Lesson 5

Freedom of the Human Person

Introduction
This lesson highlights freedom from the intellectual, political, spiritual and economic aspects. To
be free is a part of humanity’s authenticity. In one way, understanding freedom is part of our
transcendence. Freedom consists of going beyond situations such as physical or economic. For instance,
students can be young and poor, but they can still pursue their dreams of becoming a doctor, teacher, or a
stage actor. As discussed in the last lesson, critical thinking is an important toward freedom and truth.

5.1. Realize that “All Actions Have Consequences”

A. Aristotle
The Power of Volition
The imperative quality of a judgment of practical intellect is meaningless, apart from
will. Reason can legislate, but only through will can its legislation be translated into action. The task of
practical intellect is to guide will by enlightening it. Will, in fact, is to be understood wholly in terms of
intellect. If there were no intellect, there would be no will. This is obvious from the way in which will is
rationally denominated.

The will of humanity is an instrument of free choice. It is within the power of everyone to be
good or bad, worthy or worthless. This is borne out by:
 our inner awareness of an aptitude to do right or wrong;
 the common testimony of all human beings;
 the rewards and punishment of rulers; and
 the general employment of praise and blame.

Moral acts, which are always particular acts, are in our power and we are responsible for them.
Character or habit is no excuse for immoral conduct. Attending class is a student’s responsibility.
Should the student cut class, then he/she is responsible for the consequences of his actions. As a
result, he/she must be held responsible for any accident or failure in grades that will befall on
him/her. The student may regret what he/she had done, but all the regrets in the world will not call it
back. The point is the student should not have cut class in the first instance. When the matter is sifted
down, the happiness of every human being’s soul is in his own hands, to preserve and develop, or to
cast away.

Action

Will

Reason

Figure 5.1. Aristotle: Intellectual Freedom

For Aristotle, a human being is rational. Reason is a divine characteristic. Humans have the spark
of the divine. If there were no intellect, there would be no will. Reason can legislate, but only through will
can its legislation be turned into action. Our will is an instrument of free choice. As shown in Figure 5.1.,
reason, will and action drives each other.

B. St. Thomas Aquinas

Love is Freedom
Of all creatures of God, human beings have the unique power to change themselves and
the things around them for the better. St. Thomas Aquinas considers the human being as a moral agent.
As discussed in Chapter 3, we are both the spiritual and body elements; the spiritual and material. The
unit between both elements indeed helps us to understand our complexity as human beings. Our
spirituality separates us from animals; it delineates moral dimension of our fulfillment in an action.
Through our spirituality, we have a conscience. Whether we choose to be “good” or “evil” becomes our
responsibility.
 A human being, therefore, has a supernatural, transcendental destiny. This means that he can rise
above his ordinary being or self to a highest being or self. This is in line with the idea of St. Thomas that
in the plan of God, a human being has to develop and perfect himself by doing his daily tasks. Hence, if a
human being perseveringly lives a righteous and virtuous life, he transcends his mortal state of life and
soars to an immortal state of life.

The power of change, however, cannot be done by human beings alone, but is achieved through
cooperation with God. Between humanity and God, there is an infinite gap, which God alone can bridge
through His power. Perfection by participation here means that it is a union of humanity with God.
Change should promote not just any purely private advantage, but the good of the community.

Aquinas gives a fourfold classification of law: the eternal law, natural law, human law, and divine
law. Human beings, as being rational, have laws that should not only be obeyed but also obeyed
voluntarily and with understanding (for instance, in following the traffic rules). The natural law, then, in
its ethical sense, applies only to human beings. The first principle and precept of the natural law is that
good is to be sought after and evil avoided (this is the instruct of self-preservation). There is inherent in
every human being an inclination that he shares with all other beings, namely, the desire to conserve
human life and forbids the contrary. For instance, if there is fire, and its burning heat is felt, then, it is but
a human tendency to avoid it.

Since the law looks to the common goods as its end, it is then conceived primarily with external
acts and not with interior disposition. For example, if someone does not lie to his parents so they will
increase his allowance, then the reason of his goodness stems not because he does not want to lie because
it will hurt them but because he knows that there is a reward for being so. The same goes with
government officials who use full media coverage when they help their constituents so that people would
vote for them. A person, thus, should not be judged through his actions alone but also through his
sincerity behind his acts.

