as such, or the ruin of the One.28
Because the void exceeds the law of the count in the Situation there
is nothing that prevents it from threatening the consistency of presentation
(the Situation’s “self-evident” Oneness). The Situation cannot depend on its
own structure or the count-as-one to ensure consistency because the very
operation of the count-as-one is subtracted from presentation, for “a structure
exhausts itself in its effect, which is that there is oneness.” 29
Thus, to prevent the “ruin of the One,” the “catastrophe of
presentation,” a structuring of the structure is required.30 “It is necessary that
the structure be structured.”31 Badiou calls this second structuring principle
the “State of the situation.” The State is the second order of presentation—
that is, representation, and is defined by Badiou as “the “operation which,
within the situation, codifies its parts and subsets.” 32 It is what “discerns,
names, classifies, and orders the parts of a situation.”33 Those two levels of
structuring—the situation (presented multiplicity) and the State of the
situation (codified/ classified/ ordered re-presented multiplicity)—are clearly
illustrated in an example Badiou uses in Being and Event:
[A] family of people is a presented multiple of the social

situation (in the sense that they live together in the same
apartment or go on holiday together, etc.), and it is also
a represented multiple, a part, in the sense that each of its
members is registered by the registry office, possesses
French nationality, and so on. If, however, one of the
members of the family, physically tied to it, is not
registered and remains clandestine, and due to this fact
never goes out alone, or only in disguise, and so on, it
can be said that this family despite being presented is not
represented.34

29 Ibid., 95.
30 Ibid., 94.
31 Ibid., 93.
32 Alain Badiou, Metapolitics, trans. by Jason Barker (London and NY: Verso, 2005), 143.

ISSN 1908-7330
Suffice it to say the State is to be distinguished from the original

structure of the situation; however, what the State represents as “consistent
multiples” is composed only of what the situation presents. Presentation is
“on the side of the situation”: Representation is “on the side of the State of the
situation.”35
Being for Badiou is this ontological order structured by the situation
and the State. It is what is present, could be represented in our horizon of
consciousness, and is accessible to knowledge. But if all that is available to
consciousness is made possible only by the structuring operation of the
situation and the State, how can something authentically new emerge? How
is innovation possible? The new cannot emerge from any of the elements of
the situation since it is regulated by the structuring power of the State. At
best, the State can only represent something as new. The authentically new
has to emerge from beyond the sovereign domain of the State and the
structured multiple of the situation, from a place of non-Being; that is, the
void of the situation. However, if the void is precisely that which is
subtracted from presentation, how can its “presence” be made palpable
within a situation? How can its traces be made discernible at the level of
presentation?
As discussed above, the first level of structuring in the situation
(presentation) is always in danger of irruption of the void (hence the need for
the second structuring principle that is the State). The void can thus be
localized at the level of presentation through “abnormal multiples,” which
are “points of subtraction from the State’s re-securing of the count,” located
on the “edge of the void.”36 Badiou designates these abnormal multiples as
“evental sites.” Evental sites are conditions for the localization of what
Badiou calls “events” in a situation. An event is “that-which-is-not-being”; it
is an encounter with “the void of the situation … [and] has absolutely no
interest in preserving the status quo as such.”37 The event occurs beyond the
domain of established knowledge, thus there is no way to predict where and
when an event will take place. It is an “emergence of the New which cannot
be reduced to its causes and conditions.”38 Since the event has not been
subjected to any “Law of Count” it is, by definition, multiple, but a
multiplicity that counts as nothing within its Situation. “[I]t is not, as such,
presented, nor is it presentable. It is—not being—supernumerary.”39 That is,
it belongs to “that-which-is-not-being-qua-being.”40 Because it is not
35 Ibid., 103.
36 Ibid., 174-175.
38 Ibid., 386.
40 Ibid., 189.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 277
discernible in the Situation, the existence of an Event cannot be proven but

can only be asserted by a human being who by the very act of fidelity to an
Event becomes subjectivized by it. At this point the skeptic may wonder how
subjectivization differs from the “count-as-one.” Does not subjectivization
grant a singular identity to a human being by defining his or her subjecthood
solely as an attachment to an Event? Nevertheless, whether axiomatic or
arbitrary, Badiou posits that subjectivization “counts whatever is faithfully
connected to the name of the Event.” 41
To an outsider—that is, those not directly a witness to a specific
Event—Badiou’s subject would appear to be a rebel without a cause. The
Event simply cannot be seen from the vantage point of a Third position, for
“[s]ubjectivization takes place in the form of a Two.”42 He or she may be able
to identify a subject’s act of fidelity to an Event, which is the attempt to give
the Event a socio-symbolic existence, but the Event itself, since it belongs to
“that-which-is-not-being-qua-being” will remain indiscernible. What the
outsider sees, and consequently does not recognize, is Truth itself, which in
Badiou’s ontology is defined as the “real process of a fidelity to an Event: that
which this fidelity produces in the Situation.”43 In other words, the outsider
cannot integrate what he or she sees in his ways of knowing because what he
or she is witnessing is the “new” and not some familiar object simply recast
in new ways by reigning systems of knowledge. This is not to suggest,
however, that the subject fully assumes the full force of a Truth, but at best
only its trace, an “approximative truth.”44 The subject is only a local
configuration; the Truth, however, is universal: “A subject, which realizes a
truth, is nevertheless incommensurable with the latter, because the subject is
finite, and truth is infinite.”45
Amorous Axiomatics: Love as Truth-Procedure
The ostensibly normal state of things then is one of repetition and

regulation, and in fact, it is those regulative procedures of a situation that
creates the appearance of normality. Systems of ideas that dominate in a
specific situation—what Badiou designates as “encyclopeadia” 46—will only
allow the circulation of self-confirming ideas. This means that a situation will
not from its own resources produce something genuinely new, for it will
compromise the very order that it seeks to regulate. Thus, an event is
41 Ibid., 393.
42 Ibid., 393.
45 Ibid., 396.
46 Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, Philosophy in the Present (UK: Polity Press, 2009), 35.

ISSN 1908-7330
necessary to usher in the new, and force the components of the situation to
come to terms with this radical contingency. Love— which is one of the truth-
procedures along with Science, Art, and Politics—is one such instance of the
event. Love manufactures its own situation that Badiou calls the “scene of
two,” which is composed of a One and another One, an immanent Two. 47 It
is important to distinguish the Two from the couple. Whereas the immanent
Two retain their disjunction the couple is a phenomenal appearance visible
to a third position that counts the Two as One. The Two is not the sum of ‘one’
and ‘one’ but rather is an immanent Two, which suggests that “there is one
position and another position … totally disjunct from the other.”48 Love as a
process occurs as a matter of pure contingency when the life of one human
being randomly intersects with another, a process that transforms both into
Subjects (to truth)—that is, as authentic agents with the potential for action
that is not limited nor manipulated by larger structures of power and
knowledge. It opens up possibilities for the amorous subjects to see the world
anew, from the perspective of the Two instead of from the One. Badiou
poetically writes:
When I lean on the shoulder of the woman I love, and

can see, let’s say, the peace of twilight over a mountain
landscape, gold-green fields, the shadow of trees, black-
nosed sheep motionless behind hedges and the sun
about to disappear behind craggy peaks, and know—not
from the expression of her face, but from within the
world as it is—that the woman I love is seeing the same
world, and that this convergence is part of the world and
that love constitutes precisely, at that very moment, the
paradox of an identical difference, then love exists, and
promises to continue to exist. The fact is she and I are
now incorporated into this unique Subject, the Subject of
love that views that panorama of the world through the
prism of our difference, so this world can be conceived,
be born, and not simply represent what fills my own
individual gaze.49
It is crucial to highlight the ancillary comment “not from the

expression of her face, but from within the world”. Badiou suggests that we
should resist the temptation of thinking about love through a Levinasian
47 Alain Badiou, “The Scene of Two,” trans. by Barbara P. Fulks, in The Symptom 13 (30
May 2012), <http://www.lacan.com/symptom13/?p=167>.

48 Alain Badiou, Conditions, trans. by Steven Corcoran (NY: Continuum, 2008), 187.
49 Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love, trans. by Peter Bush (NY: New Press, 2012), 25.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 279
framework.50 Rather, love should be conceived as an “experience of the

world, or of the situation, under the post-evental condition that there were
Two.”51
Badiou develops his philosophy of love by beginning with an
enumeration of nonnegotiable rejections. In particular, he rejects “the fusional
conception of love” (for love cannot be a procedure that suppresses the
multiple in favor of a One), “the ablative concept of love” (for love is not an
experience of the Other but an experience of the world/situation), and “the
superstructural or illusory conception of love” (for love is not just an
ornament to make smooth the clumsy procedure of sexual relations). The
conceptual origins of the first two definitions could be traced back to
Romantic theories of love, while the third definition echoes Schopenhauer’s
philosophy that conceives of love as something manufactured by nature’s
will-to-live.52 For Badiou, love is a “procedure that makes truth out of the
disjunction of sexuated positions.”53 The aforementioned definitions of love
sacrifice the production of truth in favor of the rule of the One: the “fusional”
conception of love seeks to make a One out of Two; the “ablative,” though
attempting to produce an authentic knowledge of the Other, is only able to
apprehend the Other as an object (objet a) within the coordinates of the
subject’s own fantasy (and thus is also caught in the logic of the One); and the
“illusory,” makes love a mere pawn in sexuality’s regime.
Badiou arrives at this unique understanding of love though a highly
formal process, an axiomatics of love, formulated on the basis of nothing but
an “essential conviction.”54 He elaborates on his account of love by
demonstrating the logical connection among those axioms. Badiou, after all,
insists that “No theme requires more pure logic than that of love.”55 The four
axioms are the following: (1) “There are two positions of the experience of
love” (Man and Woman); (2) “The two positions are totally disjunct”; (3)
“There is no third position”; and (4) “There is only one humanity.” 56 Those
two positions that Badiou identifies in his first axiom are purely symbolic and
have no biological, empirical, and social basis, but are so termed depending
on the subject’s relation to the phallic signifier (of wanting to have or to be the
phallus).57 Those two positions constitute two wholly separate realms of
50 That is, as an ethical relation initiated by the phenomenological encounter with the
face that binds the subject to a pre-ontological and infinite responsibility to the other.
51 Badiou, Conditions, 187.
52 Ibid., 181.
53 Badiou, Infinite Thought, 124.
55 Ibid., 183.
56 Ibid.,183.
57 It is instructive to point out that there is a clear homology between Badiou’s
“axioms” and Lacan’s theories on the relation (or lack thereof) of the two sexualized positions.

ISSN 1908-7330
experience, and no real connection between the two positions can be

successfully established.58 However, although Badiou accepts the Lacanian
thesis that the two positions are absolutely disjunct, he rejects the conventional
reading of Lacan when it comes to the role of love in addressing the
disjunction. Numerous Lacanian commentators have interpreted Lacan’s
famous “Love is that which comes to supplement for the lack of a real
connection” to mean that love is merely this illusion that functions to make
amorous subjects misrecognize their fundamental non-connection. Badiou
unpacks Lacan’s formula by first interrogating the function of the
supplement. By referring to love as a “supplement” Badiou is underscoring
his claim that love is not something that belongs to a situation, but something
that comes from “outside” it; it is not an element recognized as belonging to
a preexisting structure. This properly foreign element opens up possibilities
for the amorous subjects of seeing the world anew, from the perspective of
the Two instead of from the One. He further argues that if one accepts the
thesis that the two sexualized positions are separated by a non-rapport then
this non-rapport cannot be written, and if it cannot be written, “if it is non-
existent as an effect of a structure,” it follows that “love itself as supplement
can only arrive by chance.”59 This absolute contingency is crucial in Badiou’s
project to re-think “love” as a truth-procedure. Love, therefore, is not a
relation (in fact, it is born precisely at the point of non-relation); it is a process
that is “the advent of the Two as such, the scene of Two.” Love is the
“hypothetical operator” of the accidental collision of two trajectories that is
the “event-encounter.”60
Badiou’s third axiom deals with the appearance of the disjunction
within situations, what could be called the “announcement of the
disjunction.”61 The axiom “There is no third position” suggests that love as a
disjunction cannot be witnessed from a situation outside the “scene of two”
that love constructs. But from which vantage point then could the amorous
truth-event be witnessed? Further, how can love be inscribed in a situation as
a “Scene of Two” if no position is available from which love can be witnessed?
This is where the notion of the amorous declaration comes into play. Within
Badiou’s vocabulary this declaration of love is designated as “naming.” 62 And
in this gesture of amorous nomination, the truth of the love-event necessarily
Lacanian psychoanalytic theory similarly claims that there are two sexualized positions
designated as “Man” and “Woman.”
58 This is because the Symbolic Order and the Imaginary always mediate sexual
relations; thus, subjects cannot transcend the limitations defined by their respective fantasies.
Suffice it to recall Lacan’s famous pronouncement: “There is no sexual relation.”
59 Badiou, “The Scene of Two.”
61 Ibid., 184.
62 Ibid., 188.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 281
marks itself onto the bodies of the subjects of love, and thus makes itself
legible within a socio-symbolic system. Badiou writes, “A Two that proceeds
amorously is specifically the name of the disjunct as apprehended in its
disjunction.”63
While the first three axioms speak about the disjunction of the two
positions, the fourth suggests that love is a generic procedure because it
addresses only one humanity (and not a specific sexualized position). It must
be noted that Badiou subtracted of humanist connotations. He defines
humanity as “the historical body of truths” and emphasizes that “all truth
holds for all its historical body.”64 Badiou’s fourth axiom creates a paradoxal
relation among the axioms. The disjunction of the two positions, Man and
Woman, suggests that truths are sexualized (read: there exists a masculine
and feminine art/ politics/ love/ science), but the axiom of a single humanity
suggests that truths are transpositional. Badiou writes:
If the effects of thesis four are related to the three

preceding theses, we can formulate precisely the
problem that will occupy us: how is it possible that a
truth is transpositional, or a truth for all, if there exists at
least two positions, man and woman, that are radically
disjunct in regard to experience in general?65
The paradox that love produces makes legible the relationship of love
to thought. Rather than conceive of love as a place of unity where questions
are foreclosed, love becomes a site where the reality of sexual disjunction is
negotiated. Love is precisely a process that thinks through the paradox. “Love
does not relieve that paradox; it treats it.”66 Love then is itself the paradox that
it treats.
Reading Literature with Badiou
If what Badiou has to say about love feels insufficient it is probably

because his discussion is more concerned with providing a formal structure
of love rather than what that structure might contain. Indeed, for such a
method of approaching the topic of love, Terry Eagleton says: “Badiou speaks
of love as though it is a self-evident experience, which may be true for
Parisians but not for the rest of us.”67 Peter Hallward comments that it “comes
63 Ibid., 189.
65 Ibid., 185.
66 Ibid., 186.
67 Terry Eagleton, Figures of Dissent (London and NY: Verso, 2003), 252.

