Search for Filipino philosophy and Filipino identity

Proposal

In the search of Filipino philosophy, we cannot avoid to include our identity because

for us to know and understand our own philosophy we first need to know who we really are

and we need to know our identity who Filipinos are because if we use our history we will see

that we were colonized by many countries before and thus making us adapt to them and their

culture thus making us a mixture of many different cultures and identities and therefore we

are having a hard time looking for the real authentic Filipino identity. Many studies and

debates have been done but results are still vague and there still so much unanswered

questions.

In this paper We would like to be able to first define what and who Filipinos are, and

do we really have Filipino Philosophy because this has been the problem of the Filipino

thinkers for so long. The debate the that they are engaging in is all set to be able to identify

and to know if we have our own philosophy or if we can call it our own they are doing this

because we want to be noticed as our own and not as subpart of any philosophy. Many

arguments have been done and many other debates papers tried and studies this, but the

argument still live until today.

 This paper will be explained using Mercado’s use of Foreign Metalinguistics to

further discus the Filipino Philosophy was questioned by Abulad in his critique in Mercado,

he questions the validity of the usage of such Foreign Metalinguistics as the basis of the

understanding of Filipino philosophy in Mercado’s work. In this paper I would like to try and

answer the question of Abulad on whether it is valid to use foreign basis of metalinguistics to

explain and further understand the Filipino Philosophy.

This paper would also aim to discuss both sides equally and unbiased because both

sides have a strong and good point but also both has some weak points which will be pointed

out and balanced to see whether which side is better in order for us to be more fair in

answering the question that Abulad raised on his critique of Mercado for us to be able to see

if we really have our own philosophy if we really do we will see at the end of the paper who

will win who between Mercado and Abulad will come out to be right and we may see if we

really need to base our linguistics and our identity to others just because we don’t know our

own identity which we see is caused by many countries that colonized us thus making our

identity harder to find because we see filipinos with mixed cultures because they live in an

environment that is heavily affected by colonizers.

 We would like to focus on the study of out Filipino Identity though linguistics and let

that define if we have our own philosophy because our philosophy is mixed with the afro-

Japanese philosophy and I would like to point out that even if our philosophy is mixed

withother philosophy it is still ours because our thinkers thought of that and other countries

cannot claim our thinkers. I would also like to put into perspective the orientalism and

postcolonial effects on Filipino thinkers and Philippines in general because this will have an

effect on our identity and on the look for our real identity.