21/09/2026
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On September 21, 1972, Ferdinand E. Marcos signed Proclamation No. 1081, placing the Philippines under Martial Law. What followed was a rupture in the possibility of democratic life, with the state acquiring an authority capable of turning dissent into a punishable act and political opposition into a condition of danger.
The violence of the regime was felt most directly by those who were arrested and tortured, yet its reach extended further through the fear that surrounded every act of questioning. When people become conscious that dissent can bring them within the reach of the violence inflicted upon those who have spoken before them, the question of whether one should speak against violence becomes inseparable from whether one can survive the consequences of speaking. Fear acquires enough political force when the possibility of repression becomes sufficient to restrain action before repression occurs. Those living under Martial Law who had witnessed the violence inflicted upon others began to measure their own words and movements against the possibility of being marked as a criminal. The fear of punishment made silence increasingly difficult to distinguish from submission
To remember Martial Law is to meaningfully confront this history of state repression as a problem that remains politically and philosophically relevant in the present.
We remember those who fought before us, those who stood against an authoritarian regime that enforced their silence and paid for their defiance with their freedom and their lives. Their struggle remains within the history we inherit and reminds us of what was fought for and what was risked for democracy and the freedom to question. We must carry their defiance because remembering their struggle means keeping it from becoming a forgotten part of our history.
As thinkers, we have a responsibility to question power, especially when that power necessitates our silence and makes obedience appear necessary and normal. To think freely is to keep open the possibility of questioning what authority presents as unquestionable and necessary for society. Societas Philosophiae stands with this responsibility and with the continued struggle to keep democratic life possible.