ISSN 1908-7330
as no surprise that Badiou has had less to say … about love than about the
other generic procedures,” for in “the case of love … such truth is private by
definition.”68 Also, since love is, for Badiou, fundamentally the “truth of the
disjunction” it cannot be an object of knowledge: “the experience of the loving
subject … does not constitute any knowledge of love.”69
It is my conviction—in the spirit of Badiou, who often justifies
claims via the force of conviction—that literature may provide clarificatory
material to the very formal procedure of love that Badiou outlines.70 The
passage is from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (1989), which I think beautifully
articulates, both as content and as “subtraction,” Badiou’s ideas on love.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes

you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up
your heart and it means that someone can get inside you
and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you
build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt
you, then one stupid person, no different from any other
stupid person, wanders into your stupid life … They did
something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you
and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes
hostages.71
What one immediately notices in the passage is that although it

speaks of love there is nothing specifically said about the loved object. No
idealization occurs. In fact, we are given almost nothing about the loved
object aside from the fact that “she” is a “stupid person, no different from any
other stupid person.”72 A word of caution: “stupid” here is not to be
understood as idiotic (although it could partially carry that meaning), for then
it would simply operate as a regulative marker within the order of being, a
way to classify and categorize elements in a Situation. Rather, “stupid” in this
context suggests a person subtracted of any accidental feature or
characteristic where desire could attach itself, a person in “her” stupid reality,
as opposed to “her” tolerable (yet barred, in the Lacanian sense of the term)

70 Despite Badiou’s insistence that literature cannot be a proper scene of representation
for love, he nevertheless credits the poet Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa) for the line “To love
is to think.”
71 Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones, vol. 9 of The Sandman (Burbank, CA: Vertigo, DC
Comics, 1989).
72 I use scare quotes on “she” (and on “her” in the rest of the explication of the passage)
to indicate that the loved object occupies the position W and does not necessarily indicate a
biological or social reality.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 283
Symbolic identity. Subtracted of those accidental features to which desire

aims, what remains is the other in his or her stupid reality. Love does not
erase the problem of sexual difference; rather, it is testament to the truth of
the absolute disjunction of the amorous Two.
Note also that the passage distinguishes between love and desire—
that is, love does not have the objet a, the object of desire as its cause—while
also resisting presenting love as a way of manufacturing an intimate
knowledge of the other. Badiou insists that love is not an experience of the
other, but an experience of the situation “under the post-evental condition
that there were Two.”73 Consequently, it leaves the reader with a sense that
love is precisely the absence of a relation, and calls attention to the
fundamental gap that separates the amorous subjects. Further, note how the
object of love just “wanders” into one’s existence, unanticipated and
unexpected. Gaiman represents love as a chance encounter! Its appearance
cannot be predicted or calculated within the order of Being, for it is a
“disruptive occurrence.”74
It also is important to highlight the aleatory nature of the encounter
to fully appreciate Badiou’s contribution to the thinking of love. The passage
states that the amorous other just haphazardly “wanders” into one’s life. Love
is not represented as a choice but as “a forced choice.”75 Also, is not the mention
of erecting “defenses” and donning a “suit of armour” an allusion to the
operations of the State of the Situation? The State bars the “phantom
remainder” from haunting the Situation so that humans counted as One of its
elements may harbor illusions of security at the expense of their immortality,
their relation to the infinite. Gaiman’s passage beautifully and clearly renders
Badiou’s ontological Faustian bargain.
The prior relationship between two beings as designated by the
structure of a particular (ordered) situation (defined by terms such as co-
workers, classmates, neighbors, friends, strangers, etcetera) will have no
bearing on the love that, upon their declaration, will confer to them both the
status of subject. Love, for Badiou, creates new worlds! Longtime friends and
perfect strangers are both equally suitable candidates to become subjects of
love (for as a “generic procedure” love is open to all!). What matters is that
the Two recognize the sudden emergence of the amorous event, and that they
courageously declare its existence. The declaration makes love legible within
the order of being, and its presence is what grants the amorous Two agency,
making them proper subjects. To act out of love means that the subject is not
acting from the position of the One (which the state of the situation
designates), but from the perspective of the Two. Needless to say, the

74 Badiou, Infinite Thought, 20.
75 Žižek, Sublime Object of Ideology, 166.

ISSN 1908-7330
emphasis on the contingency of the amorous encounter makes this passage

an apt representation of Badiou’s understanding of love. 76
At this point, allow me to introduce a possible complication. The
mention of “opening up”, “tak[ing] hostages”, and “smile” (metonymically,
the face) alludes to a Levinasian vocabulary. I suggest that it would be a
mistake to read this passage as an articulation of Levinasian ethics. The
encounter dramatized here is not an encounter with the “face of the other”
that binds the subject to a pre-ontological and infinite responsibility towards
it. The speaker, as I have mentioned above, does not directly talk about the
other (if anything, the speaker alludes to their fundamental disconnection),
but rather, talks about love itself. The speaker suggests a responsibility, albeit
hesitant, to the amorous-Event rather than a responsibility to the loved object.
This responsibility towards the amorous encounter is nothing more than the
fidelity to the Event. Suffice it to recall Badiou’s attempt to “preserve the
word ethics” by reconfiguring it as an “ethic of truth,” a tenacious relation to
Truth wherein you “do all you can to persevere in that which exceeds your
perseverance.”77
Department of Literature, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
References
Badiou, Alain, Being and Event, trans. by Oliver Feltham (NY: Continuum,
2005).
___________, Conditions, trans. by Steven Corcoran (NY: Continuum, 2008).
___________, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (London: Verso,
2001).
___________, In Praise of Love, trans. by Peter Bush (NY: The New Press, 2012).
___________, Infinite Thought, trans. by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens
(NY: Continuum, 2005).
___________, Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker (London and NY: Verso, 2005).
___________, “The Scene of Two,” trans. by Barbara P. Fulks, in The Symptom
13 (30 May 2012), <http://www.lacan.com/symptom13/?p=167>.
Badiou, Alain and Slavoj Žižek, Philosophy in the Present (UK: Polity Press,
2009).
Baki, Burhanuddin, Badiou’s Being and Event and the Mathematics of Set Theory
(London and NY: Bloomsbery, 2014).
76 I put emphasis on “representation” to indicate that this literary fragment is not
consubstantial with an Event—in the way that, say, for Badiou, the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé
constitutes an Event in the domain of Art—but rather only a symbolic enactment of it, a mere
scene of re-presentation.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. DE CHAVEZ 285
Bartlett, A,J. and Justin Clemens, “Introduction: Badiou’s Form,” in Alain

Badiou: Key Terms, ed. by A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens (NY and
London: Routledge, 2014).
Benjamin, Walter, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations: Essays
and Reflections, ed. By Hannah Arendt (NY: Schocken, 1988)
Callinicos, Alex, Resources of Critique (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2006).
Eagleton, Terry, Figures of Dissent (London and NY: Verso, 2003).
Gaiman, Neil, The Kindly Ones, vol. 9 of The Sandman (Burbank, CA: Vertigo,
DC Comics, 1989).
Hallward, Peter, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2003)
Nancy, Jean-Luc, Inoperative Community, ed. by Peter Conner (Minneapolis
and Oxford: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).
Miller, Jacques-Alain, “Jacques-Alain Miller: On Love (We Love the One Who
Responds to Our Question: ‘Who am I?’” trans. by Adrian Price, in
Lacan.com, <http://www.lacan.com/symptom/?page_id=263>, 19 July
2015.
Riera, Gabriel, Alain Badiou: Philosophy and its Conditions (NY: SUNY Press,
2005).
Ronell, Avital, Stupidity (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
The Mirror has Two Faces, directed by Barbra Streisand (1996; NY: Sony
Pictures, 1998), DVD.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny, We, trans. by Natasha Randall (NY: Random House,
2006).
Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London and NY: Verso, 1989).
___________, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology
(London: Verso, 1999).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Feminism without Philosophy: A Polemic

Jeremiah Joven Joaquin
Abstract: In this paper, I address the problem about the role of

academic philosophy for the feminist movement. I argue that the
professionalization of feminism, especially within the sphere of
academic philosophy, is detrimental to the stated goal of the feminist
movement, which, as historically understood, is to procure women’s
rights and liberties and to reassess the (oppressive) treatment of
women by different social institutions. The thought is that if feminism
were to reap the rewards of a socio-political change, feminists should
stop their fantastic theorizing and start bringing their advocacies to the
proper forums.
Keywords: feminism, feminist philosophy, feminist movement,

feminist critique of philosophy
Introduction
In the beginning was the deed …

– Goethe, Faust
T
his is not an attack against feminism per se. It is rather an attack against
the professionalization of feminism, especially within the sphere of
academic philosophy. As historically understood, feminism is a
movement devoted to procure women’s rights and liberties and to reassess the
(oppressive) treatment of women by different social institutions. Given the
idea that the stated goal of feminism is to effect social-political changes, this
paper argues that in order for feminism to achieve this, it ought to cease its
incessant attempt to form a foundation, or explanation, or even theory of how
and why such oppression came about. That is, if feminism were to reap the
rewards of a socio-political upheaval, feminists should stop their fantastic
theorizing and start to bring their advocacies to the proper forums.
It must be emphasized that I am not suggesting that feminist
philosophers should stop philosophizing. On the contrary, their critique of
© 2016 Jeremiah Joven Joaquin

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/joaquin_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 287
philosophy is one of the catalysts for some philosophers to become

iconoclasts in their way of doing philosophy. The danger that I am
presenting, rather, is in too much theorizing. This danger can and will cause
a trivialization or de-radicalization of feminism. Proponents of the feminist
cause to effect socio-political change in favour of women would be accused
of elitism if they were to stick with their highfaluting theorizing.
My suggestion is pure and simple: Feminism should take care of
itself. That is, its proponents should be careful not to overstep the boundaries
of discourse. If they were to achieve some concrete changes in the treatment
of women in every facet of human living, then they better stick with the issues
concerning women. It is not our theories that will determine whether there
are women being oppressed; rather, it is the fact that we see them being
oppressed. The argument that I will present in favour of my view can be
stated in just five words: Too much talk is useless.
A Sketch
As we have seen from the above discussions, I have arrived at a

problem that I wish to tackle in this essay. I formulate the problem as follows:
Does feminism, as a socio-political movement, need to have a philosophy
concerning the nature of gender inequality? And would feminism achieve its
main socio-political concerns by giving philosophical foundations for them?
This problem can be felt more if we are to set an analogy for it.
Consider the following issues: first, whether we must have a theory of
aesthetics in order for us to have a social policy that prohibits throwing
chewing gum waste; second, whether we should speculate on the mechanistic
tendencies of “culture” in order to have an economic policy against inhumane
treatment of labourers. If you answer affirmatively to both cases, then I resign
my argument. However, appealing to my intuition, I would bet that you
would take a negative stance concerning the first issue, and that you would
give a not-so-straightforward answer to the second. Through the course of
the discussion, I will explain why you would go for these options.
The first issue is a no-contest. No one in his or her right sense of mind
would assert that there must be a theory of what is beautiful in order to make
policies on cleanliness.1 That is, it is not a necessary condition for such a policy
to have an underlying theory of aesthetics. For we can surely device a
1 The referee has pointed out that one could make the argument that a theory of
aesthetics might inform a general policy about sanitation. I agree with this. But the issue that I am
pointing out here is whether it must inform such policies. Like most people, I would go for a
negative answer, namely, that an aesthetic theory is not necessary to make policies about
sanitation.

ISSN 1908-7330
288 FEMINISM WITHOUT PHILOSOPHY
different set of conditions that could necessitate the need for such a policy.
We could perhaps offer the fact that in some instances of environment
pollution, infectious diseases occur. This implies that if we are to avoid these
diseases, we better clean up. The condition that was offered, namely, that
infectious diseases might occur if we have a polluted environment, can be
taken as a reason for making a policy against pollution. The theory of beauty
that seems to be necessary a while ago now vanishes into thin air. Of course,
you may agree with this kind of reasoning for this issue. However, you may
disapprove of its use to the second issue.
The second issue is a conjoining of two elements. On the one hand,
there is our speculation about the mechanistic tendencies of “culture.” On the
other hand, there is the need to make a policy against the inhumane treatment
of labourers. If we were to argue in favour of making such a policy and if we
were to give the condition that there is a mechanistic tendency found in our
“culture” that dictates our behaviour towards our fellow human beings, then
the conclusion is that the policy that we will make must assent to the
mechanistic tendency. But wait! Isn’t this contrary to the policy that we want
to achieve? If we were to say that we need a policy against the ill-treatment
of labourers, then we should support this policy by asserting that such
injustices are wrong. But if we are to find our reason for the claim that such
injustices are wrong in the mechanistic tendency of our “culture,” we are lost
in the argument. That there are labourers dying because of inhumane
treatments—which we could ascertain just by looking at their work
environment—is reason enough, I think, to make a policy against it.
Surely now, you might remark, there must be a theory that backs up
the claim that there are injustices in the work environment. To this I will reply
that yes, there surely can be a theory behind our judgment of what is an unjust
treatment of human beings. But if you press to know more about it, I can go
on further and talk about the different theories of justice since time
immemorial. However, we might be taken aback once we see the labourer
lying half-dead in the corner where we are speculating novel and
philosophical ideas.
How we use our critical reason, our philosophical mind, in order to
address these two issues shows how we use the god-given talent of thinking.
There is nothing wrong with thinking about some social issue. In fact, it is
always advisable to think through an issue before we make decision about it.
All possible permutations and implications of the problem must be addressed
before we could arrive at a viable position and course of action. The problem,
however, is when we fail to focus on the issue itself, when we let our thoughts
fly towards the sky, and when we leave the issue unanswered. Well, you
might think that this is what philosophizing really entails. I will again second
your observation here. But the point of effecting policies is that they must

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 289
address particular issues. If we are to make policies that can address this, then
we must control our tinkering minds. Philosophical thinking is helpful, but it
can, at times, be disruptive in achieving particular ends.
The discussion that I have presented so far is a preliminary sketch of
what I will present in the remainder of the paper. I do hope that what I have
presented has given you a glimpse of my general argument throughout. In
the next sections, I aim to discuss the following under their respective
headings:
 Feminism as a Movement, where I will present what feminism, as a

movement, would like to achieve in its advocacy for women’s rights;
 Feminism as a Critique, where I will focus on the effect of the feminist
critique in the academe, especially in philosophy;
 Feminism with/without Philosophy, where I will represent some of
the dangers of too much speculation in feminism and how this affects
their advocacy; and, finally,
 Feminism in the Public Sphere, where I will present my conclusion
and restate my recommendations for the feminist cause.
Feminism as a Movement
The unfolding of the history of feminist ideals from Plato—although

this may be debatable—down to the present is still a work in progress.
Amidst this long and often turbulent unfolding, feminist ideals still hold
water for modern advocates of feminism today. What are these ideals? Currie
and Kazi tell us that:
Despite the diversity of its arguments, feminism is

unified through its challenge to male power and by its
vision of an alternative society; one freed from
inequalities based on sex and gender. 2
From this, we can say that feminism envisions a society where one is
freed from oppression caused by gender and sex inequalities3 and where all
human beings (male and female alike) live harmoniously in one and the same
world. I am not sure if I have formulated the second conjunct as well as most
feminists would. But the point of these ideals is to give to humanity (not in
2 Dawn Currie and Hamida Kazi, “Academic Feminism and the Process of De-
Radicalization: Re-Examining the Issues,” in Feminist Review, 25 (1987), 77.

3 As the referee has pointed out, there is a huge, albeit misguided, feminist literature
about the “philosophical” issue of whether sex and gender are natural categories, or merely
socially constructed ones. And to some extent I agree with this general indictment.

