Alton Melvar M. DapanasBS Education – English 1

ENGLISH 47 EDA

Essay: The Filipino and Western HumanismAuthor: Fr. Miguel A. Bernad, SJ

Approach: Socio-historical approach

Analysis:

A HYBRID CIVILIZATION: That is how we are illustrated. Occidental in disposition, Oriental in culture; Asian in mind, Western at heart! That makes us truly FILIPINOS. After more than three centuries of bowing our heads over the King of Spain, a decade (continual, though) of submitting our loyalty to the President of the United States of America, who would not become westernized by those? We must add a month of British rule in Manila, though.

In this essay, the term Humanism of the West was not merely the Humanism of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries (or the Renaissance), but the whole of the Western culture, especially the arts. Certain names were mentioned here with their respective fields:

a. Raphael and Michelangelo As we know, Michelangelo Buonarroti is an exceptional artist ranging his expertise and genius in a

myriad of arts’ genres; sculpture, architecture, poetry and painting.b. Cervantes and Shakespeare (in literatures)c. Saints Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Campion and Augustine

The Humanism of the West, in a holistic point of view, however could not be credited only to these great men. They may be one of the major contributors for the Renaissance to be declared as the Golden Age of the Western world, they do have the predecessors whom they look up to and came before them and hence, greatly influenced their works. Thus, an all-sided account of the Western humanism unites:

a. Aristotle with Saint Thomas Aquinasb. Vergil with Dante

The latter even met the former, in the latter’s The Divine Comedyc. Cicero with Saint Edmund Campiond. Aeschylus with Shakespearee. Boticelli with Michelangelo

There were inevitable fallbacks, however, in this Golden Age, as slavery was introduced and Puritanism was stepped into the Americas. It would have been better, though, if “the Plymouth rock landed on the Puritans.”

Moreover, the formulation of a liberalistic view of man (also called the Western concept of Man) emerged:

a. Man is a Free Being, with innate dignity and an eternal destiny “ .. Men .. inalienable rights .. of Love, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness .. “ (The Declaration of

Independence, People of the United States of the America)b. Society is a help to Man, not as his masterc. Art is Man’s way of creating Beauty

Still, it is made clear that Art was created for and by Man, and Man, therefore is not created for Art’s sake. This is adapted by Christianity (a very foreign principle for paganism). Thus, the abolishment of slavery (otherwise, discretion); a real manifestation between the difference of the Christian sarcophagus and the Egyptian pyramids.

In a Philippine-centric point of view, we could conclude that with the great influences of the Catholic Spain and the Protestant America, we have become what we are now, our history, the adaptation of their lifestyles, mindset, mentalities, values and beliefs – call it culture. It was as if the Western culture was genetically programmed and innate to our systems from then on, yet we still remained full-blooded Asians. Thus, we could say that we are Western in Realism and Eastern in Idealism. Still, no matter how these influences we have had from the Westerners (Spaniards and Americans) and Easterners (Chinese, Japanese and Indians) have shaped our lives and may totally change our course of Fate forever, we still are thankful for having such a rich culture of Grandeur (Rome) and Glory (Greece). These waves of Humanism, either from West to East, or vice versa, they are clear proofs that our human nature has ever been so caring and functioning in its society where he belongs, where he is not at all alienated and where he is Free to be someone; Lahing Kayumanggi – a Filipino.