[This paper, slightly revised, was presented during the 21st World Congress of

Philosophy in Istanbul, Turkey in August 2003. It was published in 2007, 2008, and
2009. This article should be related to the explanations, especially Chaps. I-II of the
book, Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography 1774-1997. Connected to these two
works are the papers, Filipino philosophy: Past and present (2013) because of some
modifications in the classification of the categories and Cultural philosophy: African
and Filipino dimensions (forthcoming). It is best to read the paper Filipino Philosophy:
A Western Tradition in an Eastern Setting.]

IS THERE A FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY? 1

Rolando M. Gripaldo
In the Philippines, the debate centers on the issue whether or not
there is such a thing as Filipino philosophy. The author argues that there
is, but it should be understood in three approaches: traditional, cultural,
and national. The traditional approach names individual philosophers as
in Greek philosophy where historically we name Thales, Anaximenes,
Anaximander, Xenophanes, Parmenides et al. The early Filipino thinkers
Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto et al.were Enlightenment
philosophers. The European Enlightenment of the 18th century traveled to
Spain in the first half of the 19th century and reached the Philippines in
the second half of that century. The cultural approach looks at a holistic
philosophical perspective of a people on the basis of their communal
languages, folktales, folksayings, cultural traits, and the like. It is said, for
example, that the Filipino is philosophically fatalistic, personalistic,
sensitive, caring, hospitable, and the like. Lastly, the national approach
which attempts to justify that expository works written by Filipinos on
Western and Eastern philosophies are a manifestation of the Filipino
mind as s/he hermeneutically fuses his/her horizon with the subject matter.
A Filipino interpretative exposition of Jean-Paul Sartres philosophy of
human freedom, for instance, is a Filipino philosophy in this sense, that is,
by virtue of the authors nationality.

MARGINALIZATION OF FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY

The onslaught of Oriental and Western philo sophies in t he Philippines
has marginalized Filipino philo sophy.
(The term Oriental philosophy
generally refers to Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophies.) A react ion to
this marginalizat ion took three forms: (1) Filipino philosophy in the
tradit ional sense does not exist; (2) if at all there is Filipino philo sophy it is
in a holist ic cultural sense based on Filipino languages, fo lksayings, myt hs,
and the like; and (3) Filipino philo sophy const itutes the co mbined Filipino

scho larly philosophical writ ings on Oriental and Western philosophy b y

Filipinos. Each of these react ions, of course, needs to be clarified.
The first reaction and the traditional sense
of Filipino philosophy
Not a few objected to the first react ion. There are certainly theses,
dissertations, art icles, and booksalbeit a handfulin Philippine
universit ies which suggest the existence of Filipino philosophy in the
tradit ional sense. My own book, Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach
(Part I, Section 1) (2000a), attempts to show the existence o f such a
philosophy. 2 The traditional sense is based on the standard usage o f
historians of philosophy. Greek philosophy, for example, came out as an
offshoot of the sociocultural/historical experience of the ancient Greeks, and
historians of philosophy refer to it by enumerat ing the philosophers. So, in
Greek philosophy, we study the works of individual philo sophers such as
Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. The same is true wit h French, German,
Brit ish, or American philosophy. Filipino philosophy, in this sense, must be
an enumerat ion of Filipino philosophers.
The Age of Enlightenment, which began in central Europe in the 17th
century, traveled to Spain in the first half of the 19th century and reached the
Philippines in the second half o f that century. So the first set of Filipino
philosophers, the reformists and revo lut ionists (part icularly Jose Rizal, M.
H. del Pilar, Andres Bonifacio, and Emilio Jacinto), were Enlightenment
thinkers. They were influenced by Vo ltaire, Jo hn Locke, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, 3 and others. The Age o f Enlightenment extols the primacy o f
reason, the inevitabilit y o f progress, the essent ial humanit y o f man, the
significance of educat ion, and suchlike.
One of my graduate students in philo sophy remarked that Filipino
Enlightenment philosophers were basically Western-oriented thinkers. That
is true but they did not philo sophize out of the blue. Their philosophizings
were the offshoot of their historical co lonial experience under Spain. They
appropriated Enlightenment thought as significant ly relevant to their
sociocultural experience. The different Filipino cultural co mmunit ies of that
time had similar experiences of human degradat ion, t yranny, educat ional
deprivat ion, irrat io nalit y, etc. Filipino Enlightenment thinkers art iculated the
holist ic experience of the Filipino people (the masses and t he elite) since, as
the expressio n goes, philo sophy does not exist in a vacuum. Tradit io nal
Filipino philosophy, in the same sense as Greek philosophy, const itutes,
in other words, the philosophy of the Filip ino people.
The second reaction and the cultural sense
of Filipino philosophy
The second react io n has a dual funct ion: first ly, it attempts to fill t he gap
in the alleged nonexistence of Filipino philo sophy in t he tradit ional sense

