Chapter 1 Doing Philosophy for Senior Highschool K-12. Powerpoint presentation learning material

2.  According to the Greek historian, Diogenes Laertius’
important work entitled “The Lives of Philosophers”,
the word “Philosophy” was first used by Pythagoras to
mean, literally “love of wisdom” or in Greek, philia
sophia.
 Philosophers are called “lovers of wisdom”
 philia (love) and sophia (wisdom)
 Described as a “way of life” by a French philologist,
Pierre Hadot

3.  Understood as “way of life”, therfore concretely is a
performance
 An act, a “doing philosophy”
 What or who is “doing philosophy” is the
“philosopher”

4.  The term sophia, the –sophy of philosophy, is a
specific term in Attic Greek that can be understood in
English as wisdom.
 Wisdom is a kind of knowledge that is distinguished
from:
› Opinion (doxa)
› Technical knowledge (techne)
› Scientific knowledge (episteme)

5.  Doxa or Opinion – is a kind of knowledge that refers
to a common understanding or, taken in a certain way,
as common sense.
- is the lowest kind of knowledge because it lacks
any proper justification.

6.  Techne or Technical – it is knowledge of the means-
end of objects, that is, the “how” things are made and
done.
- a kind of specialized knowledge
- a knowledge in skills to produce something, the
means to manipulate certain things in order to
achieve the desired ends.

7.  Episteme or Scientific – is a kind of knowing that has
grounded or justified assertions.
- is knowledge of the principles that govern things
- is knowledge that founds the different scientific
domains.

8.  Sophia or wisdom is distinguished to be the highest of
all knowledge according to Aristotle because it is the
“most finished of the forms of knowledge” and it is
knowledge of first principles.

9.  Plato- Aristotle's teacher
 Socrates - teacher of Plato
- Is accused of impiety and corruption of the
youth of Athens
 Apology - a work of Plato
- narrates the trial and defense of Socrates

10. APOLOGY
 Envy - Socrates explained that this 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
 Chaerephon – one of Socrates' friends
- Visited the priestess and inquired if
there is any person wiser than Socrates, the Oracle
answered that “no one is wiser”.
- He reported this to Socrates which
left Socrates baffled.

11.  Socrates – asked himself why he is the wisest of all if
he knows that he clearly knows nothing
- 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.
- He didn’t hid this realization which made
him enemies with the so-called wise men.

12.  Wise men - They made Socrates their enemy because
of the realization Socrates had which wounded their
pride and reputation.
- It was because of this assault against their
stature as wise men that these persons plotted to
accuse Socrates of being an evil doer and a threat to
Athens herself.

13.  The first important moment that can give us an
understanding of wisdom is Socrates own bafflement
and wonder for the Oracle's claim that he is the wisest
of all.
 The second important moment occurs after Socrates
presented his defense against the accusation hurled
against him by his enemies.

14.  Examination of one's life – the righteous act that
Socrates claimed he had done and he is willing to die
for.
- This, for Socrates, is the ‘’greatest
good” and that “the unexamined life is not worth
living”.

15. The two moments from Plato’s work “Apology,”
namely:
1) knowing that I do not know, and
2) “the unexamined life is not worth living” give us a clue
on how to understand sophia or wisdom.
Wisdom as knowing that I do not know breaks us
from the mechanistic procedures or the usual manner in
which we think and do things. This experience in one
way manifests itself when something breaks down or
stops working correctly.

16. 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 to that thing. We are
able to reflect about our relation to things and to the
world.
We see how they are meaningful to us, and why
they are not. At that moment, when things are away
from us, we encounter nothing.

17. We start to think about the meaning of life. We start
to ask as death stares at us: what is the point of living
at all? Why do we live at all, if in the end we will just
die?
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.

18. The cause for Socrates’ encounter with the Nothing
is the Oracle’s declaration that he is the wisest of all.
This is an experience, for Socrates, of wonder, what
the ancient Greeks call as Thaumazein. Like the
example mention, it is a moment that strips us of our
familiarity with things and situations such that it
disturbs as and haunts us or makes us wonder.

19. This experience of both wonder and suspense leaves us
to grapple with the Nothing. Like Socrates, what is
familiar to us and what makes sense, all of sudden,
becomes strange and senseless.
For the philosopher Hannah Arendt, this experience of
wonder is traumatic. She writes: “The wonder which man
endures or which befalls him cannot be related in words
because it is too general for words. Plato must have first
encountered it in those frequently reported traumatic states
in which Socrates would suddenly, as though seized by a
rapture, fall into complete motionlessness, just staring,
without seeing or hearing anything.”

20. Wisdom does not culminate after this initial
experience. This wonder and trauma, this encounter
with the Nothing, is endured until a decision is made
from this experience. Rightly so, this traumatic
experience is a crisis.

