Roque Ferriols
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Rev. Fr. Roque J. Ferriols, SJ full name Roque Angel Jamias Ferriols, (August 16, 1924 – August 15, 2021) was a Filipino Jesuit priest and philosopher known for pioneering the use of Tagalog in philosophizing.[1][2][3][4]
Ferriols' efforts are intimately linked to the broader Filipinization movement of the late 1960s to 1970s, a period marked by a shift toward the indigenization of knowledge production.[3] His body of work is also influential to the development of phenomenological thought in the Philippines, in particular, in its interest in philosophizing lived experience.[2][5]
Among his works include a collection of essays and translations on selected philosophical literature in Magpakatao: Ilang Babasahing Pilosopiko, first published in 1979; an introduction to metaphysics Pambungad sa Metapisika (1991) in which he discussed the meron (often translated as "being"); and a treatise on philosophy of religion Pilosopiya ng Relihiyon (2014) drawing from the Christian existentialist philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, the latter two of which have been canonized in the teaching of philosophy at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University.
A classicist, having been brought up in the Græco-Roman tradition, Ferriols is also noted for his translations in Filipino from the original Greek, of selected texts from the Pre-Socratics to Aristotle, compiled in his Mga Sinaunang Griyego (The Ancient Greeks).[2][6]
In 2016, he published the first volume of his memoirs Sulyap sa Aking Pinanggalingan (Glimpses Into My Beginnings) detailing his early life and his experience of the Second World War.[4][7]
Ferriols was born in Sampaloc, Manila (North Sampaloc), of Ilocano ancestry, and learned to speak in what he referred to as "North Sampalokese," a variant of Tagalog mixed with Ilocano. He recounts:
At home, the grown-ups talked to each other in Ilocano or Spanish. To the children they talked—condescendingly, I felt—something they called Tagalog. In the grassy roadways children of former farmers and of comers from elsewhere played together and talked to each other in something we called Tagalog.
He continues:
Then it was time to go to school. Trying to make friends in the playground, I talked to my peers in something I thought was Tagalog and was laughed at. In North Sampaloc nobody felt superior to you if you spoke a different accent or mixed Ilocanisms with your Tagalog. Not three kilometers away, the little sons and daughters of the Tagalese were enforcing elitist norms. Slowly I came to know that my language is not Tagalog but North Sampalokese.
His experience of speaking in the peculiar North Sampalokese shaped his thinking on the nature of language and its relevance in pagmumuni-muni (reflection) and pamimilosopiya (philosophizing). In reflecting on the language of his youth decades later, and after a chance encounter with an old neighbor who spoke the same, he thought: "In six years, one comes to know that, for human thinking, North Sampalokese is better than Plato's Greek."[8]
Religious life and education
Ferriols entered the Society of Jesus as a novice in 1941, having entered the Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches at the age of 17.[4] After surviving the war, he studied theology in Woodstock, Maryland and was ordained a priest on June 19, 1954. He later earned his Ph.D. at Fordham University, New York with a dissertation on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. At Fordham University, Dietrich von Hildebrand became one of his professors.
Ferriols taught at the defunct Berchmans College in Cebu City before he moved to Loyola School of Theology.[9]