ISSN 1908-7330
the gendered sense of the term) their liberty back, that is, the liberty to choose
for ourselves the determination of our lives.
A survey of all feminist positions throughout the ages would not
suffice to support the assumption that all feminists yearn for this ideal.
Several feminists would in fact repudiate this, stating that the idea of equality
is, in itself, a male-construct. Or that there are no real distinctions between
sexes; our distinctions are merely creatures of fiction. Be that as it may, if we
look at the history of feminism, we could see that the main themes and
persuasions of each “school” of feminism are instructive to discern a univocal
ascription of their aspiration, which is the recognition of the Other (the
woman) as a person that is part of the same world.
Towards the end of the age of enlightenment, new voices can be
heard resonating as one voice, calling the world to recognize women’s right
to vote. The right to vote gave rise to a movement known as the Suffragettes,
whose advocacy was to ensure that women, as citizens of a state, were given
the same rights and privileges offered to their male-counterparts. The
advocacy for the right to vote was only the beginning for the feminist call for
equal distribution of rights and liberties.
Another advocacy put forward was the right to equal opportunity in
education. And yet another is the equal opportunity to work. These
advocacies were the foundations of feminism as a social force. There were
many noble heroes and heroines that stood up in the late nineteenth century.
Noble names such as John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft,
and many others can be presented as advocates of women empowerment.
Thus, a movement was born: the feminist movement.
Rhode envisions three central commitments of feminist cause (be it
on a political, philosophical, or practical field)4:
1) On a political level, they seem to promote equality between men

and women;
2) On a substantial level, feminist critical frameworks make gender
a focus of analysis; their aim is to reconstitute legal practices that
have excluded, devalued, or undermined women’s concerns;
and,
3) On a methodological level, these frameworks aspire to describe
the world in ways that correspond to women’s experience and to
identify the fundamental social transformations necessary for
full equality between the sexes.
4 Deborah Rhode, “Feminist Critical Theories,” in Stanford Law Review, 42:3 (1990), 619.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 291
These commitments, Rhode continues, are mutually reinforcing. But

because of differences in persuasions, they do, in some occasions, pull in
different directions. These “directions” are the so-called feminist theories.
If we were to advocate for the rights and liberties of women, we
would be called feminists. However, the label “feminist” is full of
unnecessary conceptual baggage that often people regret being called as such.
For example, Schnittker, Freese, and Powell remarked:
Despite increasing support for many feminist ideals,

negative sentiments toward the label “feminists” remain
strong and many individuals who embrace seemingly
feminist positions nonetheless deny that they are
feminists.5
Now, we may ask: Why is this? It may be, following these authors
still, that the label “feminist” has the connotation of an ideology. Upon
hearing the term “ideology,” people may start to think about the horrors that
Marx, Hitler, and Stalin have impacted in history because of their respective
ideologies. This is why, as Misciagno considers, this is a paradox for
contemporary feminism.6 On the one hand, people may advocate the same
ends as the feminist, but because of the added stigma of being an ideology—
which I think feminism, as a socio-political movement, is not—some people
may say that “I am a feminist, but ….” Whatever is at the end of that statement
would surely counteract the reaction the first statement already induced to
the hearer.
It is somewhat depressing to think that feminism as a socio-political
movement, which promotes equality of men and women, advocates the
rights and liberties of women, and criticizes the oppression caused by the idea
of gender hierarchies, would be tainted by a stigma as bad as Marx’s, Stalin’s,
or Lenin’s. All we can do now is to ask: Why did feminism come to such a
situation?
Feminism as a Critique
In the preface to his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tells us that:
5 Jason Schnittker, Jeremy Freese, and Brian Powell, “Who are Feminists and What Do
They Believe? The Role of Generations,” in American Sociological Review, 68:4 (2003), 607.
6 Patricia Misciagno, Rethinking Feminist Identification: The Case for De Facto Feminism
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers,1997), xviii.

ISSN 1908-7330
It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most

laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination—and to
establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-
grounded claims, while it pronounces against all
baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an
arbitrary manner….7
Following Kant’s advice, a re-examination of our discipline itself, i.e.,

the discipline of academic philosophy, should be undertaken so that we can
purposely go on to other inquires without guile or deceit to ourselves.
But alas! When philosophers, especially feminist philosophers,
turned their lenses inward and looked upon the canonical works in
philosophy they have seen, to their dismay, that there were misogynist
remarks present, and often highlighted, by notable philosophers. But should
it really be a cause of dismay to find such elements present in those works?
For any self-respecting philosopher, it should be. After thousands of years of
transmitting this body of knowledge from one hand to another, why did it
not occur to these male philosophers that something is wrong here?
There are various examples of these misogynistic remarks in the
philosophical canon. We see this in Aristotle, the father of systematic
philosophizing, who, in the Politics, remarked that “the male is by nature
fitter for command than the female.” We see this in Aquinas when he said
that “women are incomplete men.” Certainly, these pronouncements send
some mixed signals. Aristotle and Aquinas, after all, are looked up to as
brilliant philosophers. But though brilliant, they still look at women as
second-rate beings.
You might reply that we should be fair to these philosophers since
they were a product of their time and situation. And their views might have
been informed by their cultural milieu.8 After all, Aristotle was a product of
the Hellenistic tendency to downgrade women, while Aquinas was a product
of the medieval aspiration to cleanse man of his earthly desires. To this I reply,
yes they were a product of their time, but after hundreds of years of
scholarship, why did people not see these misogynistic messages? Or did
they see it but failed to look? Why, if they had looked, did they not do
something about it? Or why did they not even discourse about its
ramifications?
But it is not only scholars of the past that should be blamed. We, as
scholars of today, should be blamed as well. Most of us are still unaware of
these misogynistic writings. Or if we are aware, some of us are still not doing
7 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn, rev. and
expanded by Vassilis Politis (London: Everyman, 1993), 5 [A/1781, xi].

8 I acknowledge the referee for pointing this out.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 293
something about it. As such, both the present and past scholars of philosophy
have the same moral standing with regard to the failure to address gender-
bias in our canons.
It is the task of a critique, still following Kant, to give appraisals to
well-reasoned claims and to pronounce against those which are grounded on
baseless assumptions. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, philosophy should take
care of itself. And this process of assessment is where the feminist critique of
philosophy has its glory. As Seller said, “we owe a great deal to feminists who
have, through rigorous intellectual effort, revealed that much purportedly
impartial and objective scholarship and science is grounded in male bias.” 9 I
personally think that the feminist critique, which focused on the gendered
elements in the way philosophers do philosophy, helps in the facilitation of
libertarian ideas, which can be traced from Kant—or still quite farther down
the line to Locke. Their commentary against the grounding of philosophical
principles—e.g., Rousseau’s suggested formula for women education—to
baseless assumptions of sex and gender hierarchies is a stroke of ingenuity
and would, in the long run, result in the betterment of philosophical inquiry.
We have many heroines to thank for this. We have Charlotte Witt,
Sandra Harding, Martha Nussbaum, Mary Warnock, Janet Richards, and
Helen Logino to thank. And I can assure you that there are many more people
to thank for their efforts. The task is indeed hard, but someone has to start it.
And, in fact, some already did.
Amidst the glories of the feminist critique of philosophy, there are
also some that drove their critique to the edge. This led to a hyper-critical, or
even a hypocritical, critique. And these eventually led to the ascription of
feminism not as a positive movement that criticizes gender hierarchies and
promotes the rights and liberties of women, but as an ideology that promotes
advocacies that simply serve their particular persuasions.
Feminism with/without Philosophy
It is imperative to make a distinction between the two uses of the term

“feminism” in order to eliminate the stigma of ideology in feminism.
Richards makes a clear distinction between feminism as a rigid doctrine and
feminism as a belief about sexual inequality.10 Of course, the former use is
associated with feminism as an ideology, while the latter is associated with
feminism as a socio-political movement. The importance of this distinction
9 Anne Seller, “Realism versus Relativism: Towards a Politically Adequate
Epistemology,” in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, ed. by Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret

Whitford (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 170.
10 See Janet Richards, The Sceptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1980).

ISSN 1908-7330
was already touched on in the previous discussions. But it will figure again
in our later explorations.
But we need to ask: Why is it necessary to eliminate the stigma of
ideology from feminism? To answer this, still following Richards, we must
point out that if feminism is construed merely in terms of an ideology of a
certain “type of people” (women-type, of course), it will prevent a critical
reassessment of the ideas of feminism by feminists themselves. For accepting
an ideology implies closing down points of inquiry, and since healthy and
open points of inquiry lead to critical reassessment, it follows, therefore, that
feminism construed as an ideology implies nothing but dogmatism.
While dogmatism resists any change in the status quo and feminism,
as a belief about sexual inequality, implies a direct attempt to make changes
in the status quo, then it follows that feminism construed as a belief about
sexual inequality can never be a dogmatist. 11 However, since the use of the
term “feminism” is closely associated with ideology, it would follow that the
very conception of feminism as a belief in sex and gender inequality leads to
a contradiction that will hinder the fulfilment of the socio-political changes
that women, general, want to achieve. This result is inevitable if we are not
careful with interplay of the uses of the term “feminism.”
The importance of making the distinction between the two uses of
the term “feminism” is that amidst the term’s association with ideology, a
greater and more significant issue is at stake, and that is the de-radicalization
of the advocacies of feminism. As I have pointed out, feminism bore out from
the struggle of women to achieve equal rights and liberties. This marks the
start of feminism as a movement driven by the belief that there is something
wrong with the status of women in society. The idea of equal rights for men
and women and the idea of making political upheavals are radical ideas.
However, due to the insistence of some theorists to create deeper philosophical
foundations for the genesis of the struggle of women or the gender
hierarchical model, feminism rose from being a political movement that
promotes women’s rights to being an academic ideology, which focuses more
on intellectual matters that only she and her cohorts could appreciate.
From the fashionable corridors of the academia, we might see a
feminist philosopher in her academic gown discussing in highfaluting
jargons why the word “womyn” is a better label than “women.” 12 Perhaps,
we might also see them (the academic feminists) discussing the ontological
status of social constructs such as sex, gender, and gender roles. Or perhaps,
we might see the elaborate demonstrations by a well-known French feminist
explaining her views on the inadequacy of the bipolarity of the
11 The contrapositive, of course, also follows.

12 Again, my thanks to the referee for this wonderful example.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 295
epistemological concatenations that grilled the hybrid array of Otherness in

the whole warmth of being.
Currie and Kazi drive the point home when they remarked:
… [T]he radical ideas of feminism have been

transformed into an academic debate which no longer
has relevance for women outside the hallowed halls of
institutional life … ideas inspired by feminism have
become separated from feminism as a social movement
and at this point lose their potential for change… [the]
ideas of feminism have been ‘de-radicalized,’
supporting status quo rather than working to
undermine it.13
Bowles and Klein offer a slightly different take on the issue I am

trying to set: “… differences within academic feminism merely reproduce
hierarchies and create new divisions—this time between women.”14 But they
have the same sentiments about too much academic philosophizing by
feminists by pointing out that “…women’s studies may become a new road
to elitism: writing and thinking time for the privileged few, this time for
white, middle-class women.”15 Furthermore, Stanley and Wise make the same
point that “... this ‘special relationship’ prevents the participation of all
feminists in the production of ‘feminism’.” 16
When feminism entered into the realm of academia (and this was
around the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s), it was hoped that they would
make the cause of women more apparent to a new generation. Alas! The case
was different. What happened was feminism developed into an ideology that
needs philosophical grounding. Yearning for a foundation is the battle cry of
these feminists. I am not going to point any finger at whoever is the culprit of
this phenomenon. All I am saying is that feminism did not start out as an
ideology. It started out as a political movement for social change. But from
this, it grew into one.
As it became more and more fascinated with explaining phenomena,
the feminist ideology permutated and mutated into different species. It is
mind blowing to consider that feminism as a theoretical academic endeavour
happened only in the past 50 years. I say the root of all of this is the insistence
13 Currie and Kazi, “Academic Feminism,” 77.

14 Bowles and Klein (1983, 131). Gloria Bowles and Duelli Klein, eds., Theories of
Women’s Studies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 131.
15 Ibid.
16 Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology
(London: Routledge, 1993), 54.

ISSN 1908-7330
of some feminists to present feminism not as a catalyst for socio-political

change, rather, as a body of doctrines about the primacy of anti-essential
matter that permutated into a labyrinth of anomalies. (I’m being ironic here,
of course).
If we try to evaluate the status of feminism as a philosophical
enterprise, we would miss the point of what feminism can offer to the
philosophical gourmet. Feminism offers a critique of philosophy in terms of
the gravity of gender bias. Feminism also raised come curious points in the
field of political philosophy and ethics. These are areas where they can
present their case. I need to emphasize the idea that feminism is not a branch
of philosophy (like metaphysics or epistemology). Nor is it a complete body
of doctrines that we need to take whole sale. (It is not a bible.)
Feminism, rather, is like a nice pair of sunglasses that we need to
wear from time to time in order to see things differently. It is a method in
philosophy that tries to point out that there are some great works by
philosophers which are loaded with gender insensitivity. It tries to let you
see, as Richards did, that there are women who suffer from systematic social
injustices just because they are women.17 The goal of feminism as a
movement, as Currie and Kazi stated, is to eliminate this type of injustice.18
And, of course, this is something which women and men alike should want
to eliminate.
Feminism is a movement that advances the causes of women, a
movement that aims to effect social change in the status quo. But given this,
one might now ask, where and how should feminists advance their aims?
Should it be in the academe? Should it be by becoming philosophers?
A Conclusion: Feminism in the Public Sphere
Consider this dialogue:
A: Where do we effect the changes that feminism advocates?
B: Well, this is easy to answer; of course, we need to effect these

changes in the proper venues.
A: But what are the proper venues?
B: Well, it depends on what changes you would want to effect. If you

want to change some company policies concerning pregnant
17 See Richards, The Sceptical Feminist.

18 See Currie and Kazi, “Academic Feminism.”

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 297
employees, you should see your employer. Now if you want to make
this policy into a law so that all women can benefit, then you should
go to lawmakers.
A: But why should we trust those people? They won’t understand

what a woman feels. They won’t even bother hearing me out. The
only thing left for me is to physically fight for what is rightfully mine.
B: Thousands of years have already passed and we still have not

learned anything. We still opt to fight. Don’t you know that we
already have institutions that can do a pretty good job for our benefit?
A: But are all those people in those institutions really trustworthy?
B: I did not say that. I only said that we have institutions. I don’t even
believe that most people in those institutions are doing their job right.
What I am vouching for is that we have those institutions already.
And we can turn to them to help address our needs.
A: Women should rule those institutions. Unless women do so, we

cannot effect the changes that we want.
B: Well, I don’t know about that.
Feminism is a movement geared towards the emancipation of

women from oppression due to sex and gender biases. It is a movement that
promotes the welfare and rights of women. But how do we go about creating
a climate of social cohesion among men and women.
MacKinnon points out that women cannot wait until all the spheres
that procure social change are in their control. “If women are to restrict our
demands for change in the spheres we can trust, spheres we already control,
there will not be any.”19 To effect social change, especially the changes
feminism wants, the proper venue would be the courts of law, the house of
congress, or even the streets.
The right venue for feminists to address their concerns might not be
in the hallowed walls of the academe where they will likely be tainted with
the stigma of ideological speculation. If feminism is still considering itself as
a movement geared towards creating a just and liberal society where women
have equal rights and opportunities, then perhaps the public sphere is where
19 Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 228.

