Abortion and Human Dignity

The position of the Church

The Catholic Church argues that abortion is morally wrong because “the one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life” . The position of the Church is that human life begins from the very moment of conception. This means that no period from the moment of conception and along the path of embryonic and fetal development can be drawn to merit a moral justification for abortion on the basis of the right to privacy or freedom of choice of the mother, unless the life of the mother is in danger.

One basis of the Church in saying that abortion is morally wrong is the fact that a fertilized egg already has the full genetic code of a human being right after the moment of conception. Thus, it can be said that it is already human. As such, it must be endowed with the dignity of a human being. According to the Church, “some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, from the time of that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun…” Abortion thus violates the right to life of the unborn. For the Church, this life is simply a victim of a kind of violence. Pope John Paul II speaks of the innocence of the unborn:

No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenseless, even to the point of lacking the minimal form of defense consisting in the poignant power of the newborn baby’s cries and tears.

For the Catholic Church, the unborn, even in their silence, being human, deserves respect as a person. This also means that the unborn must be protected from harm. If the unborn child does no harm to any person, if this child is innocent and powerless, why sacrifice the life of that child? It is morally plausible to argue, even without the basis of faith, from the point of view of our moral intuitions, that the life inside the womb has a moral value. The value of human life is not as such because it is what the Church stands for. The basis of such is the reality that something of moral value is developing. It has a life. It is a life brought forth by a kind of relation between two human persons. Whether or not it is a result of an acceptable or an illicit affair, such is not the point. The moral point is that there is a human life inside the womb.

Pope John Paul II summarizes the position of the Catholic faith and makes a moral evaluation of the same:

In the case of abortion there is a widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as ‘interruption of pregnancy,’ which tends to hide abortion’s true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion. Perhaps this uneasiness is also symptomatic of the uneasiness of conscience. But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

The position of the Catholic Church regarding the issue of abortion, a moral stand that has influenced the 1987 Philippine Constitution because of the country’s deep Catholic tradition, tells us that the unborn possesses the same dignity as any mature adult. In this sense, the unborn has a right to life. The State, thus, protects not only the life of the mother but the life of the unborn as well. This means that the unborn must be given all the rights and entitlements necessary to be given birth. It is a gross violation of the unborn child’s right to life to interrupt any pregnancy and consequently, this means that the no resource of the state should be utilized in support of abortion rights.

To say that the unborn has the same moral status with that of an adult means that killing the unborn is not different from killing a mature person. Thus, for Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church, abortion is direct killing or murder.

The legalization of abortion in the United States

Now, let us discuss the landmark Roe v Wade case (1973) in the US Supreme Court which gave women in the US the right to an abortion. According to the US Supreme Court:

In areas other than criminal abortion, the law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn except in narrowly defined situations and except when rights are contingent upon the live birth.

This means that the US Supreme Court does not believe that there are plausible reasons to say that human life begins at the moment of conception. And because no human life exists, subsequently no right can be given to the unborn. Morally, this means that full autonomy, which is the capacity of persons to argue for the moral good, is not conferred by the US Supreme Court on the unborn. This also means that the Court subjects the full development of the unborn to the decision of the mother and the State.

Mary Anne Warren argues for instance, that “it is possible to show that, on the basis of intuitions which we may expect even the opponents of abortion to share, a fetus is not a person, and hence not the sort of entity to which it is proper to ascribe full moral rights”. On this note, clearly for Warren, rights are conferred only to persons. To deny the right to life to an unborn child legally means that personhood is the necessary and essential basis of one’s right to life. The US Supreme Court decision concludes:

A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life saving procedure on behalf of a mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The US Supreme Court says in the ruling that any law prohibiting abortion should consider the interests of the mother. Otherwise, the rights of the mother, i.e. right to privacy, and other important State interests, i.e. health care, are violated. Impliedly, since the subject state law from Texas violates the Due Process clause as deemed by the Court, the ruling meant to manifest that the mother has the legal right to terminate the pregnancy.

Now, what the above means for us is that it assumes that the unborn fetus is an alien entity using the body of the woman. Being an alien entity, the continuation of the pregnancy should require the consent of the mother. Judith Thomson echoes this when she says that “for what we have to keep in mind is that the mother and the unborn child are not like two tenants in a small house which has, by unfortunate mistake, been rented to both: the mother owns the house”. The point of Thomson is to demonstrate that, in defense of women’s rights, she says that “at least some and perhaps most cases, a woman is under no moral obligation to complete an unwanted pregnancy”.

Consider for instance the argument comparing the unborn to some violinist. Hypothetically, Thomson says, consider that you have given a violinist the right to use your kidneys in order for him to live. But what if you decide to unplug him from your kidneys? No one could have given him such a chance. But it is your kidneys and you have made your decision. Is it unjust? Thomson says that it is not unjust because you own your kidneys. She says that, “the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly”. Thomson holds the same against the fetus, suggesting that “you are not morally required to spend nine months in bed sustaining the life of that violinist…”

The right to privacy tells us that women are autonomous subjects. Thus, it is said that they deserve respect with regard to their decisions as mature consenting individuals. The right to privacy includes the right to choose, i.e. on how to use one’s body. It is a right flowing from a woman’s being an absolute holder of moral value, i.e. being an autonomous subject. Thus, it is a right which goes on to mean that the mother has the moral power to decide as to whether or not she would allow the fetus to depend on her. Justice Blackmun also notes that:
For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.

Based on the decision, the choice to continue or terminate the pregnancy must be accompanied by certain conditions. Thus, the US Supreme Court decision states that “for the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health”.

Concerns regarding public health are thereby invoked in the decision. It clearly stipulates that after the first trimester, the different states in the United States may regulate abortion, with the general compelling reason of protecting and preserving maternal health. This stipulation rules that pregnant women do not have the absolute right to procure an abortion after the first trimester. It dictates that US States do have some form of regulatory power on abortion after the first trimester.

The decision does not mean that the US Supreme Court has acknowledged the right to life of the unborn after the first trimester. The ruling sidesteps the question on the personhood of the fetus. It is essential, but the Court rules that it is not legally possible to have any plausible argument to determine substantially if the fetus is a person. The decision on Roe v Wade simply rules that US States have certain regulatory powers with regard to abortion after the first trimester on the basis of State interests. Below, we shall consider the general reasons for abortion.

Therapeutic Abortion

Therapeutic abortion is done in order to save the life of the mother. One case of therapeutic abortion is ectopic pregnancy. It is a condition where the embryo fails to implant in the uterus and is developing inside the fallopian tube. In such a condition, continuing the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. It is the moral urgency of saving the life of the mother that makes therapeutic abortion morally justifiable.

The argument proceeds from the principle of double-effect. In the principle of double-effect, one is to choose a lesser evil in order to achieve a greater good. The principle of double-effect tells us that one act (in this case abortion) has two effects – one, saving the life of the mother and second, ending the life of the embryo. The end of the non-viable embryo is not intentional but comes as an effect in the effort to save the mother’s life by terminating the pregnancy. The good of saving the life of the mother is greater than the value of the non-viable embryo.

Eugenic Abortion

The science of eugenics employs the science of genetics in order to create better species. By better, we mean that these species are more desirable because of their better physiological traits. Following this stance, eugenic abortion terminates the pregnancy in order to avoid giving birth to infants with physical deformities. Parents usually undergo prenatal screening to check for abnormalities in the unborn fetus. A fetal anomaly is used as basis in deciding to terminate the pregnancy.

Eugenic abortion relies on the idea that fetuses are not yet persons. Thus, since fetuses are not persons, they do not have rights. Fetuses, following this argument, are said to possess no moral status and thus, they do not have a right to a full human life.

But the most compelling reason against eugenic abortion is that it considers the unborn as a mere object without any dignity. It makes the wrong judgment that an unborn child who may have disabilities cannot live a meaningful human life. It is something that reduces the life of the unborn to an object of scientific manipulation and control.

Although it can be said that the science of eugenics aims at the improvement of the human race, it is wrong because it employs unethical means. In this regard, Don Marquis writes that “since a fetus possesses a property, and the possession of which in adult human beings is sufficient to make killing an adult human being wrong, abortion is wrong. ” To tamper with human life in the womb is to grossly violate the very uniqueness of each individual being, a uniqueness that only God confers. The end or purpose of developing a super human race does not justify the use of evil means, i.e. aborting undesirable embryos.

Psycho-Social Abortion

In most poor societies, many women are burdened by the mental stigma and the economic difficulty of raising a child as a single mother. Many women also feel shame and isolation due to their condition. The economic burden of raising a child as a single mother is due to the fact that unwed single parents are usually jobless. Women are usually ostracized by society and sometimes by their families. In the absence of family support, raising a child would be very difficult. It is for this reason that some see abortion as an option.

But abortion for psycho-social reason treats the unborn as a mere means to an end and is therefore wrong. The unborn is reduced to an object which is sacrificed to serve the purpose of freeing the mother from some sort of psychological or economic difficulty. What is most unfair for the fetus here is the deliberate act of adults to evade the responsibility of caring for the child in the future.

It can be argued against the proponents of abortion that the right to privacy misunderstands the relation between the mother and the unborn child. It unacceptably views the unborn child as a stranger. The unborn child is only seen as a separate and an unwelcome entity. Thus, the unborn child is reduced to an alien object.

Psycho-social abortion also over-emphasizes the idea that women have absolute ownership over their bodies. It therefore neglects the special relationship between the mother and the unborn. Motherhood should be a kind of relationship based on real love and care. It should not be about whether or not it is convenient or comfortable on the part of a woman to carry a human life inside her womb.

Pope John Paul II expresses that while “it is true that the decision to have an abortion is often tragic and painful for the mother, insofar as the decision to rid herself of the fruit of conception is not made for purely selfish reasons or out of convenience, but out of a desire to protect certain important values such as her own health or a decent standard of living for the other members of the family” or that in many cases, “it is feared that the child to be born would live in such conditions that it would be better if the birth did not take place” , he strongly argues that “nevertheless, these reasons and others like them, however serious and tragic, can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.”

Humanitarian Abortion

Somebody who is raped and becomes pregnant can carry the mental or psychological stigma of the crime of rape. In addition to this, the new born child becomes a reminder of the crime perpetuated against the mother. Under this circumstance, a very careful consideration of the situation of the woman is necessary.

Thomson says that unborn persons whose existence “is due to rape have no right to the use of their mothers’ bodies, that aborting them is not depriving them of anything they have a right to and hence is not unjust killing” . Thomson points out that it is not the responsibility of a woman to aid a person that she finds unwelcome. She likens it to helping “an ailing violinist who is a stranger to her”.

The argument however is that the unborn is not supposed to suffer the consequences of a crime. The unborn should not be made to pay for the crime of the rapist. Aborting the fetus does not amend nor erase the criminal and moral offense that has been committed against the mother. It is not the fault of the unborn. Why then should the unborn child be made to suffer?

On the other hand, incest is a peculiar case because of the possibility of the mother carrying an unborn child who may have some form of physical deformity. But the argument runs that choosing to abort the child because of such fear can be eugenic in nature. If the incestuous pregnancy is due to rape, then the argument against abortion due to rape counters such.

But as the category suggests, some argue for this type of reason to abort for the sake of the mother who has suffered greatly from the crime of rape or the psychological stigma of an incestuous pregnancy. Some may argue that for the sake of the mother, the pregnancy should be terminated. This of course is not without opposition. The unborn child is a human being and should not be sacrificed for the sake of a co-equal good. In this sense, the rule of the thumb that a wrong cannot be rectified by another wrong applies.

The condition of a woman who is impregnated against her will violates her dignity as a human being. The woman in this sense also needs proper care and attention. Sometimes, it happens that the pregnant woman is also a minor. This puts a considerable health risk. In this sense, a careful deliberation should be done with the help of medical experts and committed family members. It should be determined whether the life of a minor is endangered by the pregnancy. In such a serious case, the principle of double effect should be applied. But if there is no apparent danger on the life of the minor, then post-childbirth options should be availed of to help the minor parent.

Basically, from a moral point of view, the argument we put forward here is that the all-encompassing principle with regard to the issue of abortion is the respect for the dignity of the human person. The unborn child, just like the mother, is entitled to that respect. Thus, any decision pertaining to such should first and foremost consider the fact that the unborn has an unequivocal right to a full human life.

Rights and Animal Welfare

Animal liberation

Some people have very bad habits. For instance, pigs are transported in decrepit trailers or trucks, their bodies cut with blades to identify them. Chickens are grown at a fast rate so that they can be consumed in 32 days, many of them dying due to the difficult conditions in poultry farms. And of course, some people slaughter dogs and torture them before they are finally served in the dining table.

So we ask – Do nonhuman animals possess rights? Do they deserve respect for life? While they do not have the moral rights and legal entitlements that humans are given, is there a basis for suggesting that they should not be abused? How do we morally evaluate the status of animals?

The welfare of animals is also an important matter for the way we treat nonhuman animals also reflect the kind of society we have. While we don’t accord them liberty, there are prudent reasons to suggest that we should not at least expend them as if they are mere lifeless stones or minerals. But the norm in the manner by which we deal with them, Peter Singer complains, is this:
There are many obvious ways in which men and women resemble each other closely, while humans and animals differ greatly. So it might be said, men and women are similar beings and should have similar rights, while humans and nonhuman animals are different and should not have equal rights.

But Jeremy Bentham has pointed out the moral basis of the discussion on animal rights. The question is not, he says, “can they reason?” nor “can they talk?” but, “can they suffer? ” It may be objected that comparisons of the suffering of different species are impossible to make, and that for this reason when the interests of animals and humans clash the principle of equality gives no guidance. But Singer notes:

The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.

From a deeply utilitarian perspective, for Singer, “pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers”. Many animal welfare groups like PETA have long complained that slaughtering animals is a barbaric act and pays no respect to the fact that animals also have a life. Thus, they argue that it is better for humans to end consuming meat in order to end the suffering of animals.

Slaughtering puts animals to unbearable and very gross procedures which exhibit no sentimental attachment to their status as creatures. Moreover, the method of transportation, including the manner by which animals are raised in cages and the way they are fed with food which accelerate their growth genetically are objectionable. Singer says:

The belief that human life and only human life is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism…The only thing that distinguishes the infant from the animal, in the eyes of those who claim it has a right to life, is that biologically, it is a member of the species homo sapiens.

For Singer, the idea that human beings and only human beings possess an inviolable value is unfair. It is therefore a violation of the basic principle of equality. It favors humans and humans alone. It puts animals, which are unable to defend themselves, at a disadvantage. The idea that animals are less than human puts animals at the lower end of the ladder of evolution, and as such, makes using them or manipulating them, from the point of view of those who think that animals are no more than lower beings, morally tenable.

Let us revisit Singer’s controversial argument from Animal Liberation. He says:

The life of every human being is sacred. Yet people who would say this about the infant do not object to the killing of nonhuman animals. How can they justify their different judgments? Adult chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, and many other species far surpass the brain-damaged infant in their ability to relate to others, act independently, be self-aware, and any other capacity that could reasonably be said to give value to life.

There is no mistake in Singer’s assertion that we should be sensitive to animal welfare. But it is morally objectionable that animals can be compared to infants. The idea that animals are of greater value than brain-damaged infants because some animals have higher thinking skills than these infants is morally unacceptable.

Singer’s above argument in favor of animal rights suffers from two dangerous flaws. First, it identifies the dignity of the human person with that of a human person’s functional mental capacities. Second, Singer wrongly assumes that the higher “thinking” capacities of nonhuman animals give them a status equivalent to that of a human person.

The dignity of any man or woman does not proceed from his or her capacities alone. Our humanity does not come from our usefulness in this world. We are humans because of the fundamental uniqueness of each human life. This uniqueness does not come from the uniqueness of a capacity or function. Rather, it comes from the unique way each human life is lived.

The brain-damaged child may not be able to perform the tasks that a “bright” monkey can, but in the same manner, a “bright” monkey also cannot render the joy of parenthood, for instance, in the basic recognition that there is a human life out there that is a value in itself, because, however difficult the condition, it is one life that cannot be replaced. On the other hand, there can be many “bright” monkeys. The judgment that a “bright” monkey is better than a brain-damaged child is therefore misplaced.

Against Singer, it can be said that there is nothing wrong with speciesism. Speciesism is not like racism. The reason is simple. People, even if of another color or race, are endowed with human dignity. They are humans and should therefore be treated justly. While it is not find objectionable that we should minimize the pain and suffering of animals, assessing the issue from the point of view of equality is not valid.

Animal rights

Some don’t feel anything about animals being subjected to very harsh conditions. This is not to say that animals should be treated in the same way as we treat humans. What this means is that animals too suffer and hence they must not be treated like emotion-less objects.

Consider for instance, transporting hogs and chickens in very small cages which cause them to suffocate and die even before they reach the slaughter house. There are ways to properly handle animals before they are consumed and as such, it does no harm to humans to consider such in order to show some form of respect for other living creatures. For instance, Ryan Urbano discusses the Philippine Animal Welfare Act of 1998. Now, he says that although the law grants moral standing to animals and safeguards their welfare, it does not accord moral status to animals equal to that of humans. The point is that we should be concerned at least of their welfare, but not in the same manner as that of humans.

But should animals possess certain rights? Tom Regan puts into question the issue in terms of the unacceptability of the system by which we treat animals. He notes:

Factory farming, they say, is wrong. It violates animal rights. But traditional animal agriculture is all right. Toxicity tests of cosmetics on animals violate their rights, but important medical research, cancer research, for example, does not. The clubbing of baby seals is abhorrent, but not the harvesting of adult seals.

For Regan, the fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us, to be eaten or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sport or money. The common understanding is that people have no direct duties to animals. We think that we can do them no wrong. For instance, if I kill your goat, I have done something wrong to you, but not to your goat. Thus, I would not kill your goat not because it is wrong to do it to your goat. Rather, I am afraid that you might sue me for violating your rights over your goat which you as the owner are entitled to. Regan adds that “as for animals, since they cannot understand contracts, they cannot sign contracts and since they cannot sign, they have no rights”.

What Regan means is that we do not have a direct duty to animals since they do not have any legal or moral rights. For instance, the right to life implies the direct duty not to harm any human life. In the case of animals, our duty is to the owners; to animals there is only an indirect obligation. In the case of wild animals, we can say that we cannot harm them because they are God’s creatures. Or it can also be said that harming them is wrong because we might harm humanity as well if we don’t care for eagles, turtles and sharks.

Like children, however, according to Regan, some animals are the objects of the sentimental interest of others. He says,
You, for example, love your dog. And thus, those animals that enough people care about, though they lack rights themselves, will be protected because of the sentimental interest of people.

We show care to our pets because of our sentimental attachment to them. We enjoy their company. They are part of our leisurely activities. We find them important because they can serve as house security. But in the case of other animals, for instance rats, snakes or bats, since there seems to be no sentimental interest in them from people, we think that there is nothing wrong if they are exterminated for they seem to be of no sentimental value to us. These animals are wild, and thus, not worth being a companion. We therefore show some interest to some animals; to others we don’t. But that does not give them any legal or moral right. We are simply being considerate of their welfare.

Animal welfare laws are enacted to protect animals from cruelty and abuse. Some animals, many empirical studies have shown, suffer from the excesses of humans, for instance from hunting, caging, enhanced genetic growth, slaughtering, etc. But the basic principle governing such may not be moral duty. For instance, because animals are useful to us, they are of value and must not be abused. It can be said that since the survival of a farmer depends so much on his carabao, then it is morally unacceptable that he sells or slaughters his carabao for its meat. Or because one has played with his pet Pitbull terrier for some years, it seems unacceptable that he sells it to other people or sends it to a dogfight where it will suffer from injuries or die. One may not feel any direct moral duty to animals. But one may show some regard for their welfare.

For Regan, since animals have a life, they must be viewed as entities or beings with some value. As such, they must not be used as means to an end. The fundamental wrong here, he argues, “is not that animals are kept in stressful closed confinements or in isolation or that their pain and suffering, their needs and preferences are ignored or discounted” . He adds that “all of those are wrong, but they are not the fundamental wrong”. He argues that “they are symptoms and effects of the deeper systematic wrong that allows these animals to be viewed as and treated as lacking independent value” . The fundamental wrong is that, according to Regan, “animals are viewed as mere resources for us, as indeed, a renewable resource”.

The use of animals in medical research

Now, let us tackle medical research involving nonhuman animals. It is a matter of fact that every advance in medicine, every new drug, new operation, new therapy of any kind, must sooner or later be tried on a living being for the first time. Prohibiting the use of animals in experiments for biomedical research, according to Carl Cohen, or sharply restricting it, must result either in the blockage of much valuable research or in the replacement of animal subjects with human subjects. The above can be considered as the serious “consequences, unacceptable to most reasonable persons, of not using animals in research” .

The use of animals in medical research, says Cohen, are justified since animals have no moral or political rights. For Cohen, to have a right means to make a claim. It is a claim that one party may exercise against another. You have the right to demand from your government, as an example, the just and equitable distribution of welfare benefits. Further, the content of any claim should be fully understood by both parties. Animals are incapable of understanding any moral or legal claim.

Thus, animals cannot make any plausible moral claim. Whatever rights may be, Cohen suggests, they are necessarily human; their possessors are persons, human persons. Our being human persons means that we have a capacity for moral judgment. We are possessors of reason; animals are not. We are autonomous moral subjects; animals are simply not. Thus, for Cohen, animals cannot have rights. Cohen says:
Humans have such moral capacities. They are in this sense self-legislative, are members of communities, governed by moral rules, and do possess rights. Animals do not have such moral capacities.

The above quote means that we have moral obligations to our fellow human beings. Human beings are capable of moral reflection. Human beings assess or evaluate the consequences of their moral judgments. As such, humans can distinguish between right and wrong, between good and evil. Animals, however, lack these attributes. Thus, they cannot be conferred the same moral status as humans. On this basis, there is nothing wrong in using animals for medical research, the value of which is very clear. It is aimed at saving human lives. It aims at promoting the greater welfare of human beings. There is no greater value than human life. For Cohen, the use of animals in medical research in order to promote this inherent good is not morally wrong.

If animals are not utilized in biomedical research, then we may not be able to undertake biomedical studies that can potentially save thousands of lives later. While we consider that animals suffer in the course of such experiments, the moral good or value of medical research cannot be substituted for a concern on whether or not a rat or a dog feels pain in order for scientists to test and discover the effectiveness of a drug against cancer. Animals are possessors of a life. But they do not have nor can make a claim of a moral life. In this sense, the use of animals for biomedical research does not violate the sanctity of life.

Animal welfare and culture

Culture is an important aspect to consider when we think of the moral status of animals. There are ethnic groups who say, for example, that cockfighting or horse-fighting have always been a tradition and therefore, the right to one’s cultural norm, they argue, should be respected. Urbano notes that the Philippine Animal Welfare Act exempts the killing of an animal “when it is done as part of the religious rituals of an established religion or sect or a ritual required by tribal or ethnic custom of indigenous cultural communities” .

Specifically, from the point of view of culture and tradition, the question is not about the violence done to or the disregard of the welfare of certain animals. The question is about the way of life of a people. It is about the wisdom of the old. As such, those in favor of cultural rights argue that there is nothing wrong with cockfighting or horse-fighting. But it could be wrong from a Western point of view, for instance, if we consider the concept of speciesism, which puts the moral concern for animal welfare at par with that of humans. But those in favor of cultural rights say that we are not a Western culture.

Culture provides a criterion that tells us something about a certain kind of consciousness. It is a kind of awareness of one’s social environment. The value of an activity comes from the very way people understand this social environment. It speaks of a communal life. If people raise their own roosters and go to cockfights, it is not in their consciousness that they are acting violently against these creatures which they put in harm’s way. Rather, they go there to gather and experience something, an experience that is not within the framework of a young boy or young girl raised in a Western culture.

A Westerner will never find any meaning in horse-fighting because it has never been part of his or her way of life. In a horse-fight, ethnic minorities don’t make judgments about the good and bad, the right or wrong. From this perspective, there is an intuition that there exists no violation whatsoever of animal rights nor is there any disregard for animal welfare. The activity is done, using animals, as a part of communal life. In this kind of life, ethnic people are together to celebrate and re-create. The meaning is in the re-creating. It is a re-creation because the community lives and dwells into an identity that is nourished and nurtured. In the activity, they see life in the community, a bond of togetherness. Thus, from the point of view of custom, culture, and tradition, there is no sense of cruelty to animals. Animals are in the background. There lives only the spirit of this bond.

As such, respect for the belief of people would sidestep any violence or harm done to animals, at least from the cultural perspective. Empirically, perhaps, from a modern person’s vantage point, the kind of violence done to these animals is unacceptable. But in terms of our value-judgment, it would not be fair to those people who value a certain way of life to make assessments that is not fully appreciative of how they live and see things.

Positive and Negative Democracy

An Essay on Human Freedom

2009 Ateneo Jubilee Lecture

Starvation, says 1998 Nobel Laureate for Economics Amartya Sen, “is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat”, not the fact of “there being not enough food to eat” . Consequently, he says that poverty is not the case of people’s “lack of income”, but rather, is “a matter of capabilities deprivation” . Income and other social primary goods are only suggestive of what people have or do not have – not of who they really are or of what they are capable of doing. Income, therefore, should not be suggestive of the kind of life a person is to live.

Justice, unarguably, should favor the poor, women, and the vulnerable, or to use John Rawls, the “worst off”, for whom, Rawls writes in A Theory of Justice, the mechanisms of the basic structure must respond to. This requires, undoubtedly, an understanding of the causes of social inequality. Democracy, in theory, is meant for the realization of the good life, not only in terms of a higher “standard of living”, but also in terms of the quality of that life, however scarce economic resources may be. In this regard, the Capability Approach, a framework developed by Sen, is a good theoretical starting point.

Sen says that primary social goods, which he explains are “general purpose means that help anyone to promote his or her ends” , cannot be an adequate informational basis for evaluating well-being. He asserts that human capability or the extent of people’s freedom has a direct role, the most important indeed, in the achievement of well-being. His basic argument is anchored on the idea that freedom has a foundational importance and he proposes the paradigm-shifting distinction between equality in terms of “primary social goods” and equality in terms of “capabilities”. For Sen, evaluations regarding equality “should not solely be based on people’s command of resources, sense of happiness or desire fulfillment, but should include features of the way people actually live” , because “equal benefits to people with unequal needs will not produce equal well-being” .

