Rizal’s Perspectives

 Rizal’s concept of a nation, as gleaned from his writings predates and

transcends the liberal concept of a nation-state.
 Vox populi, vox Dei is the fundamental principle in Rizal’s moral concept of
the nation.
 Rizal viewed the nation as an ethical community.
 He was convinced that the way to liberate the nation, to have freedom and
justice, is not through a violent seizure of state power.
 Rizal always depicted nationality by emphasizing the positive qualities of
Filipinos such as the devotion of a Filipina and her influence on a man's life,
which he wrote in his letter to the women of Malolos or the deep sense of
the Filipinos under the Spanish regime.
 He thought of a Filipino nation that was distinct, separate and different from
Spain. There was a Filipino nation even if politically, Spain was in
domination of that nation.
 His vision of the nation “the reader to recover a lost history and vision”
 He emphasized the importance of the Tagalog language and that language
will not be a basis to know their status in life.

Similarities
 Nationalism requires first a national consciousness, the awareness of
national communality of a group of people, or nation.
 A nation is a community because, regardless of the actual inequality and
exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a
deep, horizontal comradeship.
 Nationalism in communities that were formed and led by people who shared
a common language and common descent with those against whom they
fought.
 National consciousness is a shared sense of national identity and a shared
understanding that a people group shares a common ethnic/linguistic/cultural
background.
 Nationalism thrives on political love and dreams of historical destinies.
  Nationalism is an ideology of one’s loyalty and devotion to the nation as
well as in the preservation and enhancement of one’s national and cultural
identity, even when the identity is threatened.

Other Authors’ Perspectives

 Some view the nation in the liberal concept of the nation-state, i.e. the
nation-state is founded on the principle of sovereignty and is constituted by
the people, a state, and a geographical territory.
 Nationalism is the desire to preserve or enhance a people’s national or
cultural identity when that identity is threatened.
 “An imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently
limited and sovereign” (Anderson, 1991)
 Nationalism a named human population occupying an historic territory and
sharing common myths and memories, a public culture, and common laws
and customs for all members. (Smith 2003)
 Nationalism is renewing the cultural and social fabric of the nation through
sweeping institutional changes, to maintain international parity. (Smith)
 Nationalism is the pathology of modern developmental history, as
inescapable nurosis in the individual, with much the same essential
ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into
dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the
world and largely incurable. (Tom Nairn)
 Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents
nations where they do not exist. (Gellner)