ISSN 1908-7330
these demands are worth presenting. The openness of discussion in such a

venue results in positive action (or inaction, depending on the policy being
discussed). If results are what we are after as feminists, we need policies. And
since policies can only be achieved in the proper forums, it is imperative for
feminist proponents (be they be men or women) to go back to the streets and
make their hands dirty.
But there are still a lot more to discuss concerning women welfare
aside from the issue of rights and liberties. As Coultas explains:
Modern feminism cannot avoid taking part in {that}

discussion and in the process we will be forced not only
to re-evaluate our own success and failures, but also our
attitude as a movement to the entire spectrum of
political opinions ….20
What is the {that} that Coultas is referring to? There are many
problems besetting a feminist: problems concerning pornography, women
exploitation, abortion, issues on women employment, sexual harassment,
women oppression, rape, violence against women, etc. These issues are not
resolved by setting up foundational theories. These are facts that we need to
combat. We can speculate how to combat them, what methods could be used,
what the implications of these methods will be, or what the implications of
not doing anything about it could be. Yes, we can speculate. But our
speculation should lead to a positive resolution.
If all we are going to talk about are matters proper only for
philosophers, then talk about them. But that is all that can happen: an
exchange of saliva. Yes, this salivating can raise awareness and clarify certain
pertinent issues. That’s what intellectual discussions are for anyway. But if
feminists want change, mere talk is not enough. What are needed are changes
in the socio-political make-up of society. And where can we do this? There
are a lot of venues as I have said. But there is an institution where, in fact, it
has already been done, that is, in civil law.
Civil law, MacKinnon says, is more effective. In a discussion, Jeffries
and MacKinnon narrated how effective civil law is to effect socio-political
change.21 MacKinnon was asked to represent some raped Bosnian and Croat
women in a lawsuit against Radovan Karadzic. The result has been Kadic v
Karadzic, and MacKinnon is very proud of the result of this case because it
set the justice system rolling against sex-slave trade. The victims were
Val Coultas, “Feminists Must Face the Future,” in Feminist Review, 7 (1981), 35.
20
Stuart Jeffries and Catharine MacKinnon, “Are Women Human? An Interview with
21
Catharine MacKinnon,” in The Guardian (12 April 2006),

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/12/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety>.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. JOAQUIN 299
awarded $745M. The money was used to establish an organization that

provides support for victims of sex offenders. These are two forms of civil
relief that actually could make a change in the situation. That they could make
such a difference is the most important thing.
In conclusion, I say again that in order for the ideal of feminism
(taken as a socio-political movement) to have concrete results in effecting
socio-political changes, philosophical systems need not be built. Effecting
socio-political changes happens in a proper forum. That proper forum
happens in the public sphere (e.g., in civil law). However, quoting a reviewer
of MacKinnon’s work, “we must be aware of the limitations of the state and
of the law; the law is not everything, but it is not nothing either.”22 We have
our public institutions where we can raise our concerns about women’s
welfare, rights, and issues. Yes, they are limited in their functions. But let this
not deter us from using them to achieve the ends that we want. That there is
women oppression—due to a baseless premise called gender inequality—is
reason enough to ask for social change in proper forums in the public
sphere.23
Department of Philosophy, De La Salle University-Manila, Philippines
References
Bart, Pauline, Review of Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified:

Discourses on Life and Law, in The American Journal of Sociology, 95:2
(1989).
Bowles, Gloria and Renate Duelli Klein, eds., Theories of Women’s Studies
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).
Coultas, Val. “Feminists Must Face the Future,” in Feminist Review, 7 (1981).
Currie, Dawn and Hamida Kazi, “Academic Feminism and the Process of
De-Radicalization: Re-Examining the Issues,” in Feminist Review, 25
(1987).
22 Pauline Bart, Review of Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on
Life and Law, in The American Journal of Sociology, 95:2 (1989), 538-539.
23 A version of this paper was delivered in 2009 at the Ethics Conference held at
Adamson University, Manila, Philippines. I would like to thank the organizers and participants
of that conference for their helpful comments. My special thanks to my wife, Maria Georgina
Joaquin, and my colleagues, Robert James Boyles, Mark Anthony Dacela, and Napoleon
Mabaquiao for their constant support and encouragement. I acknowledge Noelle Leslie dela
Cruz for the discussions that helped form the basis of this paper, and the anonymous referee for
some very useful suggestions.

ISSN 1908-7330
Griffiths, Morwenna and Margaret Whitford, eds., Feminist Perspectives in

Philosophy (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Jeffries, Stuart and Catharine MacKinnon, “Are Women Human? An
Interview with Catharine MacKinnon,” in The Guardian (12 April
2006),
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/12/gender.politicsp
hilosophyandsociety>.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by J.M.D. Meiklejohn, rev.
and expanded by Vassilis Politis (London: Everyman, 1993).
MacKinnon, Catharine, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
Misciagno, Patrica, Rethinking Feminist Identification: The Case for De Facto
Feminism (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1997).
Rhode, Deborah, “Feminist Critical Theories,” in Stanford Law Review, 42:3
(1990).
Richards, Janet, The Sceptical Feminist: A Philosophical Enquiry
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980).
Schnittker, Jason, Jeremy Freese, and Brian Powel, “Who are Feminists and
What Do They Believe? The Role of Generations,” in American
Sociological Review, 68:4 (2003).
Seller, Anne, “Realism versus Relativism: Towards a Politically Adequate
Epistemology,” in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, ed. by
Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford (Indianapolis, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1988).
Stanley, Liz and Sue Wise, Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and
Epistemology (London: Routledge, 1993).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Aristotelian Categorical Syllogism:

An Alternative Pedagogical Approach
Jiolito L. Benitez
Abstract: This paper deals with the rules of Aristotelian categorical

syllogism as presented in various logic textbooks by Filipino authors.
These textbooks allot a chapter or a considerable space for a discussion
on categorical syllogisms. However, the presentations exhibit marked
discrepancies and differences, which primarily involve the number of
rules stipulated, rule number sequence, and the rule statements. From
the viewpoint of instruction, in which diversity of learning sources and
independent learning are desired, the above-indicated differences and
discrepancies not only expose learners, particularly the beginners, to
unnecessary difficulty and confusion but also stifle their ability and
opportunity for an effective and independent learning. To address this
problem, this paper offers a distinct alternative pedagogical approach
to Aristotle’s categorical syllogism. The approach, which employs
specialized symbols, not only eliminates the need to indicate the rule
statement number and sequence but also reconciles the discrepancies
and differences found in the textbooks. It also provides a pragmatic
strategy for teaching and learning the rules of valid categorical
syllogisms more efficiently and effectively.
Keywords: pedagogical approach, logic, Aristotelian categorical

syllogism, rule statement
Introduction
T
his study offers an alternative pedagogical approach to Aristotle’s
categorical syllogism. This approach entails the use of specialized
abbreviations, which eliminate the need for the provision of rule
numbers as well as the numerical sequence of the rules governing valid
categorical syllogisms.
© 2016 Jiolito L. Benitez

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/benitez_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
302 AN APPROACH TO ARISTOTELIAN CATEGORICAL SYLLOGISM
Aristotle’s immortal works in the field of logic1 are collectively called

the Organon, which comprises six texts, namely, Prior Analytics, Posterior
Analytics, Topics, Categories, On Interpretation, and Sophistical Refutations.2 The
bedrock of Aristotelian logic is the theory of syllogism, which is found in Prior
Analytics.3 For many centuries, Aristotelian logic was taught in universities
and colleges around the world.4 However, Aristotelian logic has been
gradually eclipsed by the emergence of modern symbolic logic.5
In the Philippine tertiary education, logic is part of the general
education courses and is now offered in most undergraduate degree program
curricula. However, with the implementation of the K-12 curriculum, logic as
a course is offered in the senior high school level. Inasmuch as most
philosophy and logic professors in the country have been educated in
Catholic seminaries, Aristotelian logic generally forms part of the logic
courses.6 This is evident in the inclusion of the categorical syllogism in most
logic textbooks by Filipino authors. There are more or less a hundred logic
text-books by Filipino authors available in bookstores and libraries.
Generally, all of these books apportion a chapter or a considerable space for
the discussion on Aristotelian categorical syllogism.
A categorical syllogism is a form of a deductive argument consisting
of three statements—the major and minor premises and the conclusion—
which contain three terms.7 In the presentation and discussion of the rules
governing valid categorical syllogisms, authors assign rule numbers to specific
rule statements, such as, rule # 1 “There shall be three and only three terms in a
categorical syllogism.” However, authors vary significantly not only in the
assignment of rule numbers but also in the counting of the rules.
Logic Textbooks Selection
For the purpose of shaping a narrative of the problem, a selection of

logic textbooks by Filipino authors is made. While the selection is arbitrary,
1 Alfredo Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
186.
2 Lawrence Krader and Cyril Levitt, eds., Noetics: The Science of Knowing and Thinking
(New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2010), 352.

3 Dov M. Gabbay and John Woods, eds., Greek, Indian, and Arabic Logic, Vol. 1 of
Handbook of the History of Logic (California: Elsevier, B.V., 2004), 34.

4 Veronica L. Borbon, et al., College Science, Technology and Society (Quezon City: Rex
Bookstore, 2000), 74.

5 Henry A. Virkler, A Christian’s Guide to Critical Thinking (Oregon: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 2006), 181.

6 Most of the members of the philosophical associations in the Philippines studied in
Catholic owned institutions where Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy is taught.

7 Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel, An Introduction to Logic, ed. by John Corcoran
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), 77.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 303
it should not necessarily affect the value and validity of the findings and
conclusion as this representation should be enough to establish the existence
of the problem this paper commits to address. Further, each of the 20 Filipino-
authored books that are part of the selection, allocates a chapter or some
considerable space for the discussion on Aristotle’s categorical syllogism.
Below is a tabular presentation of the authors, book titles, year of publication,
and number of rules for a valid categorical syllogism.
Number of
Authors Titles Rules
Agapay, R. Logic: The Essentials of Deductive 8
Reasoning (1991)
Ardales, V. Logic Made Easy (1998) 10
Babor, E. Logic: The Philosophical Discipline of 8
Correct Thinking (2003)
Bauzon, P. Logic for Filipinos (1994) 8
Calandria, R. The Art of Logic: Postscript to Classical 8
and Symbolic Logic (1997)
Ceniza, C. Elementary Logic (1994) 9
Cruz, C. Introduction to Logic (1995) 10
Fronda, E. S. Reason for the Reasonable: An 6
Introduction to Logic and Critical
Thinking (2005)
Gualdo, R. Logic: Basics of Correct Reasoning (2000) 8
Jayme, V. Introduction to Logic (2002) 9
Joven, J. Teaching and Learning Logic (2006) 8
Maboloc and Pascual Elements of Logic: An Integrative 10
Approach (2012)
Malitao, A. Essential Logic (2003) 10
Martinez, S. Logic: A Textbook in Deductive Reasoning 3
(1980)
Meer, T. Basics of Logic (2004) 9
Montemayor, F. Harmony of Logic (2004) 8
Piñon, M. Fundamental Logic: The Science of Correct 8
Thinking /
Logic Primer (1973/1979)
Tabotabo et al. Introduction to Logic: A modular 7
Approach (2008)
Tan, A. A First Course: Logic (2003) 6
Timbreza, F. Logic Made Simple for Filipinos (2001) 8
Table 1: Logic Textbooks and Categorical Syllogism for Number of Rules

ISSN 1908-7330
The table above shows a general picture of the problem, namely, a)

dissimilar ways of counting the rules; b) dissimilar assignments of numbers
to rule statements; and c) discrepancies in the rules involved. Specifically, the
authors variably fix the number of rules from three, six, seven, eight, nine to
ten. Of the 20, nine authors specify eight rules; four authors enumerate ten
rules; three authors fix the rules at nine; one author propounds seven rules;
two authors count six rules; and one author limits the rules to three.
Among the nine authors who identified eight rules, Timbreza 8 and
Agapay share generally the same rule number sequence and the same rule
9
statements. The minimal difference between them is the manner by which the
rule statements are expressed or worded. Notably, Agapay’s presentation is
more concise and direct to the point compared with Timbreza’s.
Timberza’s Eight General Agapay’s Rules of Syllogism

Syllogistic Rules
I. Rules on the Terms a) Rules on Terms:
1. There must be only three terms in 1. There must be three and only three
the syllogism. terms
2. Neither the major nor the minor 2. No term must have greater
term may be distributed in the extension in the conclusion than it
conclusion, if I is undistributed in has in the premises.
the premises. 3. The Middle Term must not appear
3. The middle term must not appear in the conclusion.
in the conclusion. 4. The Middle Term must be
4. The middle term must be universal at least once.
distributed at least once in the b) Rules on Propositions:
premises. 5. Two affirmative premises yield an
II. Rules on the Premises affirmative conclusion.
5. Only an affirmative conclusion can 6. Two negative premises yield no
be drawn from two affirmative conclusion.
premises. 7. When one premise is negative, the
6. No conclusion can be drawn from conclusion must be negative; when
two negative premises. one premise is particular, the
7. If one premise is particular, the conclusion must be particular.
conclusion must also be particular; 8. When both premises are particular,
if one premise is negative, the there is no conclusion.
conclusion must also be negative.
8. No conclusion can be drawn from
two particular premises.
8 Florentino Timbreza, Logic Made Simple for Filipinos (Quezon City: Phoenix
Publishing, 2001), 85-98.

9 Ramon Agapay, Logic: The Essentials of Deductive Reasoning (Mandaluyong: National
Bookstore, 1991), 111-121.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 305
Bauzon,10 Piñon,11 Gualdo,12 Babor,13 Montemayor,14 Calandria,15 and

Joven16 indicate practically the same rule statements as Agapay’s and Timberza’s,
varying only in the numerical order of the rules. Moreover, Babor and Calandria
exhibit marked differences. Babor provides a separate rule on the composition
of “three categorical propositions.” This provision may be unnecessary as
Aristotle’s categorical syllogism fundamentally requires three categorical
statements, namely, the major and minor premises and the conclusion.
Calandria’s stipulation for rule # 2 - “Each term must appear only twice in the categorical
syllogism”17- may also be unnecessary as this can be integrated in the elaboration
of his rule # 1 on the three-term requirement. Nonetheless, these do not in any
way imply that Babor and Calandria or any of the authors mentioned above are
mistaken since they have the liberty to employ any method they deem best suited
to their purpose.
Ardales,18 Cruz,19 Maboloc and Pascual,20 and Malitao21 enumerate ten
rules for valid categorical syllogisms. Of the four, Malitao and Cruz observe the
same numerical sequence and essentially the same corresponding rule statements
except for rule # 10. On the one hand, Malitao specifies in rule # 10 that “The
subject term of the premise must be asserted in the conclusion.”22
Cruz, on the other hand, signifies in rule # 10 that “The subject of the
conclusion must be found in the minor premise.”23 While expressed variably,
in the final analysis, rule # 10 for both authors denotes the same principle.
Maboloc and Pascual, and Ardales share essentially the same rules with Cruz
and Malitao except for a few considerable disparities in the numerical order
of the rules.
10 Prisciliano Bauzon, Logic for Filipinos (Manila: National Bookstore, 1994), 132-141.
11 Manuel Piñon, Fundamental Logic (Quezon City: Rex Bookstore, 1973) 139-162.
12 Rosendo Gualdo, Logic: The Basics of Correct Reasoning (Valenzuela: Mutya
Publishing, 2000), 60-69.

