[Slightly revised (2014) paper published in Kaisipan 1 (1): 2013 [Opisyal Dyornal ng Isabuhay, Saliksikin,

Ibigin ang Pilosopia (ISIP), a philosophical association based in Bulacan State University, Malolos, Bulacan.]

FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY: PAST AND PRESENT1

Rolando M. Gripaldo, Ph.D.

Contrary to what skeptics believed, there is Filipino philosophy in the Western

traditional sense that should be distinguished from ethnophilosophy or cultural philosophy. This
paper tries to elucidate this philosophical development by identifying the Western model of
philosophizing, by clarifying the meaning of “Filipino philosophy,” by giving examples from the
history of Filipino philosophers, and by mentioning the significance and prospects of Filipino
philosophizing.

INTRODUCTION

One of the major activities of the analytic philosophical tradition is the clarification of the meanings of
words, phrases, and sentences. I presume from the title of my paper—“Filipino philosophy: Past and present”—
that we understand what are meant by the words “past” and “present.” So I will proceed with the phrase
“Filipino philosophy” and attempt to clarify its meaning, for it will be useless for us to go on talking about the
historical development of Filipino philosophy unless we are clear as to its meaning.
There are two terms here to analyze: “Filipino” and “philosophy.” And there are many questions to ask:
(1) What or who is a Filipino? (2) What is the meaning of “philosophy”? (3) How can we determine whether a
particular kind of thinking is philosophical or not? (4) How do we know whether a particular kind of philosophy
is Filipino or not? And (5) Is it necessary for one to be seriously—and even perhaps professionally—called a
philosopher to have a degree in philosophy? These are questions we must answer in passing as we go along
with our discussions (see Gripaldo 2009a, 1-9; 2012a, 59-65).

GREEK PHILOSOPHY AS MODEL

The ancient Greeks did not have a constitution that defines who a Greek is, but they were able to
identify themselves, by the time of Thales [620-546 BC], the first Greek philosopher, as Greeks living in
various city-states and regions. The Greeks2 came, of course, from various tribes and, according to one version,
after the Trojan War these tribes formed the Great Amphictyonic League composed of twelve tribes.3
When Thales of Miletus, an Ionian philosopher, began philosophizing and spread his philosophical
thoughts, historians of philosophy marked him as the father of philosophy. Although it was said that he went to
Egypt and gained the perspective of logos rather than of mythos, he did not have a formal training in
philosophy. He did not have a degree in philosophy, so to speak. He simply asked a primordial question out of
wonder: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” For him the fundamental substance of the universe is
water. In other words, in reply to our fifth question above (5), it is not necessary to have a degree in
philosophy—like Jose Rizal—to be a philosopher but one must be able to show coherence and consistency in
his writings or teachings about his philosophical ideas.4
Thales became the first teacher of philosophy and he had students, one among which was Anaximander,
who in turn had a famous student by the name of Anaximenes. Later philosophizing spread to the other regions
of Greece until it developed into a golden age in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. After Aristotle, we have the
Greek and Roman stoics, hedonists, eclectics, and neoplatonists (see the Sahakians 1970, 581-83). The

1
important thing here is that the body of philosophical literature produced by Greek individual thinkers was
subsequently called “Greek philosophy.”
The term philosophy was coined by Pythagoras, an Ionian mathematician-philosopher of Samos, from
two Greek words philia (love) and sophia (wisdom). It was said that the wisdom of man is derivative from the
wisdom of God since God is the only truly wise, or is Wisdom Himself. Man can only be a lover or friend of
wisdom (see Chroust 1964). In this regard, in answer to our second question above (2), philosophy generally is
a body of principles that contains seeds of wisdom or ideas of great significance.
A philosophical question is one wherein we go beyond what is empirically given in experience to seek
for the connecting link to all or most of these data of experience. So we ask questions as to the nature, purpose,
or moral justification of the what is. We ask questions for the authenticity of what appears—since it can be
illusory—as in searching for the authentic life, authentic knowledge, authentic beauty, and so on. In answer to
our third question above (3), the answers to these types of questions are what constitute philosophical thinking.
Why is the Greek philosophical model important? It is important because if we want to seek a genuine
or an authentic Filipino philosophy, then we must have a body of philosophical literature that is produced by
Filipino individual thinkers. This is the same sense in which we call a body of philosophical literature as British
philosophy, German philosophy, French philosophy, or American philosophy. We enumerate, together with
their respective philosophies, individual British, German, French, or American thinkers.

FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY

There are at present three different views about “Filipino philosophy.” Any taxonomy on this topic—
Feorillo Demeterio III (2012a), for example, has a taxonomy of sixteen different meanings of “Filipino
philosophy”—can always be reduced to these three categories. The first is the traditional or the authentic
philosophical approach; the second is the cultural approach; and the third is the nationality or constitutional
approach.

Traditional/Philosophical Approach

The traditional approach is the genuine philosophical approach. It answers the question, “What is your
own philosophy?” It is the truly philosophical approach as traditionally used by historians of philosophy. It
follows the Greek philosophical model. It enumerates Filipino individual philosophers and discusses their
respective philosophical ideas. I have so far written two books—Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach,
Part I, Sections 1 & 2 (2009c and 2009d) on this type of approach. In these books I discussed the philosophical
ideas of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Manuel Quezon, Jose Laurel, Renato Constantino, R.
Esquivel Embuscado, Cirilo Bautista, Claro Ceniza, and Rolando Gripaldo. No doubt, this list is not complete
and certainly the discussions of the philosophical views of these philosophers are not exhaustive. A complete
history of Filipino philosophy has yet to be written.

