FILOCRACIA 1:1 (February 2014) i-v

Editors’ Introduction
I am thus referring to a university
that would be what it always
should have been or always should
have represented, that is, from its
inception and in principle: sover-
eignly autonomous, unconditional-
ly free in its institution, sovereign
in its speech, in its writing, in its
thinking.1
Welcome to the maiden issue of Filocracia: An Online Journal of Phi-
losophy and Interdisciplinary Studies!
After a lengthy preparation, we, the creators of Filocracia, are very
pleased to present to you another free and independent source of philo-
sophic knowledge that is easily accessible online for Philosophy scholars,
students, and enthusiasts.
But, why another journal of Philosophy?
In an age where the proliferation of technological gadgets have
fast-tracked the lives of everyone, the demands for our increasing commit-
ments to the effects of this vast global machinery called the internet have
made us all enframed (to use Heidegger’s famous term) within a tele-techno-
capitalist world system as “standing-reserves.”2 While all is not hopeless,
the future remains bleak for those of us who are caught within the imper-
sonal mechanisms of fate and the endless greed of most of the materially
privileged ones. The domestic phenomena of Filipinos working abroad
(OFWs) caused by brain-drain and the rat-race, the exploitation of chil-
dren and women economically and sexually, the destruction of the pristine
environment in the name of technological and even national progress, and

1
Jacques Derrida, “The Future of the Profession or the University without
Condition (Thanks to the “Humanities,” or What could take place Tomorrow) in Der-
rida and the Humanities, edited by Tom Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 24-57; 35.
2
See Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” in Basic
Writings, edited by David Farrell (New York: Harper-Collins, 1993).
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ii Editors’ Introduction

the despicable commodification of human labor and education are only

some of the unfortunate effects of the technological domination that has
come to characterize our present times.
It is then with the modest view of being another alternative site or
place for discourse and questioning that we envision Filocracia to be. Believ-
ing in the basic power of philosophical discourse to question the compla-
cent order of things, we want to share the burden of critiquing the estab-
lished structures in order to make philosophic subversions as integral parts
of the happening of truth(s). Particularly, the journal aims to produce a
certain positionality that is not limited to institutional affiliations, regional
identities, or nationalist aspirations. Indeed, if it has a lofty ideal, it would
be one that shares the ideal of the university “without conditions,” i.e.,
“sovereignly autonomous, unconditionally free in its institution, sovereign
in its speech, in its writing, in its thinking.”
The initial articles presented in this maiden issue reveal a certain
philosophic bias. In a way, these articles reveal the heavy influence that
Western continental philosophy has on the way current philosophical edu-
cation in the Philippines is carried out, and to a greater extent, on the way
the minds of the people in the academe are shaped. However, if one will
look closely, they are also attempts to appropriate an essential truth of
philosophical research: that one must never be limited by the knowledge
that is given to you from the outside, one must also be a producer of
knowledge. And this entails the possibility of production, even outside of
the university, in a university outside the university, of an idea of reason not lim-
ited by tenure, research grants, or academic politics.
At the outset of this maiden issue, Federico José Lagdameo “From
Machenshaft to Gestell: Heidegger’s Critique of Modernity” offers us an inter-
laced reading of two central concepts in Martin Heidegger’s thought: Ma-
chenshaft and Gestell. By tracing the link and the nuances between these
terms, Lagdameo is able to give us an easier, albeit more strategic approach,
to the Heideggerain corpus centered on the technological drama why the
question of Being remains unasked. In the same spirit, Jeffrey Bartilet’s
“Foucault, Discourse, and the Call for Reflexivity” illustrates the manifold
facets of discourse in Michel Foucault’s thinking and the need for a certain
reflexivity in the conduct of discourse. This model, European in a sense,
suggests that truth, in all its forms, is not a simple and objective end-result
of communal discourse but one that is always already implicated within
given power-relations that effect/affect its construction. Illusions about

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 iii

objectivity can then be removed if one is able to take heed of the Foucauldi-
an call for reflexivity.
Rev. Fr. Prudencio Edralin’s “Ricoeur’s Existential Phenomenolo-
gy” carefully presents the important trajectory of the eminent philosopher
Paul Ricoeur’s thought from eidetic phenomenology (as a search for essenc-
es) towards a phenomenological hermeneutics. Edralin illustrates that the
movement from a transcendental critique to an immanent one is a concre-
tizing gesture that enfleshes phenomenology with the concrete human di-
mensions necessary for an existential phenomenology.
Guillermo Dionisio’s “Natural Law Tradition and Confucian Cul-
ture: Beyond East-West Divide” offers an insightful and interesting contri-
bution to the ongoing dialogue between western and eastern philosophies
today. In his article, Dionisio claims that the usual theoretically construct-
ed distinctions between what is Eastern and Western tend to collapse if
one is able to remove the selective perceptions and misinterpretations of-
fered by regional, nationalist thinking. Through an examination of the con-
cepts of right and duty, it is only possible to isolate the West’s Natural Law
Tradition and Confucian Culture as two sides of the same coin.
The next three articles in this maiden issue deal with, arguably,
one of contemporary philosophy’s most important figures: Jacques Derrida.
Mark Joseph Calano’s “Derrida’s Intimations of Heidegger’s Sein zum Tode”
offers a penetrating analysis of an important, but seldom considered, theme
that prominently figures in the thought of these two colossal thinkers—
death. By articulating the debt that Derrida has to the Heideggerian corpus,
it is possible to understand the deconstructive project as a search for an
“(im)proper” phenomenology of the “other” that takes into account the
concrete suffering of life vis-à-vis the “impossible” good that is to-come. To
do justice to the encounter with the “other” requires a renewed apprecia-
tion of life and death as gifts within the context of absolute responsibility.
Within the same search, Michael Roland Hernandez’s “The Silence of the
Sexless Dasein: Jacques Derrida and the Sex “To-Come” explores another
relatively ignored connection between Heidegger and Derrida: that of sex.
In this article, Hernandez follows the lead in exploring Heidegger’s silence
about the question of Dasein’s sexuality. The neutralization of Dasein’s sex-
uality is not a denial of its sexual existence but a re-inscription that frees
Dasein from the limits of traditional sexual binarity. By exploring this sex-
ual neutrality, one is brought to the originary power of the Dasein that is the
source of a richness peculiar only to human beings. By going beyond tradi-
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iv Editors’ Introduction

