Jose Rizal

From Philosopedia

Rizal, José (1861–1896)

Born in Calamba, Rizal became a major Philippine nationalist, author, physician, and poet. He described his Laguna Province father, Francisco Mercardo Rizal as "a model of fathers" and his mother, Teodora Alonza y Quinto as "loving and prudent."

His mother taught him the alphabet when he was 3, by 5 he showed talent as an artist, and when 8 he wrote a Tagalog poem, "Sa Aking Mga Kabata," that illustrated his early love of language.

When 16, Rizal obtained his B.A. from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, then enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas, studying philosophy and letters. Claiming his Catholic tutors were discriminating against Filipino students, he no longer pursued a degree in medicine, moving to Spain, where when 23 he received the degree of Licentiate in Medicine at from the University of Madrid. In 1885 he received his Ph. D. there.

Noli me tangere (1886, tr. The Lost Eden, 1961) was a novel castigating the Spanish officials and what he alleged were the arrogant and despotic Philippine religious orders, resulting in his being expelled when he returned in 1887. He then lived in China, Japan, the United States, England, and France, eventually establishing himself as a physician in Hong Kong.

In 1890 he annotated Antonio Morgas's Sucesos de las isles Filipinas, showing that the islands had a civilization long before the Spaniards arrived. His second novel, El Filibusterismo (1890, tr. The Subversive (1962), was published in Ghent. Upon returning to Manila in 1892, he was arrested, termed a revolutionary agitator, and banished to Dapitan on Mindanao. Going to Cuba in 1896, he was arrested, returned, and after a trumped up trial was found guilty as an instigator of insurrection and founder of secret revolutionary societies. Murderously shot, he became a martyr who incited a rebellion against Spanish rule.

Rizal has been called "the first Filipino Humanist" by Ramon "Poch" Suzara:

• What else do you call a man who was committed to the application of reason and science and to solving human problems of the here and now?
• What else do you call a man who deplored efforts to denigrate human intelligence, who did not seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and who did not look outside nature for salvation? A man who wanted to leave this world one day a better place than he found it.
• What else do you call a man who valued scientific discoveries that have contributed to the betterment of human existence? Who was concerned with securing justice and fairness by eliminating discrimination and intolerance in society?
• What else do you call a man who attempted to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity and who worked for the spread of common human decency?
• What else do you call a man who believed that developing his creative talents to the fullest constituted the greatest happiness in life for the here and the now?
• What else do you call a man who believed in the cultivation of moral excellence, respected the rights of others, believe in human integrity, and was open to critical and rational way of thinking?
• What else do you call man who was concerned with the moral education of children? Who wanted to nourish them with the passion for reason, love, and compassion?
• What else do you call a man who rejected the theologies of despair, the ideologies of violence, and the sacraments of mediocrity?
• And finally, what do you call a man who believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in place of dogma, truth instead of sacred lies, joy rather than guilt and sin, tolerance in place of fear, love instead of hate?

{CE; JM; RAT; RE; Ramon "Poch" Suzara, Manila journalist who wrote Bertrand Russell to the Rescue: Can the Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell Save the Philippines?}