21. What Is Crisis?
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben explains that krisis
• in the medical and theological tradition is inseparable from the
connection to a determinate moment of time
the decisive days(krisimoi hemerai, dies decretorii) which
the doctor “judged” whether the sick person will survive
, and the last day that coincides with the end of time or
of what must be “judged”
Therefore, crisis means
- a moment of decision
- a judgement

22. When one endures the Nothing, one must make a
decision on whether to continue enduring or abandon
this experience. Enduring this experience is to endure
this through language, but what does it mean?

23. After Socrates received the answer from the Oracle
which says that he is the wisest, but believes it is not
true, he decided to endure this experience by seeking
for the answer of the Oracles riddle. But the first thing
he did was to speak about it, to say the experience. But
the experience isn’t sensible at all, so he tried through
language. This traumatic experience is cried, shrieked,
and screamed out.

24. Both German and French languages show this in the
structure of their words
In German
› schrieben(to write) if from the root word
› Schrie(shriek, wail)
In French
› Ecru(writing) is from Cri(cry)

25. When animals experience pain, they cry. Although
humans cry when they experience pain, the most
profound experience of pain is through language . In
the moment of writing history, it immediately belongs
to humanity . This is when we speak of the subject
“Humanities”, we deal with literature, religion, art,
architecture, and culture. This is our distinction from
animals which only cry but do not speak

26. The being that speaks in ancient Greek is called
zoon logon echon, which the Scholastics of the Middle
Ages interpret as the animal rationale, the rational
animal is the human being.

27. Language is the endurance of this traumatic
encounter with the Nothing. It is at the same time, the
second crucial moment found in the “Apology” that is
“the unexamined life is not worth living for me or in
the other way around, the examined life is worth
living. Through language, the Nothing we encounter,
little by little, becomes something. Language makes
this possible through relation between question and
answer or what in Socrates and in Plato is called as
dialectics.

28. In language, we are to make sense in the senseless,
to find meaning in the meaningless or, as Albert
Camus puts it, the lucidity in absurdity. Language is
how we endure the trauma of this encounter of the
Nothing. When we ask “why” after any traumatic
experience, we endure this by asking a question using
language.

29. The philosophers Gottfried Leibniz and Martin
Heidegger capture this encounter with the Nothing
through the question “Why is there something rather
than Nothing?”. 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.

30. It is what Socrates considers as the “greatest good”
in the “Apology”, this examination of the self. This is
sophia or wisdom. Unlike techne, doxa, and episteme,
sophia has for it is object of thinking, it’s ownself, that
is thought itself. In other words, it is self-knowledge,
the highest form of knowledge. All other forms of
thinking and knowing breaks down to become
senseless in the encounter with the Nothing, it is only
sophia or wisdom that attempts to make sense of it all
through language.

31.  Constitutes “Philosophy”
› Philia or Love – does not have any identical translation in
Attic Greek
3 categories of Love
• Agape
• Eros
• Philia

32.  Agape
› is that “love” that is unconditional
› a kind of love that has for its model, the love of parents to their
children
 Eros
› is love that is expressed between lovers
› hence, the term erotic love
 Philia
› its closest translation in English is Friendship
› in philosophia or philosophy, it is understandably Friendship
The concern of philosophy as philosophia is neither Agape nor
Eros but the third category of love, Philia. So, we have to
understand Friendship if we were to complete our clarification
of philosophy.

33.  Aristotle’s work
› Nichomachean Ethics
 one of the earliest treatises
 it discusses friendship and examine the meaning of philia or
Friendship
 This examination is guided by the thoughts and readings of the
contemporary philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, in his essay, “The
Friend”

34. If we are conscious of sensation and of being alive,
then we are also conscious of a pleasant sensation or
experience; then we can also be conscious of a
pleasant life or existence.
But what has these experiences- consciousness of
existence and the examined of life, have to do with
friendship?

35. A friend calls as the “other self”
(heteros gar autos ho philos estin) by Aristotle
- the other self-conscious being that shares the same
experience that one experience
- when one is conscious of what is pleasant and good,
the other is conscious too
- having a common experience which binds them
together

36. Friendship or philia
- the one or the self makes the other because of
common experience of a pleasant and a good life
- means to know what is pleasant and good to each
other
- they speak to each other, and they share their lives
together
- sharing or consisting the same “state of being”

37. What is the meaning of consesting?
- a shared “state of being”
- the friend who sees his friend as himself or herself
- seeks for himself the pleasant and good life
- and for the same time, seeks for his friend the same
experience

38. Something common
- According to Roberto Esposito, finds its etymology
in the word “gift”
- If it is given and passed, if it is shared
- a friend, that must has also experience in his own
solitude the same experience