Legion

Class started today. My morning was sort of ruined when I discovered that my old Chem prof. (the one I dropped) is again my instructor for Ch11. Whoopdeedoo.

Second class was my Ph104 class with Fr. Luis David S.J.

I'll start this commentary with a few anecdotes from Fr. David...

Legion: the name of the demon that posessed the demonaic man in the scriptures. Jesus asked, "demon, what is your name?" The demon answered "Legion, for we are many." The demonaic was not simply a single man. We are all demonaics with a legion of dissatisfactions in our being. Jesus asked it's name, and thus it's name, "Legion" was uttered. We though disdain fom naming Legion. We do not like to peer inside ourselves and see the dissatisfaction. We were taught to obey. This builds the dissatisfaction inside. Legion is inside us. The guilt, the fear... only when Legion is named can it be dealt with.

It's only been a day, but allow me to share my initial impessions of the person and the teaching style. He isn't your normal scholastic... Aside fom the fact that he is possibly the most cynical man I've ever met, and he speaks as if the whole of humanity is doomed to semblance, from what I've seen today, he seems to lecture not by concept; but rather, by insight. This is rather peculiar. I'm used to sir Soh's concept by concept approach. The concept approach allows us to formulate our own insights from the concepts discussed. It's like we're given a file folder with files inside. We then analyze why each file belongs in the folder. Fr. David saves us the "trouble" of thinking by giving us a pre thought of insight in it's raw post philosophizing form. We're the ones who now have to categorize it into a concept. It's like being given a file that we have to put into the proper folder. What's good about the concept approach is that analyzing why each file belong in the folder allows us to critically assess, and ask why. The insight method shuts that out. We then use prior knowledge to simply categorize the insight. The thinking then stops. We simply become parrots of his lectures. It ceases to become a personalized thinking experience, and it becomes a spoonfeeding session. That's just my initial impression... I'm sure there is more to all this then what I've seen in an hour and thirty minutes. No real judgments involved. Although this all seems so negative, I would just like to clarify that I honestly think I will love his class. The fact he gives us insights, not concepts, means that he THINKS of insights. He is his philosophy. This should be good.