13 Eddie Babor, Logic: The Philosophical Discipline of Correct Thinking (Quezon City: C &
E Publishing, Inc., 2006), 107-122.

14 Felix Montemayor, Harmony of Logic (Manila: National Bookstore, 1983), 72-84.
15 Rene Calandria, The Art of Logic: Postscript to Classical and Symbolic Logic (Quezon
City: Grandwater Publications and Research Corporation, 1997), 81-95.

16 Jose Joven, Teaching and Learning Logic (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 2006), 127-131.
17 Calandria, The Art of Logic, 83.
18 Venancio Ardales, Logic Made Easy (Iloilo City: Concerns, Inc., 1996), 82-90.
19 Corazon Cruz, Introduction to Logic, 4th ed. (Manila: National Bookstore, 1995), 239-
250.
20 Christopher Ryan Maboloc and Edgar Pascua II, Elements of Logic: An Integrative
Approach, rev. ed. (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 2012), 69-84.

21 Arnel Malitao, Essential Logic (Manila: National Bookstore, 2003), 104-118.
22 Ibid., 118.
23 Cruz, Introduction to Logic, 250.

ISSN 1908-7330
Cruz’s General Rules of the Malitao’s Ten Rules of

Categorical Syllogism Categorical Syllogism
1. There must be only three terms in 1. A syllogism must contain the
the syllogism; the major term, the major, the minor, and the middle
minor term, and the middle term. term.
2. The three major terms should be 2. The middle term should not appear
arranged in the following manner: in the conclusion.
the major term is the predicate of 3. The quantities of both the major
the conclusion and is found in the and the minor terms should not be
major premise; the minor term is extended in the conclusion if they
the subject of the conclusion and is are particular in the premises.
found in the minor premise; and 4. The quantity of the middle term
the middle term is found in the two must be universal at least once.
premises but not in the conclusion. 5. The conclusion must be affirmative
3. The major and minor terms should if both premises are affirmative.
be universal in the conclusion only 6. The conclusion must be negative if
if they are universal in the one of the premises is negative.
premises. 7. The two premises must not be both
4. The middle term must be universal negative or not equivalently
at least once. affirmative. (emphasis mine)
5. If the two premises are affirmative, 8. One premise must be universal.
the conclusion must be affirmative. 9. The conclusion should be
6. If one premise is negative and the particular if one premise is
other is affirmative, the conclusion particular.
must be negative. 10. The subject term in the premise
7. The conclusion is invalid whenever must be asserted in the conclusion.
the premises are both negative and
not equivalently affirmative.
8. One premise at least must be
universal
9. If one premise is particular, the
conclusion must be particular.
10. The subject of the conclusion must
be found in the minor premise.
Malitao’s rule # 7―“The two premises must not be both negative or

not equivalently affirmative”―may have been a case of oversight. 24 To say
“not equivalently affirmative” implies “to be both negative,” which is what
exactly this rule prohibits. The rule should have been rendered “or not
equivalently negative.”
Jayme’s Rules for a Valid Categorical Syllogism

1. There must be three and only three terms―the major, minor, and middle terms.
2. The middle term does not occur in the conclusion.
24 Malitao, Essential Logic, 114.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 307
3. The major or minor term may not be universal (distributed) in the conclusion if
it is only particular (undistributed) in the premises.
4. The middle term must be used as a universal (distributed) term at least once.
5. Two negative premises yield no valid conclusion.
6. If both premises are affirmative, then the conclusion must be affirmative.
7. If one premise is negative premise, the conclusion must be negative.
8. If one premise is particular, the conclusion must be particular.
9. From two particular premises no valid conclusion can be drawn.
Meer et al.,25 Jayme,26 and Ceniza27 limit the rules of categorical

syllogism to nine. The three show no difference in the rules involved except
in the sequence. With very few exceptions, these rules are typically included
in all 20 textbooks. Jayme’s Rules for a Valid Categorical Syllogism typifies those
of Meer et al. and Ceniza.
Fronda28 and Tan29 appropriate six rules to evaluate the validity of a
categorical syllogism. Fronda’s first three rules include: (1) three-term
requirement, (2) distribution of the middle term, and (3) distribution of the
major and minor terms. His exposition on the fourth, fifth, and sixth rules is
rather sketchy as he only presents arguments that he says violate those rules
without specifying in detail what these rules are. Tan’s (2003) six rules consist
of (1) three-term requirement, (2) middle term distribution, (3) distribution of
the major and minor terms in the premises and the conclusion, (4) prohibition
of two negative premises, (5) negative conclusion from negative premise, and
(6) universal conclusion from universal premises.
Tabotabo et al.30 provide for seven rules, which comprise the
following: (1) three-terms rule (2) univocal use of each term, (3) middle term
not appearing in the conclusion, (4) distribution of the middle term, (5)
prohibition of two negative premises, (6) prohibition of two particular
premises, and (7) non-extension of major and minor terms in the conclusion.
From the selection, Martinez31 stipulates the least number of rules—only
three. The three include (1) distribution of the middle term, (2) non-extension
25 Thelma Q. Meer, Lou S. Hualda, and Lamberto M. Bamba, Basics of Logic (Manila:
Trinitas Publishing, 2004), 101-105.
26 Virginia Jayme, Introduction to Logic (Cebu: ABC Publications, 2002), 97-104.
27 Claro Ceniza, Elementary Logic, 3rd ed. (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1994),
145-171.
28 Earl Stanley Fronda, Reason for the Reasonable: An Introduction to Logic and Critical
Thinking (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 2005), 39-46.

29 Armando Tan, A First Course: Logic (Dumaguete City: Siliman University Press,
2003), 119-145.
30 Claudio Tabotabo et al, Introduction to Logic: A Modular Approach (Quezon City: C &
E Publishing, 2008), 90-101. Claudio Tabotabo, Ronan Estoque, and Ronald Corpuz, Introduction
to Logic: A Modular Approach (Quezon City: C & E Publishing, 2008), 90-101.
31 Salvador Martinez, Logic: A Textbook in Deductive Reasoning, 2nd ed. (Quezon City:
Phoenix Publishing House, 1980), 147-153.

ISSN 1908-7330
of the major and minor terms in the conclusion, and (3) coherence of the
quality (negative) of conclusion with the quality (negative) of the premise. It
would be impossible to determine the validity of a categorical syllogism
using Martinez’s rules alone.
The Problem
The review of selected logic textbooks shows marked disparities and

differences among the authors in terms of the number of rules governing
valid categorical syllogisms as well as the assignment of rule numbers to rule
statements. The crux of the matter is not about some authors having less than
enough number of rules, or others having just enough, or still others having
more. From the viewpoint of logic, the evident variance and disparities in the
presentation are hardly an issue. The rules of validity are not sacrificed.
However, from the pedagogical vantage point, the discrepancies pose
adverse effects particularly on the part of the learners. This state of affairs not
only leads to unnecessary confusion and difficulty but also potentially stifles
the learner’s ability and opportunity for effective and independent learning.
In a logic class where the professor and students take recourse to
different logic textbooks (diversified sources of learning), the professor
spends more time and effort trying to reconcile and resolve the
aforementioned disparities and the students experience needless confusion
and difficulty. The possible effect will be inactive or passive learning as the
students tend to rely on the professor’s presentation or adopt the professor’s
text, thereby precluding diverse opportunities and sources of learning.
To address this problem, this paper offers an alternative pedagogical
approach to the teaching and learning of the rules of categorical syllogism.
Abbreviations-based Approach to Categorical Syllogism
This approach utilizes specialized abbreviations in the teaching and

learning of the rules governing valid categorical syllogisms. As such, the
requirement for numerical order and corresponding rule statements is
eliminated. To construct these abbreviations, it is first necessary to lay down
the rules for categorical syllogism.
As can be gleaned from the review of the selections above, authors
generally leave out or lump together distinct rules into one rule statement.
Taking into considerations those rules that are left out and those that are
lumped together in a single rule statement, a summary of rules for valid
categorical syllogisms is thus derived:

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 309
 Three-term rule
 Non-appearance of the middle term in the conclusion
 Distribution of the middle term
 Non-extension of the major term in the conclusion
 Non-extension of the minor term in the conclusion
 Affirmative conclusion if premises are affirmative
 No two negative premises
 No two particular premises
 Negative premise yields negative conclusion
 Particular premise yields particular conclusion
Based on the summary of rules, specialized abbreviations are

devised. For this purpose, an abbreviation may be an acronym or an initial.
Each rule is assigned an acronym or initial. The acronyms or initials are
creatively crafted such that they are immediately related to the rule
statement. Each acronym or initial is then given a definition or meaning,
which is subsequently linked to the full statement of the rule as shown in
Table 2. The first column consists of acronyms and initials; the second column
stipulates the meaning or definition of each acronym or initial; and the third
column reflects the full statement of the rule.
Acronyms/ Definition/
Initials Meaning Rule Statements
There must be three and only three
terms—the major, middle, and minor
TTT Three and only Three terms—in a categorical syllogism, each
Terms of which is used twice in exactly the
same sense in different statements.
No Middle Term (M) in The middle term (M) appears once in
NMC the Conclusion each premise and must not appear in
the conclusion.
Do not Extend the Major The major term (P) must not be
DEP Term (P) distributed (extended) in the
conclusion if it is undistributed in the
premise.
Do not Extend the Minor The minor term (S) must not be
DES Term (S) distributed (extended) in the
conclusion if it is undistributed in the
premise.
Middle Term (M) The middle term (M) must be
MDO Distributed at least Once distributed at least once.
Affirmative Premises, If both premises are affirmative, the
APAC Affirmative Conclusion conclusion must also be affirmative.

ISSN 1908-7330
Two negative premises yield no valid

NTNP No Two Negative conclusion; at least one premise must
Premises be affirmative.
Negative Premise, If either premise is negative, the
NPNC Negative Conclusion conclusion must likewise be negative.
Particular Premise, If either premise is particular, the
PPPC Particular Conclusion conclusion must likewise be
particular.
No Two Particular Two particular premises yield no valid
NTPP Premises conclusion; at least one premise must
be universal.
Table 2: Acronyms/initials, definition/meaning and

rule statements of a categorical syllogism
The order by which the rules are presented is arbitrary. This system
does not require any specific numerical sequence nor does it need a rule
number and rule statement correspondence. The use of acronyms and initials
is pragmatic and efficient so that it greatly reduces the time, space, and effort
required in teaching and learning. Thus, instead of stating rule # 5 “The
middle terms must be distributed at least once,” all the professor and the
learner need is to refer to MDO which stands for “Middle term “M”
Distributed at least Once.” Moreover, in terms of committing the rules to
memory, the learner need not memorize the rule numbers and their
corresponding rule statements. Instead, he/she needs only to memorize ten
acronyms or initials which already contain ideas of the rules in them.
This approach makes teaching and learning categorical syllogisms
simple, fast, and easy. Moreover, this approach serves as a platform that
renders all the disparities in the aforementioned logic textbooks intelligible.
With minimal time and effort, the students are able to master the rules faster
and easier. If students engage this approach first, they are expected to
comprehend varied presentations of the rules of categorical syllogisms
without unnecessary difficulty and confusion. Students who use different
logic textbooks can easily relate to the abbreviations and find a new and
pragmatic way of learning.
A sample learning assessment practice on categorical syllogisms is
presented in Table 3. This exercise calls for an application of the
abbreviations-based approach. This is to show that the approach makes
learning simple, fast, and easy.

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 311
DIRECTIONS: Evaluate each of the following arguments. Write “V” if the

argument is valid; if the argument is invalid, write “I” and indicate the
abbreviation of each rule violated.
Valid RULES VIOLATED
CATEGORICAL SYLLOGISMS or [TTT, NMC, DEP, DES,
Invalid MDO, APAC, NTNP,
NPNC, PPPC, NTPP]
1. Animals are mammals.
Horses are mammals. Invalid MDO, PPPC
Therefore, horses are animals.
2. Butterflies are trees.
Stones are butterflies. Valid
Therefore, stones are trees.
3. Filipinos are not friendly.
Italians are not friendly. Invalid DEP, DES, NTNP,
Therefore, Italians are not Filipinos. NTPP, PPPC
4. No thieves are honest.
Some professionals are honest. Valid
So, some professionals are not thieves.
5. Some celebrities are athletes.
All NBA players are athletes. Invalid MDO, PPPC
Therefore, all NBA players are celebrities.
Table 3: Learning Assessment on Categorical Syllogism
Syllogism # 1. The statement “Animals are mammals” does not have

a subject term quantifier but analysis shows that the statement is particular
(I) since only some but not all animals are mammals. Since this premise is
particular, the PPPC (Particular Premise, Particular Conclusion) rule applies.
Since the conclusion is a universal statement, the PPPC rule is violated.
Moreover, the middle term “mammals” is undistributed in both premises,
hence, a violation of MDO (Middle term Distributed at least Once). Ergo, the
argument is invalid.
Syllogism # 2. The premise “Butterflies are trees” does not have a
subject term quantifier, but it is obvious that it is a universal affirmative (A).
It is false to say that all butterflies are trees. In fact, all butterflies are not trees.
Hence, the subject term must be taken as a universal since it includes the
entire class of butterflies. The same analysis applies to the statements “Stones
are butterflies” and “Therefore, stones are trees.” The mood and figure of the
argument is AAA1 and it is a valid form of argument.
Syllogism # 3. The quantity of the term “Filipinos” in the premise is
particular because it is logical to presume that only some Filipinos are not
friendly. To view it as a universal is logically difficult since it demands proof
that all Filipinos are not friendly. However, the quantity of the term

ISSN 1908-7330
“Filipinos” in the conclusion is universal by virtue of a negative quality of the

copula. Thus, the DEP (Do not Extend the Major Term “P”) rule is violated.
The same case applies to the quantity of the minor term “Italians.” So, the
DES (Do not Extend the Minor Term “S”) rule is also violated. Moreover,
both premises are negative and particular so that the NTNP (No Two
Negative Premises) and NTPP (No Two Particular Premises) rules are also
violated. Lastly, since the conclusion is a universal statement, the PPPC
(Particular Premise, Particular Conclusion) rule is likewise violated. Hence,
the argument is flawed.
Syllogism # 4. The syllogistic form is (EIO2). This is a valid argument.
Syllogism # 5. The middle term “athletes” is undistributed in both
premises and thus violates the MDO rule. Also, since one of the premises is
particular, the conclusion, which is a universal, violates the PPPC rule.
As shown above, the use of acronyms or initials, wherein meanings
directly denote the essence of the rules, is an efficient and effective way of
evaluating categorical syllogisms. Moreover, the differences in presentation
of the rules of categorical syllogisms by different authors are reconciled, thus,
effectively dispelling unnecessary confusion and difficulty.
Conclusion
The selection of logic textbooks shows evident discrepancies and

disparities in the stipulation of the number of rules as well as in the
assignment of rule numbers to corresponding rule statements. This situation
creates adverse pedagogical effects in both teaching and learning the rules for
valid categorical syllogism. Moreover, this problem stifles the students’
ability and opportunity for effective and independent learning using
diversified learning resources. With the adoption of the abbreviations-based
approach, the need for rule numbers and corresponding rule statements is
eliminated. Moreover, the approach not only significantly reduces the time,
space, and effort requirements in teaching and learning the rules governing
valid categorical syllogism, but also serves as a platform whereby the
aforementioned inconsistencies are resolved and rendered intelligible.
Hence, the abbreviations-based approach is pragmatic, efficient, and
effective.
Social Sciences Department, Cebu Normal University, Philippines
References
Agapay, Ramong, Logic: The Essentials of Deductive Reasoning (Mandaluyong:

National Bookstore, 1991).