For Aquinas, both natural and human laws are concerned with ends determined simply by
humanity’s nature. However, since a human being is in fact, ordained to an end transcending his nature, it
is necessary that he has a law ordering him to that end, and this is the divine law or revelation.

It also gives human beings the certitude where human reason unaided could arrive only at
possibilities. It deals with interior disposition as well as external acts and it ensures the final punishment
of all evildoings. Neither of which is possible for human law. This divine law is divided into old (Mosaic)
and the new (Christian) that are related as the immature and imperfect to the perfect and complete. We
have, however, now passed beyond philosophy, since this rests on reason and experience alone; the
analysis of the divine law is the function of theology.

Eternal law is the decree of God that governs all creation. It is, “That Law which is the Supreme
Reason cannot be understood to be otherwise than unchangeable and eternal.” Natural law is the human
“participation” in the eternal law and is discovered by reason. Natural law is based on “first principles”.
As discussed in the previous lessons, the principle of sufficient reason states that nothing exists without a
sufficient reason for its being and existence.

For Aristotle, the purpose of a human being is to be happy. To be one, one has to live a virtuous
life. In other words, human beings have to develop to the full their powers – rational, moral, social,
emotional and physical here on earth. For St. Thomas, he follows the same line of thinking, but points to a
higher form of happiness possible to humanity beyond this life, and that is perfect happiness that
everyone seeks but could be found only in God alone.

St. Thomas wisely and aptly chose and proposed Love rather than Law to bring about the
transformation of humanity. For Love is in consonance with humanity’s free nature, for Law commands
and complete; Love only calls and invites. St. Thomas emphasizes the freedom of humanity but chooses
love in governing humanity’s life. Since God is Love, then Love is the guiding principle of humanity
toward his self-perception and happiness – his ultimate destiny.

C. St. Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Freedom

Actions
(Good or evil)

Conscience

God’s
Love
 Figure 5.2. Spiritual Freedom
St. Thomas Aquinas establishes the existence of God as a first cause. Of all God’s creation,
human beings have the unique power to change themselves and things around them for the better. As
humans, we are both material and spiritual. We have a conscience because of our spirituality. God is Love
and Love is our destiny.

D. Jean Paul Sartre: Individual Freedom

Sartre’s philosophy is considered to be a representative of existentialism (Falikowski 2004). For
Satre, the human person is the desire to be God: the desire to exist as a being which has its sufficient
ground in itself (en sui causa). There are no guideposts along the road of life. The human person builds
the road to the destiny of his/her choosing; he/she is the creator (Srathern 1998).

Sartre’s existentialism stems from this principle: existence precedes essence.

 The person, first exists, encounters himself and surges up in the world then defines
himself afterward. The person is nothing else but that what he makes of himself.
 The person is provided with a supreme opportunity to give meaning to one’s life. In the
course of giving meaning to one’s life, one fills the world with meaning.
 Freedom is, therefore, the very core and the door to authentic existence. Authentic
existence is realized only in deeds that are committed alone, in absolute freedom and
responsibility and which, therefore, the character of true creation.
 The person is what one has done and is doing.
 On the other hand, the human person who tries to escape obligations and strives to be en-
soi (i.e., excuses, such as “I was born this way” or “I grew up in a bad environment”) is
acting on bad faith (mauvais foi).

Sartre emphasizes the importance of free individual choice, regardless of the power of other
people to influence and coerce our desires, beliefs, and decisions. To be conscious, is to be free to
image, free to choose, and be responsible for one’s life.

E. Thomas Hobbes
Theory of Social Contract
A Law of Nature (lex naturalis) is a precept or general rule established by reason, by which a
person is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or takes away the means of preserving the
same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may be best preserved.

Given our desire to get out of the state of nature, and thereby preserve our lives, Hobbes
concludes that we should seek peace. This becomes his first law of nature. The reasonableness of seeking
peace immediately suggests a second law of nature, which is that we mutually divest ourselves of certain
rights (such as the right to take another person’s life) so as to achieve peace. That a person be willing,
when others so too (this is necessary for peace-building), to lay down this right to all things; and be
contented with so much liberty against other people, as he would allow other people against himself
(Garvey 2006).

