ÉLAINA GAUTHIER-MAMARIL

Innovative anti-colonial feminist philosophy lecturer and scholarly podcaster with expertise in the application of 17th century philosophies to contemporary bioethical issues at the intersection of health and policy. Has 7 years of experience teaching philosophy and bioethics to UG and PG students across multiple disciplines, including medicine, law, and public health. Currently working on long-COVID and disabled knowledges of mass disabling events and designing EDI key performance indicators for anti-ableist university policies. Committed to creative research methods and participatory pedagogies. Publishes in feminist philosophy and interdisciplinary applied ethics journals on topics ranging from clinical ethics to environmental bioethics. Also produces research podcasts and is a strong collaborator and team member.

• Philosophy of disability
• Ethics
• History of philosophy (Early Modern European)

• Continental philosophy
• Ancient philosophy
• Philippine philosophy

ASSOCIATE FELLOW OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMY (AdvanceHE), 2019 University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

Training on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Modules included:

• Pedagogical Theory
• Inclusive Teaching Methods
• Developing Assessments
• Sustaining a Reflective Teaching Practice

POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, 2024-present

Wellcome Anti-ableist Research Culture, iHuman Centre, Social Research Institute, University of Sheffield, Sheffield. A research initiative focused on anti-ableism.

• Designing and delivering four online/offline hybrid events that raise awareness of WAARC amongst University of Sheffield colleagues
• Sharing emerging good practice and the results of our evaluation with the Wellcome Trust network, the University population, and the University Executive Board
• Highlighting the importance of research that engages with the analyses of critical disability studies scholarship
• Developing a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that will allow us to monitor the continuing development of the three Priority Areas (inclusive environments, methods, and collaboration) for which we will seek ratification by the University Executive Board as a legacy of the project

POSTDOCTORAL INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH FELLOW,  Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, Usher Institute, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, 2022-2024

University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. A research centre focused on interdisciplinary studies in biomedicine.

• Producing an interdisciplinary research podcast on long-COVID as a mass disabling event
• Contributing to CBSS seminars and knowledge-sharing events
• Organizing Centre-wide EDI training
• Designing and delivering new teaching materials (for online and in-person delivery) in bioethics to UG and PG students in medicine and law
• Supervising UG honours and group research projects
• Producing, hosting, and editing interdisciplinary podcasts as research outputs

ARTICLES (PEER-REVIEWED)

• Podcasting as a recreational scholarship praxis (Revise & Resubmit), 2025 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. Hypatia, ISSN : 0887-5367 (Print), 1527-2001 (Online)
• Reframing patient-doctor relationships: A Spinozist Relational Autonomy, 2022 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. Journal of Global Ethics, Special Issue: Relational Theory and Its Applications, Vol. 16, No. 2, ed. Ami Harbin, Christine Koggel, and Jennifer Llewellyn. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2022.2053188
• Care, the Self and Masculinities: A philosophical perspective on constructing active masculinities, 2018 Apostolova, Iva, and Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril. Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1.DOI: https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2018.1.2
• La femme et la tromperie chez Kant, 2016 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. Science et Esprit, no. 68, pp. 177-190.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• A Crip Reading of Filipino Philosophy, 2024 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability, ed. Shelley Lynn Tremain, Bloomsbury, 2024, pp. 375-387.
• The Otherness within Us: Reframing, with Spinoza, the Self's Relationship to Disability and Aging, 2019 Apostolova, Iva, and Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril. Aging in an Aging Society: Critical Reflections, eds. Iva Apostolova and Monique Lanoix. Equinox Publishing. Sheffield: 2019, pp. 41-64.

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

• Ethics of Care and Disability (Revise & Resubmit), 2025 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. Oxford Research Encyclopedia.

BOOK REVIEWS

• Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity by Danielle Spencer, 2022 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, vol. 15, no. 1, Spring 2022, pp. 198- 202. https://doi.org/10.3138/ijfab-15.1.br02

MEDICAL HUMANITIES BLOG POSTS (PEER-REVIEWED)

• Being a masking crip killjoy, 2025-06-02 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina, and Daniel P. Jones. The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2025/06/02/masking-crip-killjoy/
• Massively Disabled 6: Where Do We Go From Here?, 2024-08-19 The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/08/19/massively-disabled-6/
• Massively Disabled 5: Making Illness, 2024-07-10 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/07/10/massively-disabled-5/
• Massively Disabled 4: Knowledges of Care, 2024-06-05 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/06/05/massively-disabled-4/
• Massively Disabled 3: Back to the Future with Polio, 2024-05-08 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/05/08/massively-disabled-3/
• Massively Disabled 2: How to Pack Like a Methodology Queen, 2024-03-27 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/03/27/massively-disabled-2/
• Massively Disabled 1: Welcome to Base Camp, 2024-02-28 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/02/28/massively-disabled-1/
• MedHums 101: What is Crip Time?, 2024-01-26 Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina The Polyphony, Durham University https://thepolyphony.org/2024/01/26/medhums-101-what-is-crip-time/

