Filipino Language Perspectives on Nature and the Environment

Filipino Language Perspectives on Nature and the Environment

Rainier A. Ibana

Ateneo de Manila University

This paper will analyse the Filipino words for Nature and the Environment from the perspective of an ecological ethics.  This analysis presupposes that languages reveal the world views shared by speakers and hearers as they communicate with one another in order to achieve mutual understanding.  This paper will be divided in according to five key words that constitute the Filipino terminologies for nature and the environment in the Tagalog language: (1) Ka, (2) likas, (3) pa, (4) ligid, and (5) an.

(1) Kalikasan, the Tagalog word for nature and kapaligiran, the term for the environment, are both prefixed by the word KA, which, taken by itself, refers to the singular second person in the Tagalog language.  It corresponds to the pronoun “you” in English or “tu” in Spanish.   KA is the other person to whom speech acts are addressed and thus refers to the implicit social dimension of communicative utterances.[1] 

When used as a prefix, moreover, KA underscores the mutual reciprocity between the subjective and objective worlds by emphasizing the symmetrical relationship between speaker and the hearer with respect to the object being spoken about.  The other is not only someone who can assent or dissent to the subject’s claims about the world; he or she also bears with the speaker the responsibility (his response-ability) of validating knowledge claims about the world as a companion and partner in a shared conversation.  The other to whom one speaks, for example, is my kausap or conversation partner and the one in front of me is my kaharap.

Even enemies (kalaban), opponents (kaaway), strange events (kakaiba) and weird objects (kakatwa) can be prefixed and embraced by the term KA.  Our enemies and opponents complement our partial perceptions and we can reach a more synoptic vision of experience if we encourage the complementary participation of others who happen to occupy different points of view towards reality.  Differences and objections can be overcome, in principle, by recognizing and engaging other participants in a shared complementarity of perspectives in order to achieve broader visions of reality. 

The inclusion of opposition and negation within the ambit of KA employs the performative logic of the social dimension of experience because even our attempts to deny this social dimension presupposes that the denial is being made before someone or something with whom the denial is being made. [2]  Excluding others from the social sphere merely redounds to an implicit admission of the existence of the excluded others.  Ka, therefore, is a prefix that radically implicates the inclusion of others in the same manner that Anaximander’s prefix a in his notion of the apeiron, pointed to the inherent negative unboundedness of all finite beings, except that Ka circumscribes the possibility of an infinite inclusiveness of everything that is.

From the perspective of an ecological ethics, we learn from environmental science that more complex ecological relationships sustain the stability and endurance of an ecological niche.  The more simple relationships, on the other hand, make ecological systems vulnerable and weaker because of the imbalances produced in the relationships among predators and their prey.   It is therefore an ecological imperative to preserve the inherent variety and plurality of living organisms in as much as they contribute to the stability of an ecological niche in the same manner that we must tolerate differences and opposition in the social world.

(2) The second element in the Tagalog term for nature or kalikasan is likas which refers to the essential nature of an organism that defines or puts a limit to what can be extracted or derived from its nature.  We have a Filipino adage which says that trees are known by their fruits or that one cannot expect a banana plant to bear mangoes.  Nature has its own implicit order that cannot yield what it does not potentially have.  The possibilities of cloning and genetically modified organisms are therefore limited by the inherent nature of the things themselves.

Even complex realities that evolve from a combination of simpler but lower forms of beings emerged from the actual entities embedded in the latter.  Oxygen using organisms, for example, can evolve only with the support of oxygen producing entities such as plants and other living organisms. 

Nature has its own laws that cannot be violated even with the aid of divine intervention or magical incantations.  It is therefore not surprising that the most prayerful places in the Philippine archipelago are also those which are most vulnerable to natural calamities by virtue of its location on the world’s volcanic ring of fire, the Pacific typhoon belt, and the clashing tectonic plates of continental Asia and the Pacific Ocean.  When nature unleashes its wrath, people can do nothing but humbly pray that their lives be spared.

The word likas is also used derivatively in reference to the habits and customs of people.  This usage of the term, however, is secondary to its primary reference to biological and physiological laws.  Habits and customs that have been repeated through many generations are encrypted, as it were in the collective consciousness of a people as if it already belongs to their so-called second nature.  Respect and a deep sense of gratitude to our elders, for example, are ingrained in Filipino children with behavioural consequences such as the use of deferential language and bodily gestures that express reverence towards elders. 

