Ruel F. Pepa (RFP): Hello, Prof.!! How are you doing? It's been quite sometime. My philosopher-colleague/kumpadre/"partner-in-crime" :-)) Dennis Paul Guevarra met you two weeks ago at Silliman. Regards and best wishes. :-)
Levi Vid.Oracion (LVO) : Yes, I think I met someone who teaches philosophy; but there were so many at the General Assembly, and some meetings were in the nature of hello and goodbye, and it is hard to remember everyone. I am doing somewhat OK; I have learned to live with my aches, and as a man of faith, I take everything to the Lord in prayer. In a way, I am compelled to inasmuch as we are not covered by any insurance, and we depend largely upon our children. It would have been better if we had stayed right there in the Philippines. Obama care does not kick in until 2014---and I might not be around anymore. Time comes when death has to be embraced like a friend, then it does not terrify, and makes one more authentic. Ah, that is Heideggerian. Say hello to Dennis!!!
RFP: Ok, I will when I see Dennis next week. Yes, I think there is some real significant sense in rehearsing Heidegger's conception of the Dasein in thematizing Death as "my death" (from my viewpoint) or "your death" (from your viewpoint). But let's not talk of it now coz what you DIALOGICALLY bring out is "the death of the Other" which is haunting and disturbing to me (if its "your death") and equally haunting and disturbing to you (if it is "my death"), if I may appropriate Emmanuel Levinas in his Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Anyway, let's quit talking philosophically at the moment. Let's savor yet the gift of life. " . . . But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life. Because of this many have cried out, 'The goal of ephemeral life is immortality!'" (Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God)
LVO: But I do not see death as haunting; terrifying perhaps as Kierkegaard experienced freedom. But in Heidegger it is more properly authenticizing---or making true because it compels me to focus on realizable possibilities. Being confronted with one's end does not allow to live frivolously, but if we are serious about life, seriously or authentically. In theology, we call it eschatological, or that one stands at the end time. I see the Other as one with whom I can share my humanity, and death as my end but more essentially as self-realization.
RFP: Yes, I agree. Neither do I see "my" death as haunting or disturbing. And I understand that neither do you see "your" death likewise. "My" death is autheticizing to me and "your" death is likewise to you. That's precisely why I can unhesitatingly sacrifice my life for a noble cause. (This, I think, is another instance to "befriend" death in the Heideggerian sense.) But it is the death of the Other that is haunting and disturbing to me--whether real or possible--like in the case of the desaparecidos and the victims of extrajudicial killings within the entirety of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's term as Philippine "president."
LVO: Ah, such death is death in its ordinary sense, particularly if it is tantamount to murder, extra-judicial killings, massacres---for that is a gross violation of life. Although, there may be attenuating circumstances as in the death of a martyr, a hero. In a sense there is an element of ordinariness, but from the perspective of the hero it is the highest form of self-fulfillment, for he has transformed himself into the cause he is fighting for. It is hard to understand Rizal's and Aquino's death if one does not factor in this element. Death is the enemy, and not a friend. In a way, I am thinking of death as my acceptance of the radicalness of my finitude that tells me it is vain and foolish to hang on to life forever.
RFP: It is therefore the THOUGHT of death (mine or yours)--which is "an acceptance of the radicalness of finitude"--that we can talk about as it is presently thematized by us who are still living. In this case, the signification and hence the "authenticization" of death once it is ACTUALIZED is no longer within the purview of our consciousness (for death's actualization deprives us of consciousness) but in the consciousness of those who know us.
LVO: Death in the case of physical death in the usual sense is the termination of one's life, one's extinction where there is no future but nothingness---in the secular sense. But even that can be understood metaphysically, like I said, we can view it as fulfillment, self-realization, or satisfaction. If you are single-mindedly pursuing a goal, your death whether you are able to reach it or not, amounts to self-fulfillment both internally and in the wider scheme of things. This is how it is understood in Whitehead's process philosophy where fulfilled entities do come together to form other entities that project a new vision of things. Of course, in a system that is radically individualized as I seem to perceive your perspective, then what Whitehead says is nonsense; but where the individual's existence is viewed as the polar end whose opposite is community, then it makes a lot of sense. Here the individual's consciousness is but an infinitesimal speck in the community of a thousand and one conscious sentient existences whose oneness and common vision points to the reality of God.
RFP: But we can only really "communitize" the THOUGHT of death in the "oneness and common vision" of "a thousand and one conscious sentient existences" as a matter of superficial imagination. If we pursue the Whiteheadian trajectory, we lose the "authenticizing" signification of the thought of death which is actually radically realized in the context of the individual. From the Whiteheadian perspective, the thought of death simply plunges into the narrative--even the meta-narrative--of a community and therefrom lands in the cold rhetoric of empty romanticism. Besides, I find some difficulties figuring out how the "oneness and common vision" of a "community of a thousand and one conscious sentient existences" "points to the reality of God". In this manner of "thought-weaving" I fail to perceive the "reality of God" which is apparently simply posited out of nowhere.
