Ron presenting at the Emmanuel Q. Fernando Philosophy Undergraduate Research Conference, where he was awarded 1st place in the Ethics category.
CLIMBING A LADDER
Admittedly, philosophy was my second degree program choice at UP Diliman in the 2021 UP College Admission. Political science was the first, history the third, and English studies the fourth. All I wanted was a humanities and social science-related pre-law undergraduate degree, and it is a hackneyed but valid view that political science is one of the best pre-law majors. Nevertheless, philosophy from the leading university in the country, I thought, would suffice—but it has now become necessary.
I discovered that I was not really interested in the empirical study of politics, but in the very assumptions that underlie politics—why and ought the state consider the natural rights of its citizens, are there even natural rights, is democracy even the best form of government, what connects the descriptive nature of the state to the normative values or duties we attach to it? I would also soon question even the assumptions that underpin empirical study or any form of science—including the heated debate whether political science and other social sciences are real science like the natural sciences (and this cannot be resolved by science for as Aquinas would put it, fire cannot set itself on fire). Although history will always fascinate me, I realize that I am more interested not in how schools of thought change the world but in the thoughts themselves. And while I have always been a bookworm, it turns out that my interest in language is more about the very nature of meaning and truth that transcends particular languages.
A PREMIER ANALYTIC DEPARTMENT
When I was admitted to the BA Philosophy program of the University, I did not have sufficient understanding of the discipline. Although I took “Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person” during senior high school, it was not enough to make a life-altering choice. I was not even aware that by choosing the UP Department of Philosophy, I was choosing to be trained under the analytic tradition, the definition of which I had yet to comprehend—nor did I know that Ateneo follows phenomenology, UST follows scholasticism and other continental schools, and so on.
According to a 2020 demographic survey by PhilPapers, about 78.4% of respondents (students, academics, and independent researchers, among others) self-identify with the analytic tradition, 9.3% with other traditions, 6.2% with various continental schools, and 1.0% with both analytic and continental, among others. While these figures can be criticized—given that the majority of respondents were from the US, UK, and Canada, where the analytic tradition historically thrived—one may point out, nonetheless, that a large number of philosophy departments from the world’s most prestigious universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, etc…) and the majority of the most well-regarded philosophy journals (Mind, The Philosophical Review, Noûs, etc…) strongly or mostly adheres with the analytic tradition. But the local scene breathes a different air.
Three graduating philosophy students aspiring to enter academia, seeking advice from Asst. Prof. Symel de Guzman-Daulat (center) during PAGLULUNSAD: BA Philosophy Batch 2025 Send-off (from left to right: Justin Daduya, Ron Sarmiento, and Ron Imperial).
I can still vividly remember the time I presented a paper at a particular university in the country. A section called for a brief citation of Gottlob Frege and some relatively simple logical symbolism, to which I blame my suspicion on why the audience did not ask me any questions (other than a pahabol, maybe even pity, general query from the host about a few minutes before our panel ended) because of which I also suspect that they did not even comprehend or appreciate my paper. I guess studying philosophy at UP makes you somewhat special.
Unlike other philosophy departments (perhaps except for that of De La Salle University), the classical syllogistic logic from antiquity is nothing but a short review and a preliminary introduction to logic here. Who needs the square of opposition when you can easily find more precise logical equivalences through some quantification rules? The meat of the syllabus is dedicated to the newer symbolic logic—a stepping stone toward some elective undergraduate classes, perhaps uniquely offered at UP (modal logic and mathematical logic), and even particular research interests you may develop (deontic logic, Kurt Gödel’s ontological proof of God, David Lewis’ revitalization of a uniquely analytic metaphysics through possible worlds semantics, Peter Geach’s Frege-Geach problem in metaethics, and Bertrand Russell and A.N. Whitehead’s infamous almost 400-page proof for “1+1=2”). There is no better place to carry on this intellectual legacy in the Philippines than here, where it has taken root locally.
