“Our Cultural Values and National Orientation”

Abstract

The paper defines the notion of national orientation and the place of the cultural values of a people in national orientation. It argues that national orientation must be tied to the public philosophy of a people, a public philosophy understood as a corpus of basic ideas and beliefs, an under-layer of values, perceptions, outlooks, fundamental convictions and truths shared by a large section of a society. The paper distinguished two avenues to evolving a national orientation: (i) reevaluation of those features of our culture that we have reason to believe would be worth our while to preserve and utilize in building the institutions of today; (ii) orientations that need to be acquired by reason of their worth in a contemporary society but which do not seem to have been purposely and robustly affirmed by our indigenous cultural values and practices, such as the innovative and scientific orientations or outlooks.