By LUIS V. TEODORO
The extent to which Rizal is recognized by the Filipino can be measured in graphs and statistics. It consists of the hero’s face appearing on match-boxes, his signature on the façade of a movie-theater, more recently in the construction this year, to commemorate his centenary, of a monstrosity at the top of his monument, and the worship of his memorabilia as fetishes of some sort.
It would seem, therefore, that the meaning of Rizal’s life and struggles for the Filipino nation has been forgotten by his own people. It is the task of the University, as the logical heir to Rizal’s faith in the freedom of thought and inquiry, to do its utmost to remain true to Rizal’s ideals and to re-assert them at a time when they are most needed: today, a hundred years after his birth.
Rizal’s dilemma consisted of the painful but necessary task of having to choose between violent commitment to the Revolution and the slow road to the agitation for reforms within the social order. It is necessarily the dilemma of a liberal believing that his people are not prepared for the sacrifice and chaos that must necessarily come with the destruction of the social order and at the same time aware of the almost total impossibility of asking for reforms within the limits of law.
This is evident in his writings, particularly in his two novels. Ibarra, a liberal who in the beginning had the utmost faith in the possibility of seeking reforms without toppling the established order, finds the brutality of the status quo victimizing him and becomes the bitter revolutionary Simoun, whose revolution is mostly motivated by the desire for personal vengeance. Simoun fails because of this and in his failure Rizal is asserting the catastrophic consequences of a Revolution which only takes destruction into account and fails to provide an alternative to the old order. On the other hand there is the idealist revolutionary Elias whose essential nobility brings about his own destruction.
This has always been the liberal dilemma in any society, and Rizal in adhering to the guideposts of his reason, finds the perennial “solution”—death, which in every society has been the fate of the liberal, whether in the form of muskets or in the form of external pressures which can kill his spirit.
But Rizal refused to surrender his spirit: rather than stifle his liberalism he chose the sure path to destruction. For Rizal must have known the penalty for free inquirer—he himself and his family had had first-hand knowledge of the brutality of the social order, but he chose to recognize and affirm the unbounded freedom of the mind.
It is one recurrent obscenity of our national life: that a hundred years after Rizal’s death the same repressive atmosphere exists to limit intellectual freedom. The University as the appropriate ground for the exercise of this freedom has often been questioned and continually attacked. Instead of muskets, it has been threatened with debilitation through pressures exerted upon its faculty and students by that world outside the campus. Just as Rizal recognized no barriers to his thoughts, so should the University recognize no limits to its freedom, whether religious or ideological, for the mind, if it must be free, must own no final commitments.
The University, by affirming this ideal, thereby would affirm the greatness of Rizal. For this is the only celebration of liberal spirit appropriate in these times. And Rizal’s was such a spirit. If there must be a goal for the University which shall be meaningful for Rizal’s centenary, it is the attainment of such conditions in which it would no longer be valid to look back to the hero; when that time comes, then Rizal can finally rest. For the liberal spirit then shall be fully accepted and understood. ●
Luis V. Teodoro served as the Collegian editor-in-chief during the second semester of Academic Year 1961-1962. He passed away on March 13, 2023 at the age of 81. Read our obituary here.