The mutual transferring of these rights is called a contract and is the basis of the notion of moral
obligation and duty. If one agrees to give up his right to punch you, you give up your right to punch him.
You have then transferred these rights to each other and thereby become obligated not to hurt each other.
From these selfish reasons alone, both are motivated to mutually transfer these and other rights, since this
will end the dreaded state of war. Hobbes continues by discussing the validity of certain contracts.
However, one cannot contract to give up his right to self-defense or self-preservation since it is his sole
motive for entering any contract.

The rational pursuit of self-preservation is what leads us to form commonwealths or states; the
laws of nature give the conditions for the establishment of society and government. These are the rules a
reasonable being would observe pursuing one’s own advantage, if he were conscious of humanity’s
predicament in a condition in which impulse and passion alone rule. The individual himself should not be
governed by momentary impulse and by prejudice arising from passion. The State itself is the resultant of
the interplay of forces; and the human reason, displayed in the conduct expressed by these rules, is one of
the determining forces (Garvey 2006).

The laws of nature can be said to represent axioms and postulates that render this deduction
possible. They answer the question, “What are the conditions under which the transition from the natural
state of the war to the state of human beings living in organized societies becomes intelligible?” These
systems are rooted form human nature and are not God-given laws. Nor do they state absolute values, for
according to Hobbes, there are no absolute values (Garvey 2006).

In Leviathan, Hobbes asserts:

 “The fundamental law of nature seeks peace and follows it, while at the same time, by the sum of
natural right, we should defend ourselves by all means that we can.

It follows from this that there are “some rights that no human being can be understood by words,
or other signs, to have abandoned or transferred”. Contracts made in the state of nature are not generally
binding, for, if one fears that you will violate your part of the bargain, then no true agreement can be
reached. No contracts can be made with animals since animals cannot understand an agreement.

The third law of nature is that human beings perform their covenant made. Without this law of
nature, covenants are in vain and but empty words; and the right of all human beings to all things
remaining, we are still in the condition of war. Further, this law is the fountain of justice. When there has
been no covenant, no action can be unjust. However, when a covenant has been made, to break it is
unjust. Hobbes adds:

“…that covenants of mutual trust are invalid when there is fear of non-performance on either part,
and that in the natural condition of war this fear is always present. It follows, therefore, that there are no
valid covenants and hence, no justice and injustice until the commonwealth is established; that is, until a
coercive power has been established which will compel human beings to perform their covenants”.

Hobbes upholds that human beings seek self-preservation and security; however, they are unable
to attain this end in the natural condition of war. The laws of nature are unable to achieve the desired end
by themselves alone; that is, unless there is coercive power able to enforce their observance by sanctions.
For these laws, though dictates of reason, are contrary to humanity’s natural passions. Therefore, it is
necessary that there should be a common power or government backed by force and able to punish. This
means that the plurality of individuals should confer all their power and strength upon one human being
or upon one assembly of human beings, which may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one
will (Garvey 2006).

That is to say, they must appoint one man (or woman), or assembly of human beings, to bear their
person, a person being defined as “he whose words or actions of another human being, or of any other
thing, to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction”. Hobbes makes a distinction between a
commonwealth by institution and by acquisition.

1. A commonwealth is said to exist by institution when it has been established through the
covenant of every member of a multitude with every other member. The multitude of human
beings subjects themselves to a chosen sovereign from fear of one another.
2. A commonwealth is said to exist by acquisition when the sovereign power has been acquired
by force. Here, human beings fear for death or bonds of that human being who holds power over
their lives and liberty.

Neither of these commonwealths affects the sovereignty. The subjects of a sovereign cannot
either change the form of government or repudiate the authority of the sovereign: sovereignty is
inalienable. No sovereign can be unjustly put to death or in any way punished by his subjects. For,
inasmuch as every subject is author of all the sovereign’s actions, to punish the sovereign would be to
punish another for one’s own actions.

One of the prerogatives of the sovereign enumerated by Hobbes is judging what doctrines are fit
to be taught. Thus, the power of the sovereign being, to all intents and purposes unlimited, brings forth
the question of freedom (if any) to be possessed by the subjects or ought to be possessed by them. A point
of greater importance is that subjects are absolved from their duty of obedience to the sovereign, not only
if the latter has relinquished his sovereignty, but also if he has indeed the will to retain his power but
cannot, in fact, protect his subjects any longer.

