My Philosophical Development (2016b)

MY PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT* Rolando M. Gripaldo Editor, Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy

This paper tells a story of how I came to study philosophy and the various phases of my philosophical development.

I have a rational mind. What fascinated me about philosophy was symbolic logic which an American peace corps, Mr. David Wiley, introduced to me in the summer of 1967, towards the end of my freshman year at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City. I was an engineering student but numbers per se bored me. I wanted something more exciting like how we could symbolize arguments derived from ordinary language and how logical symbols were themselves derived, that is, I was interested in the philosophical foundations of logic. By the time I was sophomore I shifted from engineering to philosophy, a bachelor’s degree course which was offered in 1961 in my university. I started studying the works of Bertrand Russell and was transformed from atheism to agnosticism. (Now I am a liberal Protestant. See https://www.academia.edu/ 21074220/Tillich_Self-Transcendence_and_I_Or_Why_I_Became_a_Christian_2008_ 2016e_.) The dean of the college of liberal arts at the time was Dr. Quiterio Miravite, an expert in Indian philosophy. Although I was never under our dean in any of my subjects, I read many works on Oriental philosophy, that is, in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy in order to have a working knowledge of it. In addition to some Filipino philosophy teachers, there were other American teachers of philosophy who visited my university in the 1970s such as Mr. Ross Kales and Mrs. Christine Kales, who intensively grounded me in aesthetics, history of philosophy, and analytic and continental philosophy; in short, in Western philosophy. A few years after graduation, my understanding of the metaphysical views of Bertrand Russell appeared in the Philippine Free Press on 10 April 1971 entitled “The soul and Bertrand Russell” (see https://www.academia.edu/4373738/The_Soul_and_Bertrand_Russell_1971_). After teaching philosophy for a while I decided to take up a master’s degree in analytic philosophy at the University of the Philippines from 1973-75 with a concentration on the Philosophy of Language because that was then the First Philosophy in the analytic tradition. The chair of the UP philosophy department was Dr. Armando F. Bonifacio, who was fresh from his doctoral studies at the University of California at Berkeley. My master’s thesis was an analysis of the concept freedom of choice which eventually was published in 1977 as Circumstantialism. It was an essay on situational determinism (a summary of this work can be found in https://www.academia.edu/ 9159242/Freedom_to_Choose_An_Essay_on_Situational_Determinism_2009_2015). Back at the Mindanao State University in 1975, I taught essentially Western philosophy with some occasional courses in Chinese and Japanese philosophy. Then it dawned upon me that the philosophy I was studying was alien in origin and not contextually Filipino, that is to say, not a type of philosophy that is grounded on Filipino historical experience. I did not believe at that time that the Filipinos did not have what is called “Filipino philosophy” in the traditional sense, not in the cultural or anthropological 1

sense in which Dr. Leonardo Mercado and Dr. Florentino Timbreza were researching in the 1970s and 1980s. With extensive research on the works of Filipino intellectuals, I believed a Filipino philosophy similar to a Greek philosophy or a British/French/American philosophy can be had. I told myself that it was high time I should do some inward-looking (into Filipino philosophy), rather than an outwardlooking (into Western or Oriental philosophy). So in 1980, I decided to pursue Philippine Studies, major in Filipino philosophy at the College of Liberal Arts of the University of the Philippines. The chair of the doctoral committee which examined my doctoral proposal was Dr. Armando F. Bonifacio and, after four years of research and studies, I decided to choose Dr. Remigio Agpalo, a political scientist, as my adviser since my doctoral dissertation was on the political and social philosophy of Manuel L. Quezon. He was a logical choice compared to an adviser on history or political history. Dr. Agpalo was my teacher in some courses on political thought. Many of the items of the dissertation eventually came out in the book, QuezonWinslow correspondence and other essays, which De La Salle University Press published in 1994. My studies in Western and Oriental philosophy had somehow helped me in understanding the Philippine philosophical situation and eventually I published a lot of articles on the philosophy of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Manuel L. Quezon, Jose P. Laurel, Renato Constantino, and others. When I eventually joined De La Salle University in the 1990s I compiled these researches in the book Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, Part I, Section 1, which DLSU Press published in 2000. I also thought it was important to research on a bibliography, though not absolutely complete, on Filipino philosophy (see https://www.academia.edu/3586507/Filipino_ Philosophy_A_Critical_Bibliography_1774-1997_2001_). My historical studies on Filipino philosophy revealed to me that early Filipino philosophers were Enlightenment thinkers who were influenced by the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It traveled to Spain from France in the early part of the nineteenth century and arrived in the Philippines in the second half of the nineteenth century. Filipino Enlightenment led to the Philippine Revolution of 1896 (see the article https://www.academia.edu/6363265/Filipino_Philosophy_Past_and_Present_ 2013_). Currently, I think, globalization and terrorism are significant philosophical issues that we, as Asian philosophers, should reflect upon. And it is important that in general, we as Asians should be inward-looking, that is, find out and do research about our own intellectual traditions apart from what have already been established in China, India, and Japan—as this inward-looking has changed my own philosophical position in so far as the Philippine philosophical outlook is concerned. Among the problems in teaching philosophy in the Philippines are (i) the dearth of philosophy materials, (ii) the fact that only few philosophy departments offer degree courses in philosophy, (iii) the lack of financial support for philosophical researches, (iv) the lack of students majoring in philosophy, and (v) the lack of high-caliber philosophy journals published in the Philippines. De La Salle University is the most liberal sectarian university in the Philippines in so far as philosophy is concerned. We have all sorts of philosophical persuasions in the department: agnostic, atheist, feminist, Christian, liberal Catholic, Buddhist, and so on. 2

