Meaningful exchanges during the 4th SES Philippine Politics and Culture Conference

The first day of the 4th Philippine Politics and Culture Conference was filled with colorful and meaningful interactions. Difficult issues such as the role of Religion in politics and how to handle policy and its implementation in the midst of the reality of the adversarial relationship between civil society and the political leadership took center-stage. Mr. Beljun Enaya, a faculty at the Visayas State University said that academics can talk to each other sans the vile that characterize politics in our time.

DILG Provincial Director Bruce Colao said that people rely on the bureaucracy for the effective realization of the government's function in a democratic system. Meanwhile, a wonderful exchange of ideas occurred on the issue of IP rights. Dr. Jeffry Ocay was happy to share his research experiences as he interacted with Dr. Roger Bayod after the latter presented his paper on IPRA. Dr. Ryan Urbano earlier also offered his insights on the ideal speech theory necessary for any dialogue to flourish.

Dr. Vic Aguilan of Silliman University opined when asked by Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc about the political disagreements of people that the electorate must think beyond the elections and realize that we all have a stake in the democratic process in terms of doing our duty to society as responsible citizens. Dr. Maboloc earlier played the devil's advocate as he challenged Mr. Enaya's paper on Ranciere and Sartre. "We can argue as decent human beings," he said.

The second day started with the Plenary Talk of Ms. Asuna Yoshizawa. She's from Kyoto University. She mentioned the importance of communal peace-building. Indeed, local folks can contribute to the harmony in society and this has been the result of the ethnographic study that Ms. Yoshizawa conducted in Iligan City. Later in the morning, Dr. Rey Montesclaros presented in his Plenary Lecture his views on radical democracy and provided a comprehensive history of politics in the country.

In the afternoon, Dr. Ian Clark Parcon warmly exchanged views with Atty. Jamil Matalam of the University of Southeastern Philippines College of Law on the question of Agonism and deliberative democracy. In his Plenary Lecture , Dr. Juichiro Tanabe of Waseda University in Tokyo interacted with Dr. Maboloc on the problem of Western hegemony and how the Buddhist peace building model can be institutionalized. The day ended with a Closing Message by Dr. Maboloc where he gave a short review and lecture on the meaning of citizenship from Aristotle to William Galston.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc: An Intellectual Biography

By Menelito Mansueto (MSU-IIT) Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a Davao-based Filipino scholar known for his work in Social and Political Philosophy, Bioethics, Philippine Democracy, and the Philosophy of Technology. He is an Associate Professor at Ateneo de Davao University and a Visiting Professor at Silliman University. His body of work often engages with topics of social justice, structural inequality, and political ethics, particularly in the context of the Philippines. An Erasmus Mundus scholar, the author was trained in political party building and democratic governance at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Bonn and Berlin, Germany. Dr. Maboloc finished AB Philosophy, cum laude, at Ateneo de Davao University under a Yuchengco Foundation scholarship. He has a Masters in Philosophy from Ateneo de Manila University. He holds an Erasmus Mundus Masters in Applied Ethics from Linköping University in Sweden and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway....

Statement of the SES expressing its opposition to the proposal to remove Ethics in the GE Curriculum

We, members of the Board of Directors of the Social Ethics Society, express our strong opposition to the proposal to remove ethics in college. Such move is bereft of merit and is ignorant as to the value and purpose of the teaching of the course, which is thoroughly rooted in the integral and critical function of higher education. The proposal to transfer it to Senior High School deprives college students of the teaching of ethics as a professional course, which is crucial in their civic engagements and the pursuit of a democratic society that can only be grounded in responsible citizenship and critical thinking. The direction of Edcom and its advisers from the technical panels of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) reduces our whole education system into a mode of creating docile workers who will constitute the labor force that will serve the whims and interests of a capital intensive and consumer driven globalized neoliberal economic order. It only breeds our subser...

Statement of the SES BOD Chair

The Social Ethics Society was founded in 2010 by the late Dr. Romulo Bautista, a professor at Ateneo de Davao University who did his doctorate on Marx at the University of Madrid in Spain, and Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc, then a young teacher at Ateneo de Davao. The first SES Conference was held at the University of Mindanao. Its original membership was only 15, consisting mainly of the masters students of the two founders. While in the peripheries of academia, the SES pursued its goals of helping teachers in Mindanao develop their craft in ways that is consistent with philosophy as an exercise of the human will and as the highest expression of the human intellect. When its proponents presented the concept, it was suggested that the Union of Philosophical Societies and Associations in the Philippines (USAPP) will lobby for a new bill that will professionalize philosophy in the country. That was in 2018. Top UST philosophy academics, upon the invitation of Peter Elicor, attended t...

Social Ethics Society

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