Alvin Servaña

This essay investigates the existential and philosophical dilemmas of modernity, drawing on the prophetic insights of Friedrich Nietzsche and José Rizal as critical entry points. Though situated on opposite ends of the globe, both thinkers discerned a paradox at the heart of modernity: its promise of liberation entwined with new forms of domination. Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the “death of God” diagnosed the spiritual vacuum of Western civilisation, while Rizal’s critique of colonial modernity exposed the violence embedded in imperial progress. Together, they illuminate the dialectics between emancipation and barbarism that have shaped the past century. Complementary reflections by Paul Johnson, Viktor Frankl, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn highlight modernity’s contradictions, particularly the instrumental rationality that enabled both human flourishing and systematic destruction. Cultural transformations, marked by the fragmentation of coherent narratives, are further exemplified in the literary visions of W. Somerset Maugham and Gabriel García Márquez, whose works capture the dissonance of fractured modern identities. The inquiry culminates in an exploration of hypermodernity’s crisis of selfhood, where digital “excarnation” threatens embodied human experience. Against this backdrop, the essay advocates for situated transcendence and moral imagination as pathways to reclaim sensibility amid disintegration. By echoing the voices of past thinkers, it calls for a conscious inhabiting of modernity’s tensions—an effort to confront paradoxes with compassion and creativity. Ultimately, the essay envisions more grounded in ethical vigilance and imaginative renewal, as antidotes to the alienation of the contemporary age. Echoing the voices of past thinkers, it calls for a nuanced engagement with the unresolved paradoxes of the modern Geistes—an effort to inhabit its tensions consciously and compassionately while envisioning more humanistic futures.

This paper is a section in an analytical swathe that re-orients the role of criticism in inscribed Filipino identity, Philippine Literatures in English, and Critical Pedagogy of Literature. Re-examining Philippine short stories in English through a de-westernised lens, the paper offers a comprehensive analytical and critical backbone for anyone who reads and teaches Philippine Literatures in English, especially those during the American colonisation. By revealing overlooked aspects of Filipino consciousness and challenging traditional literary analysis coming from the usual Western-oriented paradigms, the treatise provides not only a conceptual provocation, but a framework for reinterpreting colonial-era literature and promoting a more nuanced understanding of national identity. Ultimately, the critique contributes to decolonising scholarship in the Philippines, aiming to rebuild local, native, and national consciousness through critical literary examination, allowing peripheral signifying practices and significant principles of Filipino consciousness to be revisited and re-viewed.

This essay critically examines the persistent food security challenges in the Philippines, a nation paradoxically rich in agricultural resources yet plagued by hunger and malnutrition. Through a comprehensive four-part analysis, it systematically unpacks the complex milieus: historical, economic, political—factors shaping this crisis. Part 1 explores the historical and contemporary dynamics driving the hunger for food sovereignty, examining how export-oriented agriculture—driven by global actors, i.e., multinational corporations and international financial—has systematically marginalised small-scale farmers and eroded local food systems. Part 2 leverages Renato and Letizia Constantino’s “Distorted Priorities: The Politics of Food” to analyse the historical continuities between colonial and contemporary agricultural policies, while employing Foucault’s concepts of biopolitics and governmentality to illuminate the regulatory mechanisms perpetuating these inequities. The analysis reveals how cultural imperialism propagated by fast food chains and environmental degradation caused by monoculture farming have further complicated the nation’s food security landscape. Part 3 applies Iris Marion Young’s “Five Faces of Oppression” framework to systematically analyse exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and structural violence within the Philippine food system. Part 4 synthesises these perspectives to examine critical implications for food sovereignty and proposes transformative approaches through food sovereignty principles, genuine agrarian reform, and sustainable agricultural practices. The essay concludes that by addressing structural inequalities and empowering marginalised communities through comprehensive policy reforms and grassroots initiatives, the Philippines can move towards a future where all individuals have access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food, reflecting a commitment to social justice and environmental sustainability

This essay presents a critical philosophical examination of contemporary educational realities within the South- east Asian context, particularly focusing on the Philippines and broader ASEAN region. Employing Presuppositional Epistemology—the principle that knowledge emerges from foundational commitments and principles—this study argues that education is never theologically or morally neutral, necessitating rigorous philosophical inquiry into educational practice. The paper addresses the pervasive learning crisis evidenced by recent data showing that nine out of ten Filipino children aged ten cannot read simple texts, alongside declining enrollment rates across the region. Through systematic metaphysical analysis of learners, educators, and institutional frameworks, this treatise challenges prevailing educational paradigms that prioritize economic utility over human flourishing. The methodology integrates classical philosophical inquiry with contemporary educational criticism, examining how ignorance—conceptualized as a noetic effect of human depravity—manifests in systemic educational failures across ASEAN nations. The study proposes a reconceptualized philosophy of education that synthesizes Essentialist rigor, Perennialist wisdom, Existentialist authenticity, and Critical Pedagogical liberation, offering a holistic response to the educational crises plaguing Southeast Asian societies. This philosophical framework contends that authentic education must confront competing worldviews while maintaining an unwavering commitment to truth, wisdom, and human dignity in an increasingly fragmented global landscape.

(Blurb) When the dark night of the soul arrives and the miasma of cold pleasure of suicide becomes the loudest baritone in the head, how does one leap back to the warm realm of the living? Where, when, how, and why one is jolted back to life is the supposed connecting thread of each, rather, stand-alone poem. Titled "Soulful Defibrillation", the following suite of verses is a wellspring testimony---all in poetic vision--- of how one's soul is seduced into depression and how it is made to resist, no matter how death appears to be the only comfortable bed.

Using Philosophical Formalism, I am executing a close textual examination of Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” as a “postmodern” novel. By looking into the implications of genre and/into the supposed self-aware critico-novelistic vision of Pynchon, I cascaded this critique as follows: Part 1: the semiotic/semiological texture of the novel; Part 2: the novel as a critical attempt to the Enlightenment-infused concepts in the contemporary time-space reality; Part 3: the novel as a psychedelic commentary on the modernist psychosis, thus a celebration and an interrogation of the legacies (?) of the intricacies or the lack thereof of the Postmodern cultural mood; for better or worse. What we can gleaned from this novel as a signifying practice of the Postmodern turn is something that is open to interpretations that I wish to consolidate and bring forth to the discourse—(con-)current to the issues that hover the Subject—elsewhere.

Purpose This paper offers a critical exegesis of popular culture and its intersections with the other cultural expressions in the contemporary Philippine scene. As a distinct Reformed-Evangelical critique, the paper hopes to shed light on the areas of popular culture that are often assumed rather than discussed; affirmed but not analysed. Design/methodology/approach Although the following exposition is readily and arguably Western by orientation, most especially on the (post)modern mood in the space it belongs, as hegemonised by Anglo-American discourse, most of the concepts that this paper tackles are definitely universal and principled in praxes. The persuasion is that these criticisms will cover even the Filipino sub-/culture and sensibility in its attempt to exegete culture ontologically and contemplate on the phenomenon of popular culture at the very least. In that case, everyone who reads and specialises in cultural hermeneutics is thereby urged to offer a conscious understanding, comprehension and correspondence on the aforementioned particular aspects, albeit not everyone in the masses can readily grasp what this paper intends to build its discourse on. In carrying out this cultural exegetical task, certain markers and indicators will be used as halters, so to defamiliarise one’s attention on matters that may have immediate correspondence to the Filipino culture in its contemporary scene/sense, be it urban, suburban or rural depending on the spatial location of the readers as they interact with this treatise. As a whole, this paper endeavours to mould and uphold one’s glocal consciousness, distinctions, and differentiations in the assessment of culture, popular culture and popular culture in the Philippines vis-a-vis or vs other factors of this shared reality, sub-/culture and literacy and their probable popular culture counterparts elsewhere in the signifying and significant human experiences, challenges and perspectives. Findings The paper finds out that without a critico-practical approach to the implications of popular culture, it will be an insidious challenge to anyone who wishes to coexist with it, most especially the subcultural expressions of certain communities. Originality/value The paper possesses novelty in its being an intersection of cultural studies, criticism, theology and philosophy as basis for interpretation of certain socio-cultural phenomena in the contemporary urban space.

Since the 9/11 bombing, religion, terrorism and violence have been associated and have been viewed to be “coextensive”. The leading voice of secularism, darwinistic evolutionism and atheism (i.e., Dennett, Harris, Dawkins and the late Hitchens) found their way into popular media and publication and had an old hardline skeptic stance “repacked” as New Atheism. This apparent resurgence of skepticism to the possibility, probability and reality of the Supernatural (God) has been, in some way, gaining success in owning the explanation for the phenomenon of morality eliminating any sense of religion, if possible. But are their claims epistemically and ontologically viable? This paper will revisit, compare and contrast, and examine the new and the preexisting worldviews and ideologies that actively participate in the contemporary discussion of moral issues. More specifically, this critique will look into the assumptions, presuppositions of Evolutionist, Secular Humanist, Post-marxist, Post-feminist (and other dominant atheist frameworks) that attempt at explaining morality and its nature. The findings will be juxtaposed against the Judæo-Christian paradigm, as it is the traditional and standard argument on the need for God as the ground of moral values and duties. What this paper wishes to accomplish is a clear and coherent set of explanations which the other contrarian perspectives may consider viable as they consider present their ideas elsewhere. Finally, the paper aims to find its contextual significance in the Philippines as the country is slowly, but steadily receiving the winds of atheistic/materialistic ideologies through contemporary media: print, visual, and social.