ISSN 1908-7330
J. BENITEZ 313
Ardales, Vinancio, Logic Made Easy (Iloilo City: Concerns, Inc., 1996).
Babor, Eddie, Logic: The Philosophical Discipline of Correct Thinking (Quezon
City: C & E Publishing, Inc., 2003).
Bauzon, Prisciliano, Logic for Filipinos (Manila: National Bookstore,1994).
Borbon, Veronica, et al., College Science, Technology and Society (Quezon City:
Rex Bookstore, 2000).
Calandria, Rene, The Art of Logic Postscript to Classical and Symbolic Logic
(Quezon City: Grandwater Publications and Research Corporation,
1997).
Ceniza, Claro, Elementary Logic, 3rd ed. (Manila: De La Salle University Press,
1994).
Cohen, Morris and Ernest Nagel, An Introduction to Logic, ed. by John
Corcoran (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993).
Cruz, Corazon, Introduction to Logic, 4th ed. (Manila: National Bookstore,
1995).
Ferrarin, Alfredo, Hegel and Aristotle (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
Fronda, Earl Stanley, Reason for the Reasonable: An Introduction to Logic and
Critical Thinking (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 2005).
Gabbay, Dov and John Woods, eds., Greek, Indian, and Arabic Logic, Vol. 1 of
Handbook of the History of Logic (California: Elsevier B.V., 2004).
Gualdo, Rosendo, Logic: The Basics of Correct Reasoning (Valenzuela: Mutya
Jayme, Virginia, Introduction to Logic (Cebu: ABC Publications, 2002).
Joven, Jose, Teaching and Learning Logic (Manila: Rex Bookstore, 2006).
Krader, Lawrence and Cyril Levitt, eds., Noetics: The Science of Thinking and
Knowing (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2010).
Malitao, Arnel, Essential Logic (Manila: National Book Store, 2003).
Maboloc, Christopher Ryan and Edgar Pascua III, Elements of Logic: An
Integrative Approach, revised ed. (Manila: Rex Book Store, 2012).
Meer, Thelma Q., Lou S. Hualda, and Lamberto M. Bamba, Basics of Logic
(Manila: Trinitas Publishing, 2004).
Martinez, Salvador, Logic: A Textbook in Deductive Reasoning, 2nd ed. (Quezon
City: Phoenix Publishing House, 1980).
Montemayor, Felix, Harmony of Logic (Manila: National Bookstore, 1983).
Piñon, Manuel, Fundamentals of Logic (Quezon City: Rex Bookstore, 1973).
___________, Logic Primer (Quezon City: Pub. Printing Press. 1979).
Tabotabo, Claudio, Ronan Estoque, Ronald Corpuz, Introduction to Logic: A
Modular Approach (Quezon City: C & E Publishing, 2008).
Tan, Armando, A First Course: Logic (Dumaguete City: Siliman University
Press, 2003).

ISSN 1908-7330
Timbreza, Florentino, Logic Made Simple for Filipinos (Quezon City: Phoenix
Publishing, 2001).
Virkler, Henry A., A Christian’s Guide to Critical Thinking (Oregon: Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 2006).

ISSN 1908-7330
Article
Critical Rethinking of Critical Thinking:

A Contribution of Critical Pedagogy in
Facing the Challenges of K+12
Franz Giuseppe F. Cortez
Abstract: This paper argues that the tradition of Critical Pedagogy can
deepen and sharpen our understanding of critical thinking as one of
the manifest aims of the new Philippine educational system (K+12
system). Thus, it is a critical rethinking of critical thinking. The paper
discusses first Critical Pedagogy. It further explains critical thinking
as one of the manifest aims of education. Then, it reveals the
underlying principle of this dominant understanding of critical
thinking. Using the perspectives of Critical Pedagogy, the paper
explains that critical thinking cannot be restricted to a one-dimensional
meaning of simply being a set of logical and cognitive skills. Inherent
to critical thinking is its political and social dimension.
Keywords: critical pedagogy, critical thinking, critical theory, K+12 in

Philippine education
Introduction
I
n a conference sponsored by The Philosophical Association of the Philippines,
one of the questions that was addressed is this: “What updates or
upgrades to philosophical pedagogy, in whatever educational level, may
be considered, formulated and implemented, given K+12 and the new
General Education Curriculum?”1 Through this paper, I participate in
answering this question. My direct response is this: In updating our
philosophical pedagogy, we may also consider what the tradition of Critical
Pedagogy can contribute. Thus, I state my main problem as: How can Critical
Pedagogy participate in a meaningful rethinking of our educational
1 The Conference is entitled “Philosophy and the Challenges of K+12.” It was held on
1-4 April, 2014 at San Pablo Seminary, Baguio City, Philippines. This article is a revised version
of a paper presented on the said conference.
© 2016 Franz Giuseppe F. Cortez

http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/cortez_june2016.pdf
ISSN 1908-7330
316 CRITICAL [RE]THINKING
philosophy following the recent development in the Philippine educational

system? I propose the following thesis statement: Critical pedagogy can
deepen and sharpen our understanding of critical thinking as one of the
manifest aims of the new Philippine educational system. In other words,
through the lens of Critical Pedagogy, we can critically rethink critical
thinking. The idea is not to offer a solution to an admittedly distressing
problem in Philippine education. Rather, it is to invite a persistent and
rigorous reflection on the character and inherent potentiality of a concept
(that is, critical thinking) to emasculate on the one hand or to empower on the
other hand.
To answer my main problem and to defend my thesis statement, I
start with a discussion of Critical Pedagogy. I proceed to explain critical
thinking as one of the manifest aims of education. Then, I show how the
concept of “critical thinking” can be critically rethought. The last section is
the concluding remarks.
What is Critical Pedagogy?
Some 30 years ago, in a monumental book entitled Theory and

Resistance in Education (1983), the North American educator Henry A. Giroux
coined the term “critical pedagogy” to refer primarily to an educational
theory that is not just an obsession with criticizing the school as a production
and reproduction mechanism, but is also a catalyst for opposition, resistance
and change.2 Five years after, in his 1988 publication of Teachers as
Intellectuals, Giroux used the terms “language of critique” and “language of
possibility” to refer to the twin task of critical pedagogy—on the one hand, to
problematize the school as a hegemonizing and homogenizing domain and
on the other hand, to posit the school as a potential counter-hegemonic and
counter-homogenizing force.3 He singles out Paulo Freire, a Brazilian
educator and philosopher, as responsible for continuously highlighting this
Janus-faced character of the school.
As the tradition of Critical Pedagogy evolves, it has become
heterogeneous. Thus, Critical Pedagogy is not a monolithic discourse.
According to Patricia Bizzell, a critical pedagogy scholar, critical pedagogy
“should be taken to refer to a variety of practices, not one orthodox
methodology.”4 Hence, rather than label it as Critical Pedagogy, we can talk
2 Henry A. Giroux, Theories and Resistance: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition
(Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 1983, c2001).

3 Henry A. Giroux, Teachers as Intellectuals: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Learning
(Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1988), 108ff.

4 Patricia Bizzell, “Power, Authority and Critical Pedagogy,” in Journal of Basic Writing,
10:2 (1991), 55.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 317
of various critical pedagogies. But even if there are critical pedagogies, we

can still find some commonalities in their discourses. According to Monica
McLean in her book Pedagogy and the University (2006), the common features
of Critical Pedagogy are “critique of current conditions; a focus on
transformation and emancipation; emphasis on the value-laden and political
nature of education; and interest in culture, identity and subjectivity.”5
Critical Pedagogy is an embodiment in the educative setting of the
Frankfurt School critical theory. In other words, Critical Pedagogy is one
among many applications and implementations of Critical Theory in the
realm of educational process and theorizing. Giroux acknowledged the
extensive contributions of the Frankfurt School critical theorists, such as,
Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse in laying the
foundations of Critical Pedagogy.6 Joe Kincheloe talks about how Critical
Theory “forms as one of the foundations of Critical Pedagogy.”7 P. Lather
stresses that Critical Pedagogy is “a combination of Frankfurt School critical
theory, Gramscian counter-hegemonic practice and Freirean
conscientization.”8 J.M. Gore similarly suggests that this discourse is
“borrowed from Neo-Marxism, the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School,
and oppositional politics generally.”9
It is significant to mention the tradition of Critical Theory running
through the veins of Critical Pedagogy and soaring over its fields. It is
because inasmuch as the Frankfurt School critical theory was very much
informed by Marxian thoughts, critical pedagogies are also inherently
Marxist pedagogical philosophies and practices. In an essay that documents
various Marxian perspectives on education, Douglas Kellner identifies the
tradition of Critical Pedagogy as a direct legacy of Marxian educational
viewpoints. Kellner suggests that the critical pedagogues’ attempts to
intertwine Marxist concept of class oppression with other contemporary faces
of oppression in the realm of gender, race and culture among others have
provided the promises of expanding and enriching Marxist perspectives.10
5 Monica McLean, Pedagogy and the University: Critical Theory and Practice (New York:

6 Giroux, Theories and Resistance, 7ff.
7 Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy Primer, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing
Inc., 2008), 45.

8 P. Lather, “Post-Critical Pedagogies: A Feminist Reading,” in Feminisms and Critical
Pedagogy, ed. by C. Luke and J.M. Gore (New York: Routledge, 1992), 122. As cited in Stephen
D. Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching (New York: Open
University Press, 2005), 323.
9 J. M. Gore, The Struggle for Pedagogies: Critical and Feminist Discourses as Regimes of
Truth (New York: Routledge, 1993), 109. As cited in Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, 323.
10 Douglas Kellner, “Marxian Perspectives on Educational Philosophy: From Classical
Marxism to Critical Pedagogy,” in University of Los Angeles, California,

ISSN 1908-7330
But Critical Pedagogy does not deify the whole of Marxism. Martin
Jay makes this clear in his Dialectical Imagination (1973) when he says that
“[one] of the essential characteristics of critical theory from its inception had
been a refusal to consider Marxism a closed body of received truths.”11
Stephen Brookfield, a prominent figure in critical adult educational theory
and practice, says that “though critical theory can be conceived as a constant
conversation with Marx, it is not a simple replication of Marxism.”12 For his
part, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, an all-the-way Marxist and whose concept
of hegemony has become a household term for the critical pedagogues, does
not fail to counsel us about the temptation to fall into an idolatrous worship
of Marx and Marxism. He observes rightly that Marxism “tends to become
an ideology in the worst sense of the word, that is to say a dogmatic system
of eternal and absolute truths.”13
One of the important articles of the Black American thinker, Cornel
West, who is considered as a progenitor of critical pedagogy, is fittingly titled
“The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory.” In this article,
which is actually a 1992 dialogue between West and the Hungarian
philosopher Eva L. Corredor, West stresses that “Marxist theory and Marxist
sensibility are both indispensable and inadequate, something to build on but
also something to bring serious critique to bear on.”14 In the same vein of
considering both the relevance and insufficiency of Marx, Freire says that,
“Marx is not a has-been. He continues to be, needing only to be reseen.”15
The critical theorists and the critical pedagogues do not cease to reflect on the
potentials and limits of Marxist thoughts and approaches.
Words such as these are meant to respond to what Peter McLaren
would call as the students’ and teachers’ “knee-jerk Marxophobia.”16
Brookfield explains McLaren’s understanding of this irrational fear of the
bearded man in these words: “Marxophobia holds that even to mention Marx
is to engage in un-American behavior and by implication to support the
<https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/marxianperspectivesoneducation.pdf>, 24
March 2012.
11 Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute
of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 254.
12 Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, 19.
13 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare and G. N.
Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 407.

14 Cornel West, “The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory,” in The
Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 230.
15 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. by Robert R.
Barr (New York: The Continuum Publishing Corporation, 1995), 88.

16 Peter McLaren, Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations
of Education, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1997), 172.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 319
genocide and repression exhibited by totalitarian communist regimes

throughout history.”17
The implication of this idea for us as Filipino educators is this. For
those who think that by adopting Critical Pedagogy as one of the pedagogical
philosophies relevant to the contemporary situation of Philippine education,
one is turning the school into a haven of communists and NPAs, you can
relax.18 The reviewer of this paper opines that there is a difference between
the academic appropriations of Marxism on the one hand and its use as an
ideology for terrorism on the other hand. Moreso, by advocating some of the
key features of critical pedagogy, we are not called to be fixated and obsessed
with radical social restructuring through violent means. We neither expect
the laborers nor incite the students to storm the Malacañang. Neither can we
imagine the NPAs springing from the Cordillera Mountains and occupying
every embodiment of power asymmetries in the lowlands. Following the line
of thought of Paulo Freire, power must be redefined, reinvented and
rediscovered.19
Critical Thinking: An Educational Aim
As always and as ever, the framers of Philippine educational system

would never miss a magical phrase in the expression of our educational
foundation. That phrase is “critical thinking,” the crowning glory of
humanist liberal education. As early as 2010, during a Department of
Education (DepEd) discussion on the goals of K+12, the following was
already explicitly stated:
Every graduate of the Enhanced K+12 Basic Education

Program is an empowered individual who has learned,
through a program that is rooted on sound educational
principles and geared towards excellence, the
foundations for learning throughout life, the
competence to engage in work and be productive, the
ability to coexist in fruitful harmony with local and
global communities, the capability to engage in
autonomous critical thinking, and the capacity to
transform others and one’s self.20
17 Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, 19.

18 NPA is New People’s Army, the armed group of the Communist Party of the
Philippines.
Paulo Freire & Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy for Liberation (New
19
York: The Continuum Publishing Corporation, 1989), 63ff.

20 “Discussion Paper on the Enhanced K+12 Basic Education Program: DepEd
Discussion Paper,” October 5, 2010. Emphasis mine.