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

• The Foundations of Human Rights : Human nature and jus gentium as articulated by Francisco de Vitoria, 2014 G20 Youth Forum, Garmisch-Partenkirchen https://www.academia.edu/7222085 /The_Foundations_of_Human_Rights_Human_nature_and_jus_gentium_as_articulated_by_ Francisco_de_Vitoria

ANTHOLOGY CO-EDITOR, forthcoming "Philippine Philosophy Anthology"

REVIEWER, 2023-present 

• Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, Western University
• Hypatia, Cambridge University Press
• Asian Journal of Medical Humanities

RESEARCH PODCAST PRODUCER AND HOST, 2023-2024

Massively Disabled: A Long-COVID Research Podcast

Www.massivelydisabled.com

• Researching historical pandemics and up-to-date long COVID scientific literature
• Identifying and interviewing relevant guests with and without lived experience of disability from academia and industry
• Designing a bespoke ethical process
• Hiring and directing a sound designer
• Editing multi-track raw audio
• Distributing and marketing the podcast on social media and by guesting on other podcasts
• Designing a website

Philosophy Casting Call, 2021-2023

• Hosting and producing (including finding guests and sound design) an interview podcast with underrepresented and marginalized philosophers, https://www.elainagauthiermamaril.com/philosophy-casting-call-podcast

Bookshelf Remix, 2021-2023

• Producing and co-hosting a literary analysis podcast focusing on books by underrepresented and marginalized authors, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bookshelf-remix/id1569399912

Women of Questionable Morals, 2022-2023

• Producing and co-hosting a thematic analysis of the TV show Gilmore Girls, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/women-of-questionable-morals/id1608692885

THESIS WRITING MENTOR, 2024-2025 SuperVisionnaries Programme, University of Sheffield

• Supporting a PhD candidate in their last year of thesis writing
• Meeting monthly
• Guiding the student to set writing goals and talk through ideas
• Offering practical tips to manage writing block and burnout

RESEARCH PARTNER OF DISABLED PEOPLES' ORGANISATIONS, 2024-10, Present

Wellcome Anti-ableist Research Culture, iHuman, University of Sheffield

EDI AND QUEER DISABILITY ARTS EVENT COORDINATOR, 2024-12, Present

Wellcome Anti-ableist Research Culture, iHuman, University of Sheffield

PUBLIC WORKSHOP COORDINATOR

Being Human Festival, University of Edinburgh

EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL PERFORMER, 2023-08, “Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas” performer, a collaboration between The Stand Comedy Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh, Long-COVID, Zombies, and Crip Prophecies

OUTSTANDING UNOFFICIAL SUPERVISOR AWARD, 2025

University of Sheffield

OUTSTANDING POSTDOC AWARD, 2024

 University of Sheffield

USHER RECOGNITION AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN EXTERNAL ENGAGEMENT AND CREATING A RESPECTFUL, INCLUSIVE WORKING ENVIRONMENT, 2023

 University of Edinburgh

Elphinstone Scholarship, 2016-2020 Spinoza, political affect, and political decision-making, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen (Scotland)

Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, 2014-2015 Master's Program, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

This is a repository copy of A Crip reading of Filipino philosophy.

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Gauthier-Mamaril, É orcid.org/0000-0001-8124-9905 (2024) A Crip reading of Filipino

philosophy. In: Tremain, S.L., (ed.) The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability.

Bloomsbury Academic , pp. 383-396. ISBN 9781350268890

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https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/17

A CRIP READING OF FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY

ÉLAINA GAUTHIER-MAMARIL

Introduction

This chapter is my mestiza understanding of the philosophy of disability, as it is

produced at present. The chapter is mestiza because I am a disabled Filipinx, a half-

Filipina, half-white French Canadian. It is mestiza because I have settler privilege. It

is mestiza because I have “passing” privilege with respect to disability and race. But,

mostly, the chapter is mestiza because I cannot approach a philosophy of disability,

let alone create within it, in any other way. The chapter is my inchoate and exciting

contribution to the discourse on what it is to conceive of disability philosophically.

I want to draw you, my reader, into this incompleteness, this ambiguity and in-

betweenness. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness” (1987), I

echo Mercado’s point in the opening quote about lateral thinking. By working

through the complicated questions of “what is crip philosophy?” and “what

is Filipino philosophy?” together, I hope to identify and represent some of the

many possibilities of dialogue between these hitherto separate domains and open

windows on horizons for a crip Filipino philosophy of disability.