In addressing poverty, economic managers look at how economic growth alleviates the lowness of income of the poor, and thus, statistics based on aggregate national income are utilized to measure the “trickle down” effect of economic expansion. This cascading effect to the poor assumes that such will improve the poor’s “standard of living”. Des Gasper explains that this process, known as the “economics of welfare”, follows from the fact that “economic production creates wealth which is distributed as income. Income is used for consumption which results to personal utility on the part of the earner. In economic terms, utility is judged as economic well-being” . This means that economic well-being is construed as the product of income generated from higher production inputs in the economy. Higher input to the process means more labor is needed, thus resulting to employment. People earn their income from this, enabling them to consume commodities, thereby satisfying personal utility.

But welfare economics views poverty in a narrow way. This concept of poverty, proceeding from what is theoretically called economism, is ill-equipped as basis for knowing “why people are deprived of their well-being”. It does not tell the extent or the kind of deprivation that people suffer, whether it is so grave or unimaginable, say for instance in the case of children who scavenge in the city, a result of the informal garbage economy one usually finds in the third world. Sen argues that the real extent of deprivation, as a matter of fact, may be underestimated if we concentrate only on the size of incomes .

Equality in the amount of income people earn or the social primary goods they possess is not a real guarantee to well-being achievement since there are difficulties that a person (i.e., a pregnant woman, a child, or a person with a physical handicap), may have to hurdle owing to his or her specific condition. A person with a physical handicap may have to overcome disadvantages in living comfortably that another at the same age need not have, even when both of them exactly are allocated the same amount of primary goods.

The reason for the above is the correlation between functionings and capabilities. The former refers to “what a person actually does”, whereas the latter means “the ability to achieve certain things” . Functionings correspond to “an individual’s physical state of being”, for instance, whether he or she has enough food to eat; “a mental state of being”, say whether she enjoys herself doing creative work which she finds fulfilling, or “a social state of being”, like whether for instance he or she is free to do certain things like taking part in social gatherings . Functionings, therefore, are “the various things a person may choose to attain in his or her life and thereby value doing” . Functionings imply the different aspects of living conditions of people and thus, in a huge way, these tell us about the kind of life people live. The concept of capability intends to “reflect the person’s freedom to lead one type of life or another” , thus it implies the capacity to achieve real opportunities for well-being. Simply put, it means one’s “freedom to be”. In other words, capability concerns what makes a person realize what he can do or to put it basically, the freedom to achieve the kind of life one wants to live and impliedly, the freedom to avoid the kind of life one does not want to be in.

To illustrate the above, Sen makes the example of “a destitute who is starving due to famine and an affluent person who chooses to fast” . Although both individuals are deprived of the “the functioning of being well-nourished, the freedom they possess is crucially distinct” . The destitute clearly lacks the capability or positive freedom to achieve nourishment whereas the affluent has that option; he has the resource to buy food but refuses to do so for a reason, i.e. to dramatize his protest.

The idea of negative freedom, as opposed to the notion of capability, corresponds to what can be considered as non-intrusion rights or the freedom from abuse or coercion. For instance, a fisherman can feel secure and contented in his simple home, with no threat of violence from anyone. It can be said that in this case, his negative freedom may not have been violated. Yet, it can also be argued that his negative freedom has no value to him. Why? Poor, and sick, it can be said that he has a life that he does not really want. Given his condition, he is not really free.

The above, however, should not be taken as something that undermines the value of negative freedom. We can say that negative freedom is also very important in securing and protecting our democratic rights which may be violated in the absence of such freedom. Our negative freedom is also of great value if seen from the context of society as a whole since without it, regimes can become abusive. While positive freedom enhances the individual’s ability to be the person she desires herself to be, our negative rights protect us from the excesses and manipulative tendencies of other people.

Ensuring the elementary capabilities of people as a matter of public policy is to secure the very basis for their well-being. If the government commits itself to each child born in Basilan, the poorest province in the Philippines, seeing to it that each child is well-nourished, gets provisions for health care, enjoys good education and is also given the chance to participate in the affairs of governance later in life, then there is no reason for these children to become bandits or rebels someday. But in the absence of the above, it can be said, human life is hopelessly diminished.

My argument is this - the power of democracy to effect change in the well-being of people depends on what people do in their lives. If democracy is to become a key to real human well-being, then people should be an integral part to its vital existence. But as a counter-argument to this, one can cite the benevolent dictatorship of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew or China’s rise. In response, Jeffrey Sachs notes that China’s economy awoke after it opened its markets to the world . Sen also points out that there is little evidence that it is the authoritarian style of Lee Kuan Yew that has made Singapore a prosperous state . If any, Sen points to “helpful policies” which includes “open competition, provision for education and high literacy rates, the use of capital markets, and incentives for investments” , factors which can make a country globally competitive.

Democracy can be theoretically construed and empirically practiced as “positive” or “negative”. The emphasis on people’s positive capabilities, for instance, “the role of freedom concerning the way different kinds of rights, opportunities, and entitlements” , can be seen as instrumental to national development. The above includes economic opportunities, education, health, transparency in government, and protective security in terms of safety nets (i.e., farm subsidies during food or economic crises), as the things that are necessary to make democracy work. These rights can be considered as “positive entitlements” which empower people, and as such, they contribute to human well-being in the same manner as one’s positive freedom does to one’s life.

In arguing for people’s democratic rights, Sen emphasizes the argument that no famine has ever occurred under a democratic regime. The reason for this is that any famine is unthinkable if the government provides enough provisions to farmers in terms of farm inputs. A government that is in solidarity with its people can immediately address any need for food basically because transparency in the disbursement of funds and the participation of farmers in the planning process will help ensure food stability. The crucial point is that people owe to each other the moral and political duty to articulate their concerns and press their government for immediate, effective and efficient action. This requires, however, the “capability” to “speak out”, and the “positive empowerment” to argue for one’s rights in public. Sen notes that, “the people have to be seen, in this perspective, as being actively involved – given the opportunity – in shaping their own destiny, and not just as passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs” . Positive democracy means people are real contributors to human well-being and not “passive recipients” of dole-outs and grants. For example, famines, Sen argues, are not natural calamities but human disasters, and he theorizes that “famines are policy failures” , and not a real shortage of food. The same holds true for the country’s rice crisis. Neglect of agriculture is simply a failure of governance.

Transparency laws, from the point of view of positive democracy, are useless if people are not knowledgeable of the mechanisms which ensure transparent government transactions. Any government can easily abuse its people if people are bereft of the tools or knowledge which will secure for them their welfare. A hungry man, for example, will simply say that he has no time to think about corruption in government. It can also be said that “anti-corruption drives” and the “right of suffrage” are only seen by the poor in a negative way as means of protecting one’s negative freedom, and not as positive opportunities to really empower one’s self in public. Positive democracy, it should be noted, entails the active participation of people, of “people power” in a very positive way because it results to real change in the way people act in the public sphere. For Sen, “the achievement of democracy depends not only on the rules and procedures of democratic processes but also on the way certain opportunities are used by citizens” .

Basically, it can also be argued that the importance of democracy lies in the fact that it secures and protects the political freedoms of people. Negative freedom implies freedom from oppression. Simply put, it is the “right to protest”. We can explain this by pointing out that democracy makes, or at least puts “pressure” on government leaders, to be responsive to the needs of the people because the people hold them accountable. But the weakness of Philippine democracy is something that I see in the inconsistent image of a corrupt politician who endorses an anti-corruption book. Protests can effect some change in the public lives of people, but unless people become real contributors to their well-being, change is but a dream, “difficult” and “impossible”.

For instance, libraries are almost non-existent in many public schools. This should not mean that a student mustn’t read books. For a student to really learn, he or she has to find these books somewhere. It will not be enough to wait for the results of mass actions denouncing the government’s neglect of education. A student needs to realize that the life he or she has to live is something that is “fully” and “truly” his or her own responsibility. Opportunities don’t just come. These are things that we create.

In conclusion, my analysis is that responsible citizens, guided by their “duty of civility”, will work to ensure that development becomes the priority of their national and local leaders. The streets can be the battle ground for such. But beyond such and in a very positive way, the academe, research institutions, and private corporations can contribute to advance the welfare of people more than the parliamentary of the streets. The EDSA People Power of 1986 is a classic case for negative democracy. After two decades, it has become apparent that the event has not translated to a “highly industrialized” Philippines, President Corazon Aquino’s goal while in office. Of course, negative democracy makes people vigilant even in intense economic situations. People value their political freedoms. But people can also resign to the fact that their kind of government is perpetually corrupt. Negative democracy does not necessarily empower them to seek real well-being, and thus, negative democracy may not place a country on the map to human development. People should realize, as Mahbub Ul Haq suggested, that they are the “real wealth of the nation”. This means that development is not the mere “by-product” but is in itself the reflection of the “kind of people” a country has. Of course, we deserve a better government. But on the other hand, to demand such from our leaders, right now, may not be enough.

Selected Bibliography

Alkire, Sabina, 2002. Valuing Freedoms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crocker, David, 1991. Toward Development Ethics. World Development 19 (5): 457-483.

Gasper, Des, 2004. The Ethics of Development. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press.

Giri, Ananta, 2000. Rethinking Human Well-being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen. Journal of International Development 12 (7): 1003-1018.

Rawls, John, 1999. A theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Robeyns, Ingrid, 2000. An unworkable idea or a promising alternative: Sen’s Capability Approach Re-examined. Discussion Paper. Center for Economic Studies, University of Leuven.

Sachs, Jeffrey, 2005. The End of Poverty. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Sen, Amartya, 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

___________, 1992. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

___________, 1981. Poverty and Famines. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Women and Positive Rights

Women bear the face of human poverty in most developing nations. Why? One reason, unarguably, is that some cultures perpetuate gender inequality. Indeed, to promote and protect human well-being, constitutional arrangements need universal values of humanness to respond to the challenge of pluralism in a very positive way. Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities ethic fills in this need. By suggesting a constitutionally guaranteed “threshold of capabilities”, her proposal is a step beyond Amartya Sen because it is something that concretizes the approach to inequality in society. The question is – how? In many countries, constitutions usually enshrine the negative rights of people. But a right to non-interference is not a guarantee to a life worthy of being human or to a life one “has reason to value”. In this paper, I will argue for the translation of the essential capabilities into concrete positive rights which should be embodied in constitutional reforms by governments as a benchmark of entitlements that people should enjoy.

Human Poverty and the Capability Approach

Material poverty is only the surface of a deeper suffering of the world’s poorest of the poor. At the core of their being, the poor suffer because they are not really free. The poor are downtrodden not only because of corrupt leaders or unjust global structures – the poor, especially women, are systematically exploited by an enemy that lurks in front of them – cultural prejudice. Thus, in order to effect real change, a politically plausible development framework is one that should survive the challenges of a pluralistic and masculine world.

While Sen develops the Capability Approach from the perspective of economics, Martha Nussbaum attempts to employ a more philosophical account of a Capabilities Ethics. First, I will briefly explain the Capability Approach. By capability, Sen refers to the “positive freedoms of people”. Positive freedom means the ability or power to achieve certain things in life. Subsequently, the entitlement to any one of these capabilities can be denoted as a positive right. According to Nussbaum, Sen uses the concept of capability to make comparisons regarding the quality of life, which intends to advance the idea that it is in asking what people are “able to do or to be”, and not in their “level of satisfaction” nor the “amount of resources” they are “able to command that the quality of human life is best understood” (Nussbaum 2000, p12). But in contrast to Sen, Nussbaum’s stated goal in her version of the Capability Approach is “to go beyond the merely comparative use of the capability space to articulate an account of how capabilities can provide a basis for constitutional principles that citizens have a right to demand from their governments” (Ibid.).

To achieve its purpose as a theory of justice, Nussbaum intends to make her version of the Capability Approach “real and complete” rather than “abstract” (Ibid. pxvi). The prevalence of cultural bias against women in many countries where they are subjected to difficult, depressing, and demeaning circumstances makes the Capability Approach an important political device. For instance, Nussbaum says that “no country treats its women as well as its men according to a complex measure that includes life expectancy, wealth and education” (Ibid. p2). In this view, Nussbaum’s idea of a “threshold of capabilities” or the idea of a “social minimum of capabilities” is a realistic framework for policy making and development planning. Nussbaum tells us that “Sen nowhere uses the idea of a threshold” (Ibid. p12).

It must be noted that Sen’s version of the Capability Approach is deliberately incomplete and abstract. As a matter of principle, Sen proposes “a thin ethic so that his concepts can be useful for other types of substantive thick ethic that differs from him in various respects” (Sen 1993, pp47-48). This flexibility thus provides the opportunity for Nussbaum to approach it in a way that serves her philosophical purposes. Thus, while both agree on the idea that aggregate income cannot be an adequate basis for the assessment of well-being Nussbaum goes beyond the use of the Capability Approach in the economic assessment of human welfare by constructing it as a theoretical framework that serves as a “good basis for a specifically political conception and a specifically political overlapping consensus” (Nussbaum 2000, p14).

Poverty constrains most women in developing countries from having the time for self enhancing activities. Due to the difficult patriarchal environment they are in, women are in many instances systematically rendered powerless as exemplified by the fact that they are denied the chance of attending school or pursuing a career because their role is defined by a society dominated mostly by men. In the Philippines, many women in rural areas end up as domestic helpers and even a number of those who are educated work abroad as domestic servants in pursuit of economic opportunities. The effects are disheartening and the repercussions to one’s life are immeasurable. For instance, the experience of working abroad is emotionally traumatizing because most of these women are mothers who leave their own children to the care of parents-in-law who are at times too old and sickly. Children suffer because of this – many of them alienated from the love and attention of a complete family.

Women suffer. One reason for this, according to Nussbaum, is that women lack support for leading lives that are fully human and this lack of support is frequently caused by their being women (Ibid. p3). Simply put, many women in poor countries don’t have a choice. Poverty forces mothers to sacrifice for their families. But to say the least, a life without choice is “a life that is less human”. This reflection brings me to the realization that poverty is not simply material in nature; rather, in a very substantial way, poverty is really the impoverishment of human freedom.

Rights and Constitutional Entitlements

The real enemy of the poor is not the scarcity of income or wealth but their lack of meaningful options in life. It can be said that many women in patriarchal societies are deprived of the chance to express themselves creatively and choose the good life because they lack the opportunity for critical and imaginative activities. When women are prohibited from attending school because they need to work at an early age or are forced to marry against their will, they are faced with substantial impediments to attaining well-being. In the absence of positive freedoms or the capabilities that enable women to flourish and empower them to choose the good life, one can say that women are deprived of a life they deserve as a matter of universal right. Sen says in Freedoms and Needs:

The importance of political rights for the understanding of economic needs turns ultimately on seeing human beings as people with rights to exercise, not as parts of a stock or a population that passively exists and must be looked after (Sen 1994, 38).

The passage above implies that individuals are entitled to certain universal rights in order to live a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human person. Human life is not reducible to a mere number in a census data; which is the case of thousands of Filipina domestic workers abroad. Nussbaum says that “it is profoundly wrong to subordinate the ends of some individuals to those of others, that is, at the core of what exploitation is to treat a person as a mere object for the use of others” (Nussbaum 2000, p73). To empower women and liberate them from any form of exploitation means to envision “a society in which persons are treated as each worthy of regard, and in which each has been put in a position to live really humanly” (Ibid. p74).

In what way can the issue above be addressed politically? I think that constitutional reforms can be the battle ground for uplifting the lives of women and the poor in the third world. As a legal apparatus, constitutions should contain a “threshold of the essential human capabilities” which embodies the positive rights of people. Generally, national constitutions contain features which manifest the negative rights of people. By definition, a negative right is “a right to non-interference”. For instance, the rule – that “no person shall be deprived of life, property or liberty without due process of law” – exhibits this right to non-interference. Basically, the Bill of Rights enshrined in many countries fundamental law seeks to ensure that our negative rights are not violated. It is a matter of basic justice that these rights are constitutionally protected.

However, non-interference is not an assurance that one actually achieves real well-being. For instance, a poor woman may not have experienced any form of violence in her whole life, but she may continually be living in misery because her capabilities, for instance her critical thinking and other creative faculties, may not have been fully realized because she is unschooled. The way forward, in order to liberate her from the fetters of poverty, is to constitutionally promote and protect her positive right to education. Education empowers a woman to be able to express herself, fully and as a human person, which means, that for instance, she should have a right “to be heard”, “to be given attention”, “to be cared for”, or in a way, she must also possess the “right to be angry”, if indeed, these are forms of self-expression.

The real challenge is to make the entitlement to this benchmark of positive rights politically acceptable to people of different religions, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds as a guiding principle that ensures a decent way of life for each and every person in society. A decent way of life is a kind of life where each person is treated as an end. This requires, according to Nussbaum, “to take a stand on some values that will be made central for political purposes” (Nussbaum 2000, p58). Thus, the answer to the challenge of pluralism is setting a threshold or benchmark of core entitlements which manifest human values. This benchmark will thereby serve as a guiding principle for governments “as we think about what it really is to secure a right to someone” (Nussbaum 2006, p287). Pursuing this benchmark means that people are “entitled to not only mere life, but to a life compatible with human dignity, and this means that the relevant goods must be available at a sufficiently high level” (Ibid. p292).

The benchmark, or what Nussbaum calls the “ten central human capabilities”, includes “life”, which means that “one must live out that span of life normal to the species”; “bodily health”, implying one’s “being able to have good health and in order to obtain this, adequate nourishment and shelter”; “bodily integrity”, or one’s “being able to be physically secure, and with rights over one’s own body, e.g. not forced to lose capacity for sexual satisfaction or forced to conceived or bear children”; the “senses, imagination, and thought”, and thus the need to be “able to use the senses, imagine, think and reason, and to do this in a truly human way: adequately educated, informed and free from repression”; the “emotions”, implying that one is “able to have attachments for other people and things”; “practical reason”, or the capacity to “form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection for the planning of one’s life”; “affiliation”, which refers to “being able to interact well with other people, and to imagine and empathize with their situation” and “having the social bases for self-respect and non-humiliation; not being subject to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, etc.”; “other species” or “being able to live with concern for the natural world”; “play”, for people need to “play and laugh”; and “control over one’s environment”, meaning to say, one is “able to participate in political processes” and one is “able to have possessions and seek employment” (See Nussbaum 2000, p78-80).

To truly realize our human potentials, which means in a very practical way, to provide a “standard of living” worthy of the dignity of the human being, the above universal human values should be expressed as positive rights serving as basis for policies and/or constitutional essentials. From a political end, in order to bring about real change in the lives of the poor, I will elaborate on three basic entitlements. I argue that the benchmark of human capabilities should be translated to people’s rights to housing, universal health care and basic education which should be made constitutionally obligatory for governments. Realizing these entitlements will make possible the actualization of the above mentioned universal values even in a pluralist setting. As a minimum requirement, these three positive rights or entitlements are absolutely necessary in liberating women and the poor from their difficult, depressing and demeaning conditions.

First, housing should be constitutionally obligatory for governments. Nussbaum says, “an adequate house or other shelter seems to be inherent in the idea of human dignity, and it seems right that constitutions all over the world are beginning to recognize the right to housing as a constitutional entitlement” (Ibid. p293). In my view, the idea of providing decent housing to poor families is one item where a pluralistic consensus is possible. It can be said that there is no greater social anomaly than seeing a few people live in huge mansions while a big number of indigents dwell on the streets. When a government implements a housing programme for the poor, it provides the family, whether one is Catholic, Protestant or Islam, or an atheist, a dignified place to feel secure, enhance one’s creativity, play, enjoy the diversity of the human environment, or develop one’s potentials as a rational being.

Secondly, it is obvious that if one suffers from the constant threat of disease without access to reliable medical support, life can never be well-lived. For example, women bear the agony, their emotions shattered, when they see their children burdened by diseases. Universal health care will eliminate the unnecessary deaths of children from preventable diseases. Once health care is prioritized by governments, people will have productive lives because they will be secured in their health and bodily integrity, and thus they will be able to use their limited resource for many other things, or thereby concentrate on other creative activities which enhance the quality of human life.

Health is essential for human development. But this is taken for granted by governments who choose to invest primarily on big infrastructure projects while making health care secondary. Loans are granted to third world countries in building airports, seaports and dams but not much is invested on the improvement of health facilities, the training of doctors and the provisions for free vaccines and medicines. Fast and effective medical attention is only available at expensive private hospitals while public health facilities are in decrepit conditions. Constitutional reforms should rectify this mistake by making health care a fiscal priority.

Finally, to fully realize education as an essential human right, basic and high school education should be made compulsory and fully funded. Illiteracy results to unemployment and poor living conditions. To a great extent, poverty bears the face of a young girl, wounded and defeated by the travails of human life because she spends the day helping her mother find ways to augment the family income instead of reading books, thus, her senses, imagination and thought are not used to their full potential. In most rural areas in the Philippines where men don’t earn enough, poor women are forced to do double jobs, one at home and another outside, for instance by selling goods and becoming domestic servants. A woman does these menial things because she lacks the requisite education for a better kind of work. In some instances, young women are sent to the home of rich people to work as servants as payment for unpaid debts. Poverty leaves poor families with no choice, and the only way to secure the good future of young children is for the government to see to it that all children are in school. There should be no other option for parents. It is their absolute moral obligation.

The lack of education hinders the achievement of one’s full humanness, for those who are left out in the dark cave of ignorance will feel that they can’t appear in public or take the stage, for they will feel discriminated and stigmatized by their being “illiterate”. Thus, parents have the negative duty not to harm their children by keeping them out of school, and the government has the positive duty to fully finance public education. Nussbaum tells us forcefully that “women in much of the world lack support for fundamental functions of a human life” for “they are less well-nourished than men, less healthy, more vulnerable to physical violence and sexual abuse”, and as such, “they are much less likely than men to be literate, and still less likely to have pre-professional or technical education” (Nussbaum 2000, p1).

People are the “most important asset of the state”. They are, as Mahbub Ul Haq said, “the real wealth of the nation”. A country like the Philippines or Myanmar for instance may have enormous wealth in terms of natural resources, but unless the government provides for the necessary conditions of a decent way of life, people will continue to suffer from the kind of life not worthy of being human. Enhancing the quality of life people have should be the moral end of just constitutional arrangements. The problem of poverty and social inequality engenders too much suffering and thus, public action requires holistic and concrete steps. From the perspective of government leaders and policy makers who seek political reforms in order to achieve the most politically realistic development goals for their people, enshrining the above positive rights in their constitutions can be a good starting point. In a very substantial way, having the respect for human dignity and the capability of people as value orientation can help in planning, implementing, assessing and prioritizing important social, economic and human development goals and programs.


References
Gasper, Des, 2004. The Ethics of Development. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press.

— 2002. Is Sen’s Approach an Adequate Basis for Considering Human Development? Review of Political Economy 14 (4): 435-461.

— 2000. Development as Freedom: Moving Economics beyond Commodities: The Cautious Boldness of Amartya Sen. Journal of International Development 12 (7): 989-1001.

— 1997. Sen’s Capabilities Approach and Nussbaum’s Capabilities Ethics. Journal of International Development 9 (2): 281-302.

Giri, Ananta, 2000. Rethinking Human Well-being: A Dialogue with Amartya Sen. Journal of International Development 12 (7): 1003-1018.

Nussbaum, Martha, 2006. Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

__ 2000. Women and Human Development. Edinburg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

— 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sen, Amartya, 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— 1997. On Economic Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— 1992. Inequality Reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— 1993. Capability and Well-being. In: Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (eds.). The Quality of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

— 1987. The Standard of Living. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

— 1987(b). On Ethics and Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On the Problem of Global Justice

(Draft Copy)

The problem of global justice, for Thomas Nagel, is not a moral question . The duty of justice, Nagel asserts, is strictly political . Justice is an obligation restricted to one’s fellowmen under a sovereign state. The power of a sovereign state can only be used to promote its own interests. Nagel does not believe in the equality between peoples. Nagel writes, “respect for the autonomy of other societies can be thought of as a respect for the human rights of their members, rather than respect for the equality of peoples” (Nagel 2005, 135).

Justice for Nagel is only possible under one sovereign ruler to whom citizens surrender their self-interests (Ibid., 115). Globally, in the absence of a world regime, justice between peoples is impossible. What sovereign states can extend to the global poor, in this regard, is respect for human rights. For Nagel, the right to equality is something that emanates from the power of sovereignty (See Nagel 2005, 115). This implies that what Nagel really means is that peoples, rich and poor, are not equals. This idea, of course, is not acceptable.

I would like to argue against the above using John Rawls’s idea of equality between peoples. In one of the principles of The Law of Peoples, Rawls writes that “peoples are equal” and “are parties to the agreements that bind them” (Rawls 1999, 37). Here, it is important to make the distinction Rawls makes regarding “peoples” and “states”, to set him apart from Nagel. The power of sovereignty is something claimed by states. Rawls thinks that “states are primarily self-interested, are often seen as rational, anxiously concerned with their power, their military, economic, and diplomatic capacity to influence other states, and always guided by their basic interests” (Ibid., 27-28).

Sovereignty, in this sense, is not guided by any moral motive. The concern of sovereignty is power. In contrast to this, unlike states, Rawls says that “just peoples are fully prepared to grant the very same proper respect and recognition to other peoples as equals” (Ibid., 35). Henceforth, respect between peoples is respect for the self-evident truth that all men and women are entitled to live in a just and free society. The power of strong sovereign states renders the freedom of poor nations useless. Poor nations can only pursue the good life if they get fair treatment in international affairs (i.e., trade, migration, etc.).

Nagel’s idea regarding equality simply maintains the status quo. I believe that real respect for human rights is only possible if we believe in the equality of all men and women. Rawls says, “it is a part of a people’s being reasonable and rational that they are ready to offer to other peoples fair terms of political and social cooperation” (Ibid., 35). Nagel says that both the protection of human rights and the provision of basic human aid would be easier if regimes found to be responsible for the oppression or destitution of their own subjects in these respects were regarded as having forfeited their sovereign rights against outside interference (Nagel 2005, 144). In pursuing this line of argument, Nagel is highlighting the power of some liberal states in interfering with the affairs of free nations. But I think Rawls would argue that states must let go of the pretensions of power before seeking to transform non-liberal states. This is because Rawls believes in the autonomy of every society to pursue its own destiny. Social cooperation between societies should exist without having to injure the beliefs and cultures of others.

Nagel’s view above on intervention is manifested in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Iraq War is not only unpopular, it is wrong in the first place. Rawls would have favored a more diplomatic approach to the problem, considering that Iraq is a free state. The U.S. is simply imposing its will, its brand of democracy, and that of course violates the status of Iraq as a free state. The U.S. invasion is a form of occupation, and the violence in Iraq is in view of that perception. The Iraqi people must be allowed to determine their way of life. Intervention by way of force is always disastrous, i.e. Vietnam War. Such proves the fact that the only viable means of changing the status quo must be grounded on the basis of freedom and equality between peoples, not the unilateral decision of one powerful state.