If sovereign is conquered in war and surrenders to the victor, his subjects become the subjects of
the latter. If the commonwealth is torn asunder by internal discord and the sovereign no longer possesses
effective power, the subjects return to the state of nature, and a new sovereign can be set up.

F. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau is one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the French Enlightenment in
the 18th century. In his book The Social Contract, he elaborated his theory of human nature. In Rousseau,
a new era of sentimental piety found its beginning.

The “EDSA Revolution” is an example, though an imperfect one, of what the theory of Social
Contract is all about. According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the state owes its origin to a social contract
freely entered into by its members. The two philosophers differed in their interpretations. Hobbes
developed his idea in favor of absolute monarchy, while Rousseau interpreted the idea in terms of
absolute democracy and individualism.
 Both have one thing in common, that is, human beings have to form a community or civil
community to protect themselves from one another, because the nature of human beings is to wage war
against one another, and since by nature, humanity tends toward self-preservation, then it follows that
they have to come to a free mutual agreement to protect themselves.

Hobbes thinks that to end the continuous and self-destructive condition of warfare, humanity
founded the state with its sovereign power of control by means of a mutual consent. On the other hand,
Rousseau believes that a human being is born free and good. Now, he is in chains and has become bad
due to the evil influence of society, civilization, learning, and progress. Hence, from these come
dissension, conflict, fraud, and deceit. Therefore, a human being lost his original goodness, his primitive
tranquility of spirit.

In order to restore peace, bring his freedom back, and as he returned to his true self, he saw the
necessity and came to form the state through the social contract whereby everyone grants his individual
rights to the general will. The term ‘Social Contract’ is not an actual historical event. It is a philosophical
fiction, a metaphor, and a certain way of looking at a society of voluntary collection of agreeable
individuals. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights constituted, as an instance of a social contract,
however, is not a metaphor but an actual agreement and actually “signed” by the people or their
representatives (Solomon & Higgins 1996). The “1986 EDSA Revolution” was not a bloody one. People
gathered in EDSA to voice their disenchantment peacefully and through mutual effort, successfully
ousted Marcos. This had inspired changes not only in our own country but also in Eastern Europe’s
Perestroika.
Sovereign/Ruler
(State)

Freedom
(General will or mutual
transferring of rights)

Citizens
(Individual Rights)

Figure 5.3. Hobbes and Rousseau: Political Freedom

There must be a common power or government which the popularity of individuals (citizens)
should confer all their powers and strength into (freedom) one will (ruler).

5.2 Evaluation and Exercise Prudence in Choices

For B.F. Skinner, the environment selects which is similar with natural selection. We must take
into account what the environment does to an organism not only before, but also after it responds. Skinner
maintains that behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. Behavior that operates upon the
environment to produce consequences (operant conditioning) can be studied by arranging environments
in which specific consequences are contingent upon it. The second result is practical; the environment can
be manipulated.

Yelon (1996) accepted that behavioral psychology is at fault for having overanalyzed the words
“reward” and “punishment”. We might have miscalculated the effect of the environment in the individual.
There should be a balance in our relationship with others and the environment. In our dealing with our
fellow human beings, there is the strong and obvious temptation to blame the environment if they do not
conform to our expectations.

The question of freedom arises. Can an individual be free? According to Skinner, our struggle for
freedom is not due to a will to be free as for Aristotle or Sartre, but to certain behavioral processes
characteristic of the human organism, the chief effect of which is the avoidance of or escape from
“aversive” features of the environment.

The feeling of freedom, according to Skinner becomes an unreliable guide as soon as would-be
controllers turn to non-aversive measures, as they are likely to do to avoid the problems raised when the
controller escapes or attacks. For example, s skillful parent learns to reward a child for good behavior
rather than punish him for bad. Control becomes necessary in the issue of freedom.

