Dalihan Na Tolu as the Philosophical Foundation of Social Relational Ethics: A Cultural Philosophy Perspective from Batak Toba Local Wisdom
Keywords:
Dalihan Na Tolu; Cultural Philosophy; Relational Ethics; Philosophical Hermeneutics; Batak Toba; Local WisdomAbstract
Globalization, digital transformation, and increasing multicultural interaction have significantly altered patterns of social relationships, leading to the emergence of individualism, declining communal solidarity, and weakening cultural identity. These developments have encouraged scholars to reconsider local wisdom as an alternative philosophical foundation for rebuilding social ethics. Although Dalihan Na Tolu has long been recognized as the traditional kinship system of the Batak Toba community, previous studies have predominantly interpreted it from anthropological, sociological, and customary law perspectives. Consequently, its philosophical structure has not yet been systematically reconstructed within the framework of cultural philosophy. This study aims to reconstruct Dalihan Na Tolu as the philosophical foundation of social relational ethics by examining its ontological, epistemological, and axiological dimensions. This research employed a qualitative library research design using philosophical hermeneutics. Primary and secondary sources concerning cultural philosophy, Batak Toba culture, Dalihan Na Tolu, hermeneutic philosophy, and relational ethics were analyzed through hermeneutic interpretation, conceptual analysis, comparative philosophical dialogue, and theoretical synthesis. The findings demonstrate that Dalihan Na Tolu represents a comprehensive philosophical system rather than merely a customary institution. Ontologically, it conceptualizes human beings as relational beings whose identity is constituted through reciprocal social relationships. Epistemologically, cultural knowledge is constructed through tradition, symbols, language, historical experience, communal deliberation, and intergenerational interpretation. Axiologically, Dalihan Na Tolu embodies respect, responsibility, solidarity, justice, relational balance, deliberation, and peace as fundamental ethical values governing communal life. The principal contribution of this study is the formulation of the Philosophical Relational Ethics Model of Dalihan Na Tolu, an integrative framework that synthesizes relational ontology, hermeneutic epistemology, and relational axiology into a coherent model of cultural philosophy. This model extends the discourse of Indonesian cultural philosophy while demonstrating that indigenous wisdom can serve as a universal philosophical resource for strengthening social ethics within multicultural societies.
References
Bakker, A. (1984). Metodologi penelitian filsafat. Kanisius.
Beaney, M. (Ed.). (2013). The Oxford handbook of the history of analytic philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Buber, M. (1970). I and Thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Charles Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1923).
Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. Yale University Press.
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Sage.
Durkheim, É. (1984). The Division of Labor in Society. Free Press. (Original work published 1893).
Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and Method (2nd rev. ed., J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). Continuum.
Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
George, M. W. (2008). The Elements of Library Research. Princeton University Press.
Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume One. Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. MIT Press.
Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T. M., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2022). A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) (3rd ed.). Sage.
Kluckhohn, C. (1951). Values and value-orientations in the theory of action. In T. Parsons & E. A. Shils (Eds.), Toward a General Theory of Action (pp. 388–433). Harvard University Press.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Duquesne University Press.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic Inquiry. Sage.
Ricoeur, P. (1976). Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas Christian University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as Another. The University of Chicago Press.
Scheler, M. (1973). Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Northwestern University Press.
Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, 333–339.
Taylor, C. (1992). Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition. Princeton University Press.