I think Rawls is optimistic to a world that is just. That “we do not live in a just world” (Ibid., 115) does not mean that we simply accept things for what they are; it means, rather, that there is hope, and that hope lies in helping poor societies and its people free themselves from the bondage of poverty, oppression, and marginalization, although Rawls is not committed to the path of cosmopolitan justice, which I shall elaborate below. But the importance of Rawls, however, lies in the fact that he has set the stage for the possibility of a just world. As Rawls says in the conclusion of The Law of Peoples, “for so long as we believe for good reasons that a self-sustaining and reasonably just political and social order both at home and abroad is possible, we can reasonably hope that we or others will someday, somewhere achieve it; and we can then do something toward this achievement” (Rawls 1999, 128).

II.

Is global justice possible? Nagel strongly asserts that there is no global basic structure to govern the fair terms of socio-economic cooperation in the world (see Nagel 2005, 115). For instance, he says that trade agreements between nations are institutional arrangements that do not rise to the level of statehood (Ibid., 137). These arrangements do not have individuals as constituents or parties, but are pure products of bargaining between states (Ibid., 138). Since international trade is a result of pure bargaining, it lacks the political legitimacy to rise to the level of statehood. Such don’t fall “within the domain of justice which requires a collectively imposed social framework” (Ibid., 140). Nagel here is suggesting that in the absence of a global sovereignty, justice is an impossibility in the global economic order. The sphere of distributive justice, in this sense, is limited to the citizens of a nation. Citizens don’t owe to others what they owe their fellowmen (Nagel 2005, 124). Thus, the standard of justice does not apply to the world as a whole. This is because justice is not voluntary, but an obligation imposed upon citizens by their associative relation to their fellow citizens. There cannot be, according to Nagel, “any universal pressure for equal concern, equal status, or equal opportunity” (Ibid., 125).

The above implies that the distributive principle of justice does not apply to one who is not a fellow citizen. Nagel opines, “everyone may have a right to live in a just society, but we do not have an obligation to live in a just society with everyone. The right to justice is the right that the society one lives in be justly governed” (Ibid., 132). Such a claim has a strong implication for the meaning of national self-determination. This type of liberal nationalism would exclude outsiders. The ethical significance individuals confer to their community as one nation renders outsiders as morally insignificant. Nagel adds succintly, “internationally, what we owe to other inhabitants of the globe through our society’s respect for the societies of which they are citizens is different both from what we as individuals owe to all our fellow human beings”(Ibid., 124).

But I would like to argue that Nagel’s arguments above are problematic. Our response here, based on Kok-Chor Tan, will be from the point of view of global justice. Tan believes that the problem of global poverty is structural. It demands, therefore, changing the global socio-economic structure. Nagel, we have noted above, limits justice to the domestic structure of the sovereign state. But Tan advocates for a global difference principle. This is because the global economic order favors the rich. Plantation workers in the Philippines, those who labor in the mines of Africa, and domestic helpers in Singapore need not suffer. They also deserve to live in a just world. Cosmopolitan justice, which considers the individual as the basic moral unit, can serve as basis for a just socio-economic global structure. Cosmopolitanism rejects the idea that the responsibilities of justice must be limited by state sovereignty. Tan suggests that the baseline distribution of natural resources among individuals should be decided independently of the national and state boundaries within which individuals happen to be (Ibid., 97). Why? It is because there is an obvious injustice in the distribution of global wealth. I will use two arguments to counter Nagel’s claim, one based on global rectificatory justice, and two, on national self-determination.

First, we can say that development aid or assistance can put poor countries at a certain threshold to be globally competitive. But if the present global economic order prevails, poor countries will simply recede to their previous status. Economic aid will never be enough. For instance, rich nations subsidize their farmers on farm input. This puts the produce of farmers from poor countries at a disadvantage. The present conditions of global trade simply favor rich nations. Protectionist policies of powerful states perpetuate global poverty. In order to advance real economic development in poor nations, there must be structural changes in the global economic order.

Global poverty is something that can be attributed to the weakness of internal structures in the third world. This weakness makes poor nations highly handicapped in international trade relations. Some rich nations bribe their way to continually exploit the economies of third world countries. Such manifests the selfish interests and motives of powerful sovereign states. This condition needs to be changed. Thus, Thomas Pogge says it very well when he suggests that “by seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated other societies” (Pogge 2004, 262). It is a moral imperative that these mistakes be rectified. Pogge advocates for a re-redistribution of global wealth to compensate for the perpetual exploitation of the natural resource of poor countries by multi-national companies. Global inequality can be remedied by allowing the transfer of resource from rich countries to develop the economies of poor nations. Tan says that if liberalism calls for responsible choices on the part of poor countries, there must be at least the ideal of justice that requires that the background conditions against which such choices are made be fair (Tan 2004., 101). Nagel’s understanding of global reality, where he reduces the states of affairs between nations into a piece of paper, is morally indifferent to the hard realities of the third world. He speaks of power and neglects that this power of some sovereign states is used to malign the global poor. The transfer of wealth through a global difference principle from rich to poor nations will ensure the sustainability of economic development. This will mitigate the undue advantage of rich nations in the area of trade liberalization. A minimal humanitarian assistance which Nagel proposes is no more than a token gesture and surely will not solve global poverty.

Secondly, it can be argued against Nagel that national self-determination need not be incompatible with cosmopolitan justice. Nagel’s rejection of cosmopolitan moral consistency “overlooks how the differences in power relations between nations, which economic inequality engenders and sustains, obstruct the right to self-determination of the least advantaged”(Tan 2004, 117) Do we owe to others what we owe to our fellowmen? Let me cite the phenomenon of migrant workers. Migrant workers contribute to the economy of their host nations. Eight million Filipinos who work abroad, many of them professionals, send $12 Billion annually to the Philippines. On a closer look, this means that on average, one Filipino abroad earns $100 monthly for the Philippine economy. That is not much compared to what they contribute to their host nations who take advantage of them as cheap labor exports. Thus, they deserve just treatment, for the benefit is mutual. Tan says, “the principle of self-determination tells us that we should be concerned about bringing a more egalitarian global structure in which the pre-conditions do in fact obtain universally for all”(Ibid., 102). Nation building must not be at the expense of the least advantaged citizens of poor nations who labor as guest workers to do the dirty job in rich societies. They deserve equal respect because they actually reciprocate the benefits they gain. Unjust policies of certain states, for instance in Singapore, which limit migrant workers access to government institutions make them poor victims of rape, non-payment of salaries and maltreatment (AFP Report, Feb. 8, 2006). State governments, I believe, owe these workers the justice they deserve.

Thus, the requirements of sovereignty cannot be the only basis for a just world. Global structures need to be adjusted to make the playing field fair. These adjustments do not require the diminution of state sovereignty. What is required is to open economic borders and end state-centric protectionist policies which are detrimental to the global poor. We have shown that the problem of global justice is somehow structural, and this calls for a change in the status quo of global economic structures which favor the economic growth of rich nations at the expense of the peoples of the third world.

III.

What is the idea behind state sovereignty? In a sovereign state, individuals bind themselves together under one sovereign power. Through this, compatriots demand upon each other the obligations of justice. Justice in this regard serves the purpose of the basic structure set up under the rule of one sovereign government. This relation within the basic structure is political, not moral. This political relation is established by way of the legitimacy citizens confer upon their government. The government regulates its citizens (i.e. taxation, resource distribution, etc.) in the name of justice to set the fair terms of cooperation. Social institutions are established to carry out and secure justice for each citizen of the state. But this political arrangement does not give citizens the responsibility to extend the duty of justice to outsiders because outsiders are not a party to this political arrangement. Nagel says, “sovereignty puts the fellow citizens of a sovereign state into a relation that they do not have with the rest of humanity, an institutional relation which must then be evaluated by the special standards of fairness and equality that fill out the content of justice” (Ibid., 120).

Socio-economic justice, according to Nagel, is fully associative in nature and is under some form of centralized control (Nagel 2005, 127). The power of a sovereign state towards its members defines the basis and limits of such associative relation. This associative relation can be defined as state membership. It is only through such that citizens can claim “a right to democracy, equal citizenship, non-discrimination, equality of opportunity, and the amelioration through public policy fairness in the distribution of social and economic goods” (Ibid.) For Nagel, justice is something that we owe to our fellow citizens within the borders of the state; it is not owed to everyone. This state-centricism means that “a sovereign state is not just a cooperative enterprise for mutual advantage. The societal rules determining its basic structure are coercively imposed, it is not a voluntary association” (Ibid., 128-29). Citizens confer upon the state the power to govern them. In short, the state is the primary agent of justice which citizens themselves establish by agreement. This agreement brings about the positive obligations of justice (Ibid., 130). It is an obligation that does not go beyond the borders of the state. Hence, Nagel says, “this duty is not owed to everyone in the world”(Ibid., 121) When laws are made, they are established with the members of one’s political community in mind, and not imposed against or for others outside this community. The points above imply that global inequality, the imbalance of wealth between rich and poor nations, and the economic suffering that it brings is not a problem that the basic structure of rich nations must address. The political relation of citizens does not give rise to the obligations of justice to outsiders.

But the reality of globalization and the prevalence of poverty in the world makes Nagel’s points above less appealing. Is there something that an individual can do to help address the problem of socio-economic injustice in the world? I will offer two arguments here from Peter Singer. One is based on the ethics of impartiality, and the other, on the concept of maximum utility. First, Singer believes that the individual, by being impartial, can do something good to address the issue of global poverty. In the issue of global inequality, “neither race nor nation determines the value of a human being’s life” (Singer 2002, 154) and so individuals in rich nations need not be morally indifferent to strangers. Singer’s approach calls for a global ethics, grounded in the idea that the individual can always do more to be morally responsible. Nagel’s concept of domestic justice renders non-citizens as outsiders. But we do have a moral obligation to help strangers. Let me cite Singer’s example. Imagine that one is passing a shallow pond, and as he or she does, he or she sees a small child fall into it and realizes that the child is in danger of drowning (Ibid.,156) What must one do? Helping the child would make one dirty, and thus would need one to go home, thereby cancelling an appointment (Ibid.) For Singer, prioritizing the appointment and letting the child die is immoral (Ibid.)

Political decisions do not only affect the citizens of one nation; they have moral implications also on the lives of other human beings. Citing the outrageous amounts of money received by the victims of 9/11 which echoes the idea that “charity begins at home”, Singer says that such preference for the member of one’s fellow community or race implies that the lives of others is less than one’s own. Consider the little child above. That little child represents the poor children of Africa. These children, hungry, sick and dying, have never been a part of the affairs of wealthy nations. Perhaps, it needs to be asked. Whose duty must assisting the poor be? The answer to this is affected by our understanding of what an imagined community is, according to Singer (Ibid., 170). If that imagined community is limited to the nation-state, then one limits his obligations to his fellow citizens. But if that imagined community becomes one world, then one realizes that he or she must not discriminate against others outside the nation-state (Ibid.). One must be build bridges instead of erecting fences, so to say. The fact that we belong to one global community implies that citizens of rich nations have the moral duty to help poor people in the third world. We need not be morally indifferent to non-citizens.

Secondly, Singer’s argument from the principle of maximum utility would not be in line with the sphere of justice. It is grounded on the approach that leads to the best consequences, or the greatest net satisfaction (Ibid., 192). He suggests that it is more advantageous for any society if its citizens extend socio-economic obligations beyond the borders of the state. Let us consider the ethics of assistance. For instance, Singer says, “while it may, other things being equal, be more efficient for states to look after their own citizens, this is not the case if wealth is so unequally distributed that a typical affluent people in one country spends more on going to the theater than many in other countries have to live on for a full year” (Singer 2002, 172). Are rich people really constrained by sovereignty or can they do something positive to change the world? On an individual basis, Singer thinks that citizens of rich nations can do more than what their governments are doing. If rich individuals help remedy the problem of economic inequality by helping the poor, even if poor people are thousands of miles away, such will do a lot to augment the aid rich nations give to poor countries. By doing so, money that could have been otherwise spent on luxuries can help educate poor children, treat diseases, and provide for other basic needs. Such is an efficient use of resource. At the expense of what? At the expense of non-essential frivolities!

Now, consider the assistance rich nations give to citizens of poor countries. On a practical note, extending the obligations of justice would mean empowering poor people or immigrants for them to be able to reciprocate. How? The development of talents in poor nations, through technology or knowledge transfer, can be advantageous to the First World later on. By opening state borders to talented workers from foreign countries, host nations gain from their abilities. Intelligent students from developing countries who get the opportunity to study abroad, many of them in US universities, have done important researches for big companies, thereby contributing to the US economy. But more can be done. Let us consider the reality of globalization. We are linked not only to our fellow citizens, but to a global community as well. Nagel is wrong in discriminating against the Brazilian who harvests coffee for him. Global ethics calls our attention to the fact that our individual actions affect the lives of other men and women however far they are. If the CEO of Starbucks chooses to buy coffee from the Philippines instead of Brazil because American customers would so demand, the company has to be concerned about its impact on Brazilian coffee growers. Singer says, “globalization means that we should value equality between societies, and at the global level, at least as much as we value political equality within one society” (Ibid., 173). Thus, we need to ask what can be done by each individual to help change the world and make it a better place to live in. Singer says that if giving money to those near the bottom of the economic ladder in Bangladesh will both reduce inequality there and reduce inequality between nations that seems the best thing to do (Ibid. 175). Providing funds to developing countries to improve their economies is better than wasting billions in building warships and stealth fighter jets. There are one billion hungry and dying people in the world. The idea of sovereignty which fuel state-centric policies should not be a hindrance for citizens of rich nations to help the global poor.

REFERENCES:

1. Thomas Nagel. The Problem of Global Justice in Philosophy and Public Affairs 33,
No. 2, Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 2005.
2. John Rawls. The Law of Peoples. (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
3. Kok-Chor Tan. Justice Without Borders. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
4. Peter Singer. One World, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
5. Thomas Pogge. World Poverty and Human Rights. (Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2002).

Paul Ricoeur's Phenomenology of the Will

(Draft Copy)

The question of subjectivity is central in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. His intellectual journey essentially responds to the mystery of being human, and this is done "through the prolonged study of the wounded subject in an effort to heal and recuperate the subject in our time" (See Hengel 1982).

The human subject is one who struggles to be. This is because there seems to be a disjointing between human consciousness and its incarnate existence. The effort to live well thus becomes difficult. To live one's subjectivity means to understand the meaning of one's being-in-the-world. This, according to Ricoeur, can be done through a phenomenological investigation of the conscious act of willing and its purpose (intention), a purpose fully realized in human action.

Let me first go back to Martin Heidegger. His exposition of the being of man as Dasein or there-being reveals the basic question that man has - the meaning of existence. For Heidegger, man is always already thrown into the world where he realizes his potentialities and existential possibilities. Thus, man has the power-to-be in the world where he realizes his projects.

Ricoeur expounds this project by discerning into the essential structures of human existence through an exposition of a philosophy of the will. Our task in this paper is to examine the woundedness of human consciousness, restoring the unity of the cogito and human incarnate existence through human action.

Historically speaking, such woundedness arrived in the advent of modernity. Science claimed an authoritative position about the nature of things, so that before anything was to be judged as true, there would be a need to be tested by the instruments of scientific research. Thus, with the emergence of the scientific era, method acted as the source of knowledge, even about man. This paved the way for the dichotomization of the subject from the object, man from the world, and the soul from the body. This dualism can be traced in Descartes' Meditations.

The second meditation of Descartes

For Descartes, the senses act as instruments of deception (Cartesian Meditations, 13). He thinks that the world is hypothetical in nature. For him, before we could trust anything, it must be doubted, for the senses seem to say the opposite of what we believe. Descartes states that a person must not be misled by the judgements accorded to him by his sense faculties. And since the senses deceive, the real criterion for truth should be that which is indubitable. For Descartes, what can't be doubted is the fact that there is a person who doubts, for in the act of doubting, the existence of the one who doubts is always presupposed. He says,

I discover that thought is an attribute that really does belong to me. This alone cannot be detached from me. I am; I exist; this is certain (CM, 18).

What is certain then is that the subject exists. But this is a solitary subject. The world is divorced from the Cartesian cogito. Consciousness is anchored on the subject and the subject alone - on the fact that "I am therefore, I exist". Descartes methodic doubt erases the existence of the world and of the other. Insofar as the world is out there, for Descartes, this could not be known. I am an entity separate from the world.

What is the implication of the Cartesian project? It essentially destroys the unity of body and consciousness. Human experience loses the intentional unity of subject and the object which it intends. The subject loses his or her contact with the world. Thus, man has an alienated Cogito. Erazim Kohak, in his introduction to Freedom and Nature, comments on this by asserting that "there is no consciousness unless it is a consciousness of an object and, conversely, an object presents itself as an object only for conciousness" (See Kohak 1966).

Let me discuss the meaning of the instance of being there, or of phenomena. Phenomena refer to the presence of the things in the world in my consciousness. To be conscious is to be conscious of the world. Translated to the presence of the self, what makes me actual is not only the fact that I think, but that "the reasons which motivate my decision, the body which I am, even the personal and historical conditions of my being are not simply external limitations imposed upon me, but rather an organ in and through which I am actual" (Ibid.).

I am truly human insofar as I actually dwell in a world of meanings which I can apprehend because I possess an embodied existence. Human action always presupposes certain meanings. The cogito only becomes real by being-in-the-world. I can only move my body in relation to whatever possibilities the world presents me. I am an incarnate being. Thus, Kohak asserts that, "movement always emerges as the organ of cogito's practical incarnation" (Ibid., 20).

Man as being-in-the-world

According to Heidegger, man's being is a being-in-the-world (See Being and Time). As such, the world exists as man's horizon and potentiality for Being. Descartes, on the one hand, sees the fundamental ontological determination of the world as extension (See Ibid.). This means that the world is only an extension of my body - it is other than me, separate from me. Being makes no sense for Descartes. For him Being itself does not accept us, therefore, it cannot be perceived (Ibid., 87). But Heidegger says that in understanding the world, Being is also understood. He calls Being as the disclosedness or the unconcealment of things in the world, in which, in every disclosing there is also a concealing.

For Heidegger, man's primordial experience of Being is that man is always already within the world. Man is not an object separate from the world. By being in the world, man's potentiality for Being is disclosed. Man is a thrown being, thus, man always already finds himself in a situation.

This implies that man is not only conscious of a self but is conscious of a situation. Thus, we must "pass beyond self-consciousness and see consciousness as adhering to its body, to all its involuntary life and through them, to a world of action" (Freedom and Nature, 8). The world always presents itself to us as something we need to change and transform through our conscious willing.

The project that Heidegger talks about in Being and Time is concretized in Ricoeur as the project of human action. There is a link therefore in Heidegger's explication of the meaning of Dasein to Ricoeur's own elucidation of the meaning of the subject. According to Jervolino, the subject is posited as the being for whom the question regarding being gives itself; this subject is posited as Dasein (See Jervolino 1966). Thus, against Descartes, the hermeneutics of the "I am" transforms and renews the philosophy of the Cogito, doing away with the illusions of the idealistic, subjectivistic, and solipsistic Cogito (Ibid.).

The subject in Husserl's phenomenology

We must trace Ricoeur's affinity to Edmund Husserl, the father of Phenomenology, if we are to do a phenomenology of the subject. In Husserl, the ego is always rooted in the subject. This ego is always originary and transcendental. Here, we quote Van Den Hengel,

The ego is the final justification of all objectivity. The ego is the quest for the ultimate foundation of human knowledge and activity. Thus, for Husserl, according to Ricoeur, the height of intuition, the place where intuition is most complete, is subjectivity" (See Hengel 1982).

First, a few remarks. The subject without the world is an empty truth. The Cogito as it appears in Husserlian phenomenology is at once a reprise of the Cartesian cogito (See Blamey 1995). Husserl does a reworking of the Cartesian project, "conceiving the cogito as a field of experience" (Ibid.). Thus, consciousness is always consciousness of something other than the self. Subjectivity as the foundation of all human understanding presupposes that man is immediately conscious of himself as a subject. This makes the Cogito the apodictic ground of all knowing. The world, which has become a world-for-me, "appears as meaning, as meaning for the pure ego"(Ibid.).

But in Ricoeur's hermeneutical project, the foundation in the Cogito, however, does not hold ground. The criterion of an apodictic truth is broken into pieces with the emergence of language. Language as a phenomenon in man refers man not only to himself as a speaking subject but also to a world where he is related. It is "through language that we apprehend what lies before language"(Ibid.).

According to Ricoeur, for Husserl, "structural phenomenology reflects the subject by means of what may now be called the object world; in Husserl's phenomenology, the object world is primarily a perceptual one" (See The Symbolism of Evil, 10) For Husserl, experience is the immediacy of a lived world where we encounter things. But Ricoeur's aim in applying structural phenomenology to the question of the subject is essentially to understand the essential possibilities in man, and "in this context it is the experience of the fault" (See Don Ihde 1986). The fault refers to the fall of the will, the event where man commits a sin (as symbolized in the fall of Adam).

What Ricoeur does is an epoche or a phenomenological reduction of human willing. In epoche, the natural attitude comes to a halt. Here, all facts or biases for and against the human will are suspended. What is sought is the will's a priori meaning. Through this, the essential possibilities (eidetics) of the will are uncovered. In uncovering these essential possibilities, the meaning of human existence is given expression - man can be right or wrong, good or bad. This expression is manifest in the word. The word as expression gives meaning to human action. To act is to dwell in the lived life. The lived life is encompassed, linguistically. According to Hengel,

In order to understand the meaning of willing, phenomenology seeks the essences of the lived or the structures of the experience of willing. Phenomenology seeks to uncover, therefore, the meaning of the lived (See Hengel 1982).

Human will is analyzed through its objects or intentions. These objects are "identified as the world, my body, and others" (Ibid.). The will intends an act that I am responsible for. As an "act-to-be-done-by-me" (Ibid.), it opens an aspect of my existence, and that is, I possess a character whose project depends upon my own decisions. My capacity to act and realize this project means that I have the power to be in the world. The exposition of the subject as character brings in the aspect of self-imputation, thus, it must be viewed from the level of praxis, or human action.

Husserl's phenomenology dwells on the level of perception, "but there is a prior recovery of the self in the level of doing"(Ibid.). The meaning of human existence does not reside fully on the level of seeing, and so we must contemplate on the level of action where the contexts of human action are illuminated and given their ethical content. This ethical content presupposes human freedom. Thus, human action exposes the meaning of human freedom. Thus, "praxis is the realm of the emergence of freedom or of the subject as free and responsible" (Ibid.). In acting, I become responsible.

For instance, we can recall in Gabriel Marcel the rejection of the Cartesian Cogito which Marcel regards as a mere abstraction of the human subject. For him, human existence is a being-in-a-situation (See Gallagher 1982). The self is only real insofar as it experiences the situatedness it has in the world as an incarnate existence. My existence finds itself as being-with-others, and not as mere abstract thought. Thus, pure subjectivity is content-less subjectivity; as existing subjectivity I am not pure subjectivity, but a being-by-participation (Ibid.). As a subject man participates in the world of beings. This participation in Ricoeur is a participation-in-action. Being-in-a-situation means being able to respond to the demands of an event through my conscious act of willing. Ricoeur expounds this theme in his phenomenological description of human subjectivity.

Ricoeur: willing, acting, consenting

In Dr. Leo Garcia's creative repetition of the Philosophy of the Will, it can be noted that the reciprocity of the body and consciousness can be summed up in the movement of the will towards deciding, acting, and consenting. I quote,

The intentional object of decision is the project. The project then is the correlate of decision, the first moment of willing. However, the project only becomes real through effective action brought about by voluntary movement. This effective action or pragma is the correlate of action, the second moment of willing. But the will still has to acquiesce to necessity which it cannot change. The detour into the voluntary makes us aware of this necessity which is the correlate of consent, the third moment of willing" (See Garcia 1997).

To decide means "being able to attend to the things that I have to do". The project, pragma, refers to what I intend to accomplish that which needs my conscious act of doing something for the sake of something. Within the possibility of this accomplishment lies the horizon of the world, my being situated in it. Man acts in view of the possibilities that the world offers him, including the capacity to commit mistakes. Thus, "decision culminates in the determination of self by oneself: I make up my own mind, it is I who determine myself and myself whom I determine"(See Stewart 1978, 5) This means that it is the subject who acts and that it is the subject who is responsible for his or her actions.

It is the subject that decides. Decision specifies in outline a future action as my own action, as an action lying within my power (Ibid.). The "act-to-be-done-by-me" is realized in human action, which "realizes it in full"(Ibid.). Action is self-determination. For instance, to possess a political will simply means acting in view of what is demanded from an individual as a public servant. This means doing things in order to enforce the law, the "be all and end all" of the public sphere. Political action determines the worthiness self that I am as a public official.

This points to the reality of our situated existence. Human action essentially reveals the being of man as a situated consciousness. Man's being is concretized in human action, and man acts in view of the situation he struggles, enjoys, or suffers being-in. The situation defines the whole horizon of human activity. Human action, in return, characterizes the person that we are. Some men may or may not be men for others, for some people only desire what their ego so demands, but what human action reflects are the qualities that we possess as persons. Ricoeur says, "in doing something, I make myself be. I am my own capacity for being" (FN, 55). Human action is always related to the project it intends to do. And this project is realized in the world, for the world exists as a playing field for the unfolding of my actions.

Let me discuss the fall of man. The world is a witness to the unfolding of the subject that is me. If I sin, I sin in the world. If I feel guilty about what I do, the world looms as the background of this guilt. The body acts as my perspective where all understanding and acting begin. I am an incarnate being, an embodied soul. The body, according to Ricoeur, "is not the object of action but its organ" (FN, 212). It is through my body that I am able to regret, transform, or simply cast into forgetfulness, the situations I am into. The body is a witness to my mistakes. It aches, it suffers, it pains. The body reminds me of what I am, of how I acted.

But the world is a huge place to be. The world is not a raw data of nature; it is an event for me that I am constantly involved with so that my being as man can manifest a meaningful sense. Acting then is my means of doing something for myself and for others. I can change and become better. By doing social charity for instance, we don’t just give something, we share our humanity. Charity, when characterized by good intentions, bears witness to change.

