The intention of this paper is twofold: to present a philosophy of values, with the help of the noted phenomenologist of value, Max Scheler, and to show the indispensable role of philosophy in value education, especially in the context of national reconstruction.

It has often been said that at the root of the economic and political instability of the Philippines as a nation is a moral crisis of such a paramount degree that our culture has been termed a "damaged culture." Recently, it has been ranked the third most corruption-ridden country of Asia. Graft and corruption have become an accepted way of life for most, not only for government officials and their relatives. Undoubtedly, a moral recovery must go hand in hand with economic and political recovery. But such a moral recovery must come to terms with an understanding of values, notably in the field of education, which otherwise will be haphazard and lacking in direction.

This paper hopes to contribute to such an understanding of values. But more than that, it proposes that such an understanding of values entails an emphasis upon teaching philosophy in our curriculum, perhaps more than, but at no expense to, the other disciplines.

The first thing to be said about values is that they are objects of our intentional feeling. Intentional feeling is different from the sensory feelings of the five senses (e.g., pain, tickling), from bodily vital feeling-states (e.g., tiredness, illness, health), and from psychic feelings (e.g., sorrow, joy). Intentional feelings by their very nature are oriented towards values; they are feelings of something. Spiritual feelings such as bliss and despair are essentially intentional or directed towards the value of the holy, but other feeling acts like preferring, subordinating, love and hatred, likewise are oriented towards values.

Values are given to us in intentional feeling; we "know" values by feeling them, and to appear in our lives they do not wait for our rational justification. Our intellect is blind to values just as the eyes are blind to sounds. This does not mean that we cannot reflect on values, but when we do (as we are doing now), we are reflecting no longer on values as values, but on values as concepts. To illustrate this point let us consider the value of service, of being a person-for-others. Students understand the readings related to this concept, but how many after graduation venture to spend a year or two in a service-oriented job? For the few who do the decision usually comes after an immersion program in which they experience the feeling of poverty.

As objects of our intentional feeling, values are essentially qualities and are not to be mistaken for goods, though goods are carriers or bearers of values. Misconceiving values for goods may be due to a language problem. The Filipino word for value is "halaga"; but "bale" is another common expression used by young people. This is Spanish in origin and may also mean "worth", "have the same value." However, "bale" also refers to that small place of paper that the Filipino(a) brings to the sari-sari store, with the words "good for" a can of milk, a bag of sugar, for values qualify our life and do not easily give in to quantification. As qualities, values are objective and immutable, whereas goods as carriers of value vary and depend on the subject, time, circumstance, situation. A metaphor may be of help here. The color green is a quality (seen by the eyes) different from the color black. Should I decide to paint the green board black the board is now a carrier of the color black where before it was a carrier of the color green. Still, green is green and black is black. The quality green or black does not change; only the board has changed.

It is important to stress here the immutability, the objectivity of values; for values, especially higher values, call on the person and when the person fails to respond to a value, it is not the value that is destroyed, but the person himself. Justice as a value calls on the person to be just; if he does not respond to this call by being just, it is not the value of justice that is destroyed, but the person himself. We are here reminded of the words of Socrates, "to do injustice is worse than to suffer injustice." As qualities, values transcend man.

Here precisely lies the ambiguity of values in their immateriality. Our life attains a quality because values constantly present themselves to us, intervene in our life as instigators of action, prospects for commitment, reasons and standards for behavior and expression, norms and principles of conduct, and criteria for aesthetic appreciation and economic utility. But values elude all these embodiments or carriers. A value gives itself in an object to be desired, but once the goal is attained it affirms itself in the form of another demand. In this sense we can speak of the universality of values -- they exercise an influence on the totality and unity of our life. Values form a kind of horizon to our life.

More specifically, values generate an "ought-to-be" and an "ought-to-do". For instance, because justice is a value, it ought to exist and I ought to be just. Values, in other words, ground our obligations, beliefs, ideals, and attitudes, without being identical with them.