Following the adage of John Stuart Mill, “Liberty consists in doing what one desires”. Skinner
states that when a person wants something, he acts to get it when the occasion arises. Skinner argues that
even though behavior is completely determined, it is better that a person “feels free” or “believes that he
is free”.
 The issue is controllability. We cannot change genetic defects by punishment; we can work only
through genetic measures that operate on a much longer time scale. What must be changed is not the
responsibility of autonomous individual but the conditions, environment, or genetic, of which a person’s
behavior is a function. Example, a student was praised by a teacher who said to him “Very good!” for a
solution to a problem of for giving the correct answer to a question.

Skinner thinks that the problem is to free human beings not from control but from certain kinds of
control, and it can be solved only if we accept the fact that we depend upon the world around us and we
simply change the nature of dependency. Skinner proposed that to make the social environment as free as
possible of aversive stimuli, we do not need to destroy the environment or escape from it. What is needed,
according to Skinner, is to redesign it.

Life is full of paradoxes; nobody could or should control it. We have to be open to life, learn to
accept and live with paradoxes. Learning with contradiction is not the same as living in contradiction. The
paradoxes account for the reasons why life cannot be held still. Defining or conceptualizing insists on
regarding one aspect of life at the same time disregarding the other.

In the spirituality of imperfection, we learn to accept that life, our environment, is both “evil” and
“good”. In recognizing life’s open-endedness, we learn to be flexible and adaptable. B.F. Skinner believes
that morality is a conditioned response impressed on the child by society. Despite this view, however,
creating a static environment, such as a controlled environment, is not applicable in the realities of
everyday world (Schouten & Looren de Jong 2012).

Skinner is right, however, in pointing out the environment especially in the socialization of
children. Unfortunately, there is an emphasis today in the acquisition of money, property and prestige,
regardless of values – or lack of those – that children learns.

There should not just be a re-engineering of the environment, but a total transformation of how
we view our environment, but a total transformation of how we view our environment, beginning with
our own orientation. How do we view life? Is it merely a life concerned with power that, according to
Buddha, is the cause of despair? Or should it be a life of cooperation, vision and concern with other living
beings?

Indeed, the theory of freedom has negative and positive tasks. Our lives should not be merely
controlled by rewards and punishments. As human beings, we are capable of reaching different level of
heights and ideals. According to Yelon, punishment is an educative measure, and as such is a means to
the formation of motives, which are in part to prevent the wrongdoer from repeating the act and in part to
prevent others from committing a similar act. Analogously, in the case of reward we are concerned with
incentive (Schouten & Looren de Jong 2012).

However, much more important than the question of when a person is said to be responsible is
that of when he himself feels responsible. Evidently, not merely that it was he who took the steps required
for its performance; but there must be added awareness that he did it “independently”, “of his own
initiative” or whatever the term is. This feeling is simply the consciousness of freedom, which is merely
the knowledge of having acted of one’s own desires. And of “one’s own desires” are those which have
their origin in the regularity of one’s character in the given situation, and are not imposed by an external
power, such as a stimulus. The absence of external power expresses itself in the well-known feeling that
one could also have acted otherwise.

We are responsible, whether we admit it or not, for what is in our power to do; and most of the
time, we cannot be sure what it is in our power to do until we attempt. In spite of the alleged
inevitabilities in personal life and history, human effort can re-determine the direction of events, even
though it cannot determine the conditions that make human effort possible.

It is true that we did not choose to be born. It is also true that we choose, most of us, to keep on
living. It is not true that everything that happens to us is like “being struck down by a dreadful disease”.
The treatment and cure of disease – to use as an illustration – would never serve as a moral paradigm for
the whole human situation – would never have begun unless we believed that some things that were did
not have to be, that they could be different, and that we could make them different. And what we can
make different, we are responsible for.

5.3 Choices Have Consequences and Some Things Are Given Up while Others Are Obtained in
Making Choices
Twentieth century gave rise to the importance of the individual, the opposite of medieval thought
that was God-centered. For Ayn Ran (1996), individual mind is the tool for economic progress vis-à-vis
laissez faire capitalism. Since the mind is important, the sector that molds it should not be controlled by
the government. Similar with Aristotle, Rand believes that thinking is volitional. A person has the
freedom to think or not. Though, for Rand, the majority belongs to the passive supporters of the status
quo who choose not to think.