Our discussions simply point out that "consciousness is not the disembodied consciousness revealed by introspection" (See Garcia 1997). This puts into rest the illusions of the Cartesian Cogito. The subject is not an abstract mental entity. To be a subject does not only mean that I am a thinking individual, but that I think simply because I have to act. Thus, we must go beyond the objectification of the body and recover the massive experience of being my body as a source of motives, as a focus of abilities, or as a background of necessity (FN, 16).

But what is this background of necessity? Ricoeur beautifully illustrates the answer to our inquiry in his analysis of consent. To consent is to make necessity my own (See Garcia 1997). To consent means to understand my finite horizons and be able to joyfully accept whatever possibilities it accords me. My body gives me my capacity for being. It is that which allows me to act. As long as man has his body, he possesses an existential capability for acting. No one is disabled. One can only be differently-abled. But one needs to choose - and thereby act in accordance to that choice.

This is because my body is my openness to the world. It brings me to whatever is possible so that I can truly act as a human being. Thus, it is my freedom of movement. The possibility of evil then is there because of the freedom of human action. But the necessity of my bodily existence does not mean I am essentially bound to be sinful. Necessity implies that I am finite and so my possibilities are finite. To consent to human finitude is to accept the beauty and meaning of being truly human. The human being who suffers, grows old, and dies must not consider life a lonely journey because "freedom remains the possibility of not accepting myself, of saying no to what is negating" (See Stewart 1978) To be finite is to take pride in whatever possibilities human finitude offers. To be finite does not mean we are always bound to be broken, for essentially as man we are whole. This unity means that "the world of objects is for the subject, the involuntary is for the voluntary, motives are for choice, capacities for effort, necessity for consent" (See FN, 471-472; see also in Garcia 1997, 63). This horizon of my subjectivity finds its realization in responsible human action. It is only in responsible action that we find ourselves complete. It is in fulfillment that we find the meaning of being a person. My incarnate existence, my being with and for others, is experienced in a personal manner.

Reciprocity and the human person

As a human person, I am irreducible to any scientific explanation. B.F. Skinner's behaviorism essentially degrades the essence of what it means to be human by defining man as a being who responds to the stimuli he finds in his nearest environment. But behaving in some way, acting or respecting someone, is not a mere naturalistic reaction to a certain stimulus. For instance, a lifetime commitment to a loved one is irreducible to behavioral reflexes. Thus, "to rediscover the personal body, the naturalistic viewpoint must give way to a phenomenological viewpoint"(Ibid.). Human incarnate existence is essentially lived. My body is not an object. Thus, my body demands respect. It should not be subjected to any exploitation because it bears the mark of my being human. Respect for the human body is therefore respect for human life.

The reciprocity of body and consciousness makes me truly human. This means that I have a character bearing "the very decision I make, the way I exert effort, and the way I perceive and desire" (See FN, 367; see also in Garcia, 139) My character shows me that my freedom is not an abstract but concrete freedom which is real in a particular, determinate way (Ibid.). Thus, character makes me someone (FN, 447). Through my character, "I am a fundamental openness to the whole range of possibilities of being human" (See Garcia 1997). This explains the fact that the Cogito is not devoid of its worldly possibilities. The Cogito finds itself as incarnate in its many possibilities of desiring, acting, and intending. The Cogito is not separated from the human experience of being-in-the-world. Jervolino summarizes our points in these words:

The link between the voluntary and the involuntary means that the will, as a capacity to decide upon and to enact a project, to take action, to consent to one's being in a situation, corresponds to the body as source of motivations, concentrate of powers and also as necessary nature, that nature which I am. In short, the body as subject (See Jervolino 1966)

Language as the subject's horizon of meaning

In his Intellectual Autobiography, Ricoeur says that he was questioning the presuppositions of Descartes and Husserl, namely "the immediateness, the transparence, and the apodicticity of the Cogito" (See Hahn 1995) Human existence as subject cannot be understood if it is not expressed in words (or in action), language being both linguistic and verbal. For example, knowledge is useless if it is not communicated, analyzed, critiqued - therefore, it is nothing if not understood. Thus, the willing Cogito must find its way into self-expression. As Ricoeur says, "without the help of language experience would remain mute, obscure, and shut up in its implicit contradictions"(See The Symbolism of Evil, 161). Again, we cite Jervolino:

Word has the power to change our understanding of ourselves. Word reaches us on the level of the symbolic structures of our existence, the dynamic schemes that express the way in which we understand our situation and the way in which we project ourselves into this situation (See Jervolino 1966).

Ricoeur considers the word (language) as his kingdom. Speech [he refers to his teaching profession], according to him, is his means of livelihood. Thus, in the context of a hermeneutic phenomenology, the object world is exchanged for a language world. The world of expression is now the object correlate which is used to reflect the subject (See Ihde 1986). Human action in this sense is to be understood linguistically. This is because there is no direct understanding of the self. Garcia says, "the final act, and not the first, is thus to understand oneself before the text, before the work. Discourse, text, work are the mediation by which we understand ourselves" (See Garcia 1999). To know the subject is to narrate its life-story. The story constitutes the story of a life lived, the subject's life in time and its concretion in human action.

In conclusion, what we have seen is that the subject in Paul Ricoeur's philosophy is an embodied consciousness who realizes his or her possibilities in the world through (responsible) human action. Human consciousness is not an abstract reality; it also feels pain, sadness, regret, compunction or joy. The subject is rooted in the world where it discovers relationships that concretize what it means to be human. The Cogito is not an alienated entity. It also expresses itself through its self-expressions. Descartes has taken for granted the fact that language is essentially social. Language presupposes a community of beings sharing, speaking, or in dialogue.

For instance, authentic human commitment to the other must be expressed (linguistically or verbally), beyond the silence of a good or noble deed. Love should be expressed in the act of saying "I love you". Only then can the real intention of the self be known, if indeed the intention is real and present.

On Rawls and liberal equality

(Draft Copy)

According to John Rawls, justice is the first virtue of institutions, as truth is of systems of thought (Rawls 1971, 3). Rawls, who belongs to the social contract tradition, develops his theory of justice from what he calls the original position, a device in which all parties choose the principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance deems that people do not know their status in society. Thus, they are essentially blind to all facts about their lives that might affect what notion of justice they would agree. Rawls states:

No one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance (Ibid.).

The veil of ignorance ensures fairness in choosing the principles of justice which must apply to social arrangements. Rawls says, “they are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamentals of the terms of their association” (Ibid.)

This contract or agreement is hypothetical in nature. Rawls argues that these principles are in fact what the parties would agree upon if they were in that hypothetical situation of the original position. Rawls explains this by calling upon us “to imagine a state of nature where we are blind as to our status or position in society” (Ibid.). This includes, for all members of society, not knowing where one would end up or which fortunes one gets in the natural lottery. Under this veil of ignorance, the position of equality is guaranteed. It ensures that those who might be able to influence the process in their favor, due to their better position, are unable to do so (Kymlicka 2007, 63).

This initial status quo is meant to emphasize on the equality of human beings as moral persons (Ibid.). This means that individuals must be responsible for their judgments and actions but not for the situations or circumstances beyond them, for instance, nationality, gender, and race. There must be just distribution of social primary goods since equal opportunity does not fully compensate for the unequal circumstances men and women are born into. Thus, Rawls says:

Human beings should have the same initial expectations of "basic goods," i.e., all-purpose goods; this in no way precludes ending up with different quantities of such goods or resources, as a result of personal economic decisions and actions. When prime importance is accorded an assurance of equal basic freedoms and rights, inequalities are just when they fulfill two provisos: on the one hand, they have to be linked to offices and positions open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; on the other hand, they have to reflect the famous ‘difference principle’ in offering the greatest possible advantage to the least advantaged members of society (Rawls 1993, 5).

Since the moral equality of all parties is ensured, Rawls argues that people would adopt two principles of justice in the hypothetical contract. These two principles, the priority of liberty and the difference principle, would then govern the social arrangement, including how certain rights, duties, social and economic opportunities are to be distributed. The two principles of justice are: First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. Second, that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that, a) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity and b) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).

The first principle, or the autonomy principle, suggests that the liberty of the individual is inviolable. The liberty principle is supreme and cannot be violated for the sake of the second principle. This is because the autonomy or liberty of the individual essentially constitutes his moral value. No person, in this sense, can be sacrificed for the sake of another good nor can a person be used as means to further another end. Meaning to say, personal liberty means that the person is an end in itself. Each individual in a free society can pursue a life plan and profit from the same. A liberal state guarantees the autonomy of each person, but he or she must not undermine the liberty of others nor exploit others to his or her advantage.

The second principle, the fair opportunity principle and the difference principle, considers how social primary goods like income, opportunity, and the basis of self-respect, can be distributed from a just social arrangement. First, Rawls says that government instrumentalities, i.e. offices, elections, must be open to all under the fair terms of cooperation. This means that every person must have the chance to take advantage of the benefits or advantages that the institutions of government can make available. This includes, among others, the right to run for office. Secondly, it is the worst off in society who must be favored primarily to make the sharing of social primary goods fair. The worst off refers to those who are disadvantaged in society, for instance, members of poor communities, those who belong to cultural minorities, or the individuals in sectors which are vulnerable due to their social condition, i.e. poverty, conflict, etc. They must be considered, for instance, by way of taxation which should provide the basic services to help them. People can pursue their life-plans and profit from the same, but they must contribute through taxes to serve the worst off, so that the worst off may have the opportunity to improve their lives. This is what the famous difference principle calls for. People can still pursue wealth, but this must not make the position of the disadvantaged more difficult. Fairness in the liberal sense therefore means that justice is served when we treat people as equals, “not by removing all inequalities, but only those which disadvantage the worst off” (Kymlicka 2007, 55).

Equality in the liberal sense therefore means that each person’s liberty is construed as morally significant and inviolable. Thus, any person who may have an advantage in view of his talent can still pursue his life-plans as long as the inequality brought about by a person’s abilities ultimately favors the worst off.

If a person gains more income say from being a manager of a bank, the inequality is not necessarily unjust if his access to more income serves the interests of his clients, who in turn must also serve the interest of their consumers, most of which could belong to the worst off, whom they must sell goods at a fair price. Or for example, if a person invests his shares from social primary goods and earns some profit, there is no injustice if people benefit from his investments, say from gainful employment. Entitlement to the profit that one’s basic liberties allow, granting such profit is not acquired nor used to the disadvantage of the worst off, forms as the firm foundation of liberal equality.

For instance, to hire someone because one is more qualified in terms of skill does not do an injustice to a co-applicant. But to hire someone because the company prefers white people is not just for it suggests that white people are always better than colored people. In the same manner, for instance in a case which actually happened in the state of New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, replacing all white people with blacks is biased and unjust. Whereas an appropriate competency or skill would be beneficial to society’s well-being as a whole, bias against people because of their color obviously does not.

According to Will Kymlicka, liberal equality follows from what Rawls calls the maximin strategy. Say, for instance, we have situations A, B, and C for three people who are given the following amount of goods: A – 10,000:8,000:1,000; B – 7,000:6,000:2,000; C – 5,000:4,000:4,000. Since people do not know where they will end up in the just distribution, one should maximize his or her chances of getting an adequate amount of goods and minimize the risks of getting into the bottom. In this case, it would be rational to choose C, for it maximizes your chances and your risks are little if you end up getting the minimum. A is a form of oligarchy, where there are two sectors or perhaps families in society enriching themselves unabatedly, and making use of the less well off. B does not fare better, for there’s still a huge gap, and since nobody knows where one would end up, nobody would agree to such a condition. C seems to show that there is some form of inequality, but such can be compensated by the fact that the less well-off at least possesses a chance to catch up, given the fact that the rich is not too rich to usurp everybody, and that the poor is not too poor that life in such a way would seem hopeless.

Critique of Liberal Equality

Liberal equality is not a perfect design. For instance, following Ronald Dworkin, it can be argued that the difference principle accounts only for disadvantages in terms of social primary goods and neglects natural disadvantages like mental disabilities (See Ibid., 59). Dworkin says that even if social primary goods are redistributed, those with disabilities will still be disadvantaged because of their condition. Thus, for Dworkin a certain form of insurance must first be provided to those with natural disabilities before the resources of society are auctioned off. Justice as fairness demands in this sense that it must be endowment sensitive. This will ensure that the distribution of resource will not be biased to those with natural disabilities.

It is also important to point out that people, being free, can waste their fair share due to bad choices. But it is also argued in the text that it is equally unjust for one to demand that someone else pay for the cost of one’s choices simply because one has misappropriated what has been allocated to him/her as his/her fair share. Thus, the difference principle must be ambition-sensitive. Here, Will Kymlicka makes the analogy of the tennis player and the gardener who are provided with the same resource, the former opting for leisure while the latter wisely investing the said resource through hardwork.

We can improve on his analogy by citing a real world example instead. Say Pupil A and Pupil B go to the same public school – Pupil A drops out whereas Pupil B succeeds. Let’s find out why. Ambition-sensitivity is an important account, but I am using a real world example to be more reflective of reality. I would like to say that it is a fact that there is a great imbalance in terms of access to society’s resource. Much is invested in private education by way of grants, tuitions, endowments, but, like in our country, so little is put into public education, creating a huge disparity in terms of the kind of education received by rich and poor children.

Evidence suggests that there are more drop outs in public schools than in private schools. Both Pupil A and Pupil B go to the same public school, but it is a fact that Pupil A might fail although they are given the same resource in the same manner as both the tennis player and gardener were given the same resource. Why? The reason is that basic needs may not even be adequate in the first place! What Dworkin emphasizes in the idea of ambition sensitivity is that individuals must be responsible for the goods allocated for them.

Morever, it can also be argued that the idea of making profit is an immediate challenge to liberal equality. The idea of profit is compatible with any property-owning democratic state. One has to admit that making profit happens in any liberal state. But how much profit must a liberal state allow? What is the extent by which we allow the margin of inequality by way of a profit-making economy? It can be argued that it is just for companies to gain profit, for such allows business to flourish, and thus people employed can continue to earn and live a good life. If invested, such profit allows for further employment, thus maximizing the company’s potential and helping people realize their life plans.

There is no provision in the difference principle as to how profit can be controlled. Oil price increases and their resulting windfall for big oil companies are unjust if it makes the public suffer, although they justify that it is needed for the business to do more projects. But failing to account for what constitutes a just and ethically desirable profit in a democratic state is a huge gap that needs to be addressed. For it needs to be asked how do we ensure that those who make profit in any liberal state will not usurp others and exploit those who are worst off.

Fairness is discussed generally in terms of equality of opportunity, which suggests that a bigger income is deserved as long as there has been fair competition (See Ibid., 57). But such notion of fair competition can put those who do not possess high intelligence or skill at a disadvantage. The concept of fair competition is deceptive because others have natural talents they do not deserve to possess if we put premium in the moral equality of persons. The central argument of Rawls then is that all social arrangements, to be fair, should ultimately favor the worst off, whose disadvantage, say in their social position or natural talent is something they don’t deserve.

So how is liberal egalitarianism attained in view of social inequality? Liberal theorists focus on the second principle of justice – the difference principle. This principle provides for the basis of a theory of just redistribution. Why redistribute the resources of society? The argument for this is that I believe if the rich are left on their own, chances are they will be using the worst off to advance their interests.

Justice as fairness ensures that enough opportunities are available to the worst-off. How is this done? For Rawls, this means removing inequalities which disadvantage people by giving them a just share of the social primary goods. As an example, a landlord who gains 60 percent of the share of harvests is simply taking advantage of a farmer who gains only 40 percent out of which he will also have to pay for farm implements, fertilizers, etc. apart from the fact that he is the one who tills the land. This form of inequality is unacceptable. To remove this form of injustice, a democratic state can implement land reform.

In terms of professions, it is not unfair for a nurse to receive a lesser salary than a doctor for the doctor has spent greater deal of his time and energy to gain his expertise. But it is also not fair for a doctor to demand excessive fees. The reason is that unreasonable fees means taking advantage of the plight of his patients. The fact that excellent medical service in developing countries is affordable only to those who belong in the upper economic class is an injustice. This contradicts the argument that inequalities can be allowed if and only if they contribute to society’s well-being as a whole.

Another argument to enhance the meaning of liberal equality is the critique of primary social goods as basis for human well-being in welfare economics. The distribution of resources in terms of income only touches the superficial symptoms of poverty but does not address the differences and heterogeneties between two people. For instance, person A and B can have the same amount of income. But if person A is a person with a physical handicap, there is no real equality though they have the same amount of income. The difference principle is good, but not good enough (Simon 2006). For Sen, equality must be based on equality of capabilities, or the substantive (positive) freedoms of people. The income approach only addresses the poverty of income but not the poverty of human life. Unjust social arrangements diminish the capabilities of people, and as such, re-arranging the mode of social cooperation therefore entails looking at holistic approaches to development. For instance, if we consider those with natural disabilities, it is not income that they need but a sense of human well-being beyond what economic provisions provide. This can be done by advancing their cause through massive investments in education and health care. It is not enough to talk about dividing social primary goods. It is equally important that in the allocation of such, basic capability enhancement through education, health care, and protection from human rights abuse are provided for.

Can the Word God be Meaningful?

(Delivered during Philosophical Symposium of Ateneo Schools in Mindanao, 1997 Xavier University)

1. Language, Truth, and Logic, a book written by Alfred Jules Ayer in 1936, is considered as something to popularize what may be called the classic position of the Vienna Circle. (PHP) Ayer, being one of the foremost members of the Vienna Circle, just like other logical positivists, is attracted to the methods of science. A follower of Auguste Comte, a 17th century French philosopher, Ayer argued that because of the essential character of language, metaphysics is impossible. According to Ayer, metaphysicians are working on literally senseless writings without even seeing them as non-sense. Since what goes beyond phenomena cannot be verified, then what goes beyond phenomena cannot be meaningfully described.

2. Since God transcends observable phenomena, God cannot be meaningfully described. No word could be properly attributed to God. This is quite clear in Ayer’s rejection of “the metaphysical thesis that philosophy affords us knowledge of a reality transcending the world of science and common sense”. (LTL) With the elimination of metaphysics, Ayer and other logical positivists also eliminate the meaningfulness of asserting the possibility of the existence of God. The word “God”, it is claimed, is meaningless. In Ayer's critical assessment, any language that deals with the transcendent is devoid of meaning. Any language that deals with a reality beyond sense data does not have factual content. Having no factual content, it is bereft of any linguistic significance.Any philosophical discussion on the meaning of the word “God” is due to a misunderstanding of the function of philosophy.

3. For Ayer, the only function of philosophy is analysis. It is the argument of logical positivists that it is the task of philosophers to make clear that questions should find significance in experience and that they should be verified, or else they are meaningless. But since metaphysics is concerned with what transcends human experience, it is literally meaningless. It is the view of logical positivists that the metaphysical utterance about the notion of a person whose essential attributes transcend human understanding is not an intelligible notion at all. And because God cannot be empirically verified, it follows that all assertions about God are literally meaningless. It is because a metaphysical being cannot be meaningfully described, Ayer asserts, even in language.What is logical positivism?Logical positivism is best described as “a general attitude of mind, a spirit of inquiry, and an approach to the facts of human existence”. (PHP) It rejects the assumption that the world has some ultimate purpose or end. Positivism “gives up the attempt to discover either the essence or the internal or the secret causes of things”. (PHP) It attempts to deal with facts by studying the observable relation among things. To a positivist, the laws of science are simply the laws of observable phenomena.

4. Although Comte is called the founder of positive philosophy, he did not discover this mode of thought, for as John Stuart Mill has said, “positivism was the general property of the age”. (PHP) Comte's chief mission has been the total reorganization of society, and this involves the total reconstruction of the intellectual orientation of his era. While he observes the success of science in France, which has been unfolding since the discoveries of Newton and Galileo, he also observes that science has not been assimilated in areas of politics, moral, social, and religious thought. The achievements of science have been outstanding, and what commanded so much respect for science is that it can be used to solve everyday problems, leading to new methods in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, and industry. Inevitably, gaining a sense of authority from its accomplishments, science has challenged other ways of thinking, including metaphysics.

5. Positivism finds its value in the fact that science has been an essential component in the success of man’s material and social life. By employing the efficiency of scientific inquiry, positivism promises a solution to the problems not only of physical realities, but of the disorders of the society as well. Thus, the advent of a technocratic society has created the positivistic mentality. Scientists have created an atmosphere that by means of experimentation, all that can be known can be known by science.The points above in the end led to the idea that other than what science may be able to provide, all other things, including questions about the ultimate end or finality of man, bear no meaning at all. Frederick Copleston says, “what people want are practical and tangible results, and they become accustomed to look for science for anything that makes a difference”. (CP)

6. Scientific inquiry does not go beyond empirical data. Newton, for example, described the phenomena of gravity without going beyond the useful limits of scientific reasoning. Newton did not start by asking the essence of gravity, but started with gravity as a phenomenon in empirical reality. The Universal Law of Gravitation depends on actual observation in sense-experience, on what is empirically given. Newton’s discovery had great impact, and it managed to govern physics for four centuries until Albert Einstein came.People rely on scientific data in making decisions. The social sciences use scientific research before making any theoretical assertion. The scientific tool of research is used as basis and evidence in making claims. To be accepted and believed, a discipline must at least employ scientific means. Data cannot be interpreted in an arbitrary manner, therefore scientific research is necessary to obtain objectivity and universal acceptance. This is the ground and norm for theoretical validity.It can be asserted that, for positivists, “we have no knowledge of anything but phenomena, and our knowledge of phenomena is relative, not absolute”. (PHP)

7. Positivism emphasizes the view that “we know not the essence, not the real mode of production, of any fact, but only its relations to other facts. These relations are constant: that is, always the same in the same circumstances. The constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us”. (PHP)The statement above means that human knowledge is limited to empirical reality. And empirical reality can be known through the methods of science. It is science that provides us with an understanding about the natural laws of phenomena. The problem regarding what goes beyond phenomena, therefore, is not a problem for science. What is important is that science can know the order in the nature of things whose laws it can discover. For example, physics has formulated the laws of motion, gravitation, energy, and other laws concerning natural phenomena by means of actual experimentation.It is also a fact that we do not have the means to investigate what is beyond phenomena.

8. The world beyond us is unknown, for there is no tool that could bring us to such realm. It has no meaning for us. What is important is that science has contributed so much to the development of society and its total reconstruction. The success of scientific methodology in making a nation economically healthy exerted an influence wherein its tangible results offer much importance. As such, the laws scientists make become the criterion for factual knowledge.Knowledge comes from sensible human experience. In asserting that it is only through science where man acquires knowledge, positivism has shown its strong empirical inclination. Our knowledge is acquired by observing sensible phenomena. The process goes like this: a problem is identified and a hypothesis is made. Then, scientists gather data through empirical observation. These data are subjected to experiments. Results are tested to gauge their repeatability. This repeatability becomes the basis of what we call scientific knowledge. This scientific method, as we have shown above, is the only basis of our knowledge of the world.

9. We may begin by asserting that, “the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification. (LTL) Thus, it must be evident from the statement itself that it can be verified, or else it is rendered meaningless. Thus, Ayer claims that the principle of verifiability is supposed to furnish a criterion by which it can be determined whether or not a sentence is literally meaningful. (LTL) For the sake of clarity and to avoid confusion, it is necessary that we differentiate what Ayer calls a sentence from a statement, and what he calls a statement from a proposition. He defines them: “Any form of words that is grammatically significant shall be held to constitute a sentence, and that every indicative sentence, whether it is literally meaningful or not, shall be regarded as expressing a statement. The word proposition will be reserved for what is expressed by sentences that are literally meaningful”. (LTL) Ayer adds,No statement, which refers to a reality transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience, can possibly have any literal significance. (LTL)The meaningfulness of a sentence can only be derived from sense-experience. Since metaphysical sentences are not empirically verifiable, they are meaningless. It is in this sense that Ayer's principle of verifiability can be fairly described as a rigid form of empiricism. It is the characteristic of an empiricist to eschew metaphysics on the ground that every factual proposition must refer to sense-experience. Verification rests upon empirical observation. Observable data must be perceived by the senses to make the statement meaningful.

10. There are two types of statements, the analytic and the synthetic:“Analytic statements derive their meaningfulness from the definition of their words or symbols” (PHP).In general, analytic statements already contain or imply the predicate from the subject. For example, the statement "men are mortals" has literal meaning because the word men is defined in such a way as to include the idea of mortals. The meaning of analytic statements depends on the consistent use of their clearly defined terms. For the most part, they do not increase our knowledge, and for this reason they are mere tautologies. It is necessarily true only because of the meaning of its terms — the test of the meaningfulness of a tautology is the meaning of its terms.“Synthetic propositions are either true or false in each case, and their truth or falsity can be discovered only by reference to some non-logical or non-linguistic datum, a fact” (PHP).

11. Unlike analytic statements, synthetic statements can be either true of false. These statements require some sense-experience of the objects that such statements refer to in order to test or validate its actual or possible truth.From this distinction of analytic and synthetic propositions, the logical positivists formulated their concept of literal meaning. Analytic propositions have formal meanings since their meanings are derived not from facts but from the meaning of words. On the other hand, synthetic propositions have factual meaning because their meaning is based upon empirical observation.The function of philosophyWittgenstein sums up the whole point of analysis by saying that “all philosophy is a critique of language”. (TLP)

12. Philosophy is influenced by language, and philosophical ideas depend on grammatical and syntactical structures. (LP) Philosophy is all about syntax. It is the notion of logical positivists that philosophy should be busy defining terms for science. It must concern itself with the formal meaning of terms. Philosophy, they claim, defines knowledge, classifies propositions, and displays the nature of things. By displaying the nature of things, philosophy defines empirical knowledge. The sole function of philosophy is the analysis of language.Thus, it can be said that, “the only function of philosophy is logical analysis”. (PHP) It is the “function of logical analysis to analyze all knowledge, all assertions of science and of everyday life, in order to make clear the sense of such assertions and the connections between them”. (PHP) One of the principal tasks of logical analysis of a given proposition, be it a proposition of science or of everyday life is, therefore, to discover the method of verification of that proposition. Any proposition that cannot be verified by method is meaningless.

13. For Rudolph Carnap, the method of verification is either direct or indirect.If a proposition asserts something that one perceives, one asserts something that is directly verifiable. For example, the proposition "There is a girl walking on 5th street" is directly verifiable because one's sense perception is the ground for verification. On the other hand, if one says, "This brown-colored bell is made of iron," this involves an indirect verification. To determine that it is real iron, one needs to place it near a magnet and derive another observation-statement. Thus, a logical sequence follows. "This brown-colored bell is made of iron; this bell is attracted to a magnet, therefore, it is iron." In indirect verification, we draw certain observation-statements from experience in order to prove a proposition.While the task of providing empirical data is left to the scientist, philosophers are confined to language. For although philosophers will not increase human knowledge of facts, they perform the humbler task of clarifying the meaning of terms. (CP) The task of philosophy is meaningful because it works on propositions that are based on empirically available data. Philosophers work on propositions that science provides them.