and, secondly, if at all there is such a philosophy, as in Greek philosophy, it

rests on a mistake. According to this second react ion, the mistake lies in the
fact that Filipino philosophy in the tradit ional sense (or Greek philo sophy for
that matter) does not represent the spirit of the people, the ho list ic
philosophical point of view that can only be discerned from the peoples
languages, fo lk tales, fo lk sayings, riddles, and the like. I call this t ype o f
thinking as Filipino philosophy in the cultural sense.
In her art icle,
Volkgeist in vernacular literature, Emerita Quito (1990) argues that
philosophy by definit io n is universal and hence, strict ly speaking, there is
no German or French or Brit ish philosophy but only German, French, or
Brit ish thinkers. The word Volkgeist or spirit of the people or diwa in the
Filipino language is [the] most appropriate [meaning of philo sophy] because
we verily seek the spirit of the Filipino people.
Philosophers of the analyt ic tradit io n object to this react io n in three
ways: (1) Filipino philosophy in t he cultural sense is not in keeping wit h
standard usage in t hat tradit ional philo sophizing is an act ivit y of individual
persons wit hin a given communit y, articulating the philosophical problems o f
the times. It is not an act ivit y of groups of people, especially at the nat ional
level; (2) it is not generally true that Filipino philosophy or
German/French/Brit ish philo sophy does not represent the spirit o f the people
within a temporal domain unless, o f course, it is assumed t hat philosophy
exist s in a vacuum.
Filipino Enlightenment thinkers, for example,
represented and art iculated the travails and the spirit (the views, hopes, and
desires) of the people of the period because those were the philo sophical
problems at the t ime; and (3) a dist inct ion must be made between
philosophizing by reading/interpret ing the spirit o f t he people or of the t imes
(and o ffering solut ions to its philosophical problems) fro m philo sophizing by
extract ing t he philosophical presuppositions o f languages, fo lktales,
folksayings, etc. In (3), philosophizing is the act ivit y o f individual persons
but, while philo sophizing by reading/interpreting the spirit of the t imes
const itutes the tradit ional approach, philosophizing by extract ing
philosophical presupposit ions const itutes the cultural approach. In the latter,
we can affirm Filipino philo sophy in t he cultural sense and ment ion Filipino
thinkers working o n this approach such as Leonardo Mercado (1976) and
Florent ino Timbreza (1982).
The third reaction and the national sense
of Filipino philosophy
The third react ion is problemat ic. Not only that it tries to fill the gap in
the alleged nonexistence o f Filipino philo sophy, it also appears to be
oblivious o f t he fact that what the members of this group are t inkering about
are direct imports fro m Oriental and Western philosophy. The third react io n
are of three kinds. The first kind is to beco me a thorough scholar of any
Oriental or Western philosophy such that s/he beco mes an expert in it. S/He
writes expository works whose aim is to make popular the ideas of his/her

favorite philosopher or of the chosen philosophical area. The second kind is

to depart from just being an expert or a scholar in the first-kind sense, but to
modify those ideas in a uniquely original way such that one ceases to be, e.g.,
simply a Kant ian, but beco mes a neo-Kant ian. The second kind assumes
there are categories of the human mind and the human sit uat ion which are
universal and their philosophical problems will need universal so lut ions.
Object ions to this view abound because culture is situat io nally based and is,
therefore, relat ive to a given communit y, no matter how slight. There may be
universal philosophical problems but the solut io ns will be culture-based and
will have only family resemblances with other so lut ions, as Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1989) would say, rather than universalit y.
The third kind is to look for a just ificat ion of the prevalence of these
philosophical imports in Philippine schools and appropriate such foreig n
thoughts to the Filipino philosophical situation. The just ificat ion is basically
that Filipinos are a Western-oriented people who reside in Asia wit h
Oriental-Western ways and are jettisoned to the Global Age. Hence, Oriental
and Western philosophical ideas can be appropriated and modified
accordingly to suit the terrain, so to speak, of the local situat ion. A part of
it s manifestation is reflected in Filipino East-West comparat ive philo sophical
writ ings aimed at offering a solut ion to a local/nat io nal Filipino
philosophical dilemma or problem.
Whatever the merits o f the second and third kinds, they can be
considered a part of Filipino philo sophy in the tradit ional sense in that these
are philo sophizings of individual Filipinos themselves as solut ions to
particular problems. It is the first kind that is problemat ic. We can ignore it
except for the fact that in the history o f the development of philosophy in t he
Philippines it is the most numerous of Filipino philo sophical writ ings. In the
second edit io n of Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography (2000b),
which I collected on the subject (published as a CD-ROM by De La Salle
Universit y Press), writers of the first kind const itute, conservat ively
speaking, more than sixt y percent of the entries. Not all these writers have as
yet graduated to the second or third kind. But even if one has mo ved on to
the other kinds, the problem persists: what is the philo sophical status of the
writ ings of the first kind? Should they be included in the category Filipino
philosophy?
Deconstruction
The usual answer is negat ive in that the tradit ional crit erio n for
classificat ion is the subject matter.
If, for example, a work is an
interpretat ive exposit ion of Bertrand Russell o n the human soul, then it is
classified as a work in Brit ish philosophy regardless o f the nat ionalit y of the
author. And this classificat ion leads to the alienat ion o f some Filip inos, who
believe that such a work is irrelevant unless it can be related so mehow to the
Filipino human and cultural situat io n. But the alienat ion may be unjust ified

