What Philosophy has failed to teach us
By Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD
I don't understand why many of the bright philosophy academics in this country are still discussing Plato or are debating about Plato and Aristotle, or why they are arguing about forms or whether or not human beings have a soul. They use esoteric language when in truth our problems are clear. I have read John Rawls and it is fair to think that he has a lot to say about what matters in this world when it comes to the question of justice. But you need to read Thomas Pogge or Amartya Sen if you want to say a thing or two that's relevant about it.
I remember Fr. Thomas Green who said that if anyone wrote about Aristotle today (he said this in 2001 when I was in his class) his thesis ought to be rejected at once. But that is not the issue that I seek to address. Queen Elizabeth once asked a group of economics experts why they were not able to predict the 2008 financial crisis. Even former US Treasury secretary Alan Grenspan later admitted that he got his predictions about the markets wrong. I hope the current President will ask why philosophy in this country has not helped erase poverty.
The answer, if you ask me, is that many teachers are still doing old stuff, contented with their idiosyncrasies but utterly not making sense if you ask policy makers or the people who make decisions in our lives. There is, of course, nothing wrong with writing about Plato. The problem is that we are living in a society where people find it hard to find three square meals a day without most of them understanding the reason why.
The old Greek and Roman civilizations have survived for many, many centuries. The humanist tradition came from the West. The Enlightenment defined the modern world as we know it. But Mindanao, the place they call the land of promise, despite its exclusion, also survived with the identity of its people intact. The funny thing is while many young academics struggle to write about the Western thinkers they idolize, many foreign scholars are actually interested in our local narratives.
At the dinner table in Bangkok's ICONSIAM, the Australian philosopher John Weckert told me that modern civilization is actually overrated. Of course, it was difficult to get what he meant by that. But after dinner, when all the dust particles in my head settled ìn, I came to the realization what modernity has done to us. It created monsters instead of angels - factories, wars, money, social media, all of which have alienated us from our sense of what is truly human.
The problem with philosophy right now is that it has not touched the ground. It is elitist and cares not about who we are as a society. Nevertheless, it is wrong to throw away the lessons that Aristotle and Kant have taught us. But the point is that we have to solve real issues and actual problems. Moral philosophy in this country is not doing that. In fact, many teachers are teaching Kant or Mill because it is what their own course outline says, and not because any student for that matter needs to understand what liberty actually means.
Life is about motivation and purpose. Such says something about human nature. Most people do not like their fellow humans to be on top so that whenever someone achieves something good, this person has to prove himself. This is perhaps the reason why we cannot move on as a society. We value things when they are to our own favor and demean those who are on the other side of the fence. Philosophy, in this regard, has a lot of explaining to do if you want life to mean anything at all.
