Deanne Claire M.

Bagsic
LM4A
Assignment#1 PHILO 102 MAN

Are all Philosophers pilosopo?

Before diving in to encode my ideas regarding this question, I did a few

research by reading some articles online, and to be honest my prior knowledge
or opinion about this matter is that they are interconnected since, the term
“pilosopo” is the tagalog term for philosopher. For other races, people in their
country would take this term as a positive remark; but don’t you wonder why
being pilosopo in our country is often associated as a bad or negative remark?

According to Gripaldo, the word pilosopo means two things: a sophist (or
philosophist) or a philosopher. If you are argumentative, you are a pilosopo (a
sophist) but if you are wise, you are a pilosopo (philosopher). Pilosopo (sophist)
is pejorative while a pilosopo (philosopher) carries the positive connotation of
pilosopo. For instance, if an individual answers someone else conondrum in a
respectful manner, he/ she is being wise. On the other hand, answering someone
else’s question in a sarcastic manner then you are a sophist.

With the two definitions aforementioned, I would like to reiterate that

Philippines is a beautiful country with an enchanting culture as well. We give high
regards and we are very conscious with our social standards, and one of our very
distinct quality is our respect for elderly people. With that being said, our social
awareness is indeed a good thing; however, sometimes it is indeed confusing
and/or difficult to follow or apply in the young minds of our Filipino youth. We live
in a country where answering back to people who are older than us is equivalent
to being pilosopo. Consequently, some people look down to this culture and sees
it as an anti-intellectual quality of Filipino people. In my opinion, this remark is not
entirely wrong since we are all entitled with our own opinions, but what I can say
about that is that Filipinos have really high regards to respect and being
argumentative is placed below it which I think is a good thing to encourage
people to be reasonable instead of being quarellsome and being too cocky and
entitled to their own opinion.

So, with all that being said, finally this paragraph is about the main question
itself. Are all philosophers pilosopo? I believe it is a yes but we have to keep in
mind that being wise is entirely a different thing from being nonsense and
sarcastic. Yes, we are entitled to our own opinion but be wise enough to think
about what you are going to say or type and also the manner on how we deliver
it. It wouldn’t hurt to be respectful, would it?

Source: http://georgedelapaz.blogspot.com/2011/08/pilosopoare-filipinos-anti-
intellectual.html