Cultural Approach

The second approach is the cultural one. It answers the question, “What is the people’s philosophical
perspective?” or “What are the philosophical views of the people based on their socio-linguistic, cultural, and
folk concepts or the like?” Originally, I called this the anthropological approach (1996, 3) because Leonardo
Mercado (1976), the author of the book Elements of Filipino philosophy, is an anthropologist. Florentino
Timbreza (1982), who wrote Pilosopiyang Pilipino, also followed the anthropological approach (see Mancenido
2010, 80-94). But when I attended in Tehran in 1999 the World Congress on Mulla Sadra—a philosophical
conference on an Iranian philosopher—I met Dr. George F. McLean, the editor of various books published by
the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.5 In 2000 I requested him to write the foreword of the first
edition of my book, Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, Part I, Section 1 (2000a). He suggested that I

2
use “cultural” instead of “anthropological,” since any social science approach to Filipino philosophy—be it
anthropological, psychological, sociological, and so on—is basically, broadly speaking, cultural in nature.6
To distinguish the genuine philosopher in the Greek traditional model of an individual who does his own
original philosophizing on various philosophical themes from the cultural model of hermeneutic
philosophizing—that is an individual who extracts interpretatively the myriad philosophical underpinnings,
presuppositions, implications, or nuances of Filipino languages and dialects, myths, folk songs, riddles, folk
sayings, and the like—I now broadly use the term “ethnophilosopher.”7 The product of an individual who
philosophizes is a personal philosophy, while the product of an individual who extracts philosophical ideas
from the languages and folk literature of a group of people is an ethnophilosophy (see the comments of Hallen
2010, 73-85). This distinction is very significant in the Philippine setting as the cultural or ethnophilosophical
approach seems to undermine the authenticity of the genuine Filipino philosopher. So far, I have distinguished
the philosopher from the historian of philosophy and the ethnophilosopher. The first is the authentic thinker in
the sense that he creates his own philosophy which is distinguishable from the ideas of other philosophers,
although this may not be purely original. The latter two extract the philosophical ideas either from the writings
or lectures of philosophers (and present these historically) or from the cultural oral or written literature of an
ethnic group (tribal or national).
We should also distinguish the ethnophilosopher from the philosopher of culture. The former extracts
the embedded philosophical underpinnings of a people’s languages, folk literature, folk reasoning, and so on,
while the latter reflects upon the merits and demerits of one’s culture, how culture can be meaningful, what
essence there is—if any—of culture, the ethical dimensions of culture, and the like. An ethnophilosopher can be
a philosopher of culture and vice versa, but the two activities are quite distinct. Moreover, there are
ethnophilosophers who simply remain as ethnophilosophers by resisting any meaningful philosophical change
of one’s culture (see Gripaldo (2012a, 59-65).

Nationality/Constitutional Approach8

The third approach I call the nationality or constitutional approach. It answers the question, “How do we
classify a Filipino work on a Western or Eastern subject from the point of view of bibliography writing?” When
I was gathering the philosophical materials of a research on a bibliography on Filipino philosophy (1996,
2000b, 2004) I simply gathered all writings by Filipinos on any philosophical topic, including
ethnophilosophical topics, together with the writings of foreigners on Filipino thinkers like Rizal and
Constantino. But when I began classifying the works into several philosophical categories—like ethics,
epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and so on—I was faced with the problem as to what to include as
Filipino philosophy. A more accurate classificatory criterion was needed. What is Filipino philosophy from the
perspective of bibliographic writing? What is a Filipino in the first place and who are the Filipinos? Should I
consider a work on Bertrand Russell’s idea of neutral monism—written by a Filipino—a work on British
philosophy or is it a work on Filipino philosophy? Most of the writings I have gathered are of this nature—a
Filipino work on Heidegger’s Dasein, on Sartre’s existentialism, on Foucault’s genealogy, on Plato’s republic,
and so on. These are works of Filipino philosophy scholars (see Gripaldo 2009b). What is the standard criterion
for classifying philosophical works? So you see how great my predicament was.
If I discard all Filipino writings on foreign philosophers and philosophies, then my research work will be
reduced into a few pages as there are only very few writings done on both (i) ethnic and indigenous
philosophical ideas and (ii) on original or derivative but distinctive philosophical works by Filipinos
themselves. This is something I was not prepared to do.
The normal or standard procedure is to classify Filipino works on foreign philosophies in terms of
substance or content with the nationality of the author simply taken for granted. So a Filipino work on
Heidegger’s concept of Being is a work on German philosophy; a Filipino work on Sartre’s concept of
nothingness is a work on French philosophy; and so on. The standard central focus of analysis, in this case, is
the substance or subject matter regardless of the nationality of the author. A deconstruction is necessary. We
shift the central focus—or the criterion of classification—to the nationality of the writer himself or herself
3
regardless of the subject matter. The basis of this deconstruction is the fact that when we say that Heidegger’s
concept of Being is German philosophy, it is not the “concept of Being” that is German, but rather it is the
bearer of the idea—Heidegger himself—who is German. So when we deconstruct, we place the nationality of
the author at the center and place the subject matter at the periphery. There is another important reason for the
shifting of the center to the nationality of the author in that when a Filipino, for example, writes about
Heidegger’s concept of Being, the product is interpretative—even in basic expository writing on a philosopher’s
ideas, which, it has been claimed, has no so-called “Filipinoness”—but this hermeneutic insight, no matter how
slight, is essentially his or her own interpretation.
When we apply this new deconstructive perspective, a Filipino work on Heidegger’s concept of Being is
necessarily a work on Filipino philosophy in terms of the nationality of authorship and the hermeneutics that
goes with the writing of the work. This analysis enables me to justify the inclusion of Filipino works on foreign
philosophies—Western, Indian, Chinese, etc.—in my Filipino philosophy bibliography. And this is our answer
to the fourth (4) question above.
But deconstruction works both ways in so far as my Filipino bibliography is concerned. Deconstruction
can also mean a decentering, which suggests that there is no permanent center or periphery depending on the
situational need or context. I have collected some works by foreign authors on Rizal’s or Bonifacio’s ideas, for
example. What should I do with these if not to revert to the original center—the subject matter—regardless of
the nationality of the author? So Eugene Hessel’s (1983) book, The religious thought of Jose Rizal, is likewise
included in the bibliography.
In contemporary times, the author’s nationality is defined in the country’s constitution. In answer to our
first question above (1), a Filipino generally comes from the Malayan race, and he is a Filipino as stipulated in
the 1987 Philippine Constitution (Art. IV, Secs. 1-5). It is for this reason that sometimes I call the nationality
approach as also the constitutional approach to Filipino philosophy.

