Angelie D.

Maningas / BSAT3-2 PHILO 101: Introduction to Philosophy with Logic and Critical Thinking January 18, 2012 ENTERPRISING YOURSELF: A Reflection Paper on The Philosophical Enterprise
A great part of the formal education will have made up of what has been called philosophy, in which memorized answers to questions we could have never askedor perhaps, which never should have asked by anyone in the first place. (JF Kavanaugh, The Philosophical Enterprise)

We learned to read, and write, and count at an early age, and these things have in fact became essentials to each and every human beingfor him to cope up with the growing world, for his survival. However, these learnings, no matter how far they have come, can never assure any of us of the wisdom we all ought to acquire, that most of the times, it seems like what education has been teaching us were never even close to the real philosophy of life, that what we claim as wisdoms of the world, often, were actually mere thoughts floating in the air of uncertainty and false declarations made to make people believe that they have achieved excellence in spite the mediocrity that has always been second nature in this world of average people. School, and education itself, trained and prepared us for life using its most dependable toolsquizzes, examinations, or tests, filled with questions which frequently, were measures of how much we have retained, or understood after days and weeks of classroom discussions. We are being assessed from time to time for learnings we dont even recognize any relevance to our going better through life; learnings we know wouldnt get us anywhere closer to the realization of a perfect way of living and yet we go through all of it, unquestioning, unhesitating. Like what one of our high school teacher told our class, whatever part of our brains we use for our daily thinking tasks, that was just the tip of the iceberga far larger portion of the mind wanders in the unconscious; what we think we know is just a tiny piece of what we really are capable of conceiving. I guess this is just how we are made, people are all second-rate individuals, and we
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try to escape that status through the creation of measures that would separate those top-end average people from those at the lower end. But no matter how great we have made of ourselves, one fact would still prevail, we may memorize all answers to every question in the world, we may provide all the solutions to each Science or Mathematics problem, but neither of them teaches us how to live, nothing from this range could serve as an expressway to wisdom, nothing would serve as a vessel that could carry us across this stream called life.
...philosophy begins with the questioning selfnot that we are looking for an absolutely indubitable starting point, but in the sense that any starting point must be experientally authenticated. (JF Kavanaugh, The Philosophical Enterprise)

Peoples naturally inquisitive minds lead him to explore and unravel the vast and ever growing mysteries of life. This very nature also has been the immediate foundation of what we know today as philosophyphilosophy, whose essence lies not in the firmness of each belief about all that surrounds us, but rather, in the ucertainty about everything. Such questioning, as stated by Kavanaugh, need not be consciously and deliberately expressed for it to constitute philosophy, just the slightest experience of doubt and hesitation is enough to bring philosophy to life. Questioning wasnt really philosophys starting line, for philosophy is a continuous journey without any definite beginning or end. Its aim therefore, is not for us to formulate questions we could throw at each experience, rather, its the realization of those unique encounters that have lead us to such questionsthose things that made us change the way we look at the world.
At an even more fundamental level, philosophy as a discipline of questioning implies a release perhaps even a revoltfrom historical, sociological, and psychological encapsulation. (JF Kavanaugh, The Philosophical Enterprise)

Philosophy, as I have said earlier is a journey, but it is a continuum as well, questioning at one extreme and liberation at the other. Along with our search for answers is the opening of our minds to new ideas, to the acceptance of beliefs beyond those that have been fed to us by the society, to principles we have long shut our minds to. Questioning, in fact, have been our way of
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constantly enlarging ourselvesfreeing it from the encapsulationsthe status quo and conventions. Like how we could never grow if we never tried to get out of our comfort zones, we will never discover how much more there is in life if we stick to what we always knew and believed. The minds expansion has somehow been directly proportional to the immensity of its field of discovery; indeed, the mind will grow better if we could just remove limits to what it can explore.
Ones life is ones own unique creative project; and the formation of it must be grounded in the reflective understanding, interpretation, and communication of ones experience.Kierkegaard (JF Kavanaugh, The Philosophical Enterprise)

Philosophy cannot be taught, in the same way as wisdom can never be learned, not even from the wisest men in the world. Philosophy, as well as wisdom, do not just require personal experience, more so, it should be the experience itself. The wheelwright in Tomas Mertons The Way of Chuang Tzu have expressed this idea on wisdom; the wheelwrights inability to pass his skills in making wheels works in the same manner as how none of us can ever acquire wisdom from others by merely listening at them talk. Siddharhta (from Hermann Hesses Siddhartha) found real enlightenment not by listening to another enlightened person, but by going through each experience by himselfhis search and journey towards the downside of every men are all necessary ingredients to the achievement of this enlightenment. Many times, we are being reminded that wisdom can never be learned, and yet we dont seem to cease searching for it through people we think are authorities at it. Maybe the best way to learn philosophy is to make yourself a student and at the same time a mentor to yourself, be your own authoritylearn from your own mistakes and rejoice for your achievements, that way, I guess, we are to find philosophy, our own philosophy.

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