Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES The opportunity to go on sabbatical leave had come at a perfect time. I was getting bored with the courses I have been teaching for the last 30 years, and I wanted to see what was being done in the other disciplines. My TV program was judged to be doing poorly in the ratings, and … Read more
It is not known if the blind young person who begged Leo Echegaray for his eyes got his wish, but there are indications that the Filipino people may be creating new eyes with which to see themselves. I do not know how many would-be rapists Leo Echegaray’s execution will deter. But my own personal hope … Read more
Throughout our country’s political history, there has been a tendency to treat the problem in Mindanao as a seasonal illness to be managed than as a chronic life-threatening condition to be urgently addressed. Every administration thinks that it knows more or less what the problem is about, yet not one has made Mindanao the main … Read more
In varying degrees, we sometimes behave in ways that mock the very things we value. Some of us are shocked by the realization of what we are capable of doing, even as we desperately scan our past for its dark origins. But all too often, the quest for intelligibility in our actions collides against the … Read more
In the current debate over the death penalty, it is significant to note that the two opposing sides wish to be seen as equally speaking for life. The articulation of this issue with an actual case of incestuous rape has enabled us to view the problem in its full complexity. We now realize there is … Read more
Unlike some commentators on the subject, I am not bothered by the fact that the discussion of the death penalty has divided the nation. I think it is better to have a society divided by a moral debate than one unified by an unexamined impulse. It is definitely a sign of moral progress when a … Read more
It may have been just another day, and indeed the heavens conspired to make it typical, but the calendar we use to mark the passing of time permits us to see it grandly, as the start of the new year, the eve of a new century, and the turning point of a new millennium. In … Read more
In an earlier time, philosophy was understood not as the theoretical subject that we know today, but simply as the art of living. The philosopher’s concern was the practical task of creating a self — an unforgettable human being, a meaningful life — from the raw material supplied by chance. People like Socrates, Montaigne, Nietzsche, … Read more
To many people in the outside world, there is no longer any question that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein has become a menace not only to the international community, but to his own country above all. Here is the head of a nation who uses his country’s earnings from oil exports not to feed, clothe, or educate … Read more
Something about the way Leo Echegaray looks on television and in his newspaper photos makes it very difficult to summon sympathy for him as a man about to be executed. He wears a faint smirk on his face. It may be the sneer of contempt of a prisoner for a public that he stubbornly believes … Read more