Reflections Social Justice: Human Poverty and the Problem of Child Labor

Domination is not a necessary fact of human life. Most analysis on human injustice focus on causal links or the empirical without due regard for systemic wrong. This undermines the human being who is the moral locus of attention in a philosophical investigation. No human being has a pre-ordained destiny, and for this reason it is truly important to examine the rootedness of oppression and other forms of exploitation in modern society. Enrique Dussel points to the egocentric logic of the Western mind.  History, for him, is “the space of a world within the ontological horizon is the space of a world center, of the organic, self-conscious state that brooks no contradictions because it is an imperialist state.” (Dussel 1985, 2)

Analysis: Social Justice, CCT Program and the Dignity of the Poor

In The Filipino Search for Meaning (1974), Fr. Vitaliano Gorospe, S.J., poses this fundamental point of inquiry: "How many Filipinos are really free to take into their own hands their own development and destiny and achieve by their own efforts the full human life to which they aspire?" (p.427) This question above is crucial in the issue of social justice. The ideal of social justice, as a matter of principle, is "based on the dignity of the human person", and incontrovertibly, includes "the relationship of the person to the material world and to the socio-economic structures of society." (p.438)

The Myth of Philippine Democracy

(Public Lecture: Regional Leadership Training, Centrist Democratic Party, 2012)

The Philippines as a nation is soaked in the blood of poor martyrs whose dream of a free country has been rendered almost impossible by a systemic disease. We do not even have a real representative form of government. The requisites of a democratic society – free and fair elections, civil liberties and respect for human and economic rights, are not enjoyed by the poor who constitute the majority in Philippine society. Three hundred years of domination has put the country into the brink of near death, unable to find its identity, its future destroyed by the remnants of the past.