14. In Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer says that science and philosophy do not contradict each other. They work side by side.To illustrate this point, logical positivists point out that psychology as one of the empirical sciences, can serve as a model to explain the relation between science and philosophy. Behaviorism, for example, takes cognizance of how human beings react to certain stimuli found in the environment, and the results are tested in order to understand certain human experiences. The sentences of psychology, as behavioral science shows, describe sensible physical occurrences.

15. The study of human behavior is grounded on facts that are established by way of critical experimentation. In this sense, the propositions of psychology pass the principle of verifiability since such propositions are empirically grounded, the subject being human behavior.Philosophy, in performing the task of logical analysis, will simply help clarify the terms used in the propositions (or assumptions) created by psychology. Philosophers must confine themselves to the clarification of the logical meaning of words, and the elimination of syntactical ambiguity in propositions. This can be illustrated when some philosophical works make clear to psychologists the meaning of response, freedom, automatic behavior, stimuli, human subject, etc. By doing so, psychological principles of behavior are laid down, their meaning made apparent. Having known the tenets above, philosophy, according to Ayer, “as a genuine branch of knowledge, must be distinguished from metaphysics”. (LTL)

16. Metaphysics, according to Ayer, is not a philosophy. Logical analysis depends on experience. Logical analysis does not involve what goes beyond experience. Thus, when logical analysis is applied to metaphysics, says Carnap, the result is negative. According to Carnap: “It is inevitable that metaphysicians cannot avoid making their propositions non-verifiable because if they made them verifiable they would belong to the realm of empirical science since their truth or falsehood would depend upon experience.” (PHP)Since metaphysical propositions are non-verifiable according to Carnap, they are formally and factually meaningless. Being formally meaningless, metaphysics does not have any clear definition of metaphysical terms because they do not belong to the realm of human experience. Being factually meaningless, it is suggested there is no way for us to understand what lies beyond human phenomena.

17. Ayer maintains that human language cannot meaningfully describe something that transcends human experience. The assertion that the metaphysical proposition "God exists" is meaningless comes from the fact that since God is not empirically verified, it follows that what we attribute to God is unclear and insignificant.In order to illustrate this point, let us take the proposition "God is intelligent." If we say that God is intelligent, the intelligence that we attribute to God is human understanding of intelligence and not divine intelligence because we do not have an experience of divine intelligence. Our understanding of intelligence is purely human, and hence, it cannot meaningfully describe divine intelligence.Thus, if the language of metaphysics does not assert something meaningful, it should not be considered as a valid philosophy.

18. Ayer notes, many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors, rather than to a conscious desire on the part of their authors to go beyond the limits of experience. (LTL)The danger lies in the deceptive character of metaphysics: it gives the illusion of knowledge without actually giving any knowledge. (PHP)

19. According to Samuel Stumpf, metaphysical propositions are “neither true nor false, because they assert nothing, they contain neither knowledge nor error, and they lie completely outside the field of knowledge, of theory, outside the discussion of truth or falsehood”. In order to understand this idea, it is necessary to make a distinction between empirical and metaphysical propositions. According to Ayer, empirical propositions are statements of observation, actual or possible, from which statements can be logically derived. (LP) This means that empirical statements are statements of observation from experience. It is only when statements, whether they are analytic or synthetic, are empirically verifiable that they may have literal meaning.

20. A sentence is factually significant to any given person if, and only if, the proposition it purports to express can be verified. Any empirical statement must be relevant to any experience in order to have factual content, for according to Ayer, any statement that is not relevant to any experience has no factual content. (LTL)For example, from the statement, "men are mortals," it is a requisite that the idea of mortality exists in experience to render meaning to the statement. The formal meaning of the statement is derived from the fact that the idea of mortality includes man, and the idea of man includes mortality. The statement is not senseless because its meaning is based on clearly defined terms — its meaning, as we have said earlier, comes from the meaning of the words "men" and "mortals" which can be significantly described in language, and thus, be rendered meaningful.

21. Ayer claims that there are no valid metaphysical propositions. The reason for this is the fact that the language of metaphysics that deal with the metaphenomenal does not pass the criterion of verifiability. Hence, if we are to consider Ayer's definition of a proposition, any metaphysical utterance can only be labeled as a statement. Metaphysical language fails the criterion of verifiability because they try to explain things beyond sense-experience. As we have earlier said, the realm of the metaphenomenal does not lie in the realm of human knowledge.Quite surely, the reality of God cannot be established by scientific explanation.

22. Metaphysicians, in dealing with the reality of God, have ventured into realities beyond phenomena. In dealing with such reality, the language of metaphysics has dealt with a reality transcending the limits of all sense-experience. But anything that transcends human experience is senseless because it is not based on empirical data.Any notion about God transcends human understanding, and it is not possible for man to significantly define God in human terms. A proposition that deals with God is therefore meaningless. A proposition, to be significant and to be literally meaningful, must be verifiable. In dealing with the notion of God, metaphysicians, according to logical positivists, assert something that is non-sense. If one is allowing that it is impossible to define God, Ayer argues, one is allowing that it is impossible for a sentence both to be significant and to be about God. God is beyond the systematic methodology of science. But the rejection of any language about God is a result of misunderstanding the relation between science and religious language.

23. The next task, taking into consideration recent developments in analytic philosophy, is to argue for the meaningfulness of any language that deals with a reality that is metaphenomenal. To do this, we must first deal with the tool that logical positivists use in discarding metaphysics. Henceforth, we will verify the verification principle.Science does not come across God in its investigations and indeed, whatever effort science makes, it will never be able to come across God because God is ex-hypothesi, unique. (CP)No metaphysician has supposed that one could investigate scientifically what is believed to be a metaphenomenal reality. Scientists, precisely as human beings, cannot see a metaphenomenal reality with their naked eyes. But this does not mean that one cannot have an idea of that reality.

24. Although metaphysical language is not a language that scientists use, it is still a rational use of language.To positivists, the validity of any metaphysical inquiry can never be accepted because metaphysics is not and can never be scientific. Logical positivism demands that any explanation of existence or reality should begin from science. Otherwise, any non-scientific explanation is not a valid explanation at all. Ayer points out that all explanations of facts are of the type of scientific hypotheses or else they are not explanations at all. (LP) Henceforth, to be meaningful, a statement must be scientific.

25. But the term "scientific" and "rational" are not equivalent terms. (LP) A metaphysical explanation may not be scientific, but it can be a rational explanation. When the metaphysician tries to deal with the transcendent reality of God, he is not dealing with something devoid of meaning. How and why? It is an established fact that science cannot explain everything in reality. What the scientist investigates are the things man directly observes in daily experiences. As an example, scientists have investigated how fast light travels or why sound cannot travel inside a vacuum tube.

26. On the one hand, the question on man's relationship to a transcendent reality is not a problem for science. And even if science will investigate such a problem, it will not yield any positive result. This is because the scientist does not and cannot have the means to investigate such a problem.In this sense, the Verification Principle, a method that relies on science, experiences an anomaly, an anomaly that became the basis for its ultimate demise. According to Copleston: If one says that any factual statement, to be meaningful, must be verifiable, and if one means by verifiable, verifiable by sense-experience, then, surely one is presupposing that all reality is given in sense-experience. If one is presupposing this, one is presupposing that there can be no metaphysical reality, and if one is presupposing this one is presupposing a philosophical position that cannot be demonstrated by the principle of verification. (LP)

27. The Verification Principle, in asserting that there can be no metaphysical reality, is asserting something that is unverifiable. In point of fact, Ayer experienced many difficulties in devising a satisfactory formulation for the Verification Principle, because the principle itself, to be meaningful, should be subjected to verification. Since Ayer presupposes that all reality is given in sense-experience, he certainly means that there is no metaphysical reality. But stating such assertion cannot be demonstrated by the principle because one cannot verify it empirically. Ayer is certain of phenomenal realities, but he cannot be certain if there is really no reality transcending phenomena.

28. To verify that all reality is given in sense-experience is a difficult if not an impossible task. The Verification Principle cannot account for the whole of reality because it is certain that we do not have the means to do so. The principle is an inadequate tool. It can never claim that all reality can be accounted for in sense-experience. Hence, if the principle is used to rule out the possibility of a metaphysical reality, it has to be subjected first to verification because it presupposes that there is no metaphysical reality or that there is no God. But there is no way to do this. Nothing can verify the verification principle. Certainly, it has experienced a dose of its own medicine.The certainty that there is an empirical reality does not necessarily mean that all reality can be found in experience. While it is true that our awareness is defined by observable phenomena, this does not mean that God, a reality beyond observable phenomena, is non-existent.

29. In view of the above, since the principle cannot verify that all reality is in sense-experience, then, it cannot rule out that possibility of the metaphenomenal or the transcendent.Ayer set a rigid requirement for verifiability, and that is, conclusive evidence, one that is equivalent to the theory of immediate acquaintance. But since it is difficult and too rigid as a requirement, he soon realized and which he later incorporated to the second edition of Language, truth, and logic, that a sentence, to be meaningful, need not be verifiable in the strong sense.

30. One has to admit that there are sentences that are at least probable, and since probability is not a logical impossibility, there is some sense in the proposition. The examples he cited include “that volcanoes exist in Mars” and that “there are craters in the far side of the moon”. For Copleston, on the other hand, a sentence need not be verifiable in the strong sense of the word verifiable, for “if the possibility of conceiving or imagining facts that would make the statement true will count as verifiability in the weak sense”, then, a sentence, to be meaningful, must be verifiable not necessarily in the strong sense. (CP)A sentence, to be strongly verifiable, must be empirically verifiable.

31. For example, the statement that "A certain person X is running" is strongly verifiable. Why? This is because the idea of "man" and the idea of "running" are found in sense-experience. The statement says something that is empirically observable. On the other hand, verifiability in the weak sense involves simply the possibility of conceiving or imagining facts that would make the sentence meaningful.But it can be established that statements about God could be verifiable, at least, in the weak sense. For instance, with regard to the idea of God, “when some experiential idea is relevant to the formation of the meaning of the idea of God in language, and such an idea is formed through reflection on the data of experience, then the idea of God in language fulfills the requirements for intelligibility or meaningfulness”. (CP)

32. According to Ayer, one cannot conceive of an observation that would enable one to determine whether the Absolute did, or did not, enter into evolution and progress. (LTL)This means that any knowledge about the God is beyond us, henceforth, beyond human comprehension. If it cannot be truly established by means of empirical evidence, it must be rendered meaningless. But let us see how such can be refuted.It is obvious that when we predicate attributes of God we do not invent entirely new symbols, we use terms that already have meanings, and these meanings are primarily determined by our experience. (CP)

33. The word "God" did not come from nowhere. It emerged from our appeal to everyday language to give a name to a being with whom we attribute certain experiences, experiences that could reveal the possibility of that being.

34. For instance, the Five Ways of St. Thomas are based on sense-experience, on observable human phenomena – change, causation, the orderliness of nature, et al are available to our senses. In this sense, we have given a meaning to the word "God." The meaning that we attribute to the word is made by reference to a non-linguistic or a non-logical datum, a fact. As we have shown above, the Five Ways of proving the existence of God are grounded on sense-experience, on things that we directly see.Thus, “if all the terms used in describing God were used in entirely different senses from the senses that they bear in the context of human experience, God could not be described; no attribute could be significantly predicated of Him” (CP).

35. If we take into account Ayer's claim that metaphysics is meaningless, then, the problem of being as a possible problem for the metaphysician also becomes meaningless. We must find a way in which the problem of being, the problem of God as Being, can be comprehended. We have to show how metaphysical language can be meaningful when it deals with the reality of God. It is a fact that the terms human beings attribute to God are human. But we have to use human language because we have no other. Copleston accepts the contention that the meaning of the term cannot be precisely the same when it is predicated of God as when it is predicated of human beings. (CP) But this should not be taken negatively.

36. To understand the terms we predicate of God we must first recognize the meaning of those terms in our experience.This becomes valid if, for example, we say, "God is intelligent". What we attribute to God as intelligence is but human comprehension of intelligence. We do not have an idea of God's intelligence in-it-self. But we know for a fact that when we say, "God is intelligent," we do not imply that what we mean is that God's intelligence is like ours. To satisfy this aim, we have to use analogy. The terms that are predicated of finite beings and God can only be used analogically. In that sense, when terms predicated of finite beings are predicated of God, such terms can be meaningful. This is to say, “A term which is predicated of God and of finite beings must, when it is predicated of God, be used in a sense which is neither precisely the same nor completely different from the sense in which it is predicated of finite beings. (Ibid)

37. One must be given a meaning sufficiently clear to him to enable him to recognize God, that is to say, to distinguish the divine being from other beings.Any discussion about the meaning of the terms predicated to God is a discussion about the meaning of linguistic terms. Understanding the meaning of terms before undertaking an inquiry whether there is a rational proof for the existence of a transcendent being possessing attributes described in certain terms is important so that our inquiry will not result in linguistic confusion. Thus, one must have some idea at least of the meaning of those terms.

38. We can make a distinction between objective and subjective meanings.“By objective meaning, one understands that which is actually referred to by the term in question or the objective reality referred to. By subjective meaning, one understands the meaning-content that the term has or can have for the human mind”. (CP)God-language always moves within the sphere of analogy. The use of analogy is the ground for the two classifications of meaning above that Copleston formulated in order to understand the meaning of the terms predicated of God. He classifies them into objective and subjective meaning. However, this should not be taken as a distinction between the true and the real meaning of the term and a purely subjectivist interpretation of the term. It is, according to Copleston, a distinction between that which is objectively referred to or meant by a term and one's understanding or conception of what is referred to by a term.

39. One's conception may be inadequate, but it does not follow that it is totally false. (Ibid) The objective meaning of the terms predicated of God transcends our experience. We do not have an idea of God in-itself. One cannot describe that objective meaning. The subjective meaning, on the other hand, is primarily determined by experience. This meaning is the only possible meaning one can attribute to God. It is not precisely true; but it is not precisely false either.We have no direct natural apprehension of God. We cannot observe God in experience, and thus, one cannot have a natural knowledge of God.

40. The use of analogy is by way of reflection on the things that do fall within our experience. When we do this, we locate our ideas in a middle position that make them not entirely adequate to what God means, but not entirely inadequate either. (RNL)Let us make a statement and test its validity. For example, we say, "God exists." Ayer may argue against such a statement because we do not observe God's existence in experience. For Ayer, the statement is non-sense. But let us derive an observation-statement from the statement "God exists." So we say, "If God exists, there is order in the world." We do not observe God in experience, but we can observe order in the world. The statement, on the other hand, does not suggest that the statement "God exists" implies that "there is order in the world." The reason why we derive the statement that there is order in the world if God exists is that, Copleston asserts, as far as philosophic knowledge is concerned, one comes to acknowledge God through reflection on some aspect of or factor in empirical reality. (CP)

41. Supposing that our philosophic reason for accepting God's existence is reflection on the order in the world, we can offer the statement that "there is order in the world” as an empirically verifiable statement, which is, according to Copleston, derivable in view of the empirical origin of our ideas concerning reality from the statement that "God exists." (Ibid) Of course, it is open to a reaction that we cannot justifiably conclude God's existence from the order in the world. But as we have said earlier, we do not imply that God exists if there is order in the world. What we wish to point out is that through reflection, the idea of the order in the world is not irrelevant to the idea of God's existence.

42. Our assertion that we can reflect from experience the idea of God's existence may be subject to many questions, but our assertion still remains meaningful for according to Copleston, human philosophic knowledge of the metaphenomenal must be acquired by reflection on the phenomenal, and cannot be acquired in another way. (Ibid)

43. Let us take the word “good” as predicated to God. It is a fact that we are likely to say "God is good" than say that "God is not good. Now, to say "God is good" is saying that "God is good, but not in the way that we are”. (TEG)We do have an idea of goodness. Thus, in the case of the term “good”, since there are in any case many ways of being good among creatures, there is nothing incongruous in saying "God is good, though not in our way." What makes it possible to be confident that the word "good" is in some instances applicable to God is that God is the cause of the goodness of each creature. It does not, St. Thomas insists, follow from this that to call God good is to say, St. Thomas thinks, that there is something we can only call goodness in God - goodness is the best word available for signifying this although it does so imperfectly. (Ibid)

44. If we reflect upon the phenomenal in order to attain any knowledge of the metaphenomenal, and to render meaning to our assertion about the transcendent, we need to use analogy. To say that there is an analogical relationship between God and the creatures he has made is to say that God and his creatures are linked together by common attributes - though this resemblance is not precisely the same, it is not precisely different either.Thus, we say, “what we try to mean may be inadequate, but it does not mean that it is non-sense”. (LP)

45. Metaphysics, in dealing with the transcendent reality of God, has embarked upon itself the task of understanding a language beyond the conceptions of science. The philosophy of Ayer certainly has strong points but his points are not that strong enough to rule out the possibility of a reality transcending human experience. Some things we say of God even though are imperfect cannot be improved on by denying them; their imperfection lies in our understanding of what we are trying to mean. (CP) Precisely because human language is limited, man's understanding of God is imperfect, but not incorrect.

Moral selves: Politics as a crisis of meaning

(Delivered during Philosophical Symposium of Ateneo Schools in Mindanao, Ateneo de Zamboanga 2004)

Language and Structuralism

Human existence finds at the very core of its being that it is perpetually underway to language. According to the French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur, it is through language that the responsible human subject is revealed, a subject who speaks and acts in a world that is immersed in constant conflict, a subject who continuously suffers in life but still desires to live. The human person is this never-ending desire to be.The human subject is always a mystery, and thus, he is to be understood indirectly. Human existence demands a detour through language.

Through such, Ricoeur suggests the utilization of the overflowing creativity of language in highlighting the meaning of the self. The self, according to him, is like a text. This means that the self as an actor is like the unfolding of the text into a meaningful story. To understand oneself is to interpret oneself before this story. Thus, "the narrative story also shapes us in our existence prior to our intentional consciousness. If existence is dramatic, it is the story above all that brings its drama to language”. (Hengel 1982)The thesis above does not come forth without a challenge. French structuralism proposes a different view on language, a paradigm that essentially cuts off the connection between language and the human world.

The French structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure emphasizes that language is an autonomous object for empirical science. He distinguishes between language as code (langue) and language as speech (discour). In langue, there are only differences. (Garcia 2000) Langue is a closed system of signs differing from each other. The language of the story in this sense says nothing about reality. Human existence is rendered mute because in langue, all of language's referential function is cut off. Language as code does not express a world because "the code is the real meaning of the story. The surface features are only the dressing, the envelope for the underlying structures." (Hengel 1982) For Saussure, to understand a story is to decode it.But the assertion above seems to be problematic. Understanding language as a system of signs differing from each other does not reveal anything about the speaking subject. Thus, "in langue, one can say that no one speaks."(Garcia 2000) In this regard, it will be the duty of hermeneutics "to link language anew to the speaking subject, the concrete living person insofar as the sciences of language give privilege to systems, structures, and codes cut off from the speaking subject."(Ibid.)Language is not an objective reality. Language is that medium by which we express reality and have a world. (Ibid.) In language as discour, "speaking is the act by which language surpasses itself as sign towards the world, towards the other, and towards oneself."(Ibid) Discourse, in this regard, can be referred to as the intention of saying something, on something, to someone. (Ibid.) Discourse brings us to our actual being in the world. Language is primordially reference, not difference. It is in this sense that we speak of a detour in the beginning because language is primordially mediation. It brings us to our actual existence in time because the story of the narrative is a way of understanding ourselves as actors.The claim that language consists of signs is not an absolute truth. Language is essentially linked to a speaker who says something, the other to whom something is said, and to a community upon which people come into an agreement on things through linguistic mediation. Language, therefore, opens up the social dimension of the human subject. It is his way of expressing himself to the world. Thus, it is a mode of proclaiming our being in a situation. The narrative story then is a story of a life lived expressed in and through language.Narrative and MimesisNow that we have restored the relation between language and reality, our next task will be the elucidation of how language contributes in healing the existential malady of being human.

The human person acts and suffers. Action demands decisions, and decisions sometimes fail to consider the ramifications of our actions. Thus, we fall and reflect on our failures. The human subject listens to himself and tries to understand himself by interpreting his actions. There is no better way of interpreting what we do in life except through the creative power of the narrative.Ricoeur's narrative theory presents a way of understanding the self through the activity of emplotment or mimesis. Mimesis refers to “the active process of imitating or representing”. (Garcia 2000) The person gathers the scattered events, actions, goals, causes, and desires of his life into one meaningful story. The configuration of this story is the activity of emplotment. It is a way of imitating our actions with the hope of grasping them as a meaningful whole. Understanding these seemingly disconnected events is by means of the plot. The plot, says Ricoeur, is an imitation of action. (Ricoeur 1992)For Ricoeur, the narrative has the same referential function of the metaphor. The metaphor brings us to a world, a world that is not known through a direct description. Narration brings us to the temporal dimensions of our existence by means of the poetic power of the narrative, a detour through the text of one's life story.

Narration then illuminates human action and makes manifest its temporality. Thus, "human action is shaped by mimetic activity which unfolds in the plot” (Garcia 2000) Emplotment shows forth person.Emplotment, according to Ricoeur, has a threefold structure. The composition of the plot is grounded on a pre-understanding of the world (Mimesis1). First, there is a competence for the structural aspects of human action. Every human action has a conceptual network of motives, intentions, consequences, and goals. These features help us read human action. Every action presupposes motives, intentions and goals.Secondly, human action can be narrated because it is articulated through signs, rules, and norms. (Ricoeur 1992) There is a meaningful cultural context for every action. We act according to the dictates of these cultural norms. Thirdly, the pre-understanding of human action leads us to the temporal dimensions of human action. Human action has a historical dimension. The past is not simply past. The past is always in relation to the present and the present is always in relation to what I hope for in the future.The actual activity of configuration is the occasion of the grasping together of the heterogenous (Mimesis 2). Factors such as agents, goals, means, interactions, and circumstances are taken together to form a meaningful whole. It becomes the story of a life lived. This configuration allows the reader to follow the life story in the text. It gives the point, the thought or theme of the narrative by giving it a sense of followability which leads to a conclusion. The conclusion, in this regard, is the resolution of the problem unfolded in the plot.Finally, it is the reader who completes the text in Mimesis 3. It refers to the intersection of the world of the text and that of the reader, or as put simply by H.G. Gadamer, a "fusion of horizons". The configurating act is only completed when the horizon of the text and the reader are fused. Reading the text brings a change of character in the reader. Reading results to a cathartic effect, that is, it changes the reader by making him understand the ethical content of his actions through the narrative. As Ricoeur says, one must understand that every well told story teaches something. (Ricoeur 1991) Making a change in the reader is the purpose of any good story told.

Mimesis and Time

The human experience of time is inextricably but mostly bound up with narrativity. (Hengel 1982) Every story must be understood as a story that occurs in time. Here, we must distinguish between the linear and configurative understanding of time. Linear time is seeing the series of events in a story in episodic succession. According to Hengel, "linear time is linked to the observable; it is the time that is datable". (Ibid.) But life is not a series of datable events. History is not the mere recording of successive occurrences. History or human life is rather, a happening. It is only in this sense that we can speak of a being in time. Being in time means that human existence is a “being-in-the-world”. Time is that possibility for the unfolding of human existence. Dasein, or there-being, in this sense must be interpreted as man's temporal existence.Storytelling and following a story throw us in time. (Ibid.) Narrativity manifests the development of the plot in a dimension of time emerges that is hardly linear.

The central point of Ricoeur's narrative theory is that time becomes human time when it is narrated. Here, Ricoeur makes an analysis of St. Augustine and Aristotle. What Ricoeur does is to fuse St. Augustine's analysis of time and Aristotle's analysis of emplotment because the former does an analysis of time without emplotment and the latter does an analysis of emplotment without taking into account the temporal aspects of action.St. Augustine's analysis of time as a triple present establishes a discordance between the present as past [memory], the present of the present [attention], and the present of the future [expectation]. (Reagan 1995) St. Augustine sees time as a distention of the soul (distentio anime), a slippage that goes back again and again to the threefold present, thus establishing discordance. To erase this discordance, Ricoeur appeals to Aristotle's idea of emplotment, an idea that brings concordance to what is discordant. Concordance mends discordance in the activity of constructing a plot. (Ibid.) The plot then is the means of giving a unity to the distention of the soul by giving it a temporal order.The reflection above leads the way to a temporal understanding of human action. Through emplotment human action is given its temporal unity. The scattered events of human life become one meaningful story through the activity of emplotment. It is through this that we understand the self as the unity of the discordant elements of human life.

The Subject as same and the Subject as self

The narrative reveals the meaning of human existence. Let us see how this happens by reading the Parable of the Good Samaritan.A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who also stripped and wounded him... And it so happened that a Priest went down the same way...In like manner a Levite also passed by...But a certain Samaritan being on his journey came near him and seeing him, was moved with compassion...which of these three men, in thy opinion, was a neighbor to him that fell among the thieves? (Luke 10:30-37)For Ricoeur, the parable is a unique narrative. What is surprising in the parable is that Jesus answered the question of the visitor with a question, "but a question that has become inverted by means of the corrective power of the narrative". (Ibid.) In the parable, the visitor was making a sociological inquiry concerning a certain social object, a possible sociological category susceptible to definition, observation, and explanation. (Ibid.) The neighbor, however, is not a social category with defined roles. Thus, the act of making oneself available is beyond any sociological abstraction. This is because "being a neighbor lies in making oneself a neighbor". (Ibid.) The question here becomes a demand for action. The question is thrown back to the questioner, presenting him with possibilities for being or existing.Being a neighbor or making oneself available, defies one's permanence in time. This permanence in time, according to Ricoeur, refers to the subject as being the same (idem). He calls this character. Character refers to a set of distinctive marks that permit the re-identification of the human individual as being the same. (Ricoeur 1992) A Samaritan is considered as an outcast. He is conceived as someone who has no role to portray in the society. He has no social function. But this set of characteristics enabled the Samaritan to respond positively to the surprise of the event of the encounter. Thus, the Samaritan rose above his being a non-category. And so it is in this regard that we can ascribe to the Samaritan the subject as self (ipse). The Samaritan cannot be reduced to a what. The subject who acts and is responsible for his actions is a who. The Samaritan as self is a person for others, an actor who rises above social functions. He assumes a narrative identity.Narrative identity is the integration of the subject as same and the subject as self. It is through narrative identity that we can ascribe actions to its agents. The story of the Good Samaritan is a story of a life that has an actor. Through the narrative, the Samaritan as subject is the human person who possesses the dynamism of self by being able to respond to the surprise of the encounter. The narrative is his story.