in that the fault is in t he criterio n of classificat ion. There seems to be a need

to deconstruct thinking in this regard.
If a nat ive Filip ino is grounded in his situation by virtue of his birth or
nat ionalit y, then he is essent ially bound to his culture and language. Even
Andrew Gonzalez (2001) in The ro le and contribut ion o f the Tho masit es to
language educat ion, contends that the language which the Thomasites
introduced to the Philippines has been localized or Filipinized to suit the
Filipino human situat ion. Textbooks written in English for Filipino children
ceased to use snows and app les as examples but used instead examples fro m
local scenes. This is a manner in which Filipinos appropriate a foreig n
language by adapt ing it to the local sit uation. It has become Filipino
English.
A nat ive Filipino grounded in his own cult ure and language (Filip ino, or
Filipino English, for that matter) carries with him/her a microcosmic culture
that generally reflects the culture-at-large. As such, his/her int erpretation o f
a text will necessarily be co lored by his/her own cultural horizon as it merges
with t he inherent cultural horizon o f the text. The result ing fused horizon is,
therefore, a Filipino point of view, at least theoret ically if not always evident
in fact, as in works in symbo lic logic or philosophy o f mat hemat ics. It must
theoretically be different from the French or German fused horizons
(interpretations) of the same text, especially when written in the nat ive
language. We are here shift ing the crit erion o f classificat ion fro m the
original center (the subject matter) to the margin (nat ionalit y of the author).
In this way, a philo sophical expository work written by a Filipino is Filipino
philosophy regardless of the subject matter. I call this interpretatio n as
Filipino philosophy in the national (or constitutional) sense in that the focus
is on the nat ionalit y of the writer as determined by the Philippine
Const itution and not on the subject matter. (I do not wish to discuss in this
short paper some borderline cases.)
FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
The acceptance of
the three senses of approaches to Filipino
philosophytradit io nal, cultural, and natio nalwill certainly enrich the
cultural heritage o f the Filipino nat ion. In this post modern age, where the
marginalized are coming forward, the recognit io n of the existence o f Filipino
philosophy in the three senses will signal their decentering.
Filipino
philosophy can shift from one approach to another wit hout any o ne approach
claiming as do minant. There will certainly be grumblings here and there as
we cannot satisfy every Filipino scho lar or student of philo sophy. And while
we hope the grumblings will diminish, we likewise hope that the Filipino
philosophical heritage will robust ly grow.

NOTES
1. Paper delivered during the 21st World Congress of Philosophy on 1017 August 2003 in Istanbul, Turkey under the subtheme, Philosophy in Asia
and the Pacific: Contemporary Issues. The theme o f the Congress is
Philosophy Facing World Problems.
2. A sequel (Sect ion 2) to this book (Sect ion 1) appeared in 2004b.
There is now a second edit io n of Sect ion 1 (2000a) which appeared in 2004a.
3.
The Age of Reason in the 17th century led to the Age o f
Enlightenment in the 18th century. John Locke lived during the 17th centur y
and had influenced tremendously the 18th century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
who lived during the 18th century, was a romant ic and not exact ly an
Enlightenment thinker, but he influenced some Filipino Enlightenment
thinkers like Jose Rizal.
REFERENCES
Gonzalez, Andrew. 2001. The ro le and contribut io n of the Thomasites in
language educat ion. Manila Bulletin, 28 October.
Gripaldo, Ro lando M. 2000a, 2004a.
Filipino philosophy: Traditional
approach. Part I, Section 1. Foreword by George F. McLean. Manila:
De La Salle Universit y Press.
_____. 2000b. Filipino philosophy: A critical bibliography. 2nd ed. Wit h a
Foreword by Tomas Rosario. Manila: De La Salle Universit y. [In CDROM.]
_____. 2004b. Filipino philosophy: Traditional approach. Part I, Section 2.
Foreword by George F. McLean. Manila: De La Salle Universit y Press.
Quito, Emerita.
1990.
Volkgeist in vernacular lit erature.
A life of
philosophy: Feschrift in honor of Emerita Quito. Manila: De La Salle
Universit y Press.
Mercado, Leonardo. 1976. Elements of Filipino philosophy. Tacloban Cit y:
Divine Word Universit y Publicat ions.
Timbreza, Florent ino. 1982. Pilosopiyang Pilipino. Manila: Rex Book
Store.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1972. Philosophical investigations. Translated by G.
E. M. Ansco mbe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.