As far as I can see, every university seems to have a different philosophical tradition: UP is basically analytic; Ateneo is essentially continental with some Oriental philosophy; UST is Thomist, Continental, and Oriental; while DLSU is continental, analytic, Filipino, and Oriental. Both the MA and Ph.D. programs of DLSU offer analytic and continental philosophical traditions with some streaks of Oriental and Filipino philosophy. Generally, during the time I was teaching at De La Salle University (I am now retired), state universities are more inclined to the analytic tradition while sectarian universities are more inclined to the continental tradition. In one way or another, the Western (analytic, continental, pragmatic, etc.) and Oriental philosophical traditions helped me in understanding the development of traditional Filipino philosophy. For the first two trimesters of school-year 2003-2004, I taught philosophy of education, advanced symbolic logic, continental philosophy, and Filipino philosophy. During the third trimester, I taught postmodernism and analytic philosophy. My researches are basically in Filipino philosophy. Part I, Section 2 of Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach was published by the DLSU Press in 2004 (a summary of these two books can be found at https://www.academia.edu/4135427/Filipino_Philosophy_A_ Western_Tradition_in_an_Eastern_Setting_2013_). But I am also interested in the philosophy of culture, in the relationship between society and the person. The DLSU philosophy department conducted in 2001 a research on Filipino cultural traits. The book which I edited, is Filipino cultural traits: Claro R. Ceniza lectures (see https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=hXJe6vKMjroC&pg=PP5&source=gbs_selected_ pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false). The papers I read in Istanbul in August 2003 were on the person as individual and social being (see https://www. academia.edu/4279798/The_Person_as_Individual_and_Social_Being_2009_) and on the issue as to whether there is such a thing as Filipino philosophy (see https:// www.academia.edu/4428503/Is_There_a_Filipino_Philosophy_2009_2013_). Earlier I thought it was important to continue, as an additional outlet for Filipino philosophical reflections, the publication of Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of Philosophy of which I now serve as the editor (see as an example, https://www.academia.edu/24744156/ May_2016_Philosophia). Finally, I think that “contextual Asian philosophy” should be the rule, but at the same time, Asian philosophers should not close their eyes to philosophical developments in the West and the Orient (China, Japan, India). The Philippines is a highly Westernized country and Filipino philosophy as its “contextual Asian philosophy”—I would like to think—will necessarily include Western ideas such as those of St. Thomas and other Catholic philosophers. In Southern Philippines, you will hear philosophical discussions on Islamic thought. And Filipinos trained in Oriental thought will discuss Chinese and Buddhist philosophies, among others. These ideas will influence the future development of Filipino philosophy one way or the other. ========================================================= *This paper, slightly revised, was originally presented at the International Conference on Teaching Philosophy in the Asian Context on 16-19 February 2004 at the Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. The conference was sponsored by Institut Missio, Asian Christian Higher Education Institute of the United 3

Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and Ateneo de Manila University. Earlier versions of this paper appeared in Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, Part I, Section2 (Manila: DLSU Press, 2004) and in African Philosophical Inquiry 3 (3) (June 2013).

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