MICHAEL “XIAO” CHUA

FLORO Quibuyen, in his book A Nation Aborted: Rizal, American Hegemony and Philippine Nationalism, emphasized that when José Rizal was asked by his brother Paciano to go to Spain in 1882, he was told by his brother that “the principal purpose” of his trip was not just “to finish this [medical] course but to study other things of greater usefulness.” Even Rizal wrote to his worried parents after he left secretly, “I too have a mission to fulfill, as for example, alleviate the sufferings of my fellow men.” Since his Manila student days, it was hinted that his real passion was the humanities, not medicine. Studying “other things of greater usefulness” to fulfill a mission to “alleviate the sufferings of my fellow men” which was under the yoke of Spanish colonialism—it basically meant the scientific study of society, i.e. social science, not just for the sake of mere knowledge but to try to change it.

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