Quito published her book The State of Philosophy in the Philippines in 1983. When the book was already out for fifteen years, I undertook a re-reading of its identified four clusters of reasons for the underdevelopment of Filipino philosophy, and hope for development in 1999, through an article “Re-Reading Emerita Quito’s Thoughts Concerning the Underdevelopment of Filipino Philosophy.” Thirty-six years after the publication of Quito’s book, and twenty years after the publication of my re-reading, this paper looks back again on Quito’s four clusters of reasons and hope, as well as on my re-reading of such reasons and hope, with the intention of sharpening our collective diagnosis on what continue to cause the underdevelopment of Filipino philosophy, as well as imagining more realistic pathways towards its more robust development. This paper, therefore, has two substantive sections: the first is an exposition of Quito’s four clusters of causes and hope, accompanied by my commentaries on such four causes and hope; and the second is my present critical reflection on Quito’s thirty-four-year-old diagnosis and hope, as well as on my twenty-year-old commentary.

The state of exception is mostly considered within the context of the modern sovereignty. Although the state of exception is thought within the modern paradigm of state governance, it carries a Christian context. The Christian context represents an eschatological way of power that comes in a miracle which cannot be interiorized by present. This divine way of governance therefore refers to a power which occurs as a threshold. The theological-political form of governance, which is also called the divine oikonomia, shows the power of governance in creating an exception which cannot be foreseen by any current contexts. That is why the power of modern sovereignty resembles its archaic model in which the divine power of God is designated as a pure potentiality which cannot be limited within any contextuality. This article aims to explore the theological source of modern sovereignty in order to understand the very meaning of governance.

Three hypostases and their relations form the core of Plotinus’ philosophical system. We claim that contrary to some interpretations, there are no overlaps or blurred borders between hypostases, and we demonstrate that mature Plotinus philosophy presents them as clearly defined and separated. This article begins by providing an overall overview of the structure of Plotinus’ metaphysics. We then briefly characterize each of the hypostases to provide firm support for our claims. After this exposition, we discuss the relations of these hypostases and metaphysical differentiating principles, firstly providing an overview of other viewpoints then describing our proposed interpretation. The concluding remarks provide a comparison of our reading of Plotinus with the main interpretative principles of his work.

I argue in this paper that infinitism is the best answer to the dialectical regress challenge. Infinitism, as a theory of rational dialectics, has not received enough attention from scholars because major proponents of the theory have focused mainly on using infinitism to answer an epistemic regress problem. Rather than construing infinitism as an answer to the epistemic regress question, I take the theory to be addressing a dialectical regress challenge and subsequently pitch it against its dialectical rivals. It emerges that dialectical infinitism addresses the regress challenge far better than its competitors if it is couched as a social contextualist thesis.

The liar paradox results from a line of reasoning that starts with the liar sentence, ‘This sentence is false’ and ends with a contradictory conclusion, ‘The liar sentence is both true and false’. There have been solutions to the paradox that preserve the standard conception of truth and the classical notion of logical validity. In this paper, I explore nonstandard solutions to it. In particular, I focus on two non-classical solutions to the liar paradox; viz., the gappy and the glutty solutions. According to the gappy solution, the liar sentence is neither true nor false, and the reasoning that leads to the paradoxical conclusion is unsound. On the other hand, according to the glutty solution, the paradoxical conclusion is correct, but any subsequent reasoning from it is invalid. I show some ways of motivating each of these solutions. Next, I show what each implies about the notions of truth and validity, and how each solves the paradox. Finally, I highlight some of the more recent problems that could be pitted against each of these solutions.

Suppose a person blushes iff what she says is false and she says: ‘I am blushing’. If she blushes, she doesn’t, and if she doesn’t, she does. This Blushing Liar (BL) is a new paradox, similar in some respects to the Pinocchio Paradox (PP): Pinocchio’s nose grows iff he says some falsity, and he says: ‘my nose is growing’. Both paradoxes involve physical properties, and both, supposedly, confirm the existence of metaphysical dialetheias (see Eldridge-Smith 2011). In the paper, we note first that while PP relies on the rather implausible scenario of a wooden puppet whose nose grows iff he is lying, so it is debunked by the objection of fictionality (raised by Beall 2012), BL is more plausible. Many people in our world blush, and it is not difficult to imagine someone whose saying is causally related to blushing in a similar way. A second question is whether blushing can be directly connected to falsity, without deliberate conscience, on the part of the speaker, of saying a false statement. So we explore the consequences of intending ‘I am blushing’ as a ‘lie’, in the strict meaning of the term, and we claim there is no substantial difference, but for the fact that the paradoxical effect is even more plausible. Third, we check whether BL and PP do really release metaphysical dialetheias, and we argue they do not: they lack the fundamental requisite of Liar-like contradictions, i.e. the stratification of properties.

The article focuses mainly on linguistic aspects, paying special attention to meanings of the word ZHEN 貞. The research is based on the text version and commentary by Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249) from Wei Dynasty, classical Ten Wings (Shi yi 十翼) commentaries from the 1st mil. BC, works by scholars from Han, Tang, Song and Qing Dynasties (2nd cent. BC until17th. cent. AD), as well as translations by Western sinologists. In the first part of the article, the semantic approach is applied, in order to trace origins and existing definitions of the term ZHEN. In the second part, a creative deconstruction approach will be used to analyze the entire text, revealing atypical meanings within various schemes: 1) in the layer of hexagram succession chain and judgments, 2) in relationships of lines, 3) in problematic and inauspicious situations where the word is mentioned.

