The Scholastic Foundations of Emilio Jacinto’s Liwanag at Dilim (Light and Darkness), c. 1896

Abstract

Focusing on Emilio Jacinto’s conception of freedom (kalayaan) and legitimate political authority in Liwanag at Dilim (Light and Darkness), this article traces his thinking to the political theories developed during the Spanish Counter-Reformation by theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez. It argues that Jacinto’s vernacular political theology had Scholastic foundations. It provides an alternative intellectual history to Philippine revolutionary thought that is neither founded upon Protestant, northwestern European liberal influences nor derived from folk millenarianism but instead emphasizes the need to approach the “Filipino Enlightenment” as participating in a larger, global, distinctly Hispanic intellectual phenomenon.

KEYWORDS: POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY • THEOLOGY • REVOLUTION • SOVEREIGNTY • SCHOLASTICISM