I got to know Spanish philosopher Jaime Nubiola’s book (2006)“El Taller de la Filosofía: una introducción a la escritura filosófica” (The Workshop ofPhilosophy: an introduction to philosophical writing) on the recommendation of Professor Marta Torregrosa, from the University of Navarra. Her proposal involved reflecting on the book, considering research and thinking as activities inherent to academic life. The teaching of Nubiola that I consider most relevant is the search for integration between living, thinking and being. Below I describe personal reflections on the challenges and virtues discussed by the author that helped me to better understand my experience.

First of all, your book allows us to appreciate the teachings of someone who knows the craft of philosophizing well, because of the way you propose to integrate living, thinking and being. I’m happy when we find someone who can be generous when it comes to sharing what they know. Throughout his book, Nubiola shares important life lessons amidst more practical recommendations. No matter what academic moment you’re in, you’ll learn great lessons from him.

Reading it invites us to reorganize our ideas, re-evaluate our course and see if we’re on the right track. In other words, it’s a book that can be read several times.

Reading and writing

In this process of defining my role, evaluating myself as a student, researcher and teacher, I can say that I am clear about my affinities, likes and abilities. And writing for me has become something I enjoy very much and for which I have managed to develop some skills. However, writing is a wide universe in terms of forms, audiences and languages. Today, my perception is that I have reached a stable condition, with certain capabilities, without having defined how I can evolve. Part of this situation is explained by the challenge of academic writing and publishing, in which we write in other languages, such as English and Spanish, since in my case my mother tongue is Portuguese.

An aspect also related to the accelerated publication process, which imposes demands on us to continue publishing, was the perception I had about my own way of reading. My impression is that when I read something, I read it “to write something”, thinking about a future article. In other words, reading has become performative, a means to an end. And it seems that this mentality is really hard to break. I notice that sometimes I read a magazine or a novel and, before I know it, I’m planning how “x” idea in the text could lead to “y” article. That’s why I’d like to regain the freedom to enjoy reading, to discover a story, a lesson revealed there.

The virtue of order

Without a doubt, Nubiola’s book offers us valuable advice for writing and for intellectual life. One of the most important parts is how he presents the virtues we need to achieve unity in life, unity between what we think, live and are. And this in itself is a great ethical teaching, valid not only for those who dedicate themselves to the search for truth. Looking at what he says, I understand that one virtue I still have a lot to develop is the virtue of order. Such a disposition gives order to what we do and how we act. When I look at my academic and professional goals, I realize that I have not always tried to achieve them in an orderly, sometimes chaotic way. Daily tasks could have been better planned, with set timetables and an appropriate distribution between academic and personal tasks. However, we don’t always achieve what we’re aiming for, which has its grace (and learning)!

I can tell you that balancing personal and professional life is a challenge. And this is more difficult when you really enjoy what you do. Until mid-2020, the experience of being a mother, wife, doctoral student and teacher showed me that reconciling everything has a high cost in the future, because we live in a thoughtless way, “in automatic mode”. Although we manage to fit everything into our schedules, important moments in our social and family life get lost and sometimes we can’t get them back. Those who cultivate the virtue of order will be able to respond confidently to life’s demands, based on their truth, knowing how to say “no” when necessary.

Humility

Another valuable piece of advice from Nubiola is to free yourself from the opinions of others. It sounds simple, but it takes maturity to achieve this independence, and I confess that I still have a lot to learn. By this I mean focusing more on what others will think when making decisions, rather than on your own opinions and values. A deeper root of this can be a certain selfishness in always wanting to be accepted, or insecurity in wanting to receive the agreement of others, at the risk of going against one’s own convictions and losing the truth about oneself. In the end, what we need is humility and self-knowledge. We also need to accept that we are fallible, that our ideas will not always be accepted and that we are not always right. Intellectual life is made together, as Nubiola comments, and fortunately this becomes more evident every day and helps me to grow.

Unity of life

One last and no less important point: “By giving away your knowledge you teach people how to live, because you give away the truth of your life”. In this sentence, Nubiola sums up much of what is in his book. From this I understand that the truest and most authentic knowledge of someone is that which consolidates the unity of their life, in other words, that which reflects who they are, think and live, rather than just what they know. When the truth of your life coincides with the life you want to live and with what you think, then from there we can deliver knowledge that is true and coherent with our being. It’s not an academic or segmented kind of knowledge. It is loving knowledge that can be offered generously to others. Until we find this unity, may we continue to grow at the right pace, in an orderly and beneficial way for those who share our path.

References

Nubiola, J. (2006). The philosophy workshop: an introduction to philosophical writing. (5th ed.). Pamplona: EUNSA.