The figure of the mestiza is complicated and not innocent. In the context

of the history of the Philippines, the mixed-race people that resulted from the

union between Spanish colonizers, Chinese traders, and American invaders and

indigenous peoples have held an ambiguous relationship with power and colonial

violence (Tan 1986; Goh 2008). My project in this chapter is, paraphrasing

Anzaldúa, to take inventory of what was inherited, what was acquired, and what

was imposed when it comes to thinking about the intersection between crip and

Filipino philosophy (Anzaldúa 1987: 82). One of the obstacles that philosophy

of disability encounters and aims to undermine is the entrenched belief that

disability is “natural.” On the other hand, the very quest for a “Filipino philosophy”

is rooted, though not uncritically, in a nationalistic and naturalizing project. For

example, Filipino philosophical traditions call on a “Filipino way” of thinking that

depends on contentious anthropological and sociological analyses. As Filipino

philosopher Leonardo N. Mercado has pointed out, nevertheless, entertaining a

Filipino specificity can be extremely fruitful:

Does Filipino logic follow lateral thinking? Scientists will have to find out, but

we are inclined to suspect that lateral thinking is the answer. Both induction and

deduction are complementary ways of arriving at the same truth. The Filipino

way of looking at the truth illustrates his (sic) intersubjective way of thinking.

[. . .] Objectivism has a totally falsified conception of truth, by exalting what we

can know and prove, while covering up with ambiguous utterances all that [we]

know and cannot prove, even though the latter knowledge underlies, and must

ultimately set its seal to, all that we can prove. In trying to restrict our minds

to the few things that are demonstrable, and therefore explicitly dubitable, it

has overlooked the a-critical choices which determine the whole being of our

minds and has rendered us incapable of acknowledging these vital choices.”

(Mercado 1994: 45–6)

Philosophy of disability is in many respects wrestling with the ableism of the

discipline of philosophy and the attachment of the discipline to Western reason.

Filipino philosophy, too, is wrestling with philosophy’s attachment to Western reason

in addition to the way that it negotiates the colonized history of the geographical

region. In this chapter, I want to explore these intersections and divergences.

I endeavor to do so by analyzing Jeremiah Reyes’s article “Loób and Kapwa:

An Introduction to a Filipino Virtue Ethics” through a crip reading lens. In other

contexts, I have used Reyes’s article to discuss power as a virtue, identifying how

Reyes’s work can be fruitful for an analysis of feminist relational ethics (Gauthier-

Mamaril 2022). In this chapter, I engage in a cripistemological dialogue with

Reyes’s article to demonstrate how Filipino philosophical concepts can contribute

to philosophy of disability.

In many ways, Reyes’s work represents a long tradition of philosophy in the

Philippines insofar as it draws on the writing of Thomas Aquinas. A legacy of the

Spanish colonial rule and the presence of Dominican friars on the isles, Thomism

continues to leave its mark on Filipino philosophy departments in the present. Like

Reyes, I was philosophically raised by Thomists, though thousands of miles away in a

small university in Canada run by Dominican friars. Although some of the friars read

Aquinas with a Derridean lens, they were Thomists nonetheless. The commonalities

between Reyes and I extend even further because Reyes engages with virtue ethics,

a task with which I am intimately familiar given my research on feminist theory and

bioethics. If to “do philosophy” is, as Pada says, to “engage in philosophical dialogue”

(2014), in this chapter I will “do crip Filipino philosophy” with you, in part through

an analysis of Reyes’s article. I propose the following roadmap for the chapter: In

the first section, I will outline the Filipino notions of loób and kapwa, as well as

argue that they are foundational ontological concepts that allow us to understand

individual agency as intrinsically relational within this Filipino context. My aim is

to present the onto-ethical framework that loób and kapwa create as one in which

the possibilities of crip agency are accommodated. The second section is devoted to

the analysis of four of the five “Filipino virtues” that Reyes derives from the relation

between loób and kapwa. These four virtues address moral relations that range from

familial responsibility to political engagement. I will highlight the ways in which

each of the virtues both opens possibilities for a critical philosophy of disability and

create tensions with the aims of such a way of thinking about disability. Finally, the

third section considers the fifth Filipino virtue that Reyes identifies—namely, lakas-

ng-loób/Bahala na—and the ways in which it can be understood to overlap with the

notions of crip hacking and crip time. To increase the accessibility of my chapter, I

have provided an appendix that comprises a pronunciation guide of the italicized

Tagalog words that appear throughout the chapter.

Loób and Kapwa: Finding Relational

Common Ground

Reyes identifies the concepts of loób (“relational will”) and kapwa (“together-with-

the-other”) as two pillars of Filipino virtues that can be compared and contrasted

with Thomistic virtue ethics. I use Reyes’s identification of Filipino virtues to

discuss the possibilities that are opened and the tensions that are created when

we approach Reyes’s conceptual taxonomy from a crip perspective. In line with

my reading of Spinoza (Gauthier-Mamaril 2021), that is, I join Jasbir K. Puar who

writes: “I want cripistemologies to articulate not only alternative epistemologies,

but also ontologies, challenging the limits of intersectional analyses and noting

the disciplinary character of any subject-driven endeavor” (2014). In other words,

I will treat loób and kapwa as ontological terms relating to agenthood that have

epistemological and ethical consequences.

