Doing Philosophy

Soc Sci 4 (SS4)

Mr. Ernesto Bais A. Arcenas Jr.
Subject Teacher
Doing Philosophy

1. understand the complexity of defining

philosophy
2.understand why philosophy is an activity
or “way of life”
3.realize the importance of reflection and
self-examination; and
4.determine why philosophy is profoundly
different from other studies
Doing Philosophy:

1.The Definitions of Philosophy and its

Problem
2.Different Kinds of Knowledge
3.Wisdom
4.An Encounter with Nothing and Self-
Knowledge
5.Friendship
6.Friendship as “Other Self”
7.Conclusion: What is Philosophy?
Preliminaries:
1) Philosophical texts are difficult. It requires
patience and perseverance in understanding
them.
2) Secondary sources can give conflicting
interpretations.
Always consult the primary sources.
3) Practice reading the context of a text.
4. Simplifying a philosophical point does not mean
watering-down a concept or thought; doing so
affects the accuracy of the thought.
5. Philosophy is not about ‘mere opinions.’ It is a
rigorous and profound science. Hence, it requires
preparation. Hence, avoid talking ‘on top of your
head.’
6. Be Thoughful. Be Careful in reading, writing and
teaching philosophy. Philosophy demands respect.
• “To say that Major Andre was hanged is
clear and definite;
• to say that he was killed is less definite,
because you do not know in what way he
was killed;
• to say that he died is still more indefinite
because you do not even know whether
his death was due to violence or to natural
causes.”
• Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style, pp.30-31.
• “Swift, Macaulay, and Shaw would say that
Andre was hanged.
• Bradley would say that he was killed.
• Bosanquet would say that he died.
• Kant would say that his mortal existence
achieved its termination.
• Hegel would say that a finite determination of
infinity had been further determined by its own
negation.”
• Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style, pp.30-31.
 But,
what is philosophy?
To answer this question with
a defining answer is a
daunting,
If not an impossible, task.
daunting…
• Philosophy as ‘Love’ of ‘Wisdom’

• Philosophy as “a science of first

principles”

• “Philosophy…its questions are more

essential than its answers, and every
answer becomes a new question.”
• There are as many definitions to
philosophy as there are philosophers. The
German philosopher, Edmund Husserl
remarks:

• “to be sure, we still have philosophical

congresses. The philosophers meet but,
unfortunately, not the philosophies.”
if not… impossible…

• The question, what

is philosophy, is
[seeming] paradox.
E.g. Waking is dreaming”
Where do we begin?
• To circumvent this [seeming] paradox
is to borrow from M. Heidegger’s own
prescription to the hermeneutic circle,
• enter it the right way.
• How does one begin to enter the right way?
• In our interrogation to the question “what is
philosophy?”, what we have, without perhaps
noticing at the onset, is that
• we are already given the act itself, which is the
key to our interrogation of philosophy. The act
itself of philosophy is the confession of her
name. This is, perhaps, how we can begin to
enter the right way, we enter philosophy in the
name of philosophy, which is “philosophy.”
PHILO | SOPHY

ethymology
SOPHIA
• The term sophia, the -sophy of
philosophy, is a specific term in
Attic Greek that can be
understood, and is often
translated, in English as
Wisdom.
• Wisdom is a specific term, which
in Attic Greek is sophia.
• It is distinguished from opinion
(doxa),
• from technical knowledge
(techne),
• and from scientific knowledge
(episteme).
DOXA
• It is the lowest kind of knowledge because
it lacks any proper justification. Perhaps it
can be considered that opinion is an
assertion without proper justification. Any
kind of knowledge attained without any
valid or proper justification, for example,
rumors and gossips, are considered as
doxa or opinion.
Episteme
• a kind of knowing that has grounded or
justified assertions. Factual statements,
such as "Water boils at 100 degrees
Celsius at sea level” and "Dogs are warm-
blooded animals“, are assertions that are
justified, for instance through the scientific
method, and therefore can be verified.
Epistemic or scientific knowledge,
therefore, is knowledge of the principles
that govern things.
TECHNE

It is the knowledge of the means-end of objects, that is, the

“how” things are made and done. A cobbler's ability to create
shoes is not so much because he or she is knowledgeable of
the physics behind shoes or the molecular properties of
leather, nor is his knowledge of shoe-making merely a
common knowledge because not everyone has the ability to
make shoes. Techne or technical knowledge is a kind of
specialized knowledge. The cobbler's knowledge, and,
therefore, his ability to create shoes is called as technical
knowledge or techne. Without having to oversimplify the term,
techne can also be considered as the knowledge inherent in
skills to produce something, the means to manipulate certain
things (leather and other materials needed to create a shoe)
in order to achieve the desired ends (a pair of shoes).
• SOPHIA
• the highest of all knowledge, because it is
the "most finished of the forms of
knowledge” and it is the knowledge of
first principles.
But,
• What is Wisdom?
• What makes Wisdom the highest?
• What makes Wisdom different
from the other forms of Knowing?
IN BRIEF:
The “Apology” narrates the trial and defense of Socrates. In this
dialogue, Socrates explained that envy is the reason why he is
accused of impiety and the corruption of the youth of Athens in the first
place. He traced how this envy against him back to the answer of the
Oracle at Delphi. When one of Socrates' friends, Chaerephon, visited
the priestess and inquired if there is any person wiser than Socrates,
the Oracle answered that "no one is wiser."
When Chaerephon reported this to Socrates, this left Socrates baffled.
He asked himself why he is the wisest of all if he knows that he
clearly knows nothing. In trying to disprove the Oracle's claim, he
visited several persons who have the reputation to be wise. After
visiting them one by one, he realized that not one of them lives up to
their reputation as wise men. This realization, which he did not hide,
made him enemies to these so-called wise men because it wounded
their prides and reputations. It was because of this assault against their
stature as wise men that these persons plotted to accuse Socrates
of being an evildoer and a threat to Athens herself .
First, wisdom is the encounter of
the Nothing.
FOR SOCRATES, own bafflement
and wonder for the Oracle's claim
that he is the wisest of all. This
surprised him exactly because he
knows that he knows nothing. So
how can he, who knows nothing, be
the wisest of all?
second, wisdom is
self-knowledge.
When the death penalty was proposed to him against his
crimes,
Socrates explained that he has done no crime and that what
he did was righteous. He further declared his willingness to
die for his act.
But what is this righteous act that Socrates claimed he has
done and he is willing to die for? This righteous act is no
other than the examination of one’s life. That what he has
done that lead to the envy and anger of his enemies was to
examine his life and others. This, for Socrates, is the
"greatest good" and further asserts that "the unexamined
life is not worth living.
• First, wisdom is the
encounter of the Nothing.