Batch photo with Asst. Prof. Symel de Guzman-Daulat, Asst. Prof. Enrique Benjamin Fernando III, and Ma’am Winnie Bonifacio (center), taken during PAGLULUNSAD: BA Philosophy Batch 2025 Send-off.
But I would be lying if I said that I, from years ago, would not find these sh*ts dry and soulless—possibly the same impression of my conference audience to me and of the rest of the philosophy scholars in the Philippines to our department. There is a reason why, despite the scholarly dominance of the analytic school, the continental schools remain more popular in the Zeitgeist outside the academe, so much so that when an average person is asked what philosophy is, they will probably think about the meaning of life or similar continental lines of thought. But this is a confused impression. For even Iris Murdoch found no essential differences between A.J. Ayer and Jean-Paul Sartre—both are wicked, she suggests. But in a more positive note—having had the pleasure of listening to Ma’am Winnie Bonifacio’s (BA Philo 1976, MA Philo 1978) stories and life lessons from herself and her husband, the late Sir Armando “Boni” Bonifacio (a prolific Filipino analytic philosopher and a former chair of the department), during our batch send-off—I see no logical contradiction in devoting my life to philosophy.
BACK TO THE ROUGH GROUND!
I can recount when Prof. Ma. Liza Ruth Ocampo, my undergraduate thesis adviser, made our class read Antonin Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life in preparation for our research. The most important thing I learned from it is that while the intellect may be driven by a voracious appetite for knowledge, the body must still know its limits. With this in mind, I tempered and refined my newfound excitement, realizing that Elizabeth Anscombe is my philosopher as much as she also found Ludwig Wittgenstein to be hers, towards finalizing my thesis: Philosophy of Action as a Metaethical Critique: A Reiteration of G.E.M. Anscombe’s First Thesis in “Modern Moral Philosophy.”
However, such restrictions, though rooted in intellectual humility, modesty, and excellence, left further questions unanswered—questions for which my curiosity still yearns. The book is a joyous trap. The intellectual life is a vocation that cannot be ended abruptly or in any way; to do so is to commit intellectual suicide.
Class photo with some of Prof. Ma. Liza Ruth Ocampo’s thesis advisees (Prof. Ocampo, back right). Apparently, we also all decided to wear eyeglasses.
If asked which part of my thesis is my favorite, I would immediately point to the very first paragraph:
“Immanuel Kant once wrote that David Hume interrupted him from his dogmatic slumber. It is now my turn to profess that I have been woken up too from dogmatic slumber—but from Kant. Not only that, I am saved from Hume’s sophistry as well. This is all thanks to Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe.”
And it is indeed difficult to sleep again.
My initial motivation for presenting at my first conference when I was a junior was simply an incentive to Asst. Prof. Enrique Benjamin Fernando’s social and political philosophy class. I had no worthy paper at disposal, and so I pulled about 20 pages of thoughts from my head over a week before the abstract submission deadline. It has become more than a habit since then. And unbeknownst to many, I even had two papers, written in my slumber, accepted for publication in two journals. But I could no longer agree with my own arguments and their very presuppositions, and so I withdrew. But patience for growth does pay off. As of writing, I am preparing my paper presentation for the Pre-Doctoral Wartime Quartet Conference 2025 at the University of Cambridge in late June. I hope to continue such excellence as I pursue my Master of Arts in Philosophy this coming academic year at the same institution that has witnessed the development of my philosophical maturity.
I once believed I had reached the final rung—that philosophy had served its purpose, and I could now let it go. I even passed the UP Law Aptitude Examination. But there are more things to do, more things to unravel—and they are all down here.
“I might say: if the place I want to reach could only be climbed up to by a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place to which I really have to go is one that I must actually be at already.
Anything that can be reached with a ladder does not interest me.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 10c.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Joshua Imperial is a graduating BA Philosophy student and a summa cum laude candidate at UP Diliman. He will be pursuing an MA in Philosophy at the same university beginning AY 2025-2026. He held various editorial positions at SINAG, the official student publication of UP Diliman College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. He was also a member of UP Student Catholic Action and UP Writers Club.