In the following three subsections of the chapter, I argue that loób and kapwa

explain a kind of relational agency that is relevant to both the elaboration of Filipino

philosophy and the practice of philosophy of disability. In the first subsection, I

define loób and its particular role within the history of thought in the Philippines.

In the second subsection, furthermore, I define kapwa while making links to

feminist relational autonomy, drawing the conclusion, in the third subsection, that

these two concepts present a fruitful foundation for crip Filipino philosophical

reflections.

Defining Loób

Reyes tells us that the literal translation of the term loób is “inside” (2015: 153),

which can be used in relation to objects such as pots or cabinets. When the term

loób is applied to human individuals, it is usually understood as “the will.” Yet the

history of the concept is important to bear in mind because, as Reyes makes clear,

loób has evolved from the mixing of tribal animist worldviews and teachings from

Spanish Catholicism rather than the Cartesian will or for that matter the Kantian

will. Because concepts such as body/mind dualism and atomistic individualism

did not become widely spread in the Philippines until the end of the nineteenth

century when the United States took up the mantle of colonialism in this region

from the Spaniards, a Filipino sense of identity and agency was thinkable outside

of the category of the (Cartesian) “self.” To quote José de Mesa, “ loób apart from

referring to the core of personhood, also states what kind of core that is in

relationship. Loób, one may say, is a relational understanding of the person in the

lowland Filipino context” (De Mesa 1987: 46). In other words, loób expresses the

concept of relational personhood without appeal to an autonomous or rational self.

In fact, loób is characterized by becoming-in-relation, that is, by its intrinsic and

ontological relationality. This etymology of the term l loób means, furthermore,

that the concept l loób does not result due to the segregation of emotion and

intuition from the realm of rationality. With respect to the concept of loób, Reyes

notes, no distinction is made between the powers of the soul (including reason)

and the appetitive powers of the will and the senses, as is made in Aquinas’s moral

philosophy (Reyes 2015: 155).

The apparent ambivalence toward reason—which the absence in Filipino

philosophy of a distinction between reason and the senses seems to imply—has

been used to argue that there is in fact no such thing as Filipino philosophy (Pada

2014). I contend, however, that a more holistic approach to agency and, indeed,

to the agent themself resonates with the aims of a critical philosophy of disability.

The relational stance of l loób does not preclude rationality nor, however, does the

stance give rationality automatic priority as we in the West have been trained to

do. One’s lloób expresses itself in practice, through the acts of ordinary life, and

by living in relationship with others. In this way, the relational stance of loób is

similar to grassroots feminist ethics that propose ethical norms based on actual

human relationships rather than the application of norms to actions in a top-down

approach. As much as the l loób describes the agency of one soul or one individual,

it can only be defined in relation with the other, that is, with kapwa.

Defining Kapwa

Kapwa, like loób, is difficult to translate into European languages such as English.

It means others, a term that is laden with mountains of philosophical baggage.

Between Levinas’s Other, the autrui of French existentialists, and Anglo-American

individualistic political philosophy, the self/other dichotomy is part of the majority

of modern Western philosophical edifices. In the Filipino context, however, kapwa

does not signal separateness or outsideness but rather expresses the concept of “self-

in-the-others” or “together-with-the-person” (Reyes 2015: 156). To evaluate one’s

loób with respect to how well or how poorly it relates to kapwa is to take togetherness

or relationality as the core priority of ethics. And, given how much loób depends on

kapwa conceptually, I would argue that it presents a core ontological map.

The relationaliity of kapwa is not without its drawbacks. As colonized peoples,

the native inhabitants of the Philippine Islands were repeatedly depicted as

naturally subservient and docile. Even as recently as the 1960s, anthropologist

and sociologist Frank Lynch proposed “smooth interpersonal relationship” (SIR)

as the highest value of Filipinos (Lynch 1962; Reyes 2015: 155), perpetuating

a naturalized conception of Filipinos as upholding the status quo at all cost,

prioritizing community harmony over individual agency. This characterization is

harmful for multiple reasons, not least because it denies agency to Filipino peoples

because they value the recognition of shared identity. In other words, as long as the

importance given to kapwa is viewed through the lens of a reason-first conception

of agency, it will appear as a disadvantage. However, the concept of kapwa did not

evolve in a context where rationality is the gatekeeper of agency, therefore what it

offers us today is a different expression of relational personhood.