DEMETERIO’S TAXONOMY

Feorillo Demeterio III enumerates sixteen supposedly different but related meanings of the term
“Filipino philosophy.” According to him (2013), this term is used to refer to:

1) the grassroots or folk philosophies of Filipinos;

2) the lectures of some Filipino academicians on Scholasticism and Thomism;
3) the lectures of some Filipino academicians on other foreign philosophical systems;
4) critical philosophy as practiced by some intellectuals outside the group of Filipino
academicians in philosophy;
5) the practice of logical analysis;
6) the practice of existential, phenomenological, and hermeneutical reflection;
7) critical philosophy as practiced by some Filipino academicians in philosophy;
8) the appropriation of foreign philosophical theories;
9) the appropriation of folk philosophies;
10) philosophizing with the use of the Filipino language;
11) the textualized/written exposition of foreign philosophical systems;
12) breakthrough/revisionist writings or researches that make original contributions by going
beyond the thoughts of certain established foreign philosophers;
13) the interpretation of Filipino identity and worldview;
14) researches on local cultural values and ethics;
15) Identification of presuppositions and implications of Filipino worldviews; and
16) the study on Filipino philosophical luminaries.

4
 The first three are unwritten or oral (“untextualized”) philosophy, the fourth is written
(“textualized”) but outside of the academe, while the last twelve are written (“textualized”) within the
academe. Since Demeterio (2014) writes about the contributions of some professional philosophers of
the Philosophy Department of De La Salle University to Filipino philosophy, we do not need to follow
his exclusions (like 1-4) from the list as less promising in developing “Filipino philosophy.”
Let us analyze the 16 uses or meanings of Filipino philosophy from the point of view of my three
approaches while indicating some possible overlaps through the use of brackets. Let us classify them at
face value.

• Traditional/Philosophical Approach
o 5) the practice of logical analysis;
o 6) the practice of phenomenological and hermeneutical reflection;
o 7) critical philosophy as practiced by some Filipino academicians in philosophy;
o 12) breakthrough/revisionist writings or researches that make original
contributions by going beyond the thoughts of certain established foreign
philosophers; and
o 16) the study on Filipino philosophical luminaries.

Possible overlaps:
o [8] the appropriation of foreign philosophical theories;
o [9] the appropriation of folk philosophies.
o [10] Philosophizing with the use of the Filipino language.9

• Cultural/National Approach
o 1) the grassroots or folk philosophies of Filipinos;
o 9) the appropriation of folk philosophies;
o 13) the interpretation of Filipino identity and worldview;
o 14) researches on local cultural values and ethics; and
o 15) identification of presuppositions and implications of Filipino worldviews.

Possible overlap:
o [10] Philosophizing with the use of the Filipino language.

• Nationality/Constitutional Approach
o 2) the lectures of some Filipino academicians on Scholasticism and Thomism;
o 3) the lectures of some Filipino academicians on other foreign philosophical
systems;
o 4) critical philosophy as practiced by some intellectuals outside the group of
Filipino academicians in philosophy;
o 8) the appropriation of foreign philosophical theories;
o 11) the textualized/written exposition of foreign philosophical systems.

Possible overlap:
o [10] Philosophizing with the use of the Filipino language.

This is a very rough and approximate classification. It is possible to have many actual overlaps or a
misclassification. For example, A Filipino may appropriate Nietzsche (8) such that one becomes a Nietzschean
through and through (nationality approach), but one can likewise appropriate Nietzsche by improvising and
5
becomes a Neo-Nietzschean, thereby elevating him or her to the traditional approach. Anyway, the point here is
that any taxonomy of this kind can be reduced to the three Filipino philosophy approaches.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY

Tribal/National Folk Philosophy

In his Elements of Filipino philosophy, Mercado (1976) extracts the philosophical underpinnings found
in three Filipino major languages: Tagalog, Bisayan, and Ilokano while in his Pilosopiyang Pilipino, Timbreza
(1982) extracts the philosophical presuppositions of various Filipino folk sayings, folk mythologies, folk songs,
riddles, and the like. I have also edited a collection of philosophical perspectives on Filipino cultural traits
(2005). As a whole, I classify these as sources of Filipino ethnophilosophy. More sources, I think, can be found
if one examines the multivolume work of Blair and Robertson (1973), The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898.