The focus of this small contribution to (the dearth of) studies in the history of philosophy of American education falls upon the backside of the cultural upheaval between 1880 and 1920. The general purpose is to relate aspects of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy of education to pedagogical principles in the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a document of the National Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, published in 1918. An attempt is made to implement this purpose by analyzing the educational principles in the NEA report, by clarifying Spencer’s educational principles in relationship to the report, and by explaining Spencer’s philosophical principles and relating them to the CRSE document. In addition to similarities between specific Spencerian principles and the 1918 report, especially noted is the ideological proximity of the “spirit” of Spencer’s evolutionary naturalism and empiricism (or positivism) to the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.

While Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) provides a better alternative to the usual ‘banking’ model of education, questions have been raised regarding its applicability in non-western contexts. Despite its adherence to the ideals of democratic dialogue, not all members of a Community of Inquiry (COI) will be disposed to participate in the inquiry, not because they are incapable of doing so, but because they are positioned inferiorly within the group thereby affecting their efforts to speak out on topics that are meaningful to them. In this article, I claim that it is essential to integrate positionality in P4wC research/practice. Aside from its role in helping a practitioner/researcher choose the appropriate method and materials that match the unique contexts of children, it also increases one’s awareness of the subtle forms of epistemic injustice that could leak in the COI, as well as the other subtle ways in which children are marginalized. In this regard, a P4wC researcher/practitioner must have a higher degree of sensitivity towards her positionality as this inevitably gets entangled with the positionality of children. I present some ‘areas’ in which the importance of positionality in the COI manifests, namely, restructuring classroom power relations, navigating a multi-ethnic classroom, facilitating meaning-making, and modeling reflective thinking.

In this essay, we explore the possibility and the extent of individual freedom within the Afro-communitarian set up. We contend that every community is made up of individuals whose association constitutes the community and as such, that the idea of individual freedom is not only possible but could be necessary. Granted that the idea of communitarianism presupposes the domination of communal values over individual endowments, we contend, nonetheless that when the idea of primordiality of private liberty is taken into account, individual freedom could be defended. We engage extant literature in Afro-communitarianism to make a strong case using Michael Eze’s ‘realist perspectivism’ as a veritable index that defines the relationship between the individual and the community as contemporaneous which balances private liberty with public authority. Thus, we claim that since the freedom of the individual to function is necessary for the community to function, individual freedom is defensible insofar as it does not conflict with public authority.

As an international instrument on climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change embraces a general obligation to protect the climate system, from which some specific obligations for developed countries fall off from. In this paper, I discuss three of such obligations. Firstly, the obligation to address the causes of climate change and to mitigate its adverse effects, next, the obligation to assist developing countries that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting the costs of adaptation to those adverse effects and finally, the obligation to support other developing countries by providing them with appropriate resources in order for them to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. I show that these obligations are framed in the treaty as obligations of beneficence and suggest that the first two can be expressed as obligations of justice. I argue for the soundness of expressing the obligations this way and that doing so may have the added virtue of addressing both the egoistic and performance problems since it introduces some incentive for taking the obligations seriously and the possibility for their realization.

This paper argues that identity which is the locus of emotional and social phenomena of an individual becomes problematic particularly in postmodern society. Postmodern society calls for a socio-cultural and epistemological revolution which permeates the very core of our social existence. Coupled with the immensity and massive effects of the market industry, postmodern culture affects our lives through the dissolutions of boundaries, geographies, and our ethnicities so that our sense of personal and social identity is left into perpetual disintegration, struggles and contradictions. The so-called “inner” and “outer” community which we once cherished inevitably dissolved into the arena of the market industry. Consequently, the sense of “I-am” which Fromm considers as an existential human need already deeply roots itself towards commodity fixations rather than in our group or in our ethnic communal relationships. It is in these contexts that this paper contends a necessity to redeem identity not only as a psychological base but more of an existential human need. Further, this paper maintains that Fromm’s notion of relatedness and rootedness are necessary elements in identity formation since they serve as the existential psychic cores that lead towards being truly at home amidst a fragmented social world.

In this article, I present a critical exposition of and engagement with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s schizoanalysis, and its therapeutic and revolutionary powers. Firstly, I discuss how the aftermath of the May 1968 phenomenon shapes the formulation of schizoanalysis, specifically, in relation to the French people’s desire for voluntary servitude to what they call as ‘State philosophy.’ More importantly, I discuss desire’s social investment, syntheses, and parallogisms. Secondly, I elucidate schizoanalysis’ goal of achieving freedom from all kinds of Oedipalizations and capitalist exploitations from the family to the society writ large. In this regard, it is schizophrenia which is capable of subverting all forms of oppressions or totalizations fabricated by Oedipus and capitalism. Lastly, I explicate schizoanalysis’ aim, which is to reinstate desire’s revolutionary potentialities toward a revolution fueled by “schizophrenia as a process,” which Deleuze and Guattari call as ‘permanent revolution.’