Abstract
This paper situates José Rizal within the
philosophical crisis of the nineteenth century, arguing that his enduring
significance lies not merely in nationalist thought or literary achievement,
but in a sustained ethical reworking of modern philosophy under conditions of
colonial domination. Against the backdrop of Enlightenment disillusionment,
Darwinian deep time, and the fragmentation of reason into competing
intellectual currents, Rizal emerges as a critical appropriator rather than a
passive recipient of European ideas. The study advances three central claims.
First, Rizal transforms historicism into a form of critical historicism,
rejecting both historical nihilism and teleological philosophies that subsume
suffering into rational progress, and recasting history as a site of moral
accountability and dignity. Second, he articulates a normative liberalism under
constraint, in which freedom is understood not as an endpoint of history but as
an ethical discipline requiring education, self-cultivation, and civic
vigilance. Third, Rizal develops a philosophy of mediation—rather than
synthesis—through which cultural sapin-sapin (layered identity), moral
agency under domination, and critical hope are held in productive tension
without recourse to metaphysical guarantees or revolutionary absolutism. By
integrating history, education, culture, and moral agency into a coherent ethical
posture, Rizal offers an account of nationhood as an unfinished project,
sustained by responsibility rather than destiny. The paper concludes that Rizal
should be read as a philosopher of unfinished freedom, whose thought remains
relevant for contemporary debates on coloniality, dignity, and the ethical
conditions of political life.
Keywords
José Rizal; nineteenth-century philosophy; critical
historicism; coloniality; liberalism under constraint; moral agency; education
and civic formation; sapin-sapin; philosophical mediation; critical
hope; national consciousness; ethics of freedom
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