Filipino Enlightenment Period

This section is a summary of a summary. The fullest version of the exposition is found in my two
books, Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, Part I, Sections 1-2 (2009d and 2009e) while a summarized
version is expressed in my article, “Filipino philosophy: A Western tradition in an Eastern setting” (2009c) and
in my review of Emerita Quito’s The state of philosophy in the Philippines (1988).

Introduction

Undoubtedly, Filipino languages, folk literatures, values, and cultural traits antedate the period of
Filipino Enlightenment which occurred during the Propaganda Period and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.
The first volume of my work, Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, began with the discussion of Rizal’s
philosophical ideas and ends with the analysis of Constantino’s philosophical views on nationalism. Many
political luminaries do have philosophical views as expressed in their works like Graciano Lopez Jaena,
Marcelo H. del Pilar, Emilio Aguinaldo, Apolinario Mabini, and Claro M. Recto, among others, but at that time
I did not have sufficient time to do an extensive research on them. I will encourage others to do the research
themselves.
The point here is that the existing materials from Blair and Robertson and from the extensive reform and
revolutionary materials have not been examined closely and critically by many Filipino philosophy scholars
themselves. When I did a selective examination, especially of the latter materials, I found out that many of what
have hitherto been considered as only of historical and political value are in themselves of philosophical value
as well.

Enlightenment Period

For example, did anyone ever realize that Rizal’s extensive knowledge of Voltaire,10 who was an
Enlightenment thinker, made Rizal a follower of Enlightenment ideas, such as the supremacy of reason, the
deistic religion, the value of education, the inevitability of progress, and the like? The eighteenth-century
Enlightenment in France travelled to Spain in the first half of the nineteenth-century and reached the Philippine
shores in the second half of that century. It eventually led to the Philippine Revolution. An important
contribution of Emilio Jacinto on the Revolution was his idea of Liberty telling the Filipino youth that the only
remedy to the Philippine situation of oppression and exploitation is the expulsion of Slavery through violent
means. Bonifacio argued that there was relative freedom and economic development prior to the coming of
Spaniards but currently there was only relative economic exploitation and oppression.

6
American and Japanese Occupations

The most notable political luminaries during these periods were Manuel L. Quezon, who was the Senate
President and later the President of the Philippine Commonwealth, and Jose P. Laurel, who was the President of
the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic. Because of limited time and dwindling resources at the time, I
decided to focus my research on them. The ideas of Sergio Osmeña Sr., Jorge Vargas, and Claro M. Recto,
among others, are worth looking into.
Quezon was a political pragmatist who followed a practical political strategy which says that one should
aim for his ideals, but if obstacles to these are insurmountable, he must have an alternative that is better than
nothing. It must be obtainable and acceptable to him or to the people he represents and must be in the right
direction toward the ideal.
His political philosophy while Commonwealth President was Darwinian republicanism. He believes in
Social Darwinism, that governments are products of the struggle for survival and must be nurtured and
protected in order to extend the duration of their survival. Political parties are necessary only when they have
distinct programs of government, but he opposed them if their platforms are not different from the party in
power but whose existence is grounded on merely criticizing the government in order to grab power. A
partyless democracy (Quezon 1952) may be necessary when political parties do not have distinctive political
programs.
Laurel, on the other hand, was a compassionate Japanese collaborator. He was a double-agent—an agent
for the Japanese administration and an agent for the Filipino people. He believed that each one has a task to
perform. Some will have to go to the mountains, which he originally wanted to do, but since Quezon assigned
him to deal with the Japanese because of his prewar Japanese connections—as a lawyer he represented Japanese
economic interests in Mindanao—he came to the conclusion that his task was to cushion the oppressive impact
of Japanese exploitation of the Filipino people. He was able to save some Filipino guerillas and others suspected
to be against the government from capture or certain death. He provided community kitchens in Manila to help
alleviate hunger among the populace. He believed that there should be a balance between the people’s liberty
and the government prerogative. If there is too much liberty, anarchy emerges while if there is too much
prerogative tyranny ensues. This balance can be achieved through education and discipline of both the citizenry
and those running the government.

Immediate Post-Independence Period

Among the philosophical thinkers of the early post-independence period is

Renato Constantino who is both a political philosopher and a philosopher of culture. He is a nationalist who
argues that the only genuine or authentic Filipinos are the nationalists, and in this regard the Filipinos are a
minority in the Philippines. Moreover, the majority of the inhabitants of the archipelago are miseducated in that
they prefer what is foreign for what is local in almost anything.
Filipino colonial experience has generated a captive consciousness that is tailored to the needs of the
colonizers. It has developed a colonial consciousness with an indiscriminating attitude to favor foreign products.
This led to a consciousness of inferiority and a crab consciousness, or the tendency for those down below to pull
down those on top and those on top to push down those below. The net effect of this tendency is a very slow
progress for all of them.
A nationalist consciousness is needed to counter this captive consciousness. Its economic expression is
industrialization; its political expression is an independent foreign policy dictated by its own national interests,
not dictated by foreign interests; and its cultural expression is the development of a culture rooted in Filipino
heritage.

7
Emergence and Dwindling of Philosophy Departments

No doubt, prior to independence, some philosophy subjects were taught in Philippine schools like the
University of Santo Tomas, but the emergence of departments of philosophy came later. Early on, many
sectarian schools, like San Beda College, and nonsectarian private schools, like the University of the East, had
philosophy departments. It is during this period that many philosophy subjects from the West and the East were
introduced. When the economic survival and political stability of the schools became the dominant
consideration for course offerings, the number of philosophy departments slowly dwindled (see Gripaldo 1988;
1996, 13).