Relational Agency is Important to Philosophy of Disability Too

Although it might be difficult to think of agency founded in relationality, it is not

impossible and should be understood as a goal of philosophy of disability. Thus,

a conceptual framework (like that of Filipino philosophy) in which personhood

is defined outside of the usual parameters of rational capacity holds considerable

promise for a (Filipino) philosophy of disability. The logic of colonialism

encompasses the social and institutional devaluation of marginalized bodyminds,

including the bodyminds of disabled people who operate on crip time. I want,

therefore, to show that the person-with-others or one-within-otherness version of

the agent that the loób-kapwa combination proposes can contribute significantly

to the elaboration of a philosophy of disability ontology that prioritizes alternative

modes of power and agency.

Sources of Possibilities and Tensions

In my mestiza reading of Reyes, I was struck by all the possibilities that

I envisioned could bloom between Filipino concepts and philosophy of

disability. Nevertheless, I also perceived possible points of tension that I want

to render in this chapter. The two conceptual pairings that I analyze later,

namely, kagandahang-loób/utang-na-loób and pakikiramdam/hiya, represent

two concentric circles of relation: the familial or close kin circle and the larger

social circle of the community, respectively. Both my interpretation of Filipino

concepts and Reyes’s interpretation of them challenge these boundaries. I take

my challenge in the direction of crip philosophy and explore how these Filipino

concepts interact with crip concerns, whereas Reyes’s challenge remains largely

wedded to comparisons between Filipino concepts and Thomistic virtue ethics. I

think that the tensions and obstacles involved in a union between crip philosophy

and Filipino philosophy are not insurmountable. Indeed, my argument is that

the four virtues that I outline in what follows can be used in interesting crip

ways. I do not wish to have the last word on whether or not the four virtues are

completely compatible, but rather hope that my fellow scholars will find this topic

important enough to continue research on crip philosophy and the four virtues

of Filipino philosophy. My aim in this chapter is a modest one, namely, to give

an account of an interaction between these two sets of concepts, regardless of

whether that leaves us with some unresolved questions.

Kagandahang-loób and Utang-na-loób

The first pairing that I will examine is kagandahang-loób and utang-na-loób, or, in

other, Anglicized words, “beauty of will” and “debt of will.” Kagandahang-loób and

utang-na-loób are complementary ethical terms that can be roughly translated as

selfless benevolence and indebtedness, respectively. The terms capture the two

extreme ends of an asymmetrical power relation. In fact, kagandahang-loób is

often associated with motherly love and devotion for her child, who, in return, has

utang-na-loób, an unpayable debt of gratitude, for her. Historically, these terms

have been applied to familial and kin links, although Reyes, for one, argues that

the Christian tradition sought to widen the ethical reach of the terms (2015: 160).

Reyes also disagrees with thinkers who dub kagandahang-loób as a “feminine”

concept akin to Nel Noddings’s feminist care ethics (De Castro 2000). For Reyes,

this claim ignores the socio-historical context of the term and the concept that

it signifies. I agree with Reyes’s objection in this context and would add that

to approach kagandahang-loób through the mother-child lens imposes rather

arbitrary limits on what is a selfless definition of responsibility: kagandahang-loób

is probably neither Kantian disinterestedness nor emotional love. Like everything

else related to the loób, kagandahang-loób is invested in fostering and protecting a

worthwhile relationship through practice, not through moral reflection or feeling.

While responsible devotion is practiced in a relationship by the person in it

who has more to give, the receiver of care or vulnerable person in the relationship

reciprocates by expressing utang-na-loób to their caregiver. An example of this

reciprocity is a child’s respect for their parents’ wishes and their attempt to “make

their family proud” by communicating how grateful they are for their life and

upbringing. Another example is a debtor who voluntarily pays interest on the loan

that they owe a friend as a way to express their gratitude for the relationship of

trust that made the loan possible. Just as the mother-child relationship is not the

only way to consider kagandahang-loób, utang-na-loób need not be understood as

unidirectional. Insofar as all of us are in multiple relational webs, there is no one

way to care for and be cared for; our relationships with one another are dynamic

and they evolve over time and space.

Possibilities

This responsibility-for/gratitude-toward pairing opens up multiple possibilities

for philosophy of disability, especially if we explore the different modality of caring

relationships beyond blood kin. I want to emphasize the absence of any reference

to pure reason or sentimentality in both kagandahang-loób and utang-na-loób. As

I have noted earlier, loób does not involve rationality as a core criterion and there

seems to be no explicit injunction to be dispassionate in one’s relation to kapwa.

Rather, what is important is that the relation remains harmonious, which might

involve reason but does not depend on it. Caring for the loób-kapwa relationship

also need not be motivated by emotion or affect. One should, for example, express

utang-na-loób because it is an ethical practice that acknowledges and reinforces

community relations rather than because one is grateful. In a way, kagandahang-

loób and utang-na-loób prompt us to consider radical dependence beyond ideas of

desert: because we live in community, we all should be responsible for one another

and grateful to one another.