Individual rights, as espoused by Hobbes and Rousseau, are not merely numbers. Rand rejects
collectivism because of its brute force. Though human beings have rights, there should also be
responsibility. Individual rights were upheld in capitalism that is the only system that can uphold and
protect them. The principle of individual rights represented the extension of morality into the social
system.

Rand cited the right to gain, to keep, to use, and to dispose of material values. Most developed
countries have disposed their toxic wastes to developing countries. Disposing material values, thus, is not
just a matter of throwing waste but projecting where to dump wastes that would not impinge on the rights
of others.

Individualism, as espoused by Rand, is lined in family dependency because Easterners believe

that the individual needs the community and vice versa. The Filipino and Chinese, for instance, stress the
human relationships that emphasize that the person is not necessarily an independent entity. In Filipino’s
loob, for instance, the individual is the captain o his own ship on a sea that is not entirely devoid of
uncertainties. Loob touches the daily human aspect of the Filipinos.

Filipinos embraced family and political parties. For the Filipinos, one does not only fulfill reasons
of the mind but of the heart and personal involvement as well. Whereas Rand upheld the individual,
Filipinos loob is essentially an interpersonal and social concept before it is privately, personal concept.

Filipinos look at themselves as holistic from interior dimension under the principle of harmony.
This encompasses Filipino’s humanity, personality, theological perspective, and daily experiences. It
aspires harmony with others and nature to be in union with God. Filipino’s holistic and interior
dimensions stress a being-with-others and sensitivity to the needs of others that inhibits one’s personal
and individual fulfillment.

There is the apprehension on the group-oriented approach of the Filipino that might hamper the
individual’s initiative and responsibility. It is contented that the individual should be disciplined from
within rather than fear from authority figure. Discipline and responsibility should be inculcated especially
through education.

Filipino’s loob is the basis of Christian value of sensitivity to the needs of others and gratitude. It
encompassed “give-and-take” relationship among Filipinos. As such, repaying those who have helped us
is a manifestation of utang na loob or debt of gratitude. Loob is similar with other Eastern views that
aspire for harmony (sakop) with others, God and nature. Loob prioritized family, relatives, and even non
kinsmen. It bridges individual differences and is the common factor among human beings.

The concept of Rand’s free individual and Filipino’s view of the free human being may have
differences but can be overcome. The potential of the Filipino should be able to grow so that he will be
aware of his uniqueness. Children should be brought up to the identity of the members of the family and
simultaneously with that of the nation. Self-sufficiency (kasarinlan) shold recognize human worth and
dignity.

Individualism, thus, should not be seen as selfishness but an affirmation of a truly human self that
is the supreme value of human living. To be a free individual is to be responsible not only for one’s self
but also for all. Thus, the individual becomes a free and creative person who asserts one’s uniqueness.

Kagandahang loob, kabutihang loob and kalooban are terms that show sharing of one’s self to
others. This is the freedom within loob. Loob puts one in touch with his fellow beings. Great Philippine
values, in fact, are essentially interpersonal. The use of intermediaries or go-betweens, the values of
loyalty, hospitality, pakikisama (camaraderie), and respect to authority are such values that relate to
persons. In short, the Filipino generally believes in the innate goodness of the human being.

Filipino ethics has an internal code and sanction than other legalistic moral philosophies that are
rather negative. The Filipino, who stresses duties over rights, has plenty in common, once again with
Chinese of Indians. The Filipino looks at himself as one who feels, wills, thins, acts, as a total whole – as
a “person”, conscious of his freedom, proud of his human dignity and sensitive to the violation of these
two.

5.4 Show Situations that Demonstrate Freedom of Choice and the Consequences of their Choices
The author agrees to Rand’s views of the individual in the advancement of a person. According to
Rand, individual freedom should be aligned with economic freedom. The Filipino “sakop” or harmony
can be a helping value to the full development of the Filipino if it opens up to embrace the whole
Philippine society. However, there are cases where the Filipino “sakop” may adversely affect the social
and financial status of the one moving upward the social ladder. For instance, the more well-off members
of a family share their gains with their relatives or friends in need.