Later Post-Independence Philosophical Scenario

During this period, the existing philosophy departments produced many graduates of philosophy, some
of whom went to law school, business, banking, and so on. A few became professional philosophers or teachers
of philosophy. They trained for higher degrees and many finished the PhDs. In the process they also published
some philosophy articles here and there, for there was no philosophy journal but only multidisciplinary journals
like Diwa, Philippine Studies, Philippiniana Sacra, Budhi, and Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities
Research, among others. Only much later that there emerge some philosophy journals such as the Phavisminda
Journal, Kinaadman, Σοφια (Sophia) which later was succeeded by Φιλοσοφια (Philosophia): International
Journal of Philosophy, and the early Karunungan.
Among the philosophy writers during this period, I singled out four who have written books which can
be considered innovative in philosophical ideas. They are R. Esquivel Embuscado, Cirilo Bautista, Claro R.
Ceniza, and Rolando M. Gripaldo. Embuscado is a painter-philosopher; Bautista, a poet-philosopher; Ceniza, a
metaphysician; and Gripaldo, a circumstantialist.

R. Esquivel Embuscado. Embuscado (1975) is a dissectionist and his book is entitled The aesthetic[s] of
dissectionism: A general theory and practice. Reality is not to be captured statically as when a photographer
freezes a split of a second of reality in a still picture or when a painter captures realistically in a canvass a chunk
of reality in frozen time. Reality is dynamic—in perpetual motion—since time does not stand still. It is this
dynamic essence of reality that must be captured. The authentic painter must intuit reality in its dynamic
movement, depict it in a canvass, and project it to the future because reality is a movement in space-time.
Genuine art is not simply a continuation of past experience to the present; it must cut its umbilical cord from
that past and project the present to the open future. True art must no longer be past-present oriented but present-
future oriented.
Dissectionism consists of lines that crisscross the canvass from all directions in beautiful movement. Its
contents are the depressive social scenarios experienced at present: old age, war and intrigues, outcasts,
monotonous life, and the like. The authentic artist intuits these social contents from the unifold of
undifferentiated reality and creatively express them in multifarious dissectional ways through swirling motions
into the open future. Dissectionism is a rebellion against artistic permanency—against stagnation and imitation
(as in realism), mutilation of reality (as in cubism), fantasy (as in surrealism), uncreativity (as in repetitive
commercial arts, and so on. Dissectionism is artistic futurism.

Cirilo Bautista. Bautista (1998) writes in Words and battlefields: A theoria on the poem about the birth,
nature, travails, and death of a poem. He believes that every particular poem has an ideal poem looming large in
the consciousness of the poet. He calls it the Rubber Tower—which suggests being soft, bouncy, and pliant—
that can be transformed into any particular poem. The Bible (John 1:1, 14) says that in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was made flesh. Bautista sees the Rubber Tower as an organic flesh and the particular
poem is the “flesh made Word.” Since the Rubber Tower is nourished by the people’s historical experience,
then the particular poem is necessarily culture-bound.

8
 Part of the historical experiences of the poem is its transition from originally being an aural creation—
made for the ears—to its visual transformation—made for the eyes—through the invention of writing. The
printing press mummified the poem in a piece of paper: it becomes a “word painting” or a “piece of sculpture.”
When St. Ambrose started in the Middle Ages the institution of silent reading, the ears were completely
banished from participating in understanding the poem. Occasionally—to reclaim the ears’ prerogative to the
poem—oral reading is performed to wide audiences.
It is interesting to note that the poem has four layers of mask. That is why it can depict reality truly or
disguisedly. It can be warlike, liberator, propagandistic, ethical, religious, political, historical, etc. The first
layer is its lifeblood—the Verb—that prepares the poem’s intellectual direction. The second layer—the
Adjective—webs the poem’s magical powers by providing us with multicolored cinematographic landscapes
with sunrises and sunsets and with soothing or marching music. The Adverb is the “Adjective with legs” that
keeps the sunset and sunrise in motion and always in the march—in the forefront of the poem’s search for
meaning. The last layer—the Noun—is the “fulcrum of the poem’s turning.” It is carried on its back by the
Verb and the Adjective, and it makes the poem a history or history a poem.
The poem dies when (a) it is an expression of immaturity of the poet’s imagination or (b) when it is a
bad poem which cannot compare in quality with other poetic texts—inarticulate or poor in tactical preparation.