Tensions

Like the figure of the mestiza, the concepts of indebtedness and gratitude are not

innocent. Within the framework of settler colonialism, for example, narratives of

the grateful/ungrateful native have been used to justify all kinds of violence and to

deny entire peoples agency. From an intersectional feminist perspective, women

have, for centuries, been asked to be grateful for their enforced subservient social

roles; Black and brown people are supposed to be grateful that they are allowed

to exist; and disabled people are expected to rejoice that society diligently tries to

discover ways to fix them. The charitable model of disability provides excellent

examples of how someone’s “selfless sense of responsibility” harms another’s

agency when unconditional gratitude is expected. Therefore, we must recognize

that kagandahang-loób and utang-na-loób can be used to support disempowering

relationships in the name of respecting kapwa.

However, this disempowering interpretation of these terms is not inevitable. In

the spirit of bringing my mestiza inquisitiveness to this topic, I cannot leave at the

door my hermeneutical resistance to the concept of uncritical indebtedness. Then

again, that is not what utang-na-loób implies. Although Lynch’s concept of SIR

has been used to depict a pliable and docile Filipino identity, placing relationality

at the core of personhood and agency does not necessarily require that critical

thought be relinquished but rather that we give priority to the shared part of

our agency. Giving the shared part of our agency priority over the unique and

particular part of it will require that everyone who has long bathed in the waters

of atomistic individualism do some deep conceptual reconfiguring. In short, these

Filipino concepts do not tell us in advance what kind of relationship is worth

protecting other than the relationships that involve vulnerability and dependence

beyond transactional relations, a focus that is extremely relevant to the philosophy

of disability.

Pakikiramdam and Hiya

In this section, I will analyze the concept pairing of pakikiramdam (relational

sensitivity or prudence) and hiya (shame or embarrassment). Reyes links both

of these concepts to social self-restraint, empathy, and “emotional intelligence”

(2015: 163). Pakikiramdam in particular concerns “reading the room,” that

is, one’s awareness of or attunement to the social dynamics of a given time or

place before one acts. For these reasons, Reyes compares pakikiramdam to the

Thomist virtue of prudence, a virtue that is useful when one has only indirect

access to power. With pakikiramdam, we can see, once again, how a Filipino

ethical concept that involves a considerable amount of contextual awareness

can be ( and has been) used to claim that Filipinos are too sensitive and that

they care too much about public opinion. Among other things, such a claim

disregards the extent to which social praise and blame are important to most

ethical theories, including Kant’s. Indeed, members of marginalized and socially

disempowered groups in philosophy can learn a great deal about how power

operates in mainstream philosophy by considering the ways in which prudence

is mobilized in ethical theories.

The concept of hiya is more difficult to grapple with than the concept of

pakikiramdam. Reyes makes a distinction between “passive” and “active” hiya, or

shame that one suffers versus the self-control that motivates us to avoid causing

hiya to others (Reyes 2015: 164). I consider shame to be a fickle concept: it can be

extremely useful, extremely damaging, or both simultaneously. When we consider

hiya in the context of a relationality that is placed at the core of our ethical practice,

we can recognize that hiya would serve as a non-rational stopgap that to prevent

us from destroying community relations out of recklessness or imprudence. One

could argue that feeling shamed by one’s close friends and family often more

effectively motivates behavioral changes than a clear but impersonal rational

argument. Historically, however, shame has also been directed at marginalized

people in oppressive ways, such as conveying to them that they are defective or

dangerous, that they do not belong in public spaces, and that their desires and

needs are invalid. Thus, out of all of Reyes’s discussions of Filipino concepts, it is

the discussion of the concept of hiya that gives me the most pause.

Possibilities

With respect to agency there are (as I have suggested) very interesting points

of intersection between pakikiramdam, hiya, and the aims of a philosophy of

disability. Whereas kagandahang-loób and utang-na-loób are originally directed

at immediate relations with the people closest to us, pakikiramdam and hiya

offer the opportunity to think of relationality in a broader sense. Indeed, the

concept of hiya can be used to discuss our relation to nonhuman animals and the

environment by prompting us to consider the strength of all the connections that

support our communities. The kind of prudential practices that pakikiramdam

and hiya recommend are less concerned with personal moral valor than with

acknowledgment and maintenance of webs of support. This framework is

particularly instructive for a philosophy of disability that aims to be anchored in

a relational ontology insofar as the framework represents interdependence and

the need for mutual aid as the foundation of ethics rather than merely as effective

means in special circumstances only. More than that, the framework explicitly

values relationality rather than cast it as a weakness or the inability to be a “fully-

fledged” agent.