• Second, wisdom is a kind of

knowledge that thinks about itself as
its object of thought or self-knowledge.
• The two moments from Plato's work
“Apology” GIVE US A CLUE ON HOW TO
UNDERSTAND SOPHIA OR WISDOM.

1) knowing that I do not know, and

2) "the unexamined life is not worth
living"
AN EXAMPLE OF THE BALLPEN
AND BREAKING-DOWN

1) when we listen to the lecture of a teacher

and write down notes, we are not conscious of
the ballpen that we are using in writing down
notes…
2) then, all of a sudden the ballpen exhausts its
ink and loses its function to write…
3) At that moment, the ballpen, which
previously we are not conscious of, appears to
us; that is, we become conscious of the ballpen
because we start to wonder why it failed…
4) We start to notice it, to think about it…
5) Before we troubleshoot or fix the pen, in that
short moment of time, we think about our
relationship to the pen,
until we solve the problem by, perhaps, either
getting another ballpen or fixing its malfunction…
6) Once the problem is solved, we continue with
our writing and the pen disappears again from our
consciousness, that is, we again no longer notice
the pen as we continue writing down our notes of
the teacher's lecture…
What is crucial here is that when things break from
their usual movement, we are able to, even in a short
time, think about our relationship with that thing.
We are able to reflect about our relation to things and
to the world. In doing this, we are, at that moment,
seeing everything away from us as we gauged them
(things and the world) and think how they are related
to us; at that moment, we stand away from them and
see only possibilities of our engagements to them, viz.,
what we can do to them and what we can do with
them. We see how they are meaningful to us, and
why they are not.
At that moment, when things are away from us, we
encounter the Nothing.
DEATH AND DYING

This experience jolts us, stops us at that

moment from what we usually do. Like the
ballpen losing ink, we start to notice what
we haven't noticed before, we start to notice
what is closest to us; we start to notice our
life, and start to re-think our relation of life to
things and to the world.
It is a moment of wonder .
WHEN THINGS BREAK DOWN

What is the point of living at all?

Why do we live at all, if in the end we will just die?
This moment, like the ballpen failing to
write, leaves us in suspension. When such a
moment of suspension arises, we start to
realize and question our relation to things
and the world. Why am I here? What am I
doing? What am I? Where will I go? What
is the purpose of my life?
This is the mark of wisdom, the highest of all forms of
knowing, because the answer is, to take from Socrates,
“I know that I do not know.” And exactly, because I
do not know, that I seek to make sense of the
senseless. It is this searching for an answer, this
examination of the self that Socrates in the“Apology”
considers as the “greatest good.”
This is sophia or wisdom. Unlike techne, doxa and
episteme,sophia has for its object of thinking, its
ownself, that is, thought itself. In other words, it is self-
knowledge, and it is the highest form of knowledge
because when all other forms of thinking and knowing
breaks down to become senseless in the encounter
with the Nothing, it is sophia or wisdom that
attempts to make sense of all of it through
language.
PHILO | SOPHY
Love

• Agape is that kind of love that is

unconditional, a kind of love that is
paradigmatically expressed by parents to
their children.
• Eros, on the other hand, is a kind of love
that is expressed by lovers. Hence, the
term erotic love.
• Philia is friendship.
What kind of love is shown in the
pictures?
The experience of one is bridged together with the other’s
experience, thus, making both experiences common to
each other. Because of this common experience of a
pleasant and a good life, the one or the self makes the
other an other self. This is friendship or philia.
To be friends means to know what is pleasant and good to
each other and to seek for the other the same pleasant
and good thing one experiences. Agamben explains to us
that this sharing or having a common experience among
friends that binds them together is a profound relation that
is founded on a consenting, on a shared “state of being.”
A friend is what Aristotle calls as
the “Other Self” (heteros gar
autos ho philos estin), the other
self-conscious being that shares
the same experience that one
experienced.
WHAT, THEN, IS PHILOSOPHY?

What is philosophy? Philosophy, then, as a friendship of wisdom, is a

“way of life.” It is a constant enduring and struggle with the
Nothing, that is, a constant struggle in making sense or giving
meaning to one's relation to things and the world together with
those who share
the same “state of being”, together with those whom we call friends.

Philosophy, then, is not merely academic or

speculative, in the sense that it is preoccupied by merely
thinking about abstract ideas. It is also concrete because
it is a kind of life, a peculiar life that asks about life
itself together with friends—a life that we call the truly
human life.
This is philosophy. To do
philosophy is to be
human, and to be human
is to do philosophy.
ACTIVITY
• In your own words and understanding
“WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?”

• https://
padlet.com/earcenas/xy29nh6etru0yp8n
THANK YOU FOR BEING MY
“OTHER SELF” ALL
THROUGHOUT TODAY..

END…