Claro R. Ceniza. Ceniza tries to reconcile Parmenides’ belief that change or motion is illusory from
Heraclitus’ belief that change is real. Ceniza (2001) says in the book Thought, necessity, and existence:
Metaphysics and epistemology for lay philosophers that Parmenides argues only the One—the Totality—is real,
while contingent objects are unreal or illusory because they involve contradictions. The unreality of contingent
objects is derived from Parmenides’ two postulates. The positive postulate says that what is rational is real and
what is real is rational (what can be thought exists and what exists can be thought). The negative corollary
postulate, however, says that what is not rational is unreal and what is unreal is not rational (what cannot be
thought does not exist and what does not exist cannot be thought). When applied to contingent phenomena, the
postulates involve a contradiction. For example, it is a contradiction for me to have a million dollars in a bank
and not to have them in the same bank at the same time. It appears in a contradiction that it is not possible to
have and not to have a million dollars in the same bank. For not being possible, or not being rational, the million
dollars do not exist. This nonexistence does not mean the million dollars are completely obliterated, because we
experience contingent objects like tables and chairs. How is it possible that conceptually contingent objects as
contradictories do not exist but experientially they do?
“To exist” is “to stand out.” Contingent entities do not stand out: they subsist. Ceniza provides several
examples. Red and green result in yellow. Yellow is the color that exists in an object but even if the colors red
and green do not stand out, they are there in the object subsisting. The rainbow colors subsist in white, which is
the plenum or neutral state, as all positive and negative numbers subsist in zero. The other meaning of “to exist”
is “to be caused” or “to make a difference” in the sense of affecting something or the surroundings.
The Parmenidean Being, the One, is the only existent; all contingent entities subsist in it. From the point
of view of the Parmenidean Being—the Great Plenum—contingent objects do not exist or stand out. From the
point of view of finite beings or persons, however, they stand out from the Plenum through experience—that is,
either phenomenologically (first person) or empirically (third person). From the perspective of finite beings,
subsistence is arrived at conceptually while existence is experiential: it is arrived at phenomenologically or
empirically.
There are many things that Ceniza discusses in his book, but I think his reconciliation of the views of
Parmenides and Heraclitus will serve as a good introduction.

Rolando M. Gripaldo. In his book Circumstantialism: An essay on situational determinism (2011),

Gripaldo tries to analyze the concept of choice and asks the question, “In what sense is choice free?” In relation
to the choosing situation, he identifies two senses of the word “circumstance.” The first sense is a situation
totalized. Here the person feels coerced and had no choice: “Under the circumstance, I have no choice but to

9
leave you.” The second sense merely means a situational condition and in this situation, the choosing agent
feels free to choose A or B or C: “Under the circumstances, I will choose A.”
Gripaldo also identifies two broad types of choosing situations: the rational and the nonrational.
Rational choices always involve deliberation and decision while nonrational choices are without deliberation
such as mistaken choices, habitual choices, unconscious choices, tossing a coin, picking a card from a deck of
cards, flippant choices, and choices done on simple preference.
Since situational conditions are the determinants of choice, Gripaldo enumerates four sources. Source1
is the person’s present external environment where alternatives are found. In case of abstract choices, like going
to Athens or not going to Athens, the spatiotemporal environment is still necessary because the chooser is
always located in space-time. Source2 is the person’s past with memory as the repository. This includes habits,
attitudes, and capacities. Source3 is the person’s future which projectively situates the choice in terms of
consequences, or its advantages or disadvantages in the future. The last is source4 which refers to the person’s
present physical and mental condition. All these sources through the determinant situational conditions help the
person in discerning the best choice under the circumstances.
Free choice is voluntary choice, that is, the person makes the choice without someone or an authority
forcing him or her to choose a particular option that he or she may not necessarily want. Gripaldo explains how
human freedom and situational determinism can be compatible in a choosing situation. The voluntary freedom
one feels when confronting the alternatives (stage 1) is carried over to the stage (stage 2) where one makes a
deliberation and a decision. When the chooser discerns the best choice during the second stage, the other
alternatives are simply blotted out. The four sources in the situation determine the best choice which the chooser
has discerned or has ascertained in the process of deliberation. In this regard, the chooser could not have chosen
otherwise. Some or all of the situational conditions the chooser may avow as his or her reasons for selecting the
choice. And when the chooser in stage 3 acts out the choice—by buying, eating, taking, etc., the choice—then
the act of choosing is fully consummated. Since the chooser is free in the sense of not being compelled by a
person, an authority, or the situation totalized, and since the situational conditions serve as the determinants of
one’s choice, then freedom and determinism are here compatible (soft determinism).11

CONCLUSION, SIGNIFICANCE, AND PROSPECTS

There is Filipino philosophy in the Western traditional sense of individuals doing philosophizing
brought about by problems—basically political, social, artistic, metaphysical, and situational—in the Philippine
philosophical horizon. Since there are many professional thinkers and teachers of philosophy nowadays who
have finished their MAs and PhDs, the prospects for mature philosophical thought to arise is greater now than
ever before. These thinkers, however, should aim not only to be scholars of existing philosophers but of going
beyond them in order to stand independently of them with significant innovativeness. That is what Ceniza did
with Parmenides. Better still is to offer a philosophical solution to existing philosophical problems as what
Embuscado, Bautista, and Gripaldo did. Scholarship, not pseudo-scholarship,12 should serve as a stepping stone
towards one’s own personal brand of philosophizing.13
It is important in the Philippines to distinguish genuine philosophizing, or what I have called elsewhere
as “philosophy proper” (2012b) from ethnophilosophy (folk philosophy). Philosophic sagacity is the articulation
of folk wisdom derived from folk philosophy. This is not what we mean by authentic philosophizing where a
person contemplates or makes a reflection on various philosophical themes about existence, morality, beauty,
situations, worldviews, and so on.
Finally, it is also important to recognize that Filipino philosophy, as it exists today, is generally a
Western kind of philosophizing. But this kind should be nurtured since the Filipino culture nowadays is
basically a Westernized one. From the perspective of a history of philosophy, the ethnophilosophical approach
serves as a prehistoric philosophy. William T. Jones and Robert J. Fogelin (1969) have done this kind of
historical analysis in the transition from myths to philosophy.