However, sometimes, the beneficiaries of the monetary assistance (utang or loan) just use the
money for non-essentials (e.g., drinking sprees) when there are more important concerns that should be
prioritized (e.g., tuition fee). Hence, Filipino “sakop” must begin to raise its members in a more
responsible way and the members should likewise take this attempt to raise them financially and socially
seriously so as not to squander the help bestowed on them. Moreover, they must come to realize that their
personal worth and dignity is not exterior to themselves; it is found not in the body of the “sakop” but in
one’s “kalooban”. If these are fulfilled, the Filipinos shall not only be better persons but a better nation
with a sound economy (Andres 1994).

A leader or a manager with “magandang kalooban” is not passive but plays active role in
economic development. Leaders should not just focus on the impact of job performance but treats every
individual worker as persons and not as objects. Filipinos can attain a sound economy through an
integrative system as such there is support and help among unit of organizations within a company. To
make up for the inferiority complex of Filipinos, a good Filipino leader/manager must encourage fellow
Filipinos to believe in themselves so that they can bounce back as an economic power.

Rand presupposed that greater creativity will be achieved if the government will minimize
influence on individuals. Filipinos should take the initiative by following Rand’s suggestion and adopting
individualism in their value system. The author thinks that individualism will provide Filipinos an
opportunity to be more aware of their capacity, to harness fully their strengths and to commit themselves
to life. Individualism reinforces kasarilihan (self-sufficiency), as such, it discourages subservience from
external control higher than itself.

“Kasarilihan” promotes entrepreneurship, which minimize foreign control of Filipinos (i.e., from
the control of monopolies and multinational companies). Other than entrepreneurship, individualism also
prioritizes countryside development, a self-help concept among the country dwellers which discourages
dependence on government loans which would leave the locals to follow whatever conditions the
government sets in favor of the loan. Furthermore, for Andres (1986), the spirit of self-help is the root of
all authentic growth in rural development, which is a source of national productivity and efficiency.

As a result, entrepreneurship and countryside development economically and politically

emancipate Filipinos from local and foreign intervention. Moreover, Filipinos learn to be self-sufficient
which leads to self-respect and consequently, enhances Filipinos’ amor propio (pride and respectability).

Education has its own part to fulfill in giving importance to individual students and in
promulgation of the concept of individualism. Mounting a continuing education among Filipinos,
education should not shape the student’s mind to be passive. Educators should be aware of the individual
talents of students, the differences in their family background, gifts and capabilities. Rand proposed that
the main task of education is to teach students how to be trained in theories and concepts. The students
have to be taught the eventual of knowledge discovered in the past so that they will be equipped to
acquire further knowledge of their own effort (Binswanger 1986).

However, individualism should be tied with social responsibility and should not be just “tayo-
tayo” or “kami-kami”. Our own individuality should interact with the individuality of others. In this
light, every Filipino should be given equal chance to cultivate their talents that inevitably contribute in the
development of the society. Further, as individuals who are free, Filipinos should recognize their own
brand of uniqueness, instead of copying foreign cultures. “Loob” does not only develop the self of an
individual but the welfare of others.

For Aristotle and Rand, reason and will or volition is part of our being human. In relation to this,
Filipinos had proven matured thinking, pertaining to EDSA Revolution. Filipinos become sovereign
people who stood up for what they believe is right even before physical threat. Miranda (1987) viewed
EDSA Revolution as a redeeming event; Filipinos did not become fatalistic. Instead, Filipinos took
matters in their own hands. During EDSA Revolution, Filipino actuations were based on reason; Filipinos
exemplified a conscious decision of ousting a dictator.

The decision is based on the Filipinos’ belief in freedom. They also voluntarily risked their lives
as they face danger. Again, the EDSA Revolution is one example of social contract as discussed earlier in
this lesson.

Filipinos’ self is rooted in “loob” (Alejo 1990) from which springs a person’s authenticity.
Individualism could only progress to real change if it springs from the innermost depth of “kalooban” and
not just for “pakitang tao” (outward appearance’s sake). Thus, individualism manifests changes within
and outside the person.
 Further, “loob” is the only identical factor among people’s diversity in creed, color, and status in
the society. Moreover, there is no way that Filipinos will have no equal chance to become worthy
individuals. The author also took note of the interplay of Western philosophy that emphasizes modern
science and technology; the East, however, is more concerned on the inner and personal nature of the self.
The Eastern thinker is acquainted through one’s personal experience and intuitive grasp of reality, which
is of higher value than the analytical speculation.