tional physical dualism, a deconstructive understanding of sex moves into

the appreciation of multiple sexualities, or of a sex “to-come” that is not
limited by biology, anthropology, or performance. In the end, however, the
author warns us against the violent politics of a cultural sexual discourse
that is blind to its own shortcomings.
Virgilio Rivas’ “Derrida and Žižek: On the Intersections of Diffé-
rance and Parallax” is a witting rejoinder to the question of responsibility
proffered in the two immediately preceding articles, this time from the per-
spective of human survival and cannibalism. Using Žižek’s critique of Der-
rida, Rivas excellently tackles the dilemma of human responsibility in an
age of technological domination. The question of how human beings can
survive, as responsible humans, is problematized in the face of the only op-
tion that they have. Using this trope of cannibalism as the fundamental
structure of human life, this article proposes the overcoming of egoism if
the human race is to survive.
One feature of this online journal is its “Area Studies” section that
caters to researches that are decidedly local and ethnographic. For this
maiden issue, we are very proud to introduce two pioneering studies in
Bikol cultural studies: Jesus Cyril Conde et al.’s “Hybrid Christianity in the
Oral Literature and Ethno-botany of the Agtas of Mount Asog in the Bikol
Region of the Philippines” and Victor John Loquias’ “A Linguistic Explora-
tion of the Bikol Concept of Tood: Towards a Philosophical Framework for
Education.” These two latter articles reveal the potential for a rich interac-
tion between indigenous philosophizing and the utilization of digested
philosophical frameworks.
Conde et al.’s field research studies a hybrid form of belief in a real-
ity composed of visible and invisible beings existing at the same space and
time. In this reality, the belief in the power of plants and animals is instru-
mental for different relations between human beings and various invisible
entities. The Bikol region is predominantly Christian due to its history as a
part of Spanish colony. Yet, the mountain people of Asog believe in a reality
in which indigenous culture overpowers Christianity. It is a cultural hybrid
that shows the power and identity of Filipino post-colonial culture.
Meanwhile, Loquias’ article explores the Bikol concept of tood as a
philosophical framework for education. The English term “learning” may be
equally enunciated in Bikol language as “pagkanood” whereas “practice” may
be spoken “pagtood” and “friend” or “fellow” as “katood.” Pagkanood, pagtood

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 v

and katood together become intertwined cognates because of the employ-

ment of the same root word tood. Although this root may have diverse usag-
es and contexts in various parts of the region, it becomes a unifying and
central concept for the three cognates.
We conclude this maiden issue with two book reviews: on Paul
Patton’s Deleuze and the Political by Raniel Reyes and on Slavoj Žižek’s The
Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Jayson Jimenez.
We would like to thank the generosity of the following Philoso-
phy Professors from different universities for agreeing to be part of our Ad-
visory Board: Dr. Agustin Martin Rodriguez, Dr. Manuel Dy and Dr. J.
Ranilo Hermida of Ateneo de Manila University; Dr. Florentino Hornedo of
the University of Santo Tomas; Dr. Maxwell Felicilda of the University of
La Salette-Silang Campus; and Dr. Danilo Madrid-Gerona, philosopher-
historian, now an independent scholar and publisher.
Personally, I (Mike) would like to thank in a very special way Prof.
Federico José Lagdameo, Chair of the Philosophy Department of the Ateneo
de Naga University; Dr. Mark Joseph Calano, of the Ateneo de Manila Uni-
versity and President of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines
(PAP) Inc.; Prof. Virgilio Rivas, Director of the Institute of Cultural Studies
of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (ICS-PUP); Prof. Jeffrey
Bartilet, Chair of the Center of Humanities and Philosophy (PUP); Dr.
Fleurdeliz Altez of the University of Santo Tomas, Philosophy Department;
and Dr. Jeremiah Joven Joaquin of the Philosophy Department of De la Salle
University-Taft for sharing with me the vision and task of creating another
space for philosophical discourse and for helping me prepare the necessary
technical details in order to make this journal a reality.
May Filocracia be one of these avenues where philosophy teachers,
students, enthusiasts, and independent researchers can seek enlightenment
[or not] and also, as a welcome space for a more fruitful dialogue for schol-
ars not only in Philosophy but also in the Humanities and the Social Sci-
ences. As we write our alternative histories, may we always continue to be
disturbed by the questions that restore life to its original difficulty.3
The Editors

3
See John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the
Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987),
209.
ISSN: 2362-7581
http://www.filocracia.org/issue1/Editorial_Feb2014.pdf