Tensions

One way in which to redeem the concepts of pakikiramdam and hiya in a crip context

is to view them as possible support for solidarity. Both intra-group relationships

within disabled communities and inter-group relations with institutions and able-

bodied agents require boundary practices. I understand a boundary practice to

signify the recognition and expression of the limits of particular instantiations of

relationality. In order for me to be in solidarity with blind and visually impaired

people, for example, I need to acknowledge that our experiences and needs do

not overlap completely. As an Asian-Canadian disabled person who wishes to act

in solidarity with Black and Indigenous disabled individuals and communities, I

must “check myself ” before I act. That is, I must think critically about, for example,

whether I have taken up discursive space on their behalf that Black and Indigenous

disabled people themselves should have occupied, whether I have misrepresented

their issues because of my own social privilege, and so on. Although we can (and

often should) conceive of relational sensitivity and shame as mechanisms of

assimilation and disempowerment, we can also use them as safeguards against our

impulse to center ourselves and overlook critical differences in our effort to create

communities for ourselves.

Embracing Uncertainty

In this last section of my chapter, I want to turn to the fifth “Filipino virtue” that

Reyes examines, lakas-ng-l loób. Doing so will enable me to return to a statement

that I made at the outset of this chapter, according to which loób and kapwa should

be considered as ontological terms as well as ethical terms. On my understanding

of it, the concept of lakas-ng-loób, or “strength-of-will,” is a worldview, a way of

relating to time and becoming by embracing uncertainty. While some philosophers

have equated this attitude with fatalism (Bostrom 1968), I want to demonstrate

how it can intersect with the concepts of crip time and crip futurism in a way that

maps out a different kind of relational agency.

Lakas-ng-loób is often linked to the expression Bahala na, which roughly

translates into English as “God willing,” signifying everything from optimism to

fatalism, passing through indifference and irresponsibility. Note that like all of the

Filipino concepts that I have discussed in this chapter, the concept of Bahala na is

a double-edged sword: it can be used as an excuse to reinforce the status quo or as

a tool to bring about change. I will not dwell here on the disempowering aspects

of fatalism that have been attributed to lakas-ng-loób and, by implication, Bahala

na. Rather, I want to focus on how lakas-ng-loób and Bahala na can fruitfully

intersect with crip ontology.

Lakas-ng-loób can, according to Reyes, be compared to the Thomist virtue

of courage, specifically with respect to courage for the kapwa, not for ourselves

(2015: 166). It implies sacrificing oneself for the community in a way that cannot

be disentangled from the Christian idea of ultimate sacrifice. This meaning, in and

of itself, may not seem appealing to disability theorists or indeed most feminists;

there is no shortage of ethical discourses that encourage us to sacrifice ourselves

“for the greater good” to view ourselves as a burden, and so on. Yet, lakas-ng-loób

is primarily directed at the preservation of community relations rather than the

agent’s moral goodness. In this sense, (self)sacrifice is not a goal in itself, but rather

another tool in our relational ethical toolbox. Incidentally, Reyes’s examples for

this “virtue” relate to the well-being of the nation and thus he names celebrated

Filipino revolutionaries and political dissidents José Rizal and Ninoy Aquino,

further expanding the scope of ethical webs (2015: 167). I will argue that lakas-ng-l

loób, when taken together with Bahala na as an ontological worldview, provides us

with examples of crip hacking and resistance.

The notion of courage raises alarm bells for my disabled bodymind. It seems

dangerously close to “resilience” and the pervasive inspirational supercrip

narratives that celebrate disabled peoples’ strength (and continued existence)

in order to avoid responding to our needs. Given the socio-historical context of

lakas-ng-loób, however, to have courage can also be understood to mean to be

motivated to resist oppressive structures. As much as loób and kapwa’s emphasis

on inherent relationality can be used to justify prioritizing social harmony over

change, the loób’s effort to benefit the kapwa takes shape in lakas-ng-loób when

the community is threatened. In other words, relationality does not necessarily

involve uniformity but rather reminds us that “together-with-others” is our

ontological reality and that which to we should aspire, as well as what we should

protect. In short, we must resist the forces that threaten our shared selves. As

disabled people, we are constantly faced with a world that wants us to change,

to leave, to not exist. When we dare to reject the frameworks that deem us

essentially unworthy of life, power, and agency, we practice resistance. Although

we experience resistance individually, a relational philosophy of disability would

argue that lakas-ng-l loób is both practiced for the good of the community and

experienced communally through communal action. Although Reyes heralds

the resistance of individuals, we would be justified in thinking that insofar as

the agent is intrinsically relational, resistance is also an intrinsically relational

endeavor.

If we recall, pakikiramdam is an indirect strategy to achieve relational harmony.

