A Brief Philosophical History of the Social Function of Private Property in the Philippines
Abstract
According to the Buddha, we all seek the eternal cessation of suffering. It is the ultimate end goal of our existence over which we have no choice. Due to this “ultimateness,” it explicitly or implicitly permeates everything that we do. Due to the lack of choice, whatever conduces towards it must necessarily be moral. On its face, this article is about a legal principle for regulating and allocating private property – the Social Function. However, since this principle is a human creation, it is unavoidably an expression of a moral philosophy on how to bring about best what we are compelled to pursue, and the role that property plays in that pursuit. As a philosophy, it is a collection of asserted truths. But in order to properly evaluate these assertions, it is necessary to first have an appropriate theory of truth (epistemology) and a theory of reality (ontology) because, like the unity of space-time, they are epistemo-ontolo- moral. To make a mistake in one is to make a mistake in all. Accordingly, Section B is devoted to the development of an epistemo-ontological framework that will allow us to compare, apples to apples, all philosophies in terms of their truth values. In the process, we will correct the epistemo-ontological errors of the Western philosophical tradition using the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna’s solution to the Problem of Induction that has bedeviled this tradition since the time of Hume in the 1700s. In Section C, we will apply this framework to compare and evaluate two (2) moral philosophies – Locke’s and Grotius’ natural law. We will show that their truth values are both “false.” Afterwards, we will extrapolate their probable solutions to this fictional problem: Suppose that there are nine (9) healthy adults and a terminally ill baby on an overcrowded sinking lifeboat cast adrift at sea. To survive, one of them has to be thrown overboard. The adults decide to sacrifice the baby. Is their decision moral? The solutions will highlight their differing notions of the common good and positions on the redistribution of wealth: Is it moral to take from the rich and give to the poor? This in turn will accentuate the difference of the Social Function from other regulatory and allocative legal principles. In Section D, these philosophies will be situated within a historical context to trace the philo-historical evolution of the Social Function of the Philippines. In Section E, we will integrate our epistemo-ontology with a Buddhist theory of morality to understand why correct epistemology and ontology is an indispensable prerequisite to attaining the ultimate purpose of our lives. Lastly, in Section F, we will conclude that, since the Social Function, as currently constructed, is based on a false philosophy, it is at most an expedient while the Philippines searches for the correct path to true freedom.
Received: 07.11.2019
Accepted: 20.12.2019
Published online: 03.07.2020
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