How then do we experience values? The key to this question is to be found in the notion of the human being as a person, for in the real sense only men and women can experience values. For Max Scheler, a person is the seat of the spirit which transcends nature. As spirit, the person is not part of nature but apart from it; one can determine oneself, direct one’s own life. (Self-determination is another word for freedom.) This is manifest in the human being’s capacity to go against the drive of evolution, the instinct of survival -- a person can willingly take his own life. In his freedom the person is the unity of diverse acts; past, present and future. As such the person is open to reality. Martin Buber in a similar vein, talks of the person as a being in dialogue with the world. The being of the person is a being of response-ability; freedom is the precondition for one’s responding to the other, be it a human other, nature, thing, event or God. For Buber the opposite of constraint is communion. To be free, and thus to be a person, means to be able to respond to the call of communion. It is here that values are experienced -- in the dialogic relationship of the human being as a person. Unlike in the animal where a biological need compels it to satisfy a necessity with the force of a natural physical law, values call for a free response from the person. There is no experience of value if value is not recognized as such, consented to and willed by the human being.

Values appear in the human being’s engagement with the world, in his or her openness to reality. The experience of value is at once the experience of person. Values then are not created, but discovered by the person in one’s involvement with the world

The person is a unity of diverse acts, among which three uniquely characterize the person: (1) the act of reflection or of making oneself the object of one’s thinking, (2) the act of ideation or abstraction, of deriving an essence from existents, and (3) the act of loving. Of the three, the last one is the most important trait of the human being as person: a person is a being capable of loving. Loving and hating are the fundamental primordial acts of the person to which all other acts are reducible. In this sense, a person is judged by what he or she is and by what he or she loves and hates.

Both love and hatred are movements of the heart oriented towards values. Love and hatred are similar in that as movements, they open up a hierarchy of values. The opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy. Love directs us to higher values, whereas hatred directs us to lower values. It is interesting to note here that the Filipino word "mahal" (love) also means "esteem" or "of high value".

The following is Scheler’s hierarchy of values:

Holy/Unholy

Spiritual

Vital

Sensory

At the lowest rank are sensory values: the pleasant and the npleasant, technical values and luxury values. Next in rank are the vital values of the noble and the vulgar, the values of civilization. Higher than vital and sensory values which are both related to the ego are the spiritual values of justice/injustice, truth/falsehood, and the aesthetic values of beauty and ugliness. The highest values are the holy and unholy. Both spiritual and holy values refer to our being as person or spirit.

This ordered rank of values is also objective and immutable. What is subjective and mutable is our ability to perceive this hierarchy, our "value-conception," and our concrete realization of values. Hatred is a disorder of the heart because it wrongly reverses the order of the rank of values.

For Scheler, the moral values of good (positive) and evil (negative) are not to be found in this hierarchy of values, but in their realization; they, so to speak, "ride on the back of the deed." A deed is good if it prefers a higher or positive value in place of a lower or negative value. On the other hand, a deed is evil if it prefers a lower or negative value in place of a higher or positive one. Without the deed and the person who performs it no moral good or evil occurs. In this sense, moral values are personal values in that they originate from persons. Good is the realization of higher values, the spiritual and the holy, which refer to our being persons. In contrast, evil is the realization of lower values, the sensory and the vital, which refer to our likeness to the animals. Hence, good enhances our personhood, while evil degrades our humanity.

The moral acts of good and evil then are based again on the person and not on any moral authority. Obligation, as we have earlier said, is based on value and not the other way around. Values generate an "ought" in the person through models: without a person to posit them, there would be no norms or obligations. In the case of moral values, nothing can make a person good other than the intuition of a good person as an example. Love by such a person invites a following. Scheler cites the example of Christ loving the sinner, Mary Magdalene, and effecting a moral conversion in her. Model persons are the primary vehicle of value transformation in our moral world.

There are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophies and philosophers. Our task here is not to define it and thus limit the value of philosophy to its definition, but to seek its meaning in what it does in the context of the other disciplines, the human and natural sciences, and in the ordinary endeavors of human beings. We shall be led to see the value of philosophy then as corresponding to the points we mentioned regarding the nature of values.