In other words, pakikiramdam relies on empathy and consideration rather than

on confrontation, the latter of which is a tool that only the powerful can wield

carelessly. If we imagine someone who exhibits lakas-ng-loób and pakikiramdam,

we have the makings of crip hacking. In the “Crip Technoscience Manifesto” (CTP)

Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch (2019) discuss the history of feminist hacking

and how the concept of repurposing, diverting, and remaking technology is an

important expression of disabled agency. The article also cites Yergeau’s (2014)

“criptastic hacking” as a “disability-led movement, rather than a series of apps and

patches and fixes designed by non-disabled people who cannot even be bothered

to talk with disabled people.” The CTP is primarily concerned with material hacks

or changes to the material world that disabled people have enacted; however, I

see no reason why the term hacking cannot be applied to social and relational

situations as well. In this sense, a disabled person who practices lakas-ng-loób and

pakikiramdam can hack through oppressive situations by drawing upon their crip

support systems in order to preserve crip community. The sacrifice (or, at least,

the willingness to sacrifice) implied in lakas-ng-loób need not be self-sacrifice,

especially given that there is no loób separated from kapwa. Rather, the “sacrifice”

might be willingness to relinquish oneself of the goodwill and protection of

people who uphold oppressive social, political, and institutional norms in order

to preserve alternative communities. Crip hacking becomes a necessity because

crip lives are systematically deemed disposable in our societies; therefore, hacking

is always a rebellious act. I want to suggest that by linking hacking with lakas-

ng-l loób and Reyes’s proposal of “Filipino virtues,” we can arrive at crip Filipino

hacking, which will always be a rebellious practice. As Yergeau states, hacking is

a dynamic movement that needs to be continuously recharged and renewed. In

short, choosing to hack is choosing lakas-ng-loób as a way to express community

activism and solidarity.

In drawing this chapter to a close, I would like to address the possible conceptual

alliance between Bahala na and crip time. Both concepts function against or

outside of the confines of linear time and theories of progress. Bahala na exhibits a

trust that the universe will eventually balance itself out and that neither good times

nor hard times are eternal. “Crip time,” as defined by Alison Kafer, “is flex time not

just expanded, but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and

should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of ‘how long things take’

are based on very particular minds and bodies” (2013: 27). In this sense, Bahala na

seems to offer a more interesting temporal framework than a progressive capitalist

timeline because it accommodates variable, flexible, and dynamic relationships

to temporal existence and activity. Although Bahala na has been critiqued as a

cultural excuse to relinquish agency, this criticism is true only if we assume a very

narrow understanding of what is required for one to “take action.” For example,

disabled life has taught me that more often than not, refusal to act in conformity

with “straight time”—for example, by resting—is the most empowering choice that

I can make in some situations. Bahala na is not necessarily fatalist but rather can

be read as determinist, encompassing the belief in a holistic worldview where my

acts are importantly embedded in and supported by webs of relations with other

humans, rocks, and trees. Much like pakikiramdam and hiya, Bahala na exhorts

us to understand our agency within its limits so as to better learn how to flourish

in our shared identity.

Conclusion

We have now followed down the path that Reyes carved out for us, examining the

essential relationality of the loób/kapwa pairing, a conceptual cluster that defies

dualistic and individualistic logic to inform onto-ethical relational practices.

I have analyzed this enumeration of “Filipino virtues” in ways that highlight

when they intersect with and buck against crip philosophical concerns, giving

special emphasis to the construction of an agency without the Western self. By

considering the virtue of lakas-ng-loób/Bahala na, I explained how it provides a

useful framework within which to define and explain crip hacking and crip time.

In short, this chapter is the result of a crip reading of concepts in Filipino

philosophy, feminist ethics, and virtue ethics; my crip mestiza reading. It takes

pride in not being definitive or complete. By following Reyes’s beats and key

concepts, I have introduced you to a few points of entry into Filipino philosophy

that I deemed interesting for the purposes of developing a philosophy of disability

and contributing a concept of crip relational agency. The choices that I have made

throughout this chapter are the result of my own scholarly interest in relational

agency. and I am sure I emphasized aspects that others would have neglected

because of that bias. I likely emphasized aspects of Filipino thinking and culture

that other authors would have neglected. I have done so consciously in defiance

of what a philosophy essay is usually designed to be: assertive, confident, and

dispassionate. My epistemic position as a disabled mestiza philosopher brought me

to develop and share an analysis of as-of-yet uncharted territory. Surreptitiously,

I have made a bold argument of my own, that is, that my partial investigation

should have a ripple effect and prompt other philosophers to excavate further, to

build higher, and to sink deeper into the possibilities and tensions between two

philosophical cultures. Although it would please me if they were these, Filipino

and crip, cultures, I hope that my argument has a broader reach.

Appendix

Pronunciation of Tagalog words:

Hiya: Hee-yah

Kapwa: KAH-pooh-ah

Kagandahang-loób: Kah-gahn-dah-hang low-OBB

Lakas-ng-loób: Lah-kahss nang low-OBB

Loób: low-OBB in two syllables

Pakikiramdam: Pah-kee-kee-ram-dam

Utang-na-loób: Ooh-tang nah low-OBB

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