The legal system further takes these traditions into account by inscribing them in political constitutions and rules of conduct.  It is not uncommon, understandably, but also sometimes regretably, for Filipino prosecutors and judges to inhibit themselves from cases filed against their relatives and friends.  These cultural references, however, are merely derived, by way of analogies, from our more primordial experience with nature.

(3) It is no wonder then that the second syllable of the Tagalog term for the environment is “pa,” a shortened expression of the prefix “paki,” which is affixed to a verb in order to seek solicitude or a pleading for inclusion.   It corresponds to the English term “please,” or the Spanish expression “por favor” that seeks exemption from the norms of social practice. When applied to environmental concerns, social habits can then reformed in favor of the sustainability of the  natural  environment.   

Respectful deference can be adopted to cultivate a more reverential relationship towards nature and the environment.  Segregation of biodegradable from non-biodegradable materials, for example, requires a deliberate awareness of the cycles of nature which can be imbibed by new habits of recycling, reusing and renovating old materials instead of throwing them away to garbage dumps that are becoming more crowded as we continue to extract resources from nature.  Linear production lines that wantonly extract resources and simply dumping waste products will not be sustainable anymore without deliberately inculcating new habits of conforming to the cyclical laws of nature herself.

(4) The third word in the Tagalog term for the environment, ligid, refers to the surrounding horizon of one’s universe.  This horizon can contract or expand depending on the scope and depth of one’s consciousness.  Cebuano, another one of our languages aside from Tagalog, actually has the same word for consciousness and the environment: kalibotan, which approximates the Tagalog term for surroundings or kapaligiran.  For the Tagalogs and Cebuanos, one’s surroundings is coterminous with the depth of one’s consciousness.

A person’s surroundings (ligid/libot,) can contract or expand depending on the scope of one’s circumspection.  A child’s horizon, for example, is limited to the home and its surroundings.  As one grows up it expands to include the school, the town, the province, the nation and eventually the world and the universe.  The advent of global information and telecommunication industries, moreover, broadly extend this horizon especially when older members of the family work and migrate abroad for greener pastures.  Children learn about foreign languages and other places much earlier in life due to their exposure to the television and the internet.  Their cultural identities are made more complex and are more extensive due to the variety of images and information they imbibe through the mass media. 

With new information technologies, neighbourhoods are no longer defined by geographical surroundings but by the numbers and addresses encrypted within cellular phones and electronic discussion groups.  It is ironic that as telecommunication instruments become smaller and smaller, the more we become immediately connected to a wider world of expanding horizons.  The intensity of the development of telecommunications technology has become directly proportional to the scope of our interconnectedness with people, events and places.  There is indeed a profound wisdom in the Cebuano identification of our surrounding horizons with the field of our human consciousness.

Through the expansion of the scope of telecommunications, we further become conscious not only of our families and relatives who might be working in other parts of the world but we also become more aware of the state of nature and of the environment . We can now readily establish causal connections between our local activities and their far-ranging effects on global warming and the frequency and intensity of typhoons and other natural calamities that eventually hit our localities.

(5) The suffix “an,” the last syllable in the Tagalog word for nature and the environment, emphasizes the local context where humans find themselves in relation to their environment.  Without the suffix “an”, the words kapaligid and kalikas are stripped of their contexts and they become mere objects and things whose meanings can be readily uprooted from their surroundings. 

Nature and the environment, however, are always located in particular habitats defined by the immediate vicinity and temporality that surrounds the human subject.  The battle ground for human survival is eventually waged, needless to say, at the local and personal levels.  The Filipino conception of nature and the environment demands a pragmatic and deliberate transformation of lifestyles and behaviour if we are to look forward and effect a more  sustainable future for humanity.  New habits and habitats are shaped and created through our repeated actions on the environment.

Summary:

We can then summarize the ecological ethics implicit in the Tagalog terms for environment and nature by referring back to the five elements that constitute these terms:  KA, which refers to the inherent relationality of beings, LIKAS or nature which preserves the inherent principles that abide in the things themselves, PA, the necessary solicitude required in dealing with nature and the environment, LIGID, the horizon of our consciousness and of our living spaces, and AN, the local and personal contexts that serve as our dwelling places.   We can therefore cultivate an ecological ethics by developing a solicitous attitude towards nature and by cultivating an awareness of the broader horizon of our decisions that eventually affect ourselves and our environment.

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[1] Jurgen Habermas formulates a similar framework in The Theory of Communicative Action Vol 2, Trans by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 24ff.

[2] Karl-Otto Apel makes use of this performative logic in “The Problem of Justice in a Multicultural Society: the Response of Discourse Ethics” published in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, Ed. by Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 159.