Abstract

The paper traces the significance of Leonardo N. Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy and argues that the significance of his perspective lies in its bringing to light the Filipino people as a group of philosophers in their own right who constructed a worldview of their own and embodied it in their languages, behavior, and mythology that provides them with a mission and vision as a nation. To justify the argument, a content analysis of the book Elements of Filipino Philosophy was done in terms of Mercado’s cultural philosophical theoretical framework, where philosophy is constructed by a group of ordinary people like Filipinos and the result is an empirical and observably unique but not idiosyncratic worldview like the Filipino worldview, ethnographic method that involves an ethno-linguistic analysis of the major Philippine languages, phenomenological observation of Filipino behavior, secondary data analysis of social scientist’s analysis of Philippine mythologies, and findings on the conceptual elements of the Filipino worldview composed of a logos that describes the mode through which Filipinos construct their world, ontos that describes Filipinos’ constructed world, theos that describes how Filipinos construct a sacred world, and ethos that describes how Filipinos construct a moral world. To extend the argument of the discourse, a rejoinder is provided in response to scholars’ criticisms and approval of Mercado’s anthropological perspective on the study of Filipino philosophy.