Teleology and Deontology

Narrativity brings forth the ethical content of human action. Ricoeur elaborates a discussion on Kant’s deontology and Aristotle’s teleology, noting in the end his affinity to Aristotle’s ethics of the desire to be.Kant in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals makes a proposal for an ethics based on duty. An action is done because it is an obligation on the part of the individual as a rational human being. The human being acts morally because he is commanded so by human rationality. For Kant, all ethical actions proceeds from a good will. All actions, to be ethical, must have the pure intention of the will. The will is autonomous because it is not governed by any other motive except doing what is good.On the one hand, Aristotelean teleology, proposes an ethics of one’s desire to be. To be is to act in order to attain the virtuous life. The virtuous life is the good life, the realization of the individual's self-fulfillment. To be ethical means to exert one's effort to exist and to exercise one's freedom to be. For Aristotle, virtue is exercised through practical action or phronesis. A good act is like a habit. Man must do good things habitually in order to be good. Every individual has this desire to be good, and he does good things in order to attain the good life. The good life for Aristotle is the happy life. Virtue and happiness then are intimately linked.

For Ricoeur, there is primacy to teleology than deontology. This is because there is first an urgency of the desire to be before one is called to act in the name of duty. In every human action, freedom comes first before necessity. Man, first and foremost, desires the realization of his very self, the actualization of a meaningful life. To be man is to make real my potentialities for existence, the possibilities of my being. To be man is to nurture my freedom, the ultimate expression of the self that I am.The narrative of life is an archive of stories that articulate the human condition, the human condition being the ground of man’s conscious effort to desire more from himself and the world. Man’s desire to be takes its ultimate form in the field of history. History manifests the finality of human action. This finality or end, it seems to me, is a search for meaning.

Narrative, History, and Meaning

Being human is primarily set within the background of a historical condition. Let us consider the relevance of the narrative to human historical existence. According to Charles Reagan, history is a kind of writing, and in this sense, it is a kind of narration. To explain for a historian means to show the unfolding of the plot, to make it understood. Events receive their intelligibility from their place in the plot, and historical events do not differ radically from the events framed by the plot. (Reagan 1995)There is an intimate link between the narrative, history and meaning.

Victor Frankl’s account of his experiences in the concentration camp, for instance, sets us up to one of the most potent source of the narrative meaning of human historical existence. Frankl writes,A man's character became involved to the point that he was caught in a mental turmoil which threatened all the values he held and threw them into doubt. Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had made him an object to be exterminated - under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. (Frankl 1962)By understanding the accounts from history, we come to an understanding of the importance of human values and their significance to our desire to be fully human. History has a plot, and finding the meaning of human existence in it is the ultimate goal of any emplotment. This meaning may be concealed from us, but this only shows that life is an on-going story.

The human being as an actor suffers, but in his desire to live well, the search for meaning provides the impetus for him to continually desire to be. Again we quote Frankl, who says,one should not seek for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. (Ibid.)To desire is to desire one’s self-realization. To live is to seek fulfillment. The value of human life comes from the fact that each individual is unique, hence, irreplaceable. This uniqueness also corresponds to the uniqueness of each person’s account of himself, of his story. Every person’s desire to be, therefore, is also unique to himself. The meaning of the human subject’s desire to be, however, would not be realized in the absence of social justice. The institution supports the actualization of any human undertaking, for individuality would not find its expression without the presence of others. This presence is always a historical presence.

Justice and the Institution

The human subject’s desire to be is embedded in the social dimension of human existence. The fulfillment of our desire to be ultimately resides in our social relationships. The attainment of a good life, which is the desire of every man, does not find its fullest expression on the level of personal intimacy. The beauty and preservation of private life rests on public order, hence, the birth of the institution.The proposal of Ricoeur for a narrative ethics then takes its most defining moment in its importance in the constitution of a happy life in a just society. It is the presence of the institution that makes possible the emergence of a just society. John Rawls stresses this when he said that justice is the first virtue of the institution, as truth is of systems of thoughts. (Rawls 1971) In a just society, “what matters is that everyone is provided with the basic conditions for the realization of his own aims, regardless of the absolute level of achievement that may represent”. (Daniels 1975) The reason for this is that the fundamental attitude towards persons on which justice as fairness depends is a respect for their autonomy or freedom. (Ibid) Society exists for man’s greater self-realization. Ultimately, human reason demands that justice simply means making freedom a possibility for all. Reasonable human action can only be moved by charity under the form of justice. (Ricoeur 1965) What becomes clear here is that justice governs the purpose and the existence of the institution. The institution, in this sense, exists in order to bring forth equality among individuals who belong to it. As a structure of an organized whole, it sees to it that there is an equal opportunity for the individuals who belong to it. This means giving equal chances of living a good life, equal chances of realizing our desire to be. The institution exists “for the service it renders” (Ricoeur 1965).

Justice is the only guarantee that a happy life becomes a possibility for all and the institution only finds its true worth by safeguarding the basic freedom and desire to be of the human being.

Notes on the Tractatus

(Lecture Notes)

Introduction

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1889-1951) Tractatus logico-philosophicus is a difficult book. But this should not prevent us from examining its important insights. This work is an attempt to grapple with Wittgenstein’s first book, the only one published during his lifetime. Although the goal of the Tractatus in constructing a logically perfect language is a mission impossible, it yields important philosophical points of view explaining the relationship between language, logic, and reality worthy of our philosophical scrutiny.We have lifted several epigrams from the Tractatus. An explanation follows each epigram.

1. The world is all that is the case.

The world is the sum total of all state of affairs. Truth belongs to the world, and what is beyond it cannot be expressed. To express the meaning of the world means to express what can be said about it.For logical atomists, reality consists of objects. “Only objects exist, and ideas are mere mental copies of objects.” (PA) Multiplicities have to be admitted since this is the actual state of affairs of things.The statement also expresses the limitation of human knowing. Since the world is all that is the case, the object of human knowledge is limited to what can be known in the world.Thus, what can only be meaningful is the world and everything that can be said about it. The world exists like a compendium of facts, and language, that tool that describes what the world is like, presents the world into a form that makes communication and understanding possible.

1.1 The world is the totality of facts.

This totality is revealed in language by means of atomic propositions. A proposition, says Wittgenstein, is a picture of reality. Propositions picture facts. The meaning of a proposition, then, comes from the fact it pictures. Whatever is pictured is in the picture. Language, logically speaking, is factual. Language, according to the philosophy of logical atomism, must be founded on logic and mathematics. The fact that the world has a logical order can only mean that language can only be logical, if it is to be construed as meaningful. The world, in this sense, and its logical order, can only be revealed linguistically.

1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

Logical space here refers to the conditions for the possibility of existence or non-existence of facts. What can be said or expressed about the world is the existence or non-existence of facts situated in infinite logical possibilities. These facts constitute the sense of the world. Sense is anything that can be said about the world, and what can be said about it is determined by the facts so constituted in different states of affairs.

2. What is the case – a fact – is the existence of states of affairs.

The existence of states of affairs refers to the truth-condition of the world. What is true or factual is that only states of affairs exist. The world in this sense is made up of the different states of affairs of things. Reality is the sum total of all these states of affairs.

2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects.

States of affairs reflect the truth-conditions of objects. States of affairs refer to the way things are together with the facts that constitute them. Facts and their relations to objects characterize the over-all make up of the world.A fact is a quality added to an object. Let us make an example. In “a small red patch”, the patch is characterized as “small” and “red”. So we ask, what kind of thing is it? “red” and “small”. That it is “red” and that it is “small” constitute the states of affairs of the patch. Thus, states of affairs show the different conditions of the various things in the world. A room, for instance, can be “overcrowded”, “dimly lit”, “spacious”, etc.

2.02 Objects are simple.

Objects are simple because they are the basic stuff of the world. An object is that which is not yet predicated of something. If we take a closer look at reality, the world is made up of objects. Hence, “objects make up the substance of the world.”(TLP) Simplicity for an object here means the capacity to be predicated of something. A “flower”, as an object, is a simple reality. It becomes a complex thing when we talk of “magnolias”, “cattleyas”, “tulips”, etc. because of the distinct characteristics of each of these flowers.

2.0232 In a manner of speaking, objects are colorless.

Here, Wittgenstein explains what an object is. As a basic unit of reality, it is not predicated of anything. It is independent of any factual characterization. When it is predicated of something, it is only in such time that it becomes a thing. Facts characterize an object. When a patch contains some color, it becomes a thing.

2.024 Substance is what exists independent of what is the case.

What is the case is the existence of facts. Substance exists independent of facts. A “chair” as a substance is not necessarily brown. The one we use in school is a chair, the one we have at home is a chair, the one we have in the theater is a chair, etc., and so there are many types of chairs, but there is one and only one concept we understand as “chair”. This is because a chair does have one and only one substantial definition.Moreover, objects constitute the substance of the world, and as such objects contain the possibilities of the world. An object can possess different factual characterizations. That it can be characterized as such and such is contained in its possibility as an object.

2.0251 Space, time, and color are forms of objects.

Objects can be here or there, old or new, black or white. A car can be red, blue, or black. But although we see different colors, we see only one substance there, that of a car. We don’t see different cars, what we see are differently-colored cars. This is because a car can have many forms, and forms vary by virtue of the facts we attach to objects.

2.063 The sum total of reality is the world.

What is real? What is real is the existence of state of affairs. The world consists of facts. Facts constitute the reality of the world. What is not factual, that which is beyond the sense of logical thinking, is nonsense.Bertrand Russell believes that language can be broken down into atomic or elementary propositions. The sum total of these atomic propositions is the world. He calls them atomic because they are the most basic (following chemistry - an atom is the smallest particle of matter). What can be said about the world can be said by means of propositions. Language is no more than the collection of all atomic propositions. Language, therefore, as a repository of what can be said about the world, is the repository of what reality is.

2.1 We picture facts to ourselves.

Thinking is like picturing something. Since the world is factual, thinking about the world means thinking of a factual world.Thoughts are expressed linguistically. Since we picture facts to ourselves, the only way by which these facts can be pictured is by means of language. I do this when I make propositions. Picturing, in this sense, is a linguistic activity. Language is a tool. We use it to express facts to ourselves. To tell someone about what a chameleon is, I have to describe such in words. I paint a picture of such by means of words.

2.12 A picture is a model of reality.

A model is like a re-creation in our minds about the way a certain thing is. A diorama is a model of a building or of a certain structure. It is not the structure itself, but it brings us into the meaning of the structure. The meaning being the sense, the point of how a thing looks like. It is not the thing but it helps us perceive the thing. We look at reality by modeling the words we utter to the actual world. Meaningful words are models of reality. My language is based on my world. Wittgenstein has shown that the limits of our language show the limits of our world. For instance, it is impossible for me to speak in the Russian dialect because I’ve never heard nor conversed in Russian. More than that, this implies that there are concepts in a language which I may not understand simply because I do not live in the context of that form of language. As an example, the statement “~(J v A) v [(S v K)] v ~(J v A)” may prove too much to someone who does not have any formal training in symbolic logic. This does not mean, however, that language can’t be learned. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that I can only deal with a language where I can picture the meaning of the signs such a language have.

2.13 In a picture objects have the elements of the picture corresponding to them.

A picture displays the sense of objects. Henceforth, a picture cannot be a mere copy. It must be an authentic copy. Whatever is in the picture must be a definite description of what it models. It may not perfectly describe the thing it pictures, but there is always an enough approximation that makes identification possible. Otherwise, such can’t be the picture of something.

2.131 In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of objects.

The elements of the picture refer to the configuration of the properties of the picture. These elements refer to the varying conditions that objects can have. These variations are reflected in the picture so that objects are properly represented in the picture.

2.141 A picture is a fact.

Language correctly describes the world in terms of factual statements since the world is a factual one. These factual statements are pictures of state of affairs. Language, as a picture of the world, is factual. Otherwise, language would not be able to say anything about the world.What is a fact? A fact is whatever that can be predicated of something. A thing is therefore no more than the facts that constitute it. Facts in this regard describe the kind of thing a thing is. Things always have factual content, this factual content being their state of affairs. In the proposition “There exists one and only one x such that this x is both man and mortal,” the facts man and mortal are the state of affairs of x.A proposition with one particular fact is called a monadic fact. A proposition with two particulars is called a dyadic fact. A proposition with three particulars is called a triadic fact. (PA)In p(x.y.z) the variables x, y, and z represent facts. This we can translate to “my notebook is small, red, and new.”Monadic: p is small or p(x)Dyadic: p is small and red or p(x.y)Triadic: p is small, red, and new or p(x.y.z)

2.151 Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as the elements of the picture.

Pictorial form can be elucidated by way of the following:That the elements in the picture measure up to the way things are situated in logical space.The elements, being the properties that configure the things in the picture, show the similarity between the logical possibilities of the picture and that of reality.The way things are related to each other in a particular situation, say the way fruits are arranged in a table can be observed as the same condition one sees in a picture, if such a picture were to be a true picture of such reality.

2.1512 That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it.

A picture is a copy of reality. A picture brings us to reality. A picture then does not lie. An ugly picture is a result of the ugly reality it has pictured. Thus, what is pictured is always seen in the picture. A picture always speaks for itself. A picture represents reality. It shows the truth condition of a thing. It shows the states of affairs of things.

2.16 If a fact is to be a picture, it must have something in common with what it depicts.

A picture is a fact (TLP). It is only in such an instance that a picture may correctly represent reality. Since reality is factual, a picture must also be factual. For instance, if I picture a stone in my mind, I am thinking of the stone’s correlation with reality. If I am thinking of a bird made of stone, I cannot be thinking of a bird in flight since a bird that is made of stone (statues, etc.) can never fly. To find something in common with reality means that a picture reveals something that is logically connected to what is real.

2.161 There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts, to enable the one to be a picture of the other at all.

What is identical in a picture and what it depicts is factual content. What is in the picture, what is in my mind, is the actual condition of what I am looking at or perceiving. To think of something that does not exist is not thinking at all. If I picture a griffin, I am not picturing something real. It is not a real picture. But I can create it in my imagination. However, its sense cannot be established since it does not actually exist. It is not a fact. There can be no identity since it cannot be compared with something. A griffin is not something. It is but an idea where I have combined an eagle and a lion. Its ontological status cannot be established. Thus, in thinking about a griffin, I am really thinking of a lion with the head and wings of an eagle. Without the reality of these two creatures I would never create in my imagination the idea of a griffin. On the one hand, it is called a griffin since I have assigned it a name. It is no more than that.

2.181 A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.

Pictorial form refers to the arrangement of the elements in the picture. It prescribes the connectedness of the different elements in the picture. This connectedness is logical. This connectedness ensures that the picture is a logical one. A picture, if it is to depict a logical world, must be faithful to the logical structure of the world.When I think of something, my thought follows a logical order. I can only think or picture out something correctly if my thinking adheres to the terms of logic. An illogical world is unthinkable, as we have shown above.

2.182 Every picture is at the same time a logical picture.

Because I can only picture a logical world, my picture of the world is a logical one, if and only if I make the right propositions. Language, as a picture of the world, acts as a logical picture, since it is structured in such a way that it has factual content that in turn gives language its sense. Only “logical pictures can depict the world.”(TLP) This is because the world has a logical structure. Logic serves as the backbone in the way we think and express the meaning of the world. Thus, language, if it is a correct expression of the world, must be grounded on logic.

2.201 A picture depicts reality by representing a possibility of existence and non-existence of state of affairs.

A picture, or a proposition for that matter, either affirms or denies the existence or non-existence of state of affairs. What is real is to be tested by the propositions we make. What makes sense is that which is answerable by a yes or a no. The possibility of being able to say yes or no rests on the actuality or possibility of certain state of affairs. It does make sense when it can’t be answered. This is because “a picture contains the possibility of the situation that it represents.”(TLP)

2.21 A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is correct or incorrect, true or false.

Sense, logically speaking, is reducible to a true or false question. A picture then is true if it pictures what is real, false if it does not. Thus, says Wittgenstein, “what a picture represents is its sense.”(TLP) In language, a proposition is true if it agrees with reality, false if it does not. Wittgenstein affirms this by saying that “the agreement or disagreement of its sense (the proposition) with reality constitutes its truth or falsity”. (TLP)

2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.

Following Russell’s theory of descriptions, acquaintance is the only way to know if an assertion is valid or not. It is not valid if we are not acquainted with its constituent parts. If there is no acquaintance, there is no sense. Here, we affirm the empiricism of the Tractatus. If a statement does not contain any truth, it is no more than a sentence whose words mean nothing. If a statement confirms something about the world, then it is saying something. It makes sense. The importance of verification is due to the fact that “it is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false.”(TLP)

3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.

It might be important to analyze the meaning of thought here. Thought is the product of the process of thinking. When we think of something, we have a thought about something. What we are concerned of is the content of our thoughts. For Wittgenstein, we can only think about facts. The reason for this is the fact that the world is all that is the case. Hence, we can only think of a factual world, a world that is there. Thinking is thinking about whatever is “in” the world. True thinking is factual thinking. The process of thinking begins with perception since it is only through the senses where we gather the raw data that our minds assemble to form a thought.

3.001 ‘A state of affairs is thinkable’: what this means is that we can picture it to ourselves.

What we think of are the state of affairs of things. Thinking is picturing. I am thinking in terms of the pictures that I can make in my mind. To think of a chair then is to picture a chair, say its shape, color, weight, etc. If I think of a happy life, happiness is not as simple as thinking about a chair. But still, I can picture it in my mind, since I have observed how people behave when they are happy.

3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.

My thoughts are no more than a picture of the world. If for instance, I think of a tikbalang, a creature that is half-man and half-horse, the possibility of my being able to think about it is the fact that I have seen a man and a horse and that I know the concept of half. A tikbalang in this sense cannot be true, and I can come up with such a thought only because I can think of a man and a horse as conjoined objects. I can’t think of something beyond. I can only think in terms of the world I inhabit.

3.03 Thought can never be anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically.

We can never imagine an illogical world since our minds are conditioned in such a way that it can only think in terms of the logical order of the world. It is impossible to draw an illogical world. If we think illogically, it does not mean that the world is illogical. It only means that there is something wrong in the process of thinking. What becomes illogical then is not the world, but the way we think.

3.031 It is impossible to represent in language anything that contradicts logic…

Logic serves as the backbone of language. It acts as its skeleton. The structure of language follows the structure of logic. Language, in this sense, is only meaningful when it has a logical order. This is because language reflects the world. For language to properly picture the world, it must be grounded on the true condition of the world.

3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.

“A proposition is a statement in which anything whatsoever is affirmed or denied.”(IL) Let us examine this definition. First, a proposition is a statement. But a proposition cannot just be any statement. Let us consider the following: 1. My God! 2. Who am I? 3. I am 21 years old.Statement number one does not state a fact. A proposition cannot just be a mere expression of an emotion. Rather, it must affirm or deny something. What it affirms or denies is a fact. A proposition, therefore, is always a factual statement. Consider statement number two. The second statement is not a proposition because it does not declare anything. It simply asks. There is nothing whatsoever in it. If, however, we consider statement number three, common sense tells us that it does say something. It declares a fact. It states a truth-condition. If a proposition says something true, then it affirms something about reality. If it states something false, then it denies something about reality. Knowledge is nothing but the sum total of all factual statements. If we are to judge the value of our assertions, it is good to note that science as a discipline dwells on the facts of human experience and not on speculation. In looking for the cure of certain diseases, the scientist relies on hard data and never on mere speculation. In law, for instance, the only way to establish the guilt or innocence of an accused is through the evidences presented in court. The judge cannot simply make a guess on the merits of the case. He has to rely on facts.

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition as a projection of a possible situation.

The method of projection is to think the sense of the proposition.Projection here refers to the capability of perceiving the sense of something. When we project a certain meaning, we refer to the sign of a proposition in order to know what it tries to project. Projection here means picturing. A painting, for instance, projects a certain situation. A painting is compared with reality. The painter projects what is real in a painting. What is projected is the meaning or the sense of the proposition. The word directs my attention to the sense of an object. For instance, to understand what the color red means, the sign/word “red” directs me to a color sample, a thing that is red. Only then can I get the sense of the sign.

3.12 I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional sign.

Let us examine the proposition “This is poison.” What is the meaning of the proposition? We refer to the sign “this” and “poison”. By “this”, we mean a definite object, though such an object is not described significantly. But there is a sign and it refers to something. And so I know where it is. Next, we think of the sign “poison”. By poison, we know that it is a dangerous and a fatal substance. The thought in the proposition “This is poison” therefore is that “This thing is dangerous and fatal”. If we translate the proposition into variables, say let x be the representation for “This” and “y” the representation for poison, we can have the propositional sign “X is Y.” Here, the proposition being a sign is made clearer. X stands for something and Y represents something. Language then is a mere representation. It represents our thoughts.

3.14 A propositional sign is fact.

Propositions are statements of state of affairs. For it to be a true expression of such, propositions too must be factual. This means that its contents must be based on facts. The following must be considered regarding the proposition as a fact (PL):most everyday facts are ultimately atomic.a sentence, being the physical structure of a proposition, is a physical fact.Since a sentence is an internally structured fact, it is said to picture the world. Let us consider replacing words with objects. In the proposition, “Rodolfo Dumlao read Alice in Wonderland,” we can make this representation:Rodolfo Dumlao = plateRead = paperAlice in Wonderland = stonePicturing “Rodolfo Dumlao read Alice in Wonderland” is like putting the stone on top of the paper and the paper on top of the plate. Thus,Rodolfo Dumlao read Alice in Wonderland.Plate Paper StoneWords in this regard correspond to individual objects. As Fr. Thomas Green has stated above, since most everyday facts are atomic, they can be replaced by individual words that we consider as atomic propositions representing atomic facts.

3.142 Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.

Let us examine the word “dog”. The word “dog” does not mean anything if there is no actual dog. The sense of the word comes from the fact it represents. The name then is insignificant to the existence of a state of affairs. A dog can be called “zift” instead of “dog”. The word “dog” has some meaning because of the real dog. Thus, “a name means an object. The object is its meaning.”(TLP)

3.22 In a proposition a name is the representative of an object.

The word “dog” represents the actual dog in the statement “My dog is barking.” What is its importance? This is what Wittgenstein calls the ostensive meaning of words. Words point out or direct us to the objects they represent. If I say “yellow”, what I mean is that I am talking about a color sample, yellow. If I need to tell someone what kind of color yellow is, I have to direct his attention to something that is yellow. Without the word yellow I may not be able to direct him to such color.

3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are.

Propositions do not tell us the ontological status of things. Propositions only reveal the truth-condition of things, their state of affairs. Only factual conditions are revealed by propositions. Their being, or the reality that they are such and such in essence, is beyond the task of logic.

3.25 A proposition has one and only one complete analysis.

Language can be reduced ultimately into atomic propositions. Let us examine the statement “Rodolfo Dumlao crossed the Atlantic”. To analyze the statement, we have to determine the entities present in the proposition, which, in this case, are “Rodolfo Dumlao” and “crossed the Atlantic.” Its formal translation into an analytic statement should be: That there is one and only one Rodolfo Dumlao which we can represent as A and that A crossed the one and only one ocean called the Atlantic which we can represent as B. The relationship can be stated as “There is one and only one A which crossed the one and only one B” or ArB, “r” representing the way A is related to B. This example above is the one and only one complete analysis of the statement “Rodolfo Dumlao crossed the Atlantic”.Following Russell’s theory of descriptions, for us to understand the statement ArB, the constituents A and B must be understood. Understanding them means we are acquainted with such realities.In Russell’s point of view, all propositions in language must be reduced to atomic propositions. In a logically perfect language, there is a corresponding atomic proposition to each fact. This correspondence is one to one.

3.328 If a sign is useless, it is meaningless.

A word as a sign is meaningful because of its use. Since the word “zift” is not in use, it does not mean anything. Meaning comes from use. It is not the word, but what the word signifies. If a word does not refer us to something, it becomes a worthless sign. A sign functions as if it directs us to the object.

3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.

The picture-theory of meaning, in summary, explains that language ultimately is all about the propositions we make, and these propositions constitute our true thoughts of the world. In the Tractatus, logic serves as the backbone of our way of speaking. To make sense means to be logical. A.J. Ayer once said that an illogical world is unimaginable. Since the world fits the criterion of logic, our thought must also possess such a criterion to be meaningful. Language must be a reflection of a true thought. The collection of all atomic propositions, statements that pass the criterion set by atomists, would compose what can properly be called our true thoughts of the world.

4.001 The totality of propositions is language.

Language, in Russell’s point of view, is nothing but the sum of all atomic propositions. Language reveals the world, or more appropriately, picture the world. This language must be a logical one, for it is a necessary requirement for language to be logical so that it can picture a world that is logical. The implication of this is the rejection of any language that does not pass the criterion of logic. Such a language will have to be dismissed as nonsensical. We can cite an example. Let us examine the statement: “God is love.” For a statement to be meaningful, we must be able to derive several observation-statements for it to be logically valid. In the statement “God is love”, we may say that “God is good”, “God is just”, etc. But these statements can never be validated. So in this case, the statement “God is love” is not within the limits of logic.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.

A proposition states something about the state of affairs of things. Since the world is a collection of facts, a proposition about the world is a picture of the world. Reality is factual since the world is factual. The purpose of a proposition is to reveal reality. A proposition is attached to reality. It shows the sense of reality. It tells us what is and what is not.

4.023 A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or no.

As we have stated above, a proposition is true if it affirms something, false if it does not. If we examine the statement “God is love”, there is no empirical data that would affirm or deny the statement. The statement, in this regard, is a mere statement. It is not a proposition. It offers no knowledge about the world, and the state of affairs of things. Meaningfulness is based on factual content. Without it, a statement is absurd. This is because, according to Wittgenstein, “reality is compared with propositions.”(TLP)

4.25 If an elementary proposition is true, the state of affairs exists: if an elementary proposition is false, the state of affairs does not exist.

A proposition is true if it is a picture of a fact. It is false when it does not picture a fact. Its sense then comes from the fact that it pictures. Meaning then is always factual. Meaning is derived from the state of affairs of things. My language contains the sense of my world.

Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language

(Delivered during the Philosophical Symposium of Ateneo Schools in Mindanao, Xavier University 2002; also at St. Francis Xavier College Seminary, 2002; excerpts are published in Elements of Logic, 2008)

1. Analytic philosophy began as a reaction to F.H. Bradley. Bradley’s monistic idealism essentially destroys all contentions of multiplicity. For Bradley, all of reality is the content of one mind, the Absolute. The absolute is the reality. All objects belong to one and only one substance, the Absolute.Bertrand Russell rejected F.H. Bradley’s ideas, henceforth, the birth of logical atomism. Russell, in reaction against F.H. Bradley, says that the world consists of objects. Generally, the following illustrate the claims of logical atomism: first, that objects truly exist apart from the mind (extra-mental); secondly, that only objects exist; ideas exist in the mind (intra-mental); and lastly, that real objects are to be determined logically. (PA)Logical AtomismLanguage, according to atomists, is truth-functional. A compound proposition is the truth-function of its constituent parts. For instance, the statement that “Mr. Dumlao is old and happy” has two constituent statements, that “Mr. Dumlao is old” and that “Mr. Dumlao is happy”. Both are the truth-functions of the original statement. The truth or falsity of the original statement is determined by the truth or falsity of its constituent statements. So if P is true, not-P is consequently false, and if R is false, not-R is consequently true. Hence,When the truth or falsity of a complex statement can be determined from the truth or falsity of its constituent statements it is called the truth-function of its constituent statements. (PA)For them, every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely. (TLP) A complex statement can only have sense if it is truth-functional, that is, if it can be broken down into distinct and clear atomic propositions. For instance, if we say, "The house on the hill is old and dangerous," this compound proposition must be broken into its atomic constituent propositions, which are "The house on the hill is old." and "The house on the hill is dangerous." Breaking the complex proposition enables one to understand each set of constituent atomic facts, a requirement that satisfies the task of reducing all propositions ultimately into the most basic, the atomic proposition.

2. Propositions show what they say, tautologies and contradictions that they say nothing. (TLP) Propositions inform us about the state affairs of the world. Propositions reveal the factual content of reality. On the other hand, a tautology is “a statement that is true to all of its possibilities”(PA), hence, non-informative. For example, the statement, “All bodies are extended” is tautological because the idea of a body already contains the thought of extension. A tautology is true because of the necessary meaning of terms and it does not, therefore, add any knowledge about the world. On the other hand, contradictions are statements that are false to all of its possibilities. For example, “A square is a circle.” A contradiction is a logical impossibility, henceforth, meaningless. If we examine the two, both do not provide any thought about the state of affairs of the world. They provide no data about experience, and are only formally meaningful.Generally, for atomists, “the world divides into facts. (TLP) The hard data of reality can be divided ultimately into simple and elementary propositions. Following chemistry’s principle that an atom is the smallest unit of matter, an atomic proposition is the smallest unit of any language. Reality is divided into atomic facts and the multiple units of atomic propositions should correspond to the multiple numbers of atomic facts. For atomists, there are three types of facts: the atomic, the general, and the negative fact.First, let us define the atomic proposition. According to Russell, an atomic proposition refers to a statement that expresses one and only one fact. Examples of which are: “This table is red”, “My car is blue”, and “Jose is 20 years old”. The first proposition explains the fact that “There is one and only one table, and that this one and only one table is red”. In this statement, the logically proper name “table” is assigned one fact, “that it is red”. The atomic proposition represents the attribute of “being red” attached to the object, “table”. Ultimately, all of language will have to be reduced to atomic propositions in order to uncover their factual content. Analysis therefore requires breaking all statements into atomic statements.If we adhere to the tenets of logical atomism, classes like “man”, “animal”, “plant”, etc will have to be questioned since they do not represent an atomic fact. We do not experience “man”, we know and interact with a “particular man”. We do not see an “animal”, we see “our neighbor’s dog”, the “dog owned by the police”, etc. So what are classes really? They are, atomists assert, nothing but incomplete symbols. They are there simply for linguistic conveniences. They don’t actually exist. So if X is the symbol for “animal”, X’s refer to the different animals belonging to such class, which we may name as X1, X2, X3, so on and so forth.

3. Now, it can be said that not all statements are atomistically distinct. There are, as logical atomists would later admit, general facts. General facts consist of two or more atomic facts. For instance, the statement “All men are mortal”. It is quite impossible to reduce the statement into its atomic constituents for that would require knowing all men. And so, the proposal of logical atomists is that the statement is a logical sum; it is no more than an enumeration of the constituent facts that it represents, expressed in the symbol, “for all x, fx”. Thus, for every x, there is an fx1, fx2, fx3, so on and so forth. Another alternative view provided later by F. Ramsey is that a general fact does not refer to a proposition, but it refers to something that guides human behavior. It acts as a sort of rule or prescription. For instance, the proposition, “All arsenic is poisonous.” Let “p” be arsenic. Since “p” is poisonous, and since this thing I see is a “p”, this thing therefore is poisonous.General facts were a real problem for logical atomists. For instance, what does one understand by the word “school”? If we are to divide it, we can come up with students, teachers, administrators, etc. But what precisely is a school? To say that general facts do not exist is intellectual laziness. The concept of general facts was unresolved during Russell’s time. However, analytic philosophers later admitted that reality could never be ultimately atomic.The third type of fact is the negative fact. A negative fact denotes that “there is some proposition q which is true and incompatible (or excludes) p”. (PA) To state “p is not q” means that my statement is incompatible with the fact that “p is q”. We may wonder about statements such as “Einstein is not here” or “The sun is not shining.” These are examples of negative facts. If we take into consideration the correspondence theory of truth, this means that a negative fact is that which is seen to be incompatible with whatever is the case. According to F. Ramsey, the“not” does not name anything at all (PA). In this sense, it is not a fact, but an assertion of disbelief, meaning “not-p” is a disbelief in p.Normally, facts inform us about the states of affairs of things. A negative fact, which is called as such because of its negative copula, states something other than what is the case. And so, does it tell us something? Yes, it does, and what it reveals is the sense that there is something that is not the case. It informs us that something is not the case, making us look for what really is the case. For example, if one states, “Moby Dick is not a dog”, one attains the insight that Moby Dick is not a dog, but something else. In that sense, a negative fact may also function as something directional.Moving on, we shall now explain the structure of a proposition. According to Wittgenstein, “a proposition has the structure: this is how things are”. (PI) Each fact has one and only one analytic meaning. This meaning is the truth-condition of every atomic statement. A statement is atomistically distinct if it pictures one and only one atomic fact. We say, for x to be x, there has to be "one and only one x" and if that x is in a certain relation to y, we say, "there is one and only one x, and one and only one y in such a way that x is related to y" or, simply, xRy. This we can translate into an atomic fact: "roasted pig is expensive"; x being the sign "roasted pig," and y being the sign "expensive." This shows the truth about how things are, which implies that, things have a logical order, and that this order can be known. A thing is what it is, logically.The only requirement for thought to be valid, according to atomists, is that “all thought requires the presence of its object before the mind”. (PA) A proposition is true if it pictures a fact, false if it does not. If I say that "My sister was born in 1975," and documents prove the existence of such state of affairs, then my statement has factual content. If the proven state of affairs says otherwise, then my statement consequently is false. This means that every proposition that we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. (PA) Presence as a requirement here refers to factual evidence. Without such, a statement cannot claim any validity. A proof is necessary to make our thoughts clear and valid.In a sense, according to atomists, “there is nothing to be said beyond propositions”. (PA)

4. In a perfectly logical language, every word in a proposition must have a one-to-one correspondence with facts. Propositions show the existence or non-existence of atomic facts. Thus, "a proposition," being a picture of a fact, "is a model of reality" (TLP). Our thoughts, according to Wittgenstein, can only have sense if it pictures a fact. For example, if we consider one statistical data on the average number of children a couple may have in a place, say if there are 12 couples in a community and that there are 35 children, the result would be a statement that, "a couple in this community has an average of 2.91 children." In this example, the ".91" does not make sense. A ".91 child" does not picture a real fact. There is no such thing as a “.91” child. A “.91 child” is an incomplete symbol, not a real picture. Since there is no such fact as a .91 child, to say that there is such a child is absurd. A “.91 child” is not a fact. Imagine other examples like the unicorn, a square-circle, a dancing god, a happy frog, etc. Reality, for atomists, is a clear picture. Any statement that is not faithful to such requirement is nonsensical.Meaning as Use: Transition to the later WittgensteinAsserting that philosophy is a linguistic neurosis, Wittgenstein suggests in the Tractatus that, “most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but nonsensical”. (TLP) The source of a philosophical problem is the confusion one finds in the use of language. Philosophy is not about the discovery of what is true or false, or of what is factual, for such belongs to the sciences. Philosophy, in this regard, cannot have a claim to new facts. However, metaphysicians use philosophy as if they are advancing theses that purport to express some sense, when in fact, what they are doing is simply exploit the uses of words like “being”, “existence”, “God”, to name a few. Thus, philosophical problems are, in this regard, a kind of a linguistic neurosis.

5. Metaphysical assertions produce no more than nonsensical claims for they find no basis in the state of affairs of man. We shall see here how Wittgenstein’s thoughts evolved.The Blue and Brown Books of Wittgenstein is the transition to his later philosophy. Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy rejected the tenets of logical atomism, citing its inadequacy and impossibility. Meaning, Wittgenstein asserts, cannot be limited to picturing. Language performs other functions, not just picturing facts. Thus, he states,There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call “symbols”, “words”, “sentences”. (PI)Language can never be reduced to logical propositions. The language of everyday life does not come in the form of propositions, but they make sense. When a baby cries, and utters a sound, that sound is already an articulation of meaning, although the baby is not declaring a fact. This sound is not a proposition, but it makes sense. The sound may connote discomfort or hunger. Meaning moves beyond the horizon of pure logical thinking. While it is true that propositions picture facts, meaning is not and can never be confined to propositions. Propositions are our first step into the ladder of meaning, and after we climb beyond them, we move on to the more difficult aspects of reality, to the more complicated language games.The statement “I love you”, for instance, is in the form of a proposition, but it is not just a proposition; it is about a person, his life, and his proposal of life and love. To mean the words “I love you” then is to enter into a deeper realm of meaning, a realm that may never be appreciated by the person to whom the words are being directed to because there may not be a common ground for understanding to take place.

6. Henceforth, it can be said that there is futility in constructing a logically perfect language. Wittgenstein says, “the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty”. (PI) It seems absurd to reduce the world into objective and formal translations. There are things that do not fit the criterion of strict logic. Thus, the requirement of reducing language into atomic propositions is untenable. It is an impossible project.Let us take as an example the familiar adage, “The family that prays together, stays together.” Logic would require the production of observation-statements in order to substantiate such claim. But of course, the realm of faith is beyond the limits of pure logical reasoning. There is no way to verify the end-result of prayers, but that does not make them absurd. Why? Because it is a religious language, and hence, it is not a matter that one must subject to the tenets of logical investigations. It is an activity in language that is not supposed to be decided by analytic logical thinking. This is because its special character comes from the special character of religious experience itself. God, for instance, cannot be subjected to the rules of science, because he is ex-hypothesi, unique.Why is the picture-theory of meaning limited? In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein asserts that the Tractatus views language as a “naming game”. Let us examine this. A word is a sign for something. That something we label with a name. Naming, then, is marking with a sign. The object is known through this sign. This naming game is learned ostensively. Ostensive meaning is the meaning that we apprehend directly. In order to know the meaning of an object, we utter its name, and point to the object that the name represents. If I say "blue," I must find a color sample blue and point to it. The child learns language this way. Now, a sentence us no more than a jumble of words, and sentences must have correct grammatical form to be able to represent a state of affairs, which is a combination of objects. The structure of the sentence is a guide to the structure of the world. This structure is a logical one.But the naming game cannot be the adequate description of the phenomenon of language. Language is meant to serve for communication. (PI) Thus, when we say something, it is more than naming something. We don’t name but mean. For instance, if a father tells his beautiful daughter during a visit by a suitor, "Anne, it is already eleven in the evening ”, the father is not acting as a timekeeper. It is not time that he wants to convey. He is simply telling his daughter that “it’s late” and that “it is not proper”. It is in the use of the statement where meaning comes from. If it is said with a higher tone, it may mean that “I am angry” or that “This should not happen again.” This means that there is not one specific way of speaking. There are no definite rules for communicating. What is important is that a message is clear, that a statement points to something that one wishes to say. It is not in the saying; it is in what is said.

7. Wittgenstein sums up his later philosophizing about the function of language in this sense, comparing language to a toolbox:Think of the tools in the toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails, and screws. (PI)The metaphor of the tools in the toolbox emphasizes the fact that language has many uses, not only naming. We have seen, for example, the function of the word “eleven”. The fact is that "eleven" in the example above is not a mere name. It even does not have a meaning if it is not put into a particular context. “Twelve”, for instance, besides the fact that it signifies “noontime”, implies that “It is time to eat”, “It is too hot outside”, etc. It is nonsensical to ask for the meaning of words, for meaning is revealed only in use. We must, as Wittgenstein claims, not ask for the meaning, but ask for the use.To answer the question of function, Wittgenstein advises us: "don't think, but look" (PI). Looking here signifies something very relevant. It is in seeing things that we learn to do things. Allow me borrow one of Aesop’s fables, “The Crab and Its Mother” to make this point clear: “Why do you walk so crooked, child?” said an old crab to her young one. “Walk straight!” “Mother,” the young crab replied, “show me the way, and when I see you moving straight ahead, I’ll try to follow.” We understand human action when they are actually performed. Looking then is seeing how an action is done, and in doing so, one learns the meaning of such. By learning this meaning, one is inclined to follow. Language behaves in the same manner.The different uses of language reflect the different types of language games. Imagine the first few words of a baby like "da-da" or "ma-mam." For an atomist, these words are devoid of any sensible fact. But look, it means something. It tells us something. For someone who knows the experience, it may mean that the child needs some water, etc. Language, in this regard, is not only informative. It does not only picture facts. It can also be directive. The meaning is in the action that needs to be done, not in the statement. Consider an early morning experience when siblings shout to each other, "we're late!" The primary function of the statement is not only to state the fact that they are late; it asks someone to "hurry up", it expresses anger that one is “too slow”, etc.

8. The reason for the above conditions is that we use words connotatively. If we examine the words "politician," "public servant," and "government official," we will find out that these words function differently though they signify one reality. We use the word "politician" when we are critical of the government. The word "politician" has a negative connotation. It implies corruption, search for personal gain, and partisanship. If we want to praise a person in authority, we use the word "public servant." The word is used in a positive sense, connoting sincerity and commitment to public service. "Government official" is rather neutral. It is used when we need not be critical or appreciative. Even the manner we call our parents speak of the kind of relationships we have. “Daddy” may be appropriate for the elite, not for peasants. “Tatay” and “Nanay” speaks of simplicity in life. There is a particular language for a particular purpose. When one is being sweet, one can call his partner as “sweetheart” or “honey”. When a wife has an animosity towards her husband, she can call him his surname.Thus, it can be stated that “a word is not a name” and that “though it can be used as a name, it can also be used in numerous other ways”. (PI) This we can illustrate by way of the word “disabled”. One issue would be when one has a “disabled” brother who cannot avoid quarrels in school because he is oftentimes humiliated. Now, to avoid this unwanted prejudice and to emphasize the fact that persons with physical handicaps also possess skills, the government, through the prodding of NGOs, introduced the use of "differently-abled," instead of the infamous "disabled." The term "differently-abled" goes beyond merely naming the condition of persons with physical handicaps; it also points to what they can do. The term transcends the negativity of disability.

10. Why is such the case? Why is meaning beyond the purely logical? Justus Hartnack suggests,The ideal of a purely logical and mathematical language is only an illusion. Language is not a name for a single phenomenon; it is the name of the class of an indefinite number of language games. (WMP)If the Tractatus were right, there would only be one language-game, as if there is only one game. "Different language-games show a family resemblance, and the number of different language-games is indefinite, indefinite because a language-game is blurred and indistinct-there is no hard edge" (WMP). A word has numerous uses. Using words means playing different games. In each game played, a different function is shown.A statement does not have one single task. If a statement is to have some sense, its sense must be shown. Its sense can be exhibited by showing its use. If someone tells you, "you look stupid," he is not really telling you what your outside appearance is. In a deeper sense, the expression is used to irritate. The requirement of the Tractatus to break statements into constituent acts shows its limitation in its view of sense and non-sense.Not all words are as simple as the word “red” or “chair”. For instance, if one hears that, "The Dela Cruz family hates Juan," what does one precisely mean by the subject "Dela Cruz family"? Does one mean the father of the family, the siblings, their whole generation, including those who are dead, or their living members, including their three-year old child? There seems to be an ambiguity here, but such ambiguity is eliminated when we move beyond truth-functional language. One has to see the context of the statement so that one is not mistaken. The statement might be a sweeping one making it avoid the nuances of language. There is a necessity to appreciate these nuances, for in the margins lie deeper meanings that need to be uncovered. Wittgenstein says, “if we want to walk, we need friction … back to rough ground!” (PI)

12. The rigid requirement of a purely logical language must be discarded. The idea of a rough ground above is the arena of ordinary language. Nuances can always be allowed for that is the essence of everyday language. According to Wittgenstein, "language is in order as it is" (PI). The purpose of language is conversation, and as long as a language enables one to communicate, then there is nothing wrong with that language.Ordinary language philosophyEarly atomism, we may recall, has expressed that “language is a picture of reality; language depicts the logical structure of facts”. (WMP) The whole of the Tratatus is the assertion that language is a picture of reality. But it cannot be just any picture for that matter; it must be a logical picture. Language must conform to the laws of logic, or else, it can be dismissed as nonsense. Thus, any word has a meaning in being the name of something. A word represents or refers to something. (WMP)The symbolism that we find in the Tractatus is this: Symbol P represents a certain fact Q, so that P means Q, and only has a meaning in so far as Q exists as its truth function. A word in this regard is a symbol for something, that something being a fact. A word is a representative of one and only one fact, and this is necessary so that there may be no two sets of symbols representing one particular fact.The rejection of such symbolism is clearly manifested in the meaning of the word “five”. Hartnack argues,If one asks what the word five names, the question is based on a misunderstanding; the appropriate question is to ask how the word five is used. (WMP)The word five does not represent anything whatsoever, not unless one attaches it to a particular mode of action, say counting apples. The meaning of the word five is not inherent to the symbol five; it only acquires meaning when the word is applied to a particular activity. It is wrong then to presuppose that words have inherent meanings. They have none. They only become meaningful when they are used. So we do not ask what five means, but how five is used. For instance, a biscuit may cost “five cents”, an office may have the announcement, “limited to five applicants only”, or a medicine may have a prescription, “five ml daily”. As one may notice, the word five in the examples have different connotations coming from the different instances to which it has been applied. Thus, there is strictly not one source of meaning.Sources of meaning are what one calls a life form.

13. Language expresses a form of life. Since language shows the limits of my world, language also reveals the limits of my life. This is shown when our backgrounds affect the way we understand things. For instance, the influence of our backgrounds is even evident when we are told to spell out abbreviated words. A teacher-husband might ask his wife to spell out the word "prop." Someone who has some training in commerce will think that this word is "property." On the other hand, someone who is logically inclined will think that this word is "proposition." There is no point to quarrel about this, for this is not a matter of testing one’s mental aptitude.Consider for instance the sense of a joke. The possibility of joking reveals the fact that language has many functions, each function showing its particular sense. If this were untrue, there would be no way to examine the sense of a joke. Language cannot be a mere picture of reality. It would be absurd to reduce every joke into a proposition, for it need not be a proposition. The meaning of a joke comes from the context of the participants in a discussion. The context of the discussion determines the sense of a joke. It involves a particular life form. Conservative parents do not appreciate green jokes. This is because if one does not live in that particular life form, one always fails to see the context. This is why a sense of humor is always difficult to grasp. It must, so to speak, be understood.How does one discover a life form? Or more exactly, how does one learn how to use language? According to Hartnack,Just as learning the names of playing cards or the pieces in a chess set is not learning to play bridge or to play chess, so to know the names in a language is less than learning how to speak. (WMP)One can invent a word, say TQ13, and say that it corresponds to a particular tree. The purpose can be personal. It is a password that enables one to identify that particular entity. But if it is a purely private act, with no connection whatsoever to something conventional, then one is mistaken in thinking that his act makes some sense. Even if one knows all the pieces in chess, one cannot play chess if he does not know the rules. Rules imply an agreement. Two parties are in agreement, and so, there is a meaning being communicated. In the case of a private password, or a private formula, one cannot make sense if one cannot communicate what he intends to say. To say something is already to mean something, that is, it means that one intends to do something. If nothing could be done about what I know, and if I say something that only possesses a private meaning, there is really nothing in what I know and in what I am saying.Language is the repository of human action. If in a language one cannot make requests, describe or ask questions, it means that these human activities do not exist there. (WMP)

14. Language contains our intentions, plans, activities, ideas, actuations, behavior patterns, cultural norms, predicaments, moral sentiments, etc. Different generations play different language games. Different generations listen to different types of music. “Rap” is absent from the language of older generations, and “Elvis” may not be accommodated as a nice music genre twenty years from now. The words “po” and “opo” are absent in American culture. Japanese vow their heads as a sign of respect; we don’t. Politicians use the handshake as a vital tool in public relations, academicians don’t do that much. Young lovers hold their hands; sweet couples kiss each other before saying goodbye. Such is a medium not available to less intimate partners. Thus, to be able to say “I love you” means that there is already something in doing so. When one means what one says, one intends to do something about it.Words have meanings, and these meanings are carried by the particular entities to which they have been assigned. The word “building”, since it already has clearly defined limits as to its logical structure as a fact, remains the same symbol for that particular fact, although one particular structure, say “The building on F Street” to which that symbol has been assigned may have collapsed. With respect to proper names, Jose Rizal remains to be Jose Rizal although he has become non-existent. The physical reality to which the meaning has been assigned may have been gone, but the sense of who Jose Rizal was to the Malayan race remains.The picture theory of meaning was an imprisonment of language. The reason is that, “picturing or depicting the world is a meaningless notion; there are many different language games; some of which serve to describe, to assert, to report”. (WMP) Picturing held language captive. Creativity is inherent to the human spirit. This creativity could also be made available to language because language is a human reality. Analysis is so limited that it also limits the sense of everyday experience. To say that there are different language games means that there are so many human activities. These activities represent the different ways we apprehend reality.

15. Our ways of apprehending reality are always expressed linguistically. But it is expressed in a way that cannot be confined to the difficult requirement of a logical ideal by way of atomic propositions, since to do something is already to express some meaning, though that meaning may not have the logical form of a proposition.A word is and will always be a tool. It cannot be confined to one specific function, that is, to naming facts. Wittgenstein adds, “a word is not a name; a word can be used as a name, but it can be used in numerous other ways as well”. (PI) In the Tractatus, there is a one to one correspondence between words and facts. To say that P is Q means that a sign P represents a fact Q. P here names Q, Q being the fact that needs to be apprehended. The name P then is contained in the fact P. It cannot name another fact, for doing so would entail some confusion.Although there is a point to what has been stated above, it is important to realize that a word cannot be limited to its function as a sign. To illustrate this point, let us examine the word “trees”. “Trees”, of course, correspond to a physical reality, and to pronounce the word enables one to think of such physical reality. But to the mind of an environmentalist, “trees” mean something else. It may mean man’s disregard for nature, the selfishness of loggers, the ineptness of the government, etc. To a poet, the word reminds him of a poem, not of a physical entity. This disproves the claim that a word is a name, for a word may be used for some other purpose. It can even be a call to action. To shout “Cory, Cory” during the Edsa Revolution of 1986 does not mean that one is reciting the name of a particular individual; it is a call for change. The different functions of a word manifest the different kinds of language games.Language games refer to the different activities that we perform. We perform something when we understand it. To state that language games have nothing in common is to say that a specific activity requires a specific understanding of it. Each language game is of a different kind, just as a particular ballgame is different from all the others. This is because each game has its particular rules. Praying, dancing, making some noise, cracking a joke, etc require different contexts.

16. There cannot be a single language game. The word language is not a single phenomenon; it is the name of the class of an indefinite number of language games. (WMP) Just as there is an indefinite number of human activities, there is also an indefinite number of language games. This means then that there is an indefinite number of ways of making sense. To make sense, however, means to be in a language. This is because to make some sense means to make some understanding about something, and understanding happens linguistically. There is no other way available. In as much as every human activity is a particular instance of some kind of an understanding, each human activity is a particular language game. One can only play a game when one understands that game.Recalling the Tractatus, language in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy performs only one game, and that is picturing reality. Language is a picture of a fact, and it does nothing else. For language to be a valid picture of reality, it must conform to the rules of logic. This ideal is achieved by means of atomic propositions. Language in this regard is reduced to a collection of atomistically distinct propositions. The ideal is to free language of its nuances, to get rid of bumps along the way, in order to make clear the meaning of words. But this rigid requirement, this “regularization” of language, proves to be too difficult to achieve, for although physical entities can be reduced to atoms, human activities are irreducible to such due to their complexities. To say that there is just one language means that there is one and only one way of understanding reality.The metaphor of language as a toolbox emphasizes the countless function of language. It cannot be limited to one particular use. The reason for this is the fact that human reality cannot be limited to picturing reality. We always do something about reality, and in doing so, there is already a kind of understanding, an understanding which involves language all of the time. Why? It is because understanding can only be transmitted through language. I learn playing bridge by knowing the rules, and rules are known through words, meaningful words.Moreover, we always discuss certain matters from a particular point of view, from a specific context, from a standpoint. The context of the discussion comes from the language game the participants in a discussion are into. To say something means to adopt a particular stance, that position becomes the source of meaning for the speaker. This implies the fact that language games provide us with the rules in any conversation.

