"On Reading"

           Perhaps one of the most avoided things in school is reading. I really got trouble on this, especially now that I’m making my thesis. Contemporary literatures make reading interesting, but the thing is, I have to read an obscured text written by thinkers of past centuries. It’s really a ‘pain on the ass’ as said by one of my professors. Imagine, I have to wrestle with a book that was published in 1927. Not only that, I have to understand what the author wants to convey. It is a lot easier if the author wrote according to what an average reader can grasp. Needless to say, he has recondite reflections which most of the time takes hours to grasp. No doubt they call it ‘PHILOSOPHY’- a gigantomachia (battle of giants). I really got my neck hanged when I started reading it. However, despite the difficulties, eyebags and pimples that I got as a result of sleeping late at night, the feeling of accomplishment thrives.

Last September 26, 2008, an annual philosophical symposium was held at our school with the theme, ‘Philosophy and the Ethics of Reading’. Like the audience in that symposium, I also wonder how reading and ethics are related. Is there such thing as good or bad reading? 

In the process, the speaker pointed some salient points, which I want to share in this piece.

Reading, though a solitary act provides a privilege journey with the author, provided that one has a basic understanding of the subject matter and reads the texts seriously. Thus, reading demands of us a philosophical attitude so that we may cause injustice to the author by interpreting the text inappropriately. Reading requires the philosophical attitude of openness to the truth claims of the texts and at the same time a fundamental criticism. In other words, reading is not purely subjective and purely objective. 

More importantly, in reading a third action happens- that is the understanding of oneself. When one tries to read, he or she cannot do otherwise than to think of what he or she reads. Thinking in its ontological sense is being involved to the truth of something. Such that from this being involved, a stand is demanded from the reader, whether she or he agrees to what was written. As the reader makes a stand, he or she will realize that he or she is of this sort and not that. In other words, every assertion about the text is a manifestation of self-identity, which is in itself making a stand. Every making of a stand is making an ethical position. Hence, it all points to the conclusion that reading is being involved in the truth in the sense of gripping what is true and rejecting what is not. 

As a general rule in hermeneutics (one way of doing philosophy), reading does not only contain itself to printed texts but covers everything- God, man, nature and events. These texts present themselves to us, and it is incumbent upon us to entertain or rejects them. And in the case that we entertain them it is incumbent upon us to make a stand.

Jokingly, in the lecture the speaker quoted Jacques Derrida saying ‘politicians must read’ [which of course gave the audience a good laugh]. But I think the claim holds water.

The text presents itself to us: rapid increase in the prices of commodities, migration of Filipinos due to unemployment and all other societal problems. Needless to say, it is always unread. 

Though, I will never lost hope, for hoping is waiting for the promise to come true eventhough it seems to be lost.