The Western tradition has always associated philosophy with wisdom, forgetting the "love" that precedes wisdom in its original meaning. Our culture has not been spared this Western influence, for pamimilosopo also means to be pedantic, to theorize and juggle concepts in a dull and narrow way. Whereas originally, to philosophize was passionately to search for wisdom, to love it because one is not in full possession of it. Far from being purely speculative, philosophy is first of all felt, a passion, a desire, a value.

What is this wisdom loved by the philosopher? The Eastern tradition can offer us interesting answers, for it is to the East that we turn for wisdom. The Hindu word for philosophy is "darsana", which means "to see" not just with the eyes, nor with the mind, but with one’s whole being. What is to be seen with one’s whole being is none other than the truth or the real, which is what is unchanging, eternal, universal. The Chinese tradition terms philosophy as "cheh-hsueh" (philosophy). Hsueh means learning, but the character cheh is a compound character made up of a hand, a measurement, and a mouth, that is to say, philosophy is learning to measure one’s words with one’s deeds. To philosophize is to know in a very different way from learning a skill; it is first of all to learn to be moral where one’s speech, feelings, knowledge and action are integrated into one whole. The wise man is one who always knows the good to be realized in any concrete situation, whereas the clever one knows the means to utilize for whatever ends, good or otherwise.

Where does this love for wisdom emerge; when does a person begin to philosophize? It should be said at this point that just as it is only the person who experiences values, also it is only human beings who philosophize. Different philosophers have varied accounts for the beginning of philosophizing. Plato traces it to wonder, Descartes to doubt, Jaspers to the limit situation. Whether is it from wonder, or doubt, or the helplessness of a situation that one begins to philosophize, there is something in the very being of the human situation that impels the person to philosophize. Robert Johann calls this the tension of human experience. This tension springs from the very nature of the person as openness to reality, as response-ability to the other (to nature, fellowman, society or the Absolute), as not being identical with oneself or one’s self-becoming. Philosophy springs from the tensions of human life, and to philosophize is to bear witness to this situatedness of our humanity.

But what does a philosopher do with this tension that a non-philosopher or one who has ceased to philosophize does not? The philosopher brings it to consciousness, to awareness, to reflection, making explicit what is implicit in humane experience. Reflection in this sense is bending back on oneself, becoming aware of one’s own life and necessarily of the world that includes the other, for self-consciousness, needless to say, entails consciousness of the other. "The unexamined life is not worth living," says Socrates, but if it is to be authentic, philosophizing this examination of one’s life can never be mere navel-gazing.

There is, however, another sense to reflection beyond the mere clarificatory bringing to consciousness of one’s experience; this is the critical sense. To reflect is also to gain distance from oneself and one’s situation. "Disengagement" is a necessary moment in philosophizing. This is not to be construed as an escape or alienation from reality; it means rather for the philosopher to take a "second look", to hold back from instinctive reactions, to examine one’s presuppositions and prejudices.

At this point, the "retreat" of the philosopher is no different from the scientist’s objectivity. In his concern to solve the problem in his hands the scientist distances himself from it in order to examine its parts, test his hypothesis, verify his conclusions. To philosophize, however, is to be concerned with the whole, with the totality; and if the scientific process and data are of relevance to the whole, then these too are taken into consideration and questioning. Thus, the objectivity of the philosopher includes subjectivity, or to be precise, to be objective is to be intersubjective. In the sense of Gabriel Marcel, to philosophize is secondary reflection, that is, to be concerned with the mystery of being, not in the theological sense of being unknowable, but in the sense of a "problem" that encroaches upon one’s own being and that of others.

The tension in human life calls for a resolution or reconciliation different in sort from the solution of the scientist, for here the philosopher’s own self is involved -- his very being is at stake in his reflection. In the metaphor of Marcel, the philosopher is like a person trying all sorts of positions in bed to get some sleep. Philosophical reflection attempts to see the "sense" of everything in Claudel’s usage, that is, as one would speak of the meaning of a word, the direction of a river, the opening of a door, the smell of a perfume or the texture of a cloth.

