The 20th century can adequately be called philosophy’s Age of Identity Crisis as it is plagued with discourses critiquing philosophy. One of the most damaging critiques of philosophy in the past century was made by Ludwig Wittgenstein. He has famously declared the nonsensicality of philosophy after the publication of his first magnum opus, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. As a testament to his work, he thereafter abandoned philosophizing altogether. This abandonment did not take long as he later returned to philosophizing, marked by his second magnum opus, the Philosophical Investigations. This return showed a radically different notion of language and a different approach to the critique of philosophy, but nevertheless an equally damaging one. If Wittgenstein’s critique is indeed damaging, it is curious that philosophy has continuously thrived in the several decades since. Philosophy, specially the analytic tradition, seems to have swept Wittgenstein’s critique under the rug by continuously philosophizing without adequately dealing with its nature. Alain Badiou, a contemporary French philosopher, attempts to deal with Wittgenstein’s critique by properly placing him in the history of philosophy, alongside other critics of philosophy whom he calls “antiphilosophers”. Badiou, however, only goes as far as saying that the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was an antiphilosopher, calling the Wittgenstein of the Investigations “sophistic”. In this thesis, I argue that the Wittgenstein of the Investigations is also an antiphilosopher. Drawing from Badiou’s scattered writings on antiphilosophy and considering other contemporary accounts, I draw a definition of antiphilosophy. I then apply the definition to both the Tractatus and the Investigations. I argue that both works of Wittgenstein share the same, continuing project. If this continuity is correct, there is no reason for Badiou to reject an antiphilosophical reading to the Investigations.

This dissertation examines the interplay of conflict, negotiation and collaboration among the natives of Laguna and the Spanish authorities in the formation of colonial spaces: the pueblos. As the pueblos were founded in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and their corollary institutions established, the people of Laguna, the friar missionaries and the Spanish government became enmeshed in a web of interactions contextualized in these spaces. The dissertation studies and clarifies the process of pueblo foundation. It also explains the institutions that were inextricably linked to the pueblo—the Church, tribute, labor and personal services—and examines the kinds of interactions that arose within these institutions. Finally, it elucidates the roles of the principalia of Laguna as brokers in these interactions.

The Iraya Mangyans form one of the eight indigenous ethnolinguistic groups on the island of Mindoro, which is located off the southwestern coast of Luzon. This thesis presents a description of the grammar of the language spoken by the Iraya Mangyans, particularly in the northwestern part of Oriental Mindoro.

There have been few studies on the Iraya Mangyan language, and most of the linguistic studies, which do include this language, deal with its genetic relationship with other Mangyan languages and with other Philippine languages (Zorc, 1974; Barbian, 1977; and Reid, 2017). To date, the most extensive description of the language was made by Tweddell (1958), however, it is only limited to the description of Iraya phonology and morphology.

This study seeks to present a more comprehensive grammar of the language by revisiting the phonological and morphological structure of the language, and by describing the syntactic patterns and operations in Iraya. Some of the noteworthy features of the language include the lack of case markers, the lack of distinction between dual and plural personal pronouns in terms of case, the use of grammaticalized gender markers, and the limited productivity of aspectual marking on verbs through affixation. There is also no overt relativizing morpheme in the language, and the relative clause is simply juxtaposed to the head noun that it modifies.

As with most Philippine languages, Iraya is a primarily predicate-initial language. However, in cases where the actor is encoded as a personal pronoun, there is a strong preference for it to appear in the pre-verbal position.

Word order is relatively strict in this language. The grammatical relations of arguments can be discerned from the semantic roles they play within the sentence, their position within the sentence, and the focus affix attached to the verb. The strict word order in the language is hypothesized to be due to the lack of differentiation in the case marking of core arguments within the sentence.

This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the language and provides an overview of the language situation of the Iraya Mangyans of Oriental Mindoro. Chapter 2 provides a review of previous studies on this language, with particular attention paid to Tweddell’s description of Iraya phonology and morphology. Chapter 3 introduces the phonemic inventory of the language and the morphophonological processes that occur in the language. Chapter 4 presents the categorization of morphemes and the various word formation processes in Iraya. Specific grammatical categories such as the case, number, and gender of nouns, as well as aspect, focus, and modality of verbs are discussed in this chapter as well. Chapter 5 presents the phrasal and clausal structures in Iraya. Syntactic operations such as coordination and subordination are also discussed. Finally, Chapter 6 presents a summary and implications of the current findings, as well as recommendations for future studies on the language.