Phi – LAW –sophy

Phi – LAW –sophy
My journey of a thousand recits did not start with my being kicked out of Beda, it started four years prior that fateful event. It started when I made the biggest mistake of my life. The BIGGEST and the BEST mistake I have ever made. I chose PHILOSOPHY from seven majors listed on the board. And admittedly, it was because I mistook Philosophy for Psychology. Yup, I was that stupid!

If Philosophy and I were a movie, it would have been the plot of an odd couple film, a buddy movie. Plot would have been two people at the beginning so different they can’t stand each other but by the end credits they’d be together in a wedding party drinking. Just Drinking.

But it has to be said, I fell in love with Philosophy. From the lecture on incredulity to my thesis titled “The Sublime as the Fulfillment of the Postulation of God’s Existence in Kant’s Categorical impertative” Given that it was, for us, a dead end course. The career choices were slim, all we had were to become a teacher, a priest, or a teacher-priest. There were a bunch of other… uhm… existential careers we were looking at, to wit: a taxi driver, a gym instructor, a bold star and a parlorista. But nothing compared to the call of the legal profession, it was the loudest since it was echoed by parents and just about everyone. So yes, I took their “advice”

The transtition from philosophy to law is not really a minor feat. It was the personification of the allegory of the cave…in reverse.

It has been said by upper class men that Philosophy was a great pre-law course, they said that reading SCRA is peanuts compared to reading Heidegger. The problem was I never read Heidegger.
Although bot require so much from students, like reading literally hundred of books. But Law and Philosphy are very different. They require different things from students.

To illustrate:

Law, a professor requiring a student to study dozens of provisions, hundreds of pages of annotations, read 20 cases per hour is pure sadism. Philosophy, thinking about the nature of men, the human will, the source of knowledge, the existence of God, the meaning, existence, metaphysics of things is pure masochism.

In Philosophy, we were thought that the lowest form and the most unreliable source of human knowledge is Authority. We were trained to question, disparage authority that it reduces authority to a mere concept. In law, that is the only thing that matters and the only source: AUTHORITY; constitution above all, supreme court above all courts, recent law over old ones. In law, to question authority (whether it be a famous author, or jurisprudence) is to create anarchy, and to be held in contempt. No opinion matters other than those who are in power. Law is so arbitrary as authority is fleeting. But it is what it is. In latin, Dura Lex Sed Lex. We are a government of laws and not of men. Laws created by men.

Both are difficult. Both are satisfying. They are equal, but Philosophy, I have to say, is Primus Inter Pares

Philosophy may not make good law students, but I do believe philosophy make good lawyers. And I intend, with all my might, to prove it right.

I (w)could become a lawyer one day, but I do not think I will be a philospher. I am a Philo Major, I complicate things because life is complicated. We answer with a question and we question without end. We see things differently from other people. And people see us differently. But we are used to that.

Philosophy may not be the best pre-law course, but digests of cases is not as fulfilling as digests of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, reading Tsi Ming Choi is not as satisfying as the Philosophy of Mo Zi, Lao Tzi or Cong Zi. And Finishing Jurado is not as great as finishing Kant.

They may not agree, but i promise i will become 100% Philo Major, and 100% lawyer.