To philosophize is to be concerned with meaning, as we would say in Filipino, kahulugan -- the root word being "hulug" meaning "fall", or as one would say in English, "fall together". To philosophize then is to integrate both past and future in the act of presenting the personal and social meaning of one’s life. Ultimately, of course, the raison d’être of philosophy is the person’s inner longing to come to oneness with one’s self, with nature, with others, with God -- which is the very meaning of sagehood in the oriental tradition.

It is not surprising that the authentic philosopher must also be a lover of justice (Socrates, Confucius, Mencius, Gandhi, Sartre, are examples). After all, justice implies a vision of the totality of the situation and a respect for the dignity of the human person. It is also worth noting that the philosopher must also be a peacemaker or a lover of peace, for peace reconciles conflicting forces both within and without one’s self.

First, just as value is the object of our intentional feelings, philosophy makes us sensitive to the quality of our lives. The greatest danger facing us today is apathy, a sort of spiritual anesthesia. Philosophy awakens us from our spiritual slumber, our take-for-granted attitude in the same way as do literature or the arts. But more than literature or the arts, philosophy not only sensitizes us, but also brings us to the level of holistic, critical and evaluative reflection. This can be said to be the second value of philosophy, a step beyond sensitivity that turns it into sensibility -- reflection.

Just as values differ and transcend goods, philosophical reflection enables us to see beyond the facade of superficiality the perennial, lasting and deepest quality of our lives. Because philosophy attempts to see the totality of any human experience, it can provide a vision. This is important in the task of national reconstruction, for the development of a society cannot be haphazard and aimless. Short term goals and long term objectives have to be blended harmoniously, and this requires a vision of what a nation intends to be. This vision, of course, must be rooted in the historical realities of the present. Although philosophy may lack the discipline of the sciences and technology, nevertheless it is trained to inquire into the basics. Philosophical reflection seeks to go back to the roots of any human endeavor; it sets the foundation.

Both vision and foundation demand of philosophical reflection a critical sense. The thinking that is properly philosophical is reflective and critical: it is reflective because it is critical, and critical because it is reflective. Traditionally thinking was considered reflective when its object was within the mind. But much thinking about oneself can be anything but reflection; it can be mere daydreaming. Thinking is reflective when it is done disinterestedly without preconceptions and when it opens itself to the wider horizon of values. Just as values form a horizon in our lives, so philosophy in its search for truth opens us to a range or hierarchy of values against which we must evaluate the quality of our lives and the sensibleness of an issue or project. This is the outstanding value of truth; it illumines other values, including the value of justice. In the light of truth, the world is not just a world of facts and figures but is imbued with priorities, with a sense of importance and with purpose.

One cannot overestimate this critical role of philosophy especially for peoples, such as those of the Philippines, who are undergoing a transition from a long period of dictatorship to a new era of self-determination. The same seems true more generally for the universal phenomenon of cultural globalization at the turn of the millenium. In the prospect of national reconstruction and total human development this critique must necessarily include the re-evaluation of traditional Filipino values and traits.

Finally, just as values generate an "ought-to-be" and an "ought-to-do" and call forth moral persons, so philosophy invites us to be integrative. This integrative function of philosophy is more an ideal to be achieved than a guaranteed role, for philosophy does not impose itself but springs from the responsible freedom of the philosopher as a human being. Philosophy urges us to be moral persons, persons of integrity who are self-possessed because their speech, feelings, thinking and action are one; they are one because they are committed to the value of persons. Philosophy invites us to be true to ourselves, to our humanity, by committing ourselves to the value of other humans. Just as love is the movement towards the realization of higher values, so philosophy moves us to be responsive to the value of persons -- to love.

The above mentioned values of philosophy make philosophy an indispensable factor in value-oriented education. These insights on value and philosophy have grave implications for our curriculum, for pedagogy, and most important of all, for the person of the teacher. But that is another topic.