10
NOTES

1. Revised paper delivered at the PNPRS Panel during the PAP Philosophical Conference held on 9
April at the Ateneo de Manila University. The older version of this paper was originally delivered at Bulacan
State University on 27 April 2012. The theme of the seminar there was “Kumperensya sa Katayuan ng
Filipinong Pilosopiya Ngayon” (“Conference on the State of Filipino Philosophy Today”). The Philippine
National Philosophical Research Society funded this paper.
2. According to Bertrand Russell (1972, 7-8), the Greeks migrated to Greece in three successive waves:
Ionians, Achaeans, and Dorians. The Mycenaean civilization of the Achaeans was weakened by the wars
between the Ionians and Achaeans, and was “practically destroyed” by the invading Dorians.
3. The league was founded by Amphictyon, the brother of Hellen. The Greeks were later
referred to as the Hellenes after the Trojan War. According to Aeschines (see Wikipedia 2012a), the twelve
Greek tribes are:

…the Aenianes or Oetaeans…, the Boeotians…of Thebes, the Dolopes…, the Dorians…of Sparta,
the Ionians…of Athens, the Phthian Achaeans…, the Locrians…(Opuntians…and Ozolians…),
the Magnesians…, the Malians…, the Perrhaebians…, the Phocians…, the Pythians…of Delphi, and
the Thessalians…. Among the descendants of Hellen are mentioned Aeolus, Ion, Achaeus, Dorus,
Graecos and Makedon. It seems that the Macedonians were a Dorian tribe which stood behind in
Macedonia when the main Dorian tribes moved to the south.

4. It may be argued that Thales did not have a philosophy degree because there were no degree-granting
institutions at the time. But nowadays, even when academic degrees in philosophy are aplenty, one can still be a
philosopher even if he does not have a degree in philosophy. Others become philosophers even when they are
trained for a different job. As someone (Gripaldo 2009b, 47) says:

Benedicto de Spinoza wrote his famous book, Ethics, while working as a lens grinder.
Empedocles was a creative writer like William Shakespeare, expressing his philosophy in poetry
and tragedies. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a romantic philosopher of the 18th century, was by
training a musician and composer. Jose Rizal, although by training a medical doctor, was also a
novelist and philosopher.

5. To read more about CRVP publications, see http://www.crvp.org.

6. A quotation from Wikipedia (2011) reads:

…In some European countries, all cultural anthropology is known as ethnology (a term coined
and defined by Adam F. Kollár in 1783).

The study of kinship and social organization is a central focus of cultural anthropology, as
kinship is a human universal. Cultural anthropology also covers economic and political
organization, law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, material
culture, technology, infrastructure, gender relations, ethnicity, childrearing and socialization,
religion, myth, symbols, values, etiquette, worldview, sports, music, nutrition, recreation, games,
food, festivals, and language (which is also the object of study in linguistic anthropology).
[Italics supplied.]

7. Henry O. Oruka (see Wikipedia 2012b), a Kenyan philosopher, has identified four trends in
African philosophy: ethnophilosophy, philosophical sagacity, nationalistic–ideological philosophy, and
professional philosophy. To quote from Wikipedia (2012b):

11
 Ethnophilosophy has been used to record the beliefs found in African cultures. Such an
approach treats African philosophy as consisting in a set of shared beliefs, values, categories, and
assumptions that are implicit in the language, practices, and beliefs of African cultures; in short,
the uniquely African world view. As such, it is seen as an item of communal property rather than
an activity for the individual.
One proponent of this form, Placide Tempels, argued in Bantu Philosophy that the
metaphysical categories of the Bantu people are reflected in their linguistic categories.
According to this view, African philosophy can be best understood as springing from the
fundamental assumptions about reality reflected in the languages of Africa….
Philosophical sagacity is a sort of individualist version of ethnophilosophy, in which one
records the beliefs of certain special members of a community. The premise here is that,
although most societies demand some degree of conformity of belief and behaviour from their
members, a certain few of those members reach a particularly high level of knowledge and
understanding of their cultures' world-view; such people are sages. In some cases, the sage goes
beyond mere knowledge and understanding to reflection and questioning—these become the
targets of philosophical sagacity….
Professional philosophy is the view that philosophy is a particularly European way of
thinking, reflecting, and reasoning, that such a way is relatively new to (most of) Africa, and that
African philosophy must grow in terms of the philosophical work carried out by Africans and
applied to (perhaps not exclusively) African concerns. This view would be the most common
answer of most Western philosophers (whether of continental or analytic persuasion) to the
question ‘what is African philosophy?’…
Nationalist-ideological philosophy might be seen as a special case of philosophic
sagacity, in which not sages but ideologues are the subjects. Alternatively, we might see it as a
case of professional political philosophy. In either case, the same sort of problem arises: we have
to retain a distinction between ideology and philosophy, between sets of ideas and a special way
of reasoning…. [Italics mine, except Bantu Philosophy.]

8. For the first time in this paper, I replaced “national” with “nationality,” because “national” has been
confused with “nation.” “Nationality” and “nation” are, of course, political concepts but in the context of this
current analysis, they are accurately classified as constitutional and cultural (as in tribal or national culture),
respectively. In previous papers, I used “national” in the sense of nationality (constitutional) and not “national”
in the sense of a nation or tribe (cultural).
9. This category can include philosophical activities from the traditional, cultural, and constitutional
approaches to Filipino philosophy.
10. Rizal had the complete works of Voltaire.
11. Hard determinism says that every human action is strictly governed by deterministic laws while
libertarianism says that man’s free will is absolutely undetermined. Soft determinism argues that both freedom
and determinism are compatible.
12. A pseudo-scholar is one who does not exhaust all existing available materials on his
or her research, and because of this he or she is more liable to misinterpret a text. Jeremiah J. Joaquin (2010,
124), for example, after having read only a few sources of the many articles and books on Filipino philosophy
that I have written, argues that “Gripaldo operates with the assumption that prominent personalities of
Philippine history are already philosophers.” This is far from the truth. Through the writings of these prominent
political personalities, I have discovered that some of their works are in themselves philosophical, which make
them philosophers. This fact could have been known had the writer earnestly and seriously studied the
philosophies of these personalities as contained in the book, Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach, Part I,
Section 1 (2009d). He should have also considered the continuation of the presentation (Part I, Section 2)
(2009e).

