‘Project 2028’: Philippines unleashed (2)
Humiliated by Napoleon, and intent on building a unified German nation in a world dominated by the superpowers of Britain, France, and Russia, the Prussians embraced a period of reform and modernization around two centuries ago. The Germans were not interested in democratic transformation. What they wanted was a strong, prosperous nation built on the rule of law. And perhaps nothing better embodied this purposeful commitment to genuine modernization than the establishment of the University of Berlin at the turn of the long 19th century.
The university’s shifting names throughout the decades—beginning as Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in the imperial era, then renamed as Humboldt University of Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) during the Cold War era, just to inspire the creation of the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin) on the western side of the Berlin Wall—stand as a testament to the traumas of the German modernization project. Against all odds, however, then upstart Prussia quickly managed to build one of the world’s leading universities, which would eventually hire researchers such as Albert Einstein in the 20th century.
It’s hard to overstate the sheer ambition behind the establishment of the university—and the broader German project. At this time, the likes of Oxford in Britain and the Sorbonne in France were already more than half-a-millennium in existence, having produced and attracted some of the greatest figures in science, literature, and politics in human history. Yet, the University of Berlin took off like a rocket from the very start, thanks to the role of world-renowned philosophers. No less than Johann Gottlieb Fichte served as not only its founding planner but also its first chair of philosophy and its first elected rector.
Within barely a generation, its star philosophy professor Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel produced the “Elements of the Philosophy of Right” (1821), which provided a revolutionary mode of political thought that still shapes our policy debates to this date. As the chair of philosophy, Hegel sought to answer the most fundamental question facing his burgeoning nation-state: “What is Germany?”
More specifically, he provided a comprehensive framework for analyzing the relationship between personal freedom and state power. For Hegel, the State (Staat) represented the ultimate expression of an ethical life (sittlichkeit): namely, the nesting of individual interest in a collective consciousness, which harmonizes personal freedom with national coherence. For Hegel, the State represents the march of the divine will and “the actuality of the ethical Idea” by ensuring the “union of duty and right” and securing the “pillars of public freedom.”
Crucially, he criticized Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of moralität (morality) for its formalism and individualized obsession with “ought” (sollen) rather than the creation of institutions, which can collectively uphold both individual