But please don't get me wrong; I do not wish to question anybody's belief in God's existence, much less her/his faith in the power of that God.
LVO: Your opposition to Whiteheadian metaphysics drags you back into a Cartesian solipsism where the individual is radically confined within his own consciousness with no sense of community or world but the world within. This is the death of human authenticity. You can only have the individual if you posit the community---but you do not have to posit it for it is real. The history of philosophy from Descartes to Hegel is one of overcoming Cartesian solipsism. Kierkegaard fell also in that trap, and another exisentialist, Heidegger tried to get out of it in his concept of Dasein as "being with." I think Whitehead's metaphysics has some affinity with Heidegger's. This is really more of an epistemological problem, than a metaphysical one. I know that metaphysics is a rara avis these days ---but in my musings on truth, justice, freedom, good and evil---I find it necessary to go into it. It is of course non-scientific but it belongs to the logic of being human. And here the divine ghost appears and it is too bad that theologians have clothed it in habiliments that contradict the world as we experience it. No, I am not trying to prove God's existence; I am only trying to make sense of my humanity that responds to love and freedom, justice and goodness which I find inescapable.
RFP: I don't think I have regressed to Cartesian solipsism since I, in the first place, do not deny the dialogical reality achieved in community interaction. Nobody can sensibly refute the facticity of human interface specifically realizable in the context of a community. But human authenticity emanates from the reflective competence of the human being in the individual dimension. It is not therefore a case of naively revisiting the graveyard of Cartesian solipsism but a reflexive affirmation of the fact that the participating agencies in the human community are uniquely differentiated individuals that constitute an inter-subjective reality.
Considering the dynamics of social change, a community could get extremely ascendant (and hence dominant/domineering) to the point of tyrannizing the individual. This is the major problematization in most of Levinas' writings: When the community gets ascendant, the Other is pushed to the margins. In the process, the meaningfulness of the indvidual is imperiled and human authenticity loses its grounding.
LVO: If so, then you cannot and must not deny the plausibility of Whiteheadian metaphysics whose analysis of entities parallels that of Heideggerian ontology---for entities make a seizure of another in realizing themselves. Entities are always in a community, and communities are formed by entities which are highly individualized. At no point in my thinking that do I betray the oppressive and exploitative character of communities for one of the polar elements in my thought is the balance between the individual and the community. To me authenticity arises when the individual actualizes possibilities that essentially belong to it, and one of those is to belong to a community. Whitehead uses a highly difficult language and it does not readily relate to existential language that we now use---but the authenticity of an entity depends on choices it makes among the millions of possible choices offered to it by its larger community. I did say that a common vision may point to God's reality for the simple reason that such a human vision shared by a community must of necessity include justice, freedom, love, equality, sacrifice which to me find their highest realization in something final and ultimate. It is not romanticizing for to get there one must struggle with the harsh realities of life and history. I may be thought weaving but the basic ideas are taken out of the stuff of human life---some end up relativistically, I prefer to end in some form of ultimacy and touch those things unseen in my very finite existence.
RFP: Well said, my dear professor. It's always been like honing my intellectual sword every time I get into a serious philosophical conversation with you--a seasoned theologian and philosopher--spending precious time with a "poisonous weed" on the well-manicured lawn of philosophy and theology. :-) Just kidding, Prof. Levi. We'll keep in touch for another philosophico-theological skirmish. Your body may already be deteriorating but the vigor of your mind is still as fresh as the morning sun. Best wishes.
LVO: Well, thank you Ruel. I must admit you have gone far beyond me in philosophy, and perchance theology too, had you chosen to go there. For me, it is enough that I infect my students with the love of truth, and pursue them wherever it might lead, though I for one am quite content with the faith I have in Christ, and if engage in any sort of intellectual skirmish, my goal is to bring the illumination of the Gospel to the subject at hand in the hope that some poisonous weed might turn his intellectual gifts as tools for liberation, empowerment and for fuller humanity.
RFP: It is I who should be tremendously grateful to have you as a mentor full of patience and understanding: an eminent world-class theologian/philosopher and a spontaneous well-spring of immeasurable wisdom, It is a priceless honor and a lofty privilege on my part to always be your humble student.
LVO: Ah, this is the finest accolade I have ever received and will ever receive, and that it should come from the most brilliant mind I have ever had in my life, makes me truly happy indeed. I wish that it were uttered before a wider audience!!! But, NO, much of what you have heard from me was culled from the mind of the great philosopher-theologians, I am a mere sounding board, and you know it. Perhaps I have uttered them as if they were mine, and that would be my greatest crime. However, I truly believe them, and I am trying to live them out, oftentimes with disastrous consequences, but that is OK. My Lord died on the cross; I only dream to die in bed, but not in a hospital bed.
© Ruel Pepa, June 2010
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