12
 13. In one article (Gripaldo 2009b, 65), I described—with Ralph Waldo Emerson—a scholar of a
particular philosopher who could not go beyond that philosopher throughout his or her life as an “intellectual
suicide.”

REFERENCES

Bautista, Cirilo. 1998. Words and battlefields: A theoria on the poem. Manila: De La Salle University.
Blair, Emma Helen and James Alexander Robertson. 1973. The Philippine islands. Vols. I-LIII. Reprint edition.
Mandaluyong City: Cacho Hermanos.
Ceniza, Claro R. 2001. Thought, necessity, and existence: Metaphysics and epistemology for lay philosophers.
Manila: De La Salle University Press.
Chroust, Anton-Hermann. 1964. Some reflections on the origin of the term “philosopher.” New Scholasticism
38.
Demeterio III, Feorillo. 2013. Status of and directions for “Filipino philosophy” in Zialcita, Timbreza, Quito,
Abulad, Mabaquiao, Gripaldo, and Co. Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of Philosophy 14 (2).
________. 2014. Quito, Ceniza, Timbreza, Gripaldo, Mabaquiao and the contributions of De La Salle
University to the development of Filipino philosophy. Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of Philosophy
15 (2).
Embuscado, R. Esquivel. 1975. The aesthetic[s] of dissectionism: A general theory and practice. Pasay City:
By the author.
Gripaldo, Rolando M. 1988. Review of Emerita Quito’s The state of philosophy in the Philippines. Philippine
Studies 36 (4).
________. 1996. Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography. Foreword by Andrew Gonzalez. First edition.
Manila: De La Salle University.
________. 2000a. Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach. Part I, Section 1. First edition. Foreword by
George F. McLean. Manila: De La Salle University Press.
________. 2000b. Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography, 1774-1997. Second edition. Foreword by
Tomas Rosario. Manila: De La Salle University.
________. 2004. An Update, 1998-2002 on Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography [1774-1992, 1993-97].
Manila: DLSU College of Liberal Arts.
________. 2005. Filipino cultural traits. Edited by Rolando M. Gripaldo. Washington, D.C.: Council for
Research in Values and Philosophy.
________. 2009a. Is there a Filipino philosophy? The making of a Filipino philosopher and other essays.
Mandaluyong City: National Book Store.
________. 2009b. Filipino philosophy, Western tradition, and nation building. The making of a Filipino
philosopher and other essays. Mandaluyong City: National Book Store.
________. 2009c. Filipino philosophy: A Western tradition in an Eastern setting. The making of a Filipino
philosopher and other essays. Mandaluyong City: National Book Store.
________. 2009d. Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach. Part I, Section 1. Third edition. Foreword by
George F. McLean. Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc.
________. 2009e. Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach. Part I, Section 2. Second edition. Foreword by
George F. McLean. Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc. [First published in 2004 by De La Salle
University Press.]
________. 2011. Circumstantialism: An essay on situational determinism. Revised edition. Saarbrucken: VDM
Verlag Dr. Müller GmbH & Co. KG. [First published in 1977 as Circumstantialism. Dumaguete City:
Silliman University Press.]
_______. 2012a. Philosophy in culture: Embedded and disembedded. Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of
Philosophy 41/13 (1).
_______. 2012b. Editor’s notes. Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of Philosophy 41/13 (2).

13
Hallen, Barry. 2010. “Ethnophilosophy” redefined? Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical
Association of Kenya (PAK) New Series 2 (1).
Joaquin, Jeremiah J. 2010. Gripaldo and Mabaquiao on Filipino philosophy: A critical assessment of two
attempts to establish a Filipino philosophy. Dalumat 1 (1).
Jones, William T. and Robert J. Fogelin. 1969. A history of Western philosophy. Volume 1: The classical mind.
Beverly, MA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Mancenido, Marella Ada V. 2010. Filipino philosophy according to Mercado and Timbreza: A re-evaluation.
Dalumat 1 (1).
Mercado, Leonardo. 1976. Elements of Filipino philosophy. Tacloban City: Divine Word University
Publications.
1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines. 2001. Citizenship (Art. IV, Secs. 1-5). Available at
http://www.ldb.org/philcon/citizen.htm. Accessed: 17 April 2012.
Quezon, Manuel. 1952. A partyless government in a democracy [1940]. In Partyless democracy. Edited by
Ricardo R. Pascual. Quezon City: University of the Philippines.
Russell, Bertrand. 1972. A history of Western philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Sahakian, William S. and Mabel Lewis Sahakian. 1970. Realms of philosophy. Caloocan City: National Book
Store (with special arrangement with Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc.)
Timbreza, Florentino. 1982. Pilosopiyang Pilipino. Manila: Rex Book Store.
Wikipedia. 2011. Anthropology. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology. Accessed: 17 April
2012.
________. 2012a. Names of the Greeks. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Greeks.
Accessed: 16 April 2012.
_______. 2012b. African philosophy. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_philosophy. Accessed:
17 April 2012.

14