The Life of Emerita S.

Quito
Emerita Quito is a Lady Philosopher. She was born on September 11, 1929 in San
Fernando, Pampanga and died on September 17, 2017. She considered herself as a pioneering
teacher in philosophy.
Educational Background
Emerita Quito graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from
the University of Santo Tomas. She took higher studies at the Universite de Fribourg in
Switzerland. From 1958 to 1965, she immersed herself in the works of Bergson, Husserl,
Jaspers, Heidegger, Marcel, and Sartre among others. Her European studies gave her firm
grounding on the philosophy of Plato, whose marked influence is seen in her dialogical method
of scholarly inquiry. It also enabled her to integrate the ideas of the best of the existentialists into
her way of seeing the world. Of them all, Jean Paul Sartre exerted the profoundest influence: “…
much as I refuse to admit, I am greatly influenced by Sartre because existentialism enabled me to
see things differently and with more depth.”She returned to the Philippines after having earned,
cum laude, a doctorate in Philosophy.

Return to the Philippines

In the mid-60’s, the Philippines was undergoing a challenging and dangerous social
transformation. There was the civil rights movement and the rise of student power or student
activism in the country. Into this milieu Quito gave her energies, writing as assistant editor of
UNITAS, the faculty magazine of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), and chairing the
Philosophy Department of UST’s Graduate School. From 1967 to 1970, she published three
major books and monographs; A New Concept of Philosophy (1967. UST Press), which was her
inaugural address for school year 1967-68: La Notion de la Liberté dans la Philosophie de Louis
Lavelle (1969. Studia Friburgensia), the first work in French written by a Filipino and accepted
for publication by the University of Fribourg; and Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Society
(1970. UST Press), which exerted a catalytic effect on the phenomenon of student protest in the
Philippines.
During this period, she also became a visiting professorial lecturer in Philosophy at the
Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle College, and Assumption College, extending her
influence on the students who were in the midst of the activist movement.Thus, in January 29,
1970, as head of the Division of Humanities of UST’s Graduate School, she shook the halls of
academe with her St. Thomas Moore lecture on fellow-Fribourger, Herbert Marcuse, who
espoused the idea of the Great Refusal. Three days prior to the lecture, students had
demonstrated in front of Congress protesting against corruption in government. A day after her
lecture, student activists of the First Quarter Storm held the siege of Malacañang, During the
same day, these activists became victims of the Mendiola massacre.
 Quito captured not only the imagination and fervor of the students but also of the media.
She was called “the darling of student philosophers, rebels, intellectuals, and even
demonstrators,”
Paying heed to the fact that at the height of classroom boycotts, student demonstrators continued
to attend her lectures. Emerita Quito was one of UST’s main discussants on the issue of
Filipinization, moving for a Filipino oriented curriculum and challenging teachers to teach in
Pilipino
Quito led the formation of the National Association of College and University Professors
(NACUP), believing that the faculty can be a third force in directing the country’s social and
political transformation. In 1971, she wrote four articles on Structuralism which were published
in the Manila Chronicle and UNITAS It was also in this same year that she became a full time
faculty member at De La Salle University, as well as Chair of the Philosophy Department upon
the invitation of Brother Andrew Gonzales, FSC, then Academic Vice-President. Meantime, the
Manila Chronicle continued publishing her “Mind” series of articles like “The Filipino Mind”,
“The Oriental Mind”, “The Greek Mind”, “The Medieval Mind”, “The Renaissance Mind”, and
“The Contemporary Mind”.
It was also at this point when she started her crusade in the propagation of Filipino in
academe. She challenged her fellow Filipino philosophers to write in the national language her
article “Philosophy in Pilipino, Anyone?” which was also published by the Manila Chronicle. To
prove that this was possible, she wrote the following year (1972) her book Ang Pilosopiya sa
Diwang Pilipino, making her the first Filipino philosopher to write a major philosophical work in
the national language.
In 1973, the French Government acknowledge her potential contribution to the world of
philosophy by awarding her a grant to pursue further studies in Comparative Philosophy, as well
as Sanskrit, at the University of Paris at the Sorbonne.The following year, 1974, she was chosen
as the first (Association of South Asian Institutions of Higher Learning) ASAIHL annual
lecturer in Singapore. The lecture she delivered entitled “Oriental Roots of Occidental
Philosophy” was published as a monograph both in Manila and Kuala Lumpur. Simultaneous
with this was the publication of another major work in Pilipino, Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilosopiya.
On her 52nd year in 1981, Emerita Quito received and accepted the invitation from the
French government to teach at the University of Nancy II and at the University of Paris III.
Greatly saddened by the country’s deteriorating social, political, economic, and cultural life, she
had refused to read any newspaper or view the television during the ignominious height of the
Marcos dictatorship.Thus, when she taught “Philippine History and Culture” in these French
universities, she carried in her heart and mind the burden of the Philippines’ sad state of affairs.
But the physical distancing served only to intensify her study of Philippine culture within the text
of lived historical experiences. During this period, her intellectual energies were focused on her
continued advocacy for Filipinization in education. She wrote several articles advancing her
views. Among these were: “Ang Pilosopiya: Batayan ng Pambansang Kultura” (1981); “A
Filipino Philosophy of Value” (1983); “Isang Teoriya ng Pagpapahalaga” (1984); “Filipino
Volksgeist in Vernacular Literature” (1984); and “Pilosopiya ng Edukasyon sa Diwang Pilipino”
(1985). Two of her major works were published by the De La Salle University Press: Homage to
Jean Paul Sartre (1981), and Three Women Philosophers (1986), both of which were delivered as
professorial chair lectures.
Recognition also came from many universities and institutions all over the world. Her
lectures took her to Malaysia during the 1000th anniversary of Avicenna; to Hawaii for the
international conference on “God: The Contemporary Discussion”; to Portugal for the world
conference in philosophy and theology; and to Thailand for the UNESCO meeting of experts in
Philosophy to write the country report on the “Teaching and Research in Philosophy in the
Philippines.” In 1984, she was awarded by the French government the highest academic
decoration Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Academiques. A year after, she was honored as the
Most Outstanding Educator of the Philippines by Metrobank Foundation.
But these academic achievements did not insulate this academician-scholar from the
realities of the times. She held true to her involvement with the country’s historical events,
raising the social consciousness of her students and colleagues in the countless symposiums
conducted at De La Salle University and other schools in Manila. Just before the fall of Marcos,
she had driven home the point during a discussion on civil disobedience that in the fluxes of
history, there is always the ripe moment or Kairos where the inevitable finds its point of
expression. Needless to say, she marched in the rallies and demonstrations against the Marcos
dictatorship after the death of Benigno Aquino.

Sources:
“Dr. Emerita Quito.” De La Salle University. Accessed October 15, 2021.
https://www.dlsu.edu.ph/university-fellows/dr-emerita-quitoi/.

Quito, Anne. “The Philippines' Greatest Female Philosopher Has Died.” Quartz. Quartz.
Accessed October 15, 2021. https://qz.com/725370/emerita-quito-the-greatest-forgotten-
filipino-philosopher-has-died/.

Emerita Quito was as a pioneering teacher of Philosophy in the Philippines. She was the
Chairperson of the Philosophy Department of UST’s Graduate School as well as the chairperson
of the Philosophy Department of De La Salle University. She was called “the darling of student
philosophers, rebels, intellectuals, and even demonstrators,” paying heed to the fact that at the
height of classroom boycotts, student demonstrators continued to attend her lectures.