17. Misunderstanding occurs when two speakers talk from a different context. The context is the arena where a particular game is played. It is the board in a game of chess, the hard court in basketball, the pool in swimming. Just as chess can never be played in a basketball court, one cannot play bridge while doing some gymnastics.So we may ask – what is it that makes sense? A proposition, of course, always makes sense. But to say that language must be in the form of a proposition in order to make sense does not make sense. The analysis of propositions to set out their correct logical form is no longer relevant, if there is no longer any correct form. (WMP) There is no such thing as a correct logical form of language, for language, according to Wittgenstein, “is in order as it is”(PI).In view of this, what is therefore is the task of a philosopher? It is not the task of the philosopher to find the correct syntactical form of a statement. Philosophy cannot be limited to the syntax of logical propositions. To state that, “There is one and only one X known as the Rubicon and one and only one Y known as Caesar and that Y crossed X” is no longer necessary. To say that Caesar crossed the Rubicon is enough, and by this we understand the fact that a particular person known as Caesar crossed a particular river known as the Rubicon. We therefore say that,The philosopher’s task is not to correct the proposition, but to understand it…A proposition has neither a correct or an incorrect form – it can only be understood or not understood. (WMP)Let us re-examine the proposition in view of what we have stated. A proposition is anything whatsoever that affirms or denies. It states a truth or a falsity. It can only have a yes or a no answer. A proposition, in this sense, states a fact or denies the same. But any sentence, be it complete or not, already states something as long as it is used to communicate something. For example, builder A can simply say “Slab” and builder B can interpret this to mean, “Bring me a slab”, “There is a problem with this slab”, etc. It is not necessary to have the S – C – P form of the proposition. The context of the discussion will set the tone for whatever is supposed to be grasped. Obviously, a person who does not live the context of carpenters may not easily acknowledge what builder A means. This does not mean, however, that one can’t enter such context.

18. What gives value to philosophy, according to Hartnack, “is this very fact that propositions and other utterances can be misunderstood. If there were no such possibility of misunderstanding, there would be no philosophy”. (WMP) Philosophy aims at the logical clarity of our thoughts. In this regard, its nature is linguistic. Misunderstandings occur because there seems to be a misconception with respect to the way language functions. Misunderstandings happen when we are out of context.The task of the philosopher then is to put into proper context the point of every discussion. Let us take the proposition “Mickey Mouse is a millionaire”. From the context of a rigid logical analysis, the propositions seems unclear for it may be equal to the statement “Mickey Mouse rides a Ferrari” or that “Mickey Mouse owns a mansion”. As a matter of fact, the statements are devoid of any sense. But putting it into a greater context, say, from the point of view of a child or of a cartoonist, it may mean that “Mickey Mouse is a great character” or that “I can think of many things about Mickey Mouse”. It can be said, therefore, that logical misunderstandings that lead us into philosophical problems can arise from confusing one language game with another, from supposing that different language games are one and the same language game, or from regarding some games as the only legitimate kind. (WMP)What is clear above is that to place a certain language into its proper context means that we have to situate language to the proper language game to which a particular language belongs. Oftentimes, we dismiss religion because it is not scientific, and we at times say that scientists are non-believers because they argue that the existence of God cannot be established experimentally. Science is experimental and it cannot deal with God since God is beyond science. But on the one hand, one cannot simply dismiss the existence of God because it has no scientific basis. If one does, one is implying that our only source of knowledge and understanding is science. Blurring a context results to a philosophical problem.But what is a philosophical problem? Hartnack says that, “the presence of a philosophical problem is symptomatic of a misunderstanding of the logic of language”. (WMP)

19. A philosophical problem is always linguistic in nature. If we consider the language about God, and how it can be meaningful, it is necessary to separate our views on God from the world of the experimental sciences. To assert that God does not exist because there is no scientific evidence for his existence is a linguistic nonsense. Why? It is because science cannot be confused with religion and religion cannot be an experimental thing. Religion works on the rudiments of faith; science on the tenets of cognition. To understand the reality of God properly, man must situate any language about God to where it belongs – the context of faith. This only proves the point that the philosophical problem on God’s existence or non-existence is nonsensical. If the language of science and religion are clarified, then there is no more confusion. The solution to a philosophical problem, as Wittgenstein asserts, is its dissolution. Once we make clear all that we mean to say, there wouldn’t be any need for philosophy.The logic of language in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is the context of language, the perspective that participants are into in order to form an understanding. This context is a “form of life”, a category that implies a basic recognition of certain aspects about a particular thing or event making one understand the context. Meaning emanates from this form of life, for if one does not belong to a particular life form, one cannot effectively say something about something. Having the right to say something about something means belonging to a particular life form.

20. To say something means to understand something. What we understand always has a claim to truth. A truth-claim can only be valid when one is in the right context. This truth-claim comes from one’s understanding. Misunderstanding occurs when we are out of context, when we say something about something though we know nothing about that thing. Knowing here refers to the fact that I recognize basic things about a particular reality. Knowing means erasing the confusion. Knowing means making things clear. But it is this – “clarity does not lead to the solution of the problem, but to its disappearance”. (WMP)To make things clear means that we do not confuse a particular language game with another language game. It also means we do not mix up different life forms. This also implies that when we discuss certain matters, we must discuss from the same context. If this is done, then the problem disappears. But what kind of a problem is this? It is the problem of misunderstanding. We misunderstand a particular aspect of reality if we do not play the same language game. The rules of soccer if for soccer; the rules of basketball is for basketball. That’s how we are supposed to talk to each other.As we have stated above, philosophical problems are in a way nonsensical. For instance, if we ask, “what is truth?”, “what is virtue?”, or “what is freedom?”, the emergence of such questions simply come from the lack of clarity with respect to one’s definition of truth, of virtue, or of freedom. When one understands the definition of these terms, and I mean definitions in use, one does not need to ask, since the sense of each of these terms have been clarified.

21. There is no solution to the problems of philosophy; the task is to dissolve them. This dissolution happens when language, the sense of the terms we use, are clarified. Once the logic of our language is clarified, one will have a clear view of reality. Clarity, in this regard, is the task at hand.The ultimate task of philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is “to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”. (PI) The fly here is the confusion that results from misunderstanding language. To end the problem, we do not prescribe rules, like the way logical atomism does. We do not give the fly a definite direction, for obviously, it cannot apprehend such. We simply lead it to the very way it entered the bottle; we open the bottle. This is to say that we let language be; we open it to its possibilities. We let language take its natural course. There is no need for an ideal; language is just fine! This is exactly what Wittgenstein meant in the latter part of the Tractatus. We quote,My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: any one who understands them eventually recognizes them as non-sense. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it. (TLP 6.54)The important task of philosophy remains to be the logical clarification of thought. (PA) Wittgenstein’s early philosophy adheres to the idea that propositions are the raw materials that philosophers work on in order to make sense. (PA) Philosophy analyzes propositions to make them attain a level of clarity. But after that has been done, one should move on beyond analysis and begin to understand.Philosophy, Wittgenstein asserts, “is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”. (PI) The emergence of a philosophical problem is result of misunderstanding the grammar of language. Philosophy in this regard is a certain kind of therapy. It corrects our misunderstandings by making language clear. The later Wittgenstein introduced us to the reality of language as a multi-faceted entity. Language can never be confined to a perfectionist form of logic. But the logic still remains to be there. Language is only meaningful if it remains faithful to what the states of affairs of things reveal. It’s just that these different truth-conditions cannot be captured as a picture.Although according to Wittgenstein, philosophy is limited to the analysis of terms, analysis cannot be absolutely equated with picturing. Thus, rejecting his early philosophy, he adds, “ a picture held us captive”. (PI)

22. Picturing is just one type of philosophizing, and there are other types. The picture-theory of meaning is an imprisonment of language. But it can be asserted though that reductive analysis is not wrong; it is inadequate. Philosophical analysis concerns itself with the clarification of terms and linguistic concepts, and to the elimination of what seems to be non-sensible, on what is meaningless. But it cannot be totally tied to the demands of logic. The value of reductive analysis, putting in mind, of course, the rigidity of its logic, resides in the fact that it enables us to eliminate nonsensical assertions. Through reductive analysis, the statements “All Filipinos are lazy”, “All women are weak”, etc. are rendered meaningless. Without logical analysis, there is no way to eliminate such non-sense.We have to remain steadfast to the idea that philosophy concerns itself with language and the clarification of such. This is because it is only through language where we get to discuss and know the affairs of the world, and so language displays the sense of the world, and to use language is already to deal with the world, with man’s states of affairs. As we have said above, understanding is always a matter of language. For Wittgenstein, to do philosophy is to think in terms of meanings, meanings that come in linguistic form. Philosophy can only be a linguistic activity, though the content of this activity may vary in view of the many concerns of the person who philosophizes.A philosopher, thus, always expresses a linguistic thought, and this linguistic thought has reality as its substance or content. We can claim, therefore, that philosophy deals with all the things that we say. Thus, it is said, “there are no philosophical problems, only linguistic puzzles”.

23. A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about. (PI) The idea above can be made evident in Walter Gallie’s discussion of essentially contested concepts. If we are to analyze the meaning of words, it seems clear that there are certain parameters to consider. These parameters reflect the way how a word may evolve, or acquire meaning. These parameters enable one to understand the use of a term, although, in a manner that is not always clear. This lack of clarity makes a term highly contested.The word “championship” (PL) can be a good example. “Championship” can mean being a “better sportsman”, which also means, playing by the rules honestly. It also means that “championship” is not a physical or a tangible thing, like medals and trophies, but that it is all about character. Being a champion in this sense may mean being defeated in the game, but winning still by being able to “capture the purpose of the game” which is the development of one’s “personal character.”It can be said, however, that the statements above are mere alibis, empty notions, and meaningless connotations of the word “champion”. A team becomes a champion by winning games, and you do not win games if you do not have the skill and talent, notwithstanding all the hard practices necessary to prepare for the game. The true gauge of championship, in this sense, is winning. For if one wins, this means that one has prepared better than the other team. Whatever is meant it is important to note that to assert a meaning is to assert a claim to truth. A truth-claim must always be grounded. This grounding is always experiential, for it is in experience where truth, and its meaning, ultimately resides.The puzzle about the word “championship” is due to the fact that the notion of value, it seems to me, is not a clear concept. If it is clarified, then it can have its formality as a term, and its proper use. But this brings us to a second parameter, which is conformity. If we conform to the same understanding about the meaning of value, then we reach a level of connection, and we may share the same with respect to the way we look at things. If one conforms to the meaning of “championship” as character building, then one follows the norm set therein. There is no disagreement here, for we simply abide by the principles set thereunto.

24. By norm, we refer to the very way by which things are done in a context deemed proper by a community of individuals, reaching a commonality of understanding. To conform to a certain norm means to acknowledge the propriety of certain rules towards the achievement of a purpose.The contestability of meaning comes from the term itself. Since we consider the internal structure of a term as evolving, the conflicting contexts upon which a term may be applied makes a term puzzling, always puzzling. This statement can be explained by the fact that such terms, the philosophically puzzling ones, are persistently vague because it is put against the background of a community whose values and ways of perceiving things change from time to time. There seems to be no clear cut way of determining the meaning of a term, for indeed, if a meaning can be determined at all, it is the shared experiences of a linguistic community that sets the tone of such. In the end, philosophy can only describe, and not prescribe. Wittgenstein advises, “philosophy must simply do away with explanation”, and as such, “it leaves everything as it is” (PI).Finally, as Wittgenstein suggests, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. (TLP) This, to my mind, is the last word for philosophy, for philosophy seems to venture into a discourse that sees no end, simply because the ground or logic of the discussion is not clarified. Every statement has its own logic; each statement possesses its own sense. Where one cannot make any sense in what one says, one must not say at all, for to say something is already to mean something. This has been the failure of all metaphysicians who claim that they are dealing with first principles. But in examining the things that they say in greater detail, they are not saying anything at all. Sense cannot be said; it can only be shown. And metaphysics misses this point.

25. The last statement in the Tractatus is a signpost that prescribed certain signals with respect to the direction that philosophy must take. The direction still is linguistic, though it may not be confined to what is strictly logical. A statement can be analyzed in different ways, and it is the task of philosophy to clarify the grounds for such analysis. Although there is no longer one single ground (logic), there is still the need to understand the sense of each statement and its relation to the world, and that world is not only factually meaningful, but meaningful in many other ways too.

Perspective, Ideology and Social Reality

(Delivered during the Phavisminda Conference at Silliman University, May 2007; Published in the Phavisminda Journal Vol. 7, 2008)


What is the function of a writer[1]? Consequently, it can also be asked, what is the function of art? To the first question, the response shall be direct – the function of a writer is to reveal reality. It is the writer’s task to inform human consciousness of the reality of the world and to put forward a perspective of the human condition. The second question needs an indirect route, for we need to ask what is presupposed when any aesthetic formulation is conceived. To this, we say, that art must reveal the truth. Truth must be in art; art must be in truth.

The philosopher, writer and literary critic who glorified the paradigm above and rebelled against the prevailing systems of his time was no other than Georg Lukacs[2] (1885-1971), author of the Marxist cultural revolution in Europe, whose influence finds alliance in the Critical Theory of Hokheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse. According to Lukacs, “in any true art, there is no content of which man is not the focal point”. (Lukacs 1963, 19) He adds, “literature must be able to portray the contradictions, struggles, and conflicts of social life in the same way as these appear in the mind and life of actual human beings.” (Lukacs 1981, 143) Furthermore, he notes that it is the task of the writer “to portray the connections between these collisions in the same way as they focus themselves within the human being”. (Ibid, 143) Liberation[3] from human alienation is only possible if man frees his consciousness from the images painted by capitalism, and this comes about by way of the realist aesthetic tradition, which is “not contented simply with the appearances of truth, but builds its edifices on truth itself.” (Lukacs 1978, 31)

Georg Lukacs’ Critique of Modernism

Lukacs’ critique of modernism is elucidated in his two works, namely, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism and Essays on Realism. In order to understand Lukacs’ aesthetic theory, we must begin with his putting into question the aesthetic paradigm of modernism. Modernism[4] for Lukacs is a capitalist instrument. It is, by and large, an artistic medium that thrives in the character of form and style. For Lukacs, modernism fails in showing the substance of social reality. Modernism considers substance as secondary to formal coherence. He suggests, imploring of course his Marxist leanings[5], that what is to be understood in any work of art is not merely the subjective and formal criterion developed by the artist, but more importantly, it is the clear understanding of the totality of his historical consciousness. For Lukacs, the artist’s subjectivity is no longer what matters, because the means in achieving the fullest possible reflection of a totality does not coincide with subjective meaning. The writer[6] must intend to bring forth the meaning of objective reality and not the subjective contents of his mind. For Lukacs, this objective reality refers to man’s roots in a historical totality.

The modernist tradition advocates that “there is no outer reality; there is only human consciousness, constantly building, modifying, rebuilding new worlds out of its own creativity”. (Faulkner 1977, 25) This criterion emphasizes the criterion of formality in modernism. Modernity is devoid of any substance. It dwells on an illusion. But according to Lukacs, the goal for all great art is to provide a picture of reality in which the contradiction between appearances and reality, the particular and the general, the immediate and the conceptual are made clear. (Lukacs 1978, 34) Modernism does not show this contradiction. It only shows the ideal and neglects the real. Modernism paints an illusory[7] world of beauty and color. Any true work of art must depict the pain and struggles of human existence because, according to Lukacs, “the effect of art results from the fact that the work by its very nature offers a truer, more vivid, more complete, and more dynamic reflection of reality. (Ibid, 36)

Important to the understanding of the task of art is an elaboration of the meaning of reification[8]. What is reification? Reification is “the process by which capitalism permeates the whole of reality”. (Ibid, 5) Objective reality, according to Lukacs, has been deeply embedded or reified in the consciousness of the masses. This means that the truth of the human world is objectified. Reification reduces the truth of human activity into an object. The same thing happens in art, where the truth of the human world is replaced by modernist leanings on the glory of form and self-gratification.

It is in the sense above that modernism must be rejected, since for the bourgeois mind, “a correct theory of objectivity is an impossibility,” (Lukacs 1978, 25), and we must thereby appeal to the realist tradition, which is, “the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking presentation of that which is daily taking place around him”. (Faulkner 1977, 1) The task of art, Lukacs says, is to de-reify reality. The writer must free it from the illusions imprinted in it by capitalism by showing the objectivity of man’s world. A real work of art stands on its own as a real presentation of that objective world[9]. It reflects an objective world where man lives and experiences the miseries of life. It manifests all that is significant in the area of life it tries to depict. In real life, there are real people, real suffering, and real struggles.

In a capitalist society, modernism defines “persons in terms of abstract quantities”. (Ibid, 34) Mass media[10], for instance, sometimes undermine its poor audience by putting emphasis on the latter’s weight, education, upbringing, social status, and worst, their face. In architecture and design, the presence and the interplay of colors inside a mall or a modern fast food chain, and in cimena, the sex and violence menu of a Hollywood flick take away from us our objective consciousness of reality. The human mind is rendered mute by the beautiful images of modernism. In the end, it is man himself who loses the authentic meaning of his humanity.

Ideology and Perspective in Literary Texts

According to Lukacs, “the basis for any correct cognition of reality, whether nature or society, is the recognition of the objectivity of the external world, that is, it’s existence independent of human consciousness”. (Lukacs 1978, 25) Applied to literature, it speaks of the objectivity of the external world as the substance of every work. The truth that matters, for Lukacs, is the truth that concerns man. It is a work that understands man. This understanding results from the conception of a perspective. This perspective refers to the truth of man’s world.

Modernism[11] is insufficient as an art form because it deprives literature of a sense of perspective. (Harrison 1998, 678) Perspective determines the course and content of any realist writing. It is what allows the delineation of what is significant and insignificant. Content determines form, and there is no content which man himself is not the focal point. (Ibid, 676)

Of course, Lukacs names realism as the primary aesthetic mode of the new socialist literature. (Kadarkay 1991, 343) Realism puts forward an aesthetic presentation of man’s historical totality. This totality is lost in modernist art forms because of its “exaggerated concern with formal criteria and the questions of style and technique”. (Lukacs 1963, 17) For Lukacs, as a contrast to this, what matters is “the view of the world, the ideology, the welstanschauung underlying a writer’s work that counts.” (Ibid, 19) Realist literature simply aims at a truthful reflection of reality and what it tries to bring about is the concreteness of man’s life. Realism, Lukacs adds, is not only a style among others, but “the basis of literature”. (Ibid, 48)

Writing, as an ideology, presents the writer’s conscious views about life and the problems of his time. (Ibid, 71) Realism makes human life the subject of all its aesthetic constructions. He adds,

In the portrayal of a story, a real plot leads inevitably to testing human feelings and experiences against the external world, weighing the living interaction with social reality and finding this light or heavy, genuine or false, whereas the psychological or surrealistic introspection of the decadents simply offers the superficial internal life a completely restricted field, entirely free of any criticism. (Ibid, 145)

According to Lukacs, for the realist writer, it is the question of ideology that he takes into account when he writes. The modernist writer, on the other hand, glorifies form and style at the expense of the substantial content of the character’s life. For Lukacs, taking the ideological question means that the writer who portrays real human beings need in no way be completely aware that a portrayal of such is already the beginning of a rebellion against the prevailing system. (Lukacs 1980, 149) For Lukacs, only a realist aesthetic theory provides man with a reply to the question of ideology. “It is important to show the distortions evident in modern society”, and he praises Thomas Mann, for instance, for “showing distortion for what it is, tracing its roots and its concrete origins in society”. (Ibid.)

Art and Social Reality

A literary work of art should not only arouse our imaginations, but more importantly it must reflect the ideological decay of contemporary capitalist society. The only way to free man from his alienation is to bring him to a conscious awareness of his social totality. Lukacs has shown the connections between history, with all the material struggles of man, and literature, which for him must be no more than a reflection of human reality. The reality of man is the totality of his material struggles which forever define his way of life and survival, and therefore, the very meaning that he creates for himself, including his conceptions of the aesthetic. Writing must be true to man’s material conditions, so that writing as an art does not become a mere reproduction of gibberish mediums. Writing must enable man to retrace his roots in a totality, a totality that reveals his authentic state of being.

For Lukacs, “the concept of totality is a dynamic reality that enjoys an ontological status”. (Kadarkay 1991, 272) This totality manifests the reality of man as a being who is situated in social, political, economic, and historical conditions where he experiences the struggle for liberation. This totality defines the reality of human existence. Literature must therefore be grounded on this truth.

The work of art must therefore reflect correctly and in proper proportion all the important factors objectively determining the area of life it represents. (Lukacs 1978, 38) A literary subject of this kind is thus already rich and developed because a genuine love of life and human beings arises in it as the result of its own contact with life. (Lukacs 1981, 147) For Lukacs, the great novels of our time reveal the driving forces of history that are invisible to actual consciousness.

Lukacs explains that the essence of discourse is the category of concrete totality; it is the category that governs the notion of reality. Truth emerges out of this discourse. But modernism’s theoretical and practical conception of the world is not faithful to the real conditions of man. Its basis of action is not the essential nature of man’s real problematic. The man found in modernist art forms is not the man who suffers from the political and economic tragedies of his time.

It is the function of art to make us see, however painful it might be, the sufferings of men, the sufferings of real men, and not the artificiality of modern life. Art must uncover the undercurrents in the real world of man. Real human life can be found in the slums, in the lives of street children, in the palengke, in sugarcane plantations, and the bodegas where there are real people. Real people do not exist inside the mall. Every color, every shape, and every smile inside the mall is nothing but imaginary and artificial.

Present day spectacles like cultural and social gatherings, elections among elitist clubs, intellectual conferences and meetings are but ways of pretending to see the truth about man but in truth they are no more than a hypocritical way of showing concern for man’s socio-economic and political conditions. These events are mere illusions. Held in plush venues stacked with delightful meals, the theme, participants and topics misrepresent social reality. Real people, many of them victims of injustice and inequality, dwell outside.

As writers, it is our task to lay claim to our real, objective life. Philosophical ideas are not only a symbolic expression of the world but must be the presentation of the real world, the real objective world with all its conflicts and anguish. Human thought must reflect in a manner that is clear the important factors objectively determining the meaning of life. Thinking in this sense must be an objective portrayal of the individual’s social and economic conditions. Lukacs asserts,

The more artless a work of art, the more it gives the effect of life and nature, the more dearly it exemplifies an actual concentrated reflection of its times and the more clearly it demonstrates that the only function of its form is the expression of this objectivity. (Lukacs 1971, 52)

Any literary piece or artwork must express reality and send the message of truth it represents to those who involve themselves in its evolution through time. Thus, art must go beyond the mere expression of beauty, for art is also about real life. Art must express the human problematic. It is the duty of the writer as an artist to reveal the truth of the human condition. After all, man writes for his fellow human beings. It is the writer’s ultimate obligation to tell his readers the truth of human life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources on Lukacs

Lukacs, Georg. History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971)

____________ The Historical Novel (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press,
1983)

____________ The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (London: Merlin Press,
1963)

____________ Essays on Realism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981)

____________ Writer and Critic (London: Merlin Press, 1978)


Other Sources

Curtis, Michael The Great Political Theories (New York: Avon Books, 1981)

Deleuze, Gilles Anti-Oedipus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983)

Faulkner, Peter Modernism (London: Harper and Row, 1977)

Harrison, Charles. Art in Theory (Malden: Blackwell, 1998)

Kadarkay, Arpad Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought and Politics (Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1991)

Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (New York: Prometheus
Books, 1988)

Nietzsche, Friedrich The Birth of Tragedy (New York: Dover Publications, 1954)

Notes:

[1] This paper is an attempt to put into words my view of the human world. I have always thought that life is difficult and that however beautiful others may want to paint it, reality is that there exist in this world the many faces of injustice, hatred, inequality, discrimination, domination, and many other evils. A writer must be honest to the truth of human life. It is, to my mind, the writer’s task to tell people what the world, our world, is really like. This I believe is the function of writing as an art. To quote Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, “art saves man, and through art, life.” (Nietzsche 1954, 59)
[2] According to Rodney Livingston, “Georg Lukacs is one of the most controversial figures of his own age and of ours. As a Marxist philosopher, he has been credited with the most profound development of Marxist theory since Marx. He has been widely regarded as a major influence on writers as diverse as Heidegger, Benjamin, and Sartre. He played a big role in the Hungarian revolution after the First World War… From inside party lines he has been accused of deviations from the current party line as well as revisions of Marxist doctrines. From outside Marxism he has often been identified as one of the chief spokesmen for the dominant communist cultural ideology.” (Lukacs 1978, 7)
[3] Alienation is also the alienation of human consciousness. Human consciousness, according to Lukacs, is imprisoned in a false consciousness. Political economy hides the slavery that one can find in the modern work place. The colors, lighting, and overall ambiance of beautiful workplaces hide the reality that the poor worker earns a pittance compared to the huge profit of the corporation. As Marx says in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, “the more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself.”(Marx 1988, 44) To change this system, Lukacs advocates for the elevation of the consciousness of the proletariat, saying that because of the nature of a capitalist economy, objective consciousness is lost and must be recovered.
[4] Lukacs asserts that “modernism suggests that the form of an object is always determined by the self, through the self’s inner activity. Aesthetic pleasure is always objectivized self-gratification”. (Lukacs 1978, 33) Such notion is in congruence to the function of capitalist technology where emphasis is on the fulfillment of human desires.
[5] Lukacs is known for his brand of Marxism as Western Marxism. Lukacs says that orthodox Marxism, the wing to which he belongs, is not about a blind obedience on the thesis of Marx. Orthodoxy, he says, refers to method, a method that leads to the truth. Method for Lukacs is something that can be developed if only to satisfy the demands of the present.
[6] Lukacs’ literary criticism is best elucidated in The theory of the Novel (1920) and The Historical Novel (1936). Both trace the history of the novel as a genre.
[7] This illusion is made manifest by malls, glossy magazines, American Idol, Hollywood, Harry Potter and others, alienating man from his real conditions. On the other hand, there are films which vividly illustrate the human condition. We can cite “Tinimbang ka ngunit kulang” (social critique), “Himala” (popular religion), “Ora Pro Nobis” (political persecution), “El Crimen de Padre Amaro” (church ethics), and “Romero” (religion and politics) as prime examples.
[8] The theory of reification is one of the major contributions of Lukacs to Marxist thought, along with his ideas of ideology, false consciousness, and class-consciousness.
[9] Think, for instance of “Presumed Innocent” (crime) by Scott Turow, “The Brothers Karamazov” (guilt) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Old man and the sea” (the human will) by Ernest Hemingway, “Death of a Salesman” (meaning of work) by Arthur Miller. These works represent the objective human world.
[10] It is important to explain the phenomenon of modern television. Modern TV, the toolbox of hyper-nonsensicality, brings us to a cultural bankruptcy. Talents are hidden beneath an array of foolish and gibberish re-reproduction of Western literary inventions, shown for the sake of entertainment and not truth. Our children know nothing about us, for the tools of modernity alienate them from their roots. Their consciousness is forever embedded in an identity that does not know itself. Kris Aquino exemplifies the non-sense of modern television.

[11] The lack of perspective in modernist writings is in view of its reduction of objective reality to the subjective conditions of the writer. This leads to the alienation of human nature. For Lukacs, modernism alienates us from our true historical conditions by freezing objective reality in the reified ideas immanent in modern literature.