ISSN 1908-7330
After some time, the K+12 Primer released by the Department states
categorically that K+12 is designed to develop a learner who, among others,
“engages in critical thinking and creative problem solving.”21 This is what
the framers of the new educational system refer to as producing “holistically
developed learners with 21st century skills.”22
I can safely assume that nobody will object to this. Various scholars
even in opposing camps would agree that one of the noble aims of education
is the development of critical thinking. Robin Barrow, in his book The
Philosophy of Schooling (1981), declares that “one clear goal of education is
developing powers of critical thought.”23 Even the Philippine Constitution’s
provision on education directly asserts that all educational institutions shall
“encourage critical and creative thinking.”24 Furthermore, the vision-mission
statement of many educational institutions does not fail to include “critical
thinking” as one of the desired educational ends. It is one of those skills that
every school would like to develop in its students. It is one of those
proficiencies that every employer would be happy to find in the products of
the educational institutions. Indeed, “critical thinking” has become an
educational buzzword especially after the 1980 recommendation of the
Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities, stating that critical thinking
must be included by the U.S. Office of Education as one of the defining
characters of true education.25 This has led Robert Sternberg, a prominent
theorist of intelligence, to declare that: “Probably never before in the history
of educational practice has there been a greater push to teach children to think
critically.”26
But what do people mean by critical thinking? What do we
understand when we say that we want our students to become critical
thinkers? What does the dominant educational discourse mean by this
statement? As we now enter a new chapter in the history of Philippine
educational system, it is also high time to rethink what we mean by “critical
thinking.”
21 Department of Education (Philippines), “K-12 Primer,” in Rex Publishing House
Philippines – Teachers’ Lounge, < http://www.rexpublishing.com.ph/basic-

education/teacherslounge/basic-education/k-to-12-Primer/>, 19 December 2013.
22 Ibid.
23 Robin Barrow, The Philosophy of Schooling (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1981), 45.
As cited in Periklis Pavlidis, “Critical Thinking as Dialectics: A Hegelian-Marxist Approach,” in

Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, 8:2 (2010), 78.
24 The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Art. XIV, Sec. 3, No. 2.
25 Robert H. Ennis, “Critical Thinking and the Curriculum,” in Thinking Skills
Instruction: Concepts and Techniques, ed. by Marcia Heiman and Joshua Slomianko (Washington,
D.C.: National Education Association, 1987), 40.
26 Robert Sternberg, “Teaching Critical Thinking: Are We Making Critical Mistakes?”
in Thinking Skills Instruction, 209.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 321
Critical Rethinking of Critical Thinking
To start a critical rethinking of critical thinking, we must be aware

that we do not have a univocal understanding of this term. Faculty members
attending a seminar on curriculum development may all nod their heads
when somebody proposes that the development of “critical thinking” is a
must. But I highly suspect if the polite head-nodding signifies a uniform and
standardized understanding of the term. According to Jennifer Moon, critical
thinking “seems to be a prominent activity in education … but about which
there is so much uncertainty.”27 She calls it “an elusive concept.”28
The second step in this process of rethinking involves asking the
question: What is the dominant understanding of critical thinking as an
educational goal? Barrow says that critical thinking includes coherent
reasoning, conceptual clarity, discrimination in planning, discussion,
explanation and others.29 Diane Halpern mentions a review of literature on
critical thinking which shows the following as some of its main features:
“reasoning/logic, judgment, metacognition, reflection, questioning and
mental processes.”30 Stella Cottrell lists the following as some of the skills
and attitudes of a critical thinker: “identifying other people’s positions,
arguments and conclusions; identifying false and unfair assumptions;
drawing conclusions about whether arguments are valid and justifiable,
based on good evidence and sensible assumptions.”31 Nicholas Burbules and
Rupert Berk further observe that this tradition of critical thinking is primarily
concerned with “criteria of epistemic adequacy: to be ‘critica’ basically means
to be more discerning in recognizing faulty arguments, hasty generalizations,
assertions lacking evidence, truth-claims based on unreliable authority,
ambiguous or obscure concepts and so forth.”32 It is clear from these various
explanations that critical thinking is basically a mental process. Irvin
Peckham calls this the cognitive strand of the critical thinking tradition. He
says that, “teachers in the cognitive strand focus on argumentation as the
exclusive vehicle of critical thought.”33
27 Jennifer Moon, Critical Thinking: An Exploration of Theory and Practice (London:
28 Ibid., 19.
29 Barrow in Pavlidis, “Critical Thinking as Dialectics,” 45.
30 Diane F. Halpern, Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, 4th ed.
(New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), 6.

31 Stella Cottrell, Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2.

32 Nicholas Burbules and Rupert Berk, “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy:
Relations, Differences and Limits,” in Critical Theories in Education, ed. by Thomas S. Popkeweitz
and Lynn Fendler (New York: Routledge, 1999), 46.
33 Irvin Peckham, Going North, Thinking West: The Intersections of Social Class, Critical
Thinking, and Politicized Writing Instruction (Utah: Utah State University Press, 2010), 12.

ISSN 1908-7330
The third step in this rethinking is to ask the question: What is the
philosophical foundation of this dominant understanding of critical
thinking? Brookfield’s study of the different traditions of critical thinking
offers a worthwhile answer. In a book entitled The Power of Critical Theory for
Adult Learning and Teaching (2005), he suggests that the notion of criticality in
critical thinking can be traced to at least five different traditions: analytic
philosophy, pragmatism, psychoanalysis, constructivism and critical
theory.34 Brookfield further suggests that the tradition of logic and analytic
philosophy has dominated the educational underpinning of higher
education. He says: “From this perspective, to be critical is to be skilled at
argument analysis, to recognize false inferences and logical fallacies, to be
able to distinguish bias from fact, opinion from evidence, and so on.”35 I can
further assume that the most concrete manifestation in our educational
system of the dominance of this critical thinking tradition is the long-standing
habitation of Logic as a philosophy subject offered in many tertiary
educational institutions and in some secondary schools.36
This leads me to the next step in this rethinking: Given that there is
a notion of critical thinking privileged in many academic institutions, what is
marginalized along the way? Again, Brookfield’s observation is very helpful.
He believes that the skills developed by the analytic tradition are useful and
necessary but the tradition’s overemphasis on mental processes has led to
inattention to social and political critique.37 Peckham calls this the social
strand of critical thinking, which is concerned with promoting social justice.
He says: “The critical thinking within this strand is not a function of informal
logic and language; rather, it applies to a way of reading culture, of
demystifying or denaturalizing socializing narratives.”38 The development
of the skills of reasoning and argumentation is not done for itself. Rather, it
is privileged “for the larger purpose of promoting social justice.”39
And here lies the significance of the tradition of Critical Theory in
general and Critical Pedagogy in particular. The critical teacher is concerned
not only with the validity of reasoning process. Pedagogy must involve a
deeper understanding of the socio-political and economic arrangements that
hegemonize and homogenize the lives of the students. This is partially what
Freire would mean by conscientization, an educational process that prepares
34 Brookfield, Preface to The Power of Critical Theory, viii.

35 Ibid.
36 In the current curriculum, philosophy subjects are not anymore centered on
Aristotelian Logic but on Philosophy of the Human Person and Introduction to World Religions. I
consider this a welcome development. Future researchers may also consider the history of the
dominance of Logic as a philosophy subject in the Philippine educational system.
37 Brookfield, Preface to The Power of Critical Theory, vii.
38 Peckham, Going North, Thinking West, 12.
39 Ibid., 12.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 323
students to become skillful not only in reading the word (both traditional
literacy and functional literacy) but also in reading the world (critical and
political literacy).40 By themselves, functional literacy and traditional
academic skills cannot remedy the marginalized status of the citizens.
Literacy must involve a continual demystification of socio-economic and
political forces responsible for the oppressive condition of the people. It is
worthwhile to quote in full one of Freire’s most concrete description of a
conscienticized individual.
A person who has reached conscientization is capable of

clearly perceiving hunger as more than just not eating,
as the manifestation of political, economic, and social
reality of deep injustice … [He/she] is able to connect
facts and problems and to understand the connections
between hunger and food production, food production
and agrarian reform, agrarian reform and reactions
against it, hunger and economic policy, hunger and
violence and hunger as violence, hunger and the
conscious vote for progressive politicians and parties,
hunger and voting against reactionary politicians and
parties, whose discourse may be deceptively
progressive.41
Thus, critical thinking is a fusion of various literacies. Relevant

education is not reduced to what is acclaimed in the workforce or in the
corporate world or by students and parents themselves: technicism and
instrumentalism.42 Relevance comes to mean also as dynamic participation
in democratic processes and citizenship.43 It is the substitution of a culture of
40 Freire discusses these ideas in many of his works. The following are good starting
points: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation
(1985), and one co-authored with Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and Reading the
World (1987).
41 Paulo Freire, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work, trans. by Donaldo
Macedo, Quilda Macedo, and Alexandre Oliveira (New York: Routledge, 1996), 182-183.
42 “We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection
of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they
defend.” Herbert Marcuse, Introduction to One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of
Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge, c1991), xxxix.
43 In an article, Beatrice Avalos argues that relevance in education must be understood
in the Habermasian sense. It must satisfy not only the technical and practical interests of an
individual or a society but also the emancipatory interests. See Beatrice Avalos, “Education for
the Poor: Quality or Relevance” in British Journal of Sociology of Education, 13:4 (1992), 431.

ISSN 1908-7330
voice to what Freire would call as a culture of silence.44 As we prepare our

students to land their first job, we also prepare them to learn to question. In
fact, this is clear in the K+12 agenda: education is not only for job preparation
but for total human development. Critical pedagogues take seriously
statements such as this.
But of course, my ideas are neither groundbreaking nor earth-
shaking for Philippine education. Some Filipino scholars do not fail to
remind us of the necessity of this dimension of critical thinking. Let me just
mention some. Renato Constantino’s “Miseducation of the Filipino,”
originally written in 1959, is a critique of the neocolonial character of our
educational system.45 I do not buy the idea that it has ceased to become
relevant after more than half a century. In a 1971 paper, Fernando Nakpil-
Zialcita reminds Filipino scholars to allow philosophy as a critique of the
society to flourish and develop along with other forms of philosophizing.46
Thirty-two years after, Feorillo Demeterio III, in at least two articles, calls for
Filipino scholars of philosophy to learn again the pathway of critique
understood not just as logical thinking but as critique of our deformed
societal structures as well.47 Even in a 1995 publication, Florentino Hornedo
emphatically says that values education in the Philippines must necessarily
be education for social justice.48 And I am sure that I am missing many more.
Admittedly, when educators commit to this notion of critical
thinking, they may be treading on inhospitable and dangerous ground:
putting their profession at risk, gaining the ire of the powers-that-be, held
under suspicion by school administrators and co-faculty members, frowned
by students and parents who see the school merely as a training ground for
careerism. Freire was very much aware of this dilemma of the critical teacher.
In one of his dialogical books, he says that the teacher must be able to play
around the system: one foot outside and one foot within the system.49
44 For his discussion on the notion of culture of silence, see Paulo Freire, “Cultural Action
and Conscientization,” in Freire, The Politics of Education, 67ff.

45 Renato Constantino, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” in The Filipinos in the
Philippines and Other Essays (Quezon City: Filipino Signatures, 1966).

46 Fernando Nakpil-Zialcita, “Mga Anyo ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino,” trans. by Nicanor
G. Tiongson, in Mga Babasahin sa Pilosopiya: Epistemolohiya, Lohika, Wika at Pilosopiyang Pilipino,

ed. by Virgilio Enriquez (Manila: Philippine Psychology Research and Training House, 1983),
321.
47 F.P.A. Demeterio III, “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late Twentieth
Century Filipino Philosophy,” in HINGOWA: The Holy Rosary Seminary Journal, 8:2 (2003), 47.
See also F.P.A. Demeterio III, “Defining the Appropriate Field for Radical Intra-State Peace
Studies in Filipino Philosophy,” in Philippiniana Sacra, 38:13 (2003), 358.
48 Florentino H. Hornedo, Christian Education: Becoming Person-for-Others - Essays in
Philosophy of Education (Manila, UST Publishing House, 1995), 150.

49 Paulo Freire and Ira Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming
Education (Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1987).

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 325
Stephen Sweet, a Sociology professor from the State University of New York,
recognizes the institutional constraints; thus, he argues for balancing and
tempering radical pedagogy by being conscious and considerate about these
constraints.50 Giroux’s words are also enlightening. Citing the former City
University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor, Joe Murphy, he says that
educators should “give students [the critical] sensibility to understand
economic, political, and historical forces so they're not just victims of these
forces but can act on them with effect. Giving [students, especially the poor]
this power is a threatening idea to many. But it is essential to the health of a
democratic society.” 51
Concluding Remarks
Personally, notwithstanding the preparedness (or unpreparedness?)

of the Philippine government and its citizenry, I recognize the fact that the
major re-structuring of Philippine education (K+12 system) is a progressive
move in the continuous evolution of the concept that education is a privilege
gifted to a few into the “modern” idea that it is a fundamental human right
for each person.52 The former basic education system is at best a right that is
wanting. At worst, it is a privilege that disguises itself as a right. The present
one is in the direction of the actualization of a right. K+12 is a progressive one
step forward.
However, in the interest of total human development being bannered
by the new educational system in the Philippines, we have to listen as well to
the critical pedagogues. When critical thinking is rethought critically, we will
find out that it means more than what majority of the framers of our new
educational system would like it to mean as a 21st century skill. It cannot be
confined to a one-dimensional meaning of simply being a set of logical skills.
Inherent to critical thinking is its political and social dimension.53 To be
critical is also to have the skill to problematize dominant knowledge and to
50 Stephen Sweet, “Practicing Radical Pedagogy: Balancing Ideals with Institutional
Constraints,” in Teaching Sociology, 26:2 (1998), 100-111.

51 Henry A. Giroux, “Cultural Studies as Public Pedagogy: Making the Pedagogical
More Political,” in Encyclopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (October 1999),

<http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=cultural_studies_and_public_pedagogy>, 21 June 2012.
52 Cf. C. Lohrenscheit, “Curriculum and Human Rights,” in. International Encyclopedia
of Education, vol. 1, ed. by Penelope Peterson, Eva Baker, Barry McGaw (Oxford: Academic Press,
2010), 287.
53 In another book, Stephen Brookfield claims that “critique” is a sacred word. And it
cannot be understood properly when separated from the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical
Theory. See Stephen D. Brookfield, “Transformative Learning as Ideology Critique,” in Learning
as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, ed. by Jack Mezirow & Associates
(San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 129.

ISSN 1908-7330
challenge hegemonic arrangements. We have to make the critical in critical

thinking more critical.54 Anything less is merely lip-service.
Then, when we look at the new K+12 curriculum, we will also find
out that the field of philosophy, arguably a deathbed discipline that is in dire
need of resuscitation,55 is in a better position to reclaim and reintroduce the
critical in critical thinking. Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao, the values-education
subject given to students across all year levels in the new Basic Education,
and Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person, obviously a philosophy
subject required for senior high school students to take, are exciting venues
and avenues for critical pedagogues. In the first place, Logic as the main take-
off for critical thinking skill is already abolished. Secondly and more
importantly, the two courses mentioned have the potential to support
teaching and learning for social justice and equality. I have the inkling that
these subjects have a temper that is in harmony with what Freire would call
as “reading the word” and “reading the world.” Who in their right minds
can accept the fact that pagpapakatao may not involve concern for justice,
equality and human rights? Pagpapakatao is always a dynamic tension
between personal agency and social agency. Freire is correct once again:
Education is always Janus-faced! There will always be cracks and openings
for the critical educators to operate. Philosophy is both a force for
domestication and/or liberation.
The tradition of Critical Pedagogy and Critical Theory offers
interesting and promising signposts for this noble but extremely difficult
undertaking. The idea is not to replace one tradition with the other. Rather,
Critical Pedagogy extends the discourse. And by extending it, at least two
things are accomplished. First, the dominant discourse on critical thinking is
problematized, for this concept can really be appropriated to cater to the
interest of the dominant part of the society.56 The “critical thinker” becomes
an effective cog in the well-oiled machine of an oppressive system. Second,
the marginalized discourse is given a place in the vast field of what Agustin
Rodriguez, in his book Governing the Other (2009), would term as “multiverse
54 Joe L. Kincheloe, “Making Critical Thinking Critical,” in Perspectives in Critical
Thinking: Essays by Teachers in Theory and Practice, ed. by D. Weil and H.K. Anderson (New York:
Peter Lang, 2000).
55 For accessible but provocative insights on the demise of philosophy as an academic
discipline, see Lee McIntyre, “Making Philosophy Matter—Or Else,” in The Chronicle of Higher
Education (11 December 2011), <http://chronicle.com/article/Making-Philosophy-Matter-
or/130029/>, 11 March 2014.
56 Michael Payne & Jessica Rae Barbera, “Some Versions of Cultural and Critical
Theory,” in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, 2nd ed., ed. by. Michael Payne and Jessica
Rae Barbera (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 8.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 327
of rationality.”57 We need different perspectives on education. We cannot just

submit to one dominant discourse.
In the spirit of Freirean liberating education, I ask you not to just
accept what I said here but to think critically about it.58
References
Avalos, Beatrice, “Education for the Poor: Quality or Relevance” in British

Journal of Sociology of Education, 13:4 (1992).
Bizzell, Patricia, “Power, Authority and Critical Pedagogy,” in Journal of Basic
Writing, 10:2 (1991).
Brookfield, Stephen D., The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and
Teaching (New York: Open University Press, 2005).
___________, “Transformative Learning as Ideology Critique,” in Learning as
Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, ed. by Jack
Mezirow & Associates (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
Burbules, Nicholas & Rupert Berk, “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy:
Relations, Differences and Limits,” in Critical Theories in Education, ed.
by Thomas S. Popkeweitz, & Lynn (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Constantino, Renato, “The Mis-education of the Filipino,” in The Filipinos in
the Philippines and Other Essays (Quezon City: Filipino Signatures,
1966).
Cottrell, Stella, Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and
Argument (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Demeterio, F.P.A. III., “Defining the Appropriate Field for Radical Intra-State
Peace Studies in Filipino Philosophy,” in Philippiniana Sacra, 38:13
(2003).
____________, “Thought and Socio-Politics: An Account of the Late
Twentieth Century Filipino Philosophy,” HINGOWA: The Holy
Rosary Seminary Journal, 8:2 (2003).
“Discussion Paper on the Enhanced K+12 Basic Education Program: DepEd
Discussion Paper,” October 5, 2010.
Department of Education (Philippines), “K-12 Primer,” in Rex Publishing
House Philippines – Teachers’ Lounge,
<http://www.rexpublishing.com.ph/basic-
57 Agustin Martin Rodriguez, Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of Democracy
in a Multiverse of Reason (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009).
58 Paulo Freire, “Reading the World and Reading the Word: An Interview with Paulo
Freire,” in Language Arts, 62:1 (1985), 24-29.

ISSN 1908-7330
education/teacherslounge/basic-education/k-to-12-Primer/>, 19
December 2013.
Ennis, Robert H., “Critical Thinking and the Curriculum,” in Thinking Skills
Instruction: Concepts and Techniques, ed. by Marcia Heiman and
Joshua Slomianko (Washington, D.C.: National Education
Association, 1987).
Freire, Paulo and Antonio Faundez, Learning to Question: A Pedagogy for
Liberation (New York: The Continuum Publishing Corporation,
1989).
Freire, Paulo and Ira Shor, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming
Education (Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1987).
Freire Paulo, Letters to Cristina: Reflections on My Life and Work, trans. by
Donaldo Macedo, Quilda Macedo, and Alexandre Oliveira (New
York: Routledge, 1996).
___________, Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. by
Robert R. Barr (New York: The Continuum Publishing Corporation,
1995).
___________, “Reading the World and Reading the Word: An Interview with
Paulo Freire,” in Language Arts, 62:1 (1985).
Giroux, Henry A., “Cultural Studies as Public Pedagogy,” in Encyclopaedia of
Educational Philosophy and Theory (1999), <
http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=cultural_studies_and_public_pedagog
y>, 21 June 2012.
___________, Teachers as Intellectuals: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Learning
(Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1988).
___________, Theories and Resistance: Towards a Pedagogy for the Opposition
(Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 1983, c2001).
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Q. Hoare and G.
N. Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971).
Halpern, Diane F., Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical
Thinking, 4th ed. (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003).
Hornedo, Florentino H., Christian Education: Becoming Person-for-Others -
Essays in Philosophy of Education (Manila, UST Publishing House,
1995).
Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1973).
Kellner, Douglas, “Marxian Perspectives on Educational Philosophy: From
Classical Marxism to Critical Pedagogy,” in University of Los Angeles,
California, <https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/
marxianperspectivesoneducation.pdf>, 24 March 2012.

ISSN 1908-7330
F. CORTEZ 329
Kincheloe, Joe L., Critical Pedagogy Primer, 2nd ed. (New York: Peter Lang
Publishing Inc., 2008).
__________, “Making Critical Thinking Critical,” in Perspectives in Critical
Thinking: Essays by Teachers in Theory and Practice, ed. by D. Weil and
H.K. Anderson (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).
Lohrenscheit, C., “Curriculum and Human Rights,” in. International
Encyclopedia of Education, vol. 1, ed. by Penelope Peterson, Eva Baker,
Barry McGaw (Oxford: Academic Press, 2010).
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced
Industrial Society (London: Routledge, c1991).
Lee McIntyre, “Making Philosophy Matter—Or Else,” in The Chronicle of
Higher Education (11 December 2011), <http://chronicle.com/article/
Making-Philosophy-Matter-or/130029/>, 11 March 2014.
McLaren, Peter, Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the
Foundations of Education, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1997).
McLean, Monica, Pedagogy and the University: Critical Theory and Practice (New
York: Continuum, 2006).
Moon, Jennifer, Critical Thinking: An Exploration of Theory and Practice
Nakpil-Zialcita, Fernando, “Mga Anyo ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino,” trans. by
Nicanor G. Tiongson, in Mga Babasahin sa Pilosopiya: Epistemolohiya,
Lohika, Wika at Pilosopiyang Pilipino, ed. by Virgilio Enriquez (Manila:
Philippine Psychology Research and Training House, 1983).
Pavlidis, Periklis, “Critical Thinking as Dialectics: A Hegelian-Marxist
Approach,” in Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies, 8:2 (2010).
Payne, Michael & Jessica Rae Barbera, “Some Versions of Cultural and
Critical Theory,” in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, 2nd ed.,
ed. by Michael Payne and Jessica Rae Barbera (West Sussex, UK:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
Peckham, Irvin, Going North, Thinking West: The Intersections of Social Class,
Critical Thinking, and Politicized Writing Instruction (Utah: Utah State
Rodriguez, Agustin Martin, Governing the Other: Exploring the Discourse of
Democracy in a Multiverse of Reason (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
Sternberg, Robert, “Teaching Critical Thinking: Are We Making Critical
Mistakes?” in Thinking Skills Instruction, ed. by Marcia Heiman and
Joshua Slomianko (Washington, D.C.: National Education
Association, 1987)
Sweet, Stephen, “Practicing Radical Pedagogy: Balancing Ideals with
Institutional Constraints,” in Teaching Sociology, 26:2 (1998).
The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines.

ISSN 1908-7330
West, Cornel, “The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory,” in

The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999).

ISSN 1908-7330
Submissions
Please Read Carefully
A. What do we publish?
We are interested in publishing articles, review articles, book reviews, and creative works across the whole range of philosophical
topics, but with special emphasis on the following subject strands:
 Filipino Philosophy
 Oriental Thought and East-West Comparative Philosophy
 Continental European Philosophy
 Anglo-American Philosophy
The journal primarily caters to works by professional philosophers and graduate students of philosophy, but welcomes contributions
from other fields (literature, cultural studies, gender studies, political science, sociology, history, anthropology, economics, inter alia)
with strong philosophical content.
B. How long should a submission be?
 Article (8,000 words or less)

 Review Article (8,000 words or less)
 Book Review (2,500 words or less)
 Creative Works (short philosophical fictions, poems, etc.)
C. When should you submit your work?
Because of the sheer number of unsolicited submissions we receive everyday, submission management has become a challenge
for us. This often results in the piling-up of submissions, the breakdown of the online submission tool, and, at times, unacknowledged
submissions. Therefore, we have devised a scheme to help us manage unsolicited submissions.
 Submissions for the June issue will be entertained ONLY during the January-February period (March-May for the refereeing
process)
 Submissions for the December issue will be entertained ONLY during the July-August period (September-November for the
refereeing process)
Specific Submission Guidelines
1. Submissions may be in either English or Filipino with good punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Provide a 200 word abstract in
English and at least 4 key words. Please take note of the number of the acceptable word count for your submission (see Section B
above).
2. KRITIKE is a refereed journal, so make sure that your text is prepared for blind review, meaning your name and institutional affiliation
should not appear in the body of your paper. If you cited your own previous work(s) in the article, delete your name from the
citation(s).
3. We recommend that, at the first instance, you use our prescribed citation style. You may also use the Chicago style which resembles
our own. Click here (http://kritike.org/kritike-style-guide.html) to visit the journal's style guide page.
4. Submit your text in 2.0 line spacing with 12 points font size. Quotations exceeding four lines should be indented and single-spaced.
5. Save your paper as either a Rich Text Format file (*.rtf) or a Microsoft Word document (*.doc or *.docx).
6. We recommend that you submit your paper by filling in the online submission tool at the right column of the submissions page
(http://kritike.org/submissions.html) for a more systematic and efficient submission process.
7. We have amended our submission management policy (see Section C above). Submissions entered through the online submission
tool outside the specified periods in Section C will not be considered. We recommend that you resubmit your work during a specific
submission period.
8. By sending us your submission, you agree to be bound to the Terms and Conditions set in Section C of the journal's Publication
Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
KRITIKE is committed to meet the highest ethical standards in research and academic publication. The journal is
guided by the following principles:
A. Responsibilities of the Editorial Board
The Editorial Board ensures that manuscripts are prepared for blind peer-review. It is the responsibility of the
Editorial Board to accept, reject, or recommend a manuscript for revision and resubmission. Such decision is
based, to a large extent, on the recommendations of nominated experts who act as referees. It is the
responsibility of the Editorial Board to inform an author about the status of his/her submission, regardless of the
decision. The Editorial Board may choose to reject a paper that violates legal provisions on libel, copyrights,
and originality (plagiarism). Information regarding a manuscript under review must remain confidential until it
is finally accepted for publication. The Editorial Board does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the
articles published in the journal. As an Open Access journal in the Gold category, KRITIKE does not charge
any fees to complete the publication process. No charges are levied against the authors or users for
submission or article processing.
B. Responsibilities of the Referee
The referees nominated by KRITIKE’s Editorial Board are experts in their areas of specialization. The referees
assist the Editorial Board’s decision to accept, reject, or revise and resubmit manuscripts based on their
objective assessments and recommendations. A referee must treat an assigned manuscript with utmost
confidentially during the peer review process; however, it is the responsibility of the referee to inform the
Editorial Board when a legal violation by the author is suspected. The evaluation of a manuscript should be
based solely on its academic merit and not on race, gender, sexuality, or religious and/or political orientation
of the author.
C. Responsibilities of the Author
It is the responsibility of the author to prepare his/her manuscript for blind review. The author must ensure that
his/her work is original and not plagiarized. The sources used in the manuscript should be properly cited. An
author must not submit the same manuscript to another journal when it is currently under review by KRITIKE. It
is the responsibility of an author to inform the Editorial Board right away if his/her manuscript is being considered
in another journal or publication medium; in such case, KRITIKE will discontinue the review of the manuscript.
If an author's manuscript is published by KRITIKE, he/she must adhere to the provisions set in the Copyrights
section of the journal
Contact Us
If you wish to send us your feedback, general questions about the journal, questions about article submissions,
theme suggestions for future issues, or word of intention to be a peer-reviewer or referee, send a message to
kritike.editor@gmail.com.
If you wish to be a peer-reviewer or referee, do send us your complete name, e-mail address, institutional
affiliation, position, and area of expertise via e-mail (include subject heading: reviewer). If you have any
suggestions for specific themes (e.g., "European Philosophy and the Filipino Mind" or "Is there such thing as Filipino
Philosophy?") for future issues of the journal, send them via (include subject heading: theme).
Please note that unsolicited submissions should be sent through the journal's Article Submission Tool.
You can also contact us via snail mail:
KRITIKE
c/o Dr. Paolo A. Bolaños
Department of Philosophy
Room 109 Main Building
University of Santo Tomas
España, Manila 1015
Philippines
KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy (Issue 18), Vol. 10, No. 1 (June 2016)
© 2007-2016 KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy | ISSN 1908-7330 | OCLC 502390973 | kritike.editor@gmail.com

Kritike June2016

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kritike June2016

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Kritike June2016

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

KRITIKE

An Online Journal of Philosophy

THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

All materials published by KRITIKE are licensed under a

ABOUT THE COVER

Roland Theuas DS. Pada, Valor, 2016. Photograph.

The Philosopher's Index

KRITIKE is a biannual journal published in June and December of each year.

ISSN 1908-7330 | OCLC 502390973 | www.kritike.org

Book Review and Creative Works Editors

Style and Layout Editors

International Advisory Board

ON FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE

38 LEO ANDREW B. BICLAR

54 LESLIE ANNE L. LIWANAG

124 ANTON LUIS SEVILLA

146 IAN RAYMOND B. PACQUING

163 KELLY LOUISE REXZY P. AGRA

192 ANTHONY LAWRENCE A. BORJA

213 LEANDER P. MARQUEZ

236 SAURABH TODARIYA

255 SHAHARIR bin MOHAMAD ZAIN

269 JEREMY DE CHAVEZ

286 JEREMIAH JOVEN JOAQUIN

301 JIOLITO L. BENITEZ

315 FRANZ GIUSEPPE F. CORTEZ

On Filipino Philosophy and Culture

An Interview with Romualdo Abulad, SVD

Abstract: In this interview, the readers get the chance to listen

Keywords: Abulad, Filipino philosophy, interview, Thomasian

A Child of Lucban, Quezon

Emmanuel De Leon (Tagapanayam): Magandang araw po, Br. Romy!

De Leon: Ilan po kayong magkakapatid?

© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

De Leon: At kung tungkol naman po sa sistema ng edukasyon noon sa

De Leon: Sinu-sino po silang tatlo?

Abulad: I mean, si Dr. [Emerita] Quito sa pilosopiya, si Dr. [Josephine]

© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

lately pagdating sa theology, itong ating Kardinal Chito Tagle ngayon. At

De Leon: Noon pong kabataan ninyo sa elementarya at sekondarya, wala po

Abulad: Meron, meron. Pero, hindi syempre kasing [lakas ng impluwensiya

On the UST College of Science and the Use of Intuition

De Leon: Mathematician? [laughs] May kaugnayan po ‘yan sa tanong ko

Abulad: Eh kasi pagkatapos ng High School ay parang lahat gusto ko eh

De Leon: Ah, sa College of Science po pala kayo noong 1964?

© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

De Leon: Tama po. Lalo na po sa probinsiya ng Quezon.

De Leon: Pagkatapos naman po ng dalawang taon sa College of Science dito

Abulad: Hindi. Nagshift ako sa seminaryo muna [laughs].

De Leon: Ah, pumasok po pala talaga kayo sa seminaryo? Dito po sa

De Leon: Philosophy na po ang kinuha ninyo pagkalabas ng seminaryo?

De Leon: So, parang aksidente lang po pala na napunta kayo sa philosophy—

© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

De Leon: Bago po dumating si Dr. Quito galing sa Switzerland, ano po ba

The Awakening from Dogmatic Slumber

© 2016 Emmanuel C. De Leon

De Leon: Itinuturing po ang mga nasabi ninyong kurso na “bago” noong

De Leon: ‘Yan po ba yung tinatawag na “be-all and end-all” pagdating sa

De Leon: Pero, mukha pong sa nabasa ko mula sa mga isinulat ninyong