Victor John Loquias

The paper presents a constellation of works that have made a different ripple in doing philosophy in the Bikol region. The common feature of relocating the philosophical enterprise into the linguistic universe of Bikol among the works included is identified herein as the root of Bikol philosophizing while the arrangement according to their shared themes conveyed by the various concepts tackled is referred to as the offshoots of Bikol philosophizing. A panoramic view of the Bikol concepts developed is thus presented thematically rendering solidarity to the efforts of the authors who either worked directly or in proximity with the linguistic turn of philosophy to Bikol. The paper ends with some remarks on this practice of philosophy in Bikol in relation to the other initiatives in the country which offer a molecular view of (Filipino) philosophy in the regions.

The paper presents a constellation of works that have made a different ripple in doing philosophy in the Bikol region. The common feature of relocating the philosophical enterprise into the linguistic universe of Bikol among the works included is identified herein as the root of Bikol philosophizing while the arrangement according to their shared themes conveyed by the various concepts tackled is referred to as the offshoots of Bikol philosophizing. A panoramic view of the Bikol concepts developed is thus presented thematically rendering solidarity to the efforts of the authors who either worked directly or in proximity with the linguistic turn of philosophy to Bikol. The paper ends with some remarks on this practice of philosophy in Bikol in relation to the other initiatives in the country which offer a molecular view of (Filipino) philosophy in the regions.

In this paper, the famous Bikolano folk way of healing called Santigwar is reconstructed as a procedure of social critique which was ideationally made possible by Kristian Cordero’s metaphorical configuration of its practice from healing a sick body to a poetics of social diagnosis. The legitimacy of this effortis grounded on the normative significance of the practice of santigwar toBikolanos in the present and its historical background of conversion andresistance in Bikol. It is argued that while santigwar, in Cordero, is a literarypiece for social healing, it could likewise serve as a local concept for socialcritique refurbished with the conceptual tools borrowed from the recognitivetheory of Axel Honneth. Santigwar captures in literary imagination the brand ofsocial criticism called immanent critique geared for freedom yet grounded innormativity. Hence pagsantigwar sa banwaan becomes a philosophical praxis ofsocial healing performed for social emancipation —using Fenella Cannell’s terminology of the ethnographic value of santigwar to Bikolanos —for a “peoplewho have nothing.”

Employing Speech Act Theory, this paper traces the ethical contour of gratitude among Bikolanos as conveyed in the utterance of “Dyos Mabalos.” Utang na buot, the Bikolano counterpart of utang na loob is explained with its complementary concept of atang kan buot (gift of the self) as the two main conceptual conditions for the formation of the type of gratitude contained in the utterance of “Dyos Mabalos.” These normative conditions can also be culled from a number of contemporary Philippine studies which have already established the conceptual underpinnings of gratitude as a value. It will be shown further that “Dyos Mabalos” elevates gratitude from an ethical to a transcendental plane which becomes an emancipative mechanism for its conveyor in the situation where he assumes the asymmetrical position of being a recipient to an otherwise manipulative giver who would utilize the commerce of utang na loob for self-aggrandizement. This articulation achieves then on one hand a reappraisal of the culturally specific Bikolano significance of “Dyos Mabalos” and a contribution on the other to the already rich literature of investigations on utang na loob, specifically on a possible resolution to the ambivalence of gratitude in Philippine culture which could be gleaned from the performative speech and transcendental dimension of “Dyos Mabalos.”

Through problematization, Foucault bares the ethical teleology of homosexuality in friendship. In an interview, he describes friendship as a way of life. In parallel with his problematization of pleasure and the love of boys in the Greco-Roman technologies of the self, friendship could be more fully understood as a mode of cultivating the self in relation to a practice of truth between friends. According to Foucault, this cultivation or care of the self is at the same time a practice of freedom that defines an “aesthetics of existence.” On the other hand, at present, friendship could become a practice of freedom through a resistance of the discourse of sexuality and the overcoming of homosexuality as a sexological concept. In this paper, an alternative way of looking at homosexuality in an ethical manner is thus construed with Foucault

This paper provides an alternative way of linking Honneth’s claims on critical theory with his view of education. It addresses the question whether Honneth’s view of education bear the ramifications of his early theory of recognition, andhow it does come into play in the current strand of his thought in his later works. Honneth’s own description of doing criticaltheory is then appropriated to education in the phrase “criticalpedagogy with normative content.” The development ofHonneth’s thought from his theory of recognition to his notionof social freedom is first mapped out which provides thefoundation for the discussion of the moral-practicaldimension of education in the second part. The last partsurveys the normative goals of critical pedagogy in praxis from Honneth’s own experience as an educator and critical theorist, from methods employed by other researchers who employed Honneth’s theory as well as from local practices of social critique.

An environmental ethics grounded on a theory of recognition assumes social justice as incomplete without the due recognition of persons’ relationship with the environment from the standpoint of well-being as an integral part of human flourishing. The state in which this recognition is found missing in intersubjective relations is called reification or the loss of the empathetic engagement of persons with the environment. In Axel Honneth’s social theory, the historical moment in which this reification began can be traced from the emergence of the capitalist economic system. Economic inequalities and environmental crises are simultaneous effects of capitalism symptomatic of the severed empathetic engagement with the environment. The ethical significance of the environment is derived therefore on the first place from its role in the moral integrity of persons. The environment becomes a critical concern for social critique in the advent of this reification. Ethical action towards the environment in a recognitive framework demands reparation of this empathetic engagement in the practical level of human affairs where the environment is always already integrated.

Unless indigenous languages are revitalized in research and instruction, education itself will become the totalizing machine that will shut off spaces of discourse in the regions. This is due to the fact that language is the primary medium through which education and its cosmopolitan aims are carried out in pedagogical institutions. Knowledge, skills and principles are structurally transmitted in schools that employ the mainstream language either of the national, i.e., Filipino, or the international level, i.e., English, in instruction. But the hegemony of the mainstream language, without discounting the cosmopolitan value of the aims of education, threatens to silence diverse voices of discourses that operate within local and regional spaces. This threat becomes real when the agents of the educational enterprise in the regions embrace the promise of cosmopolitanism at the expense of or to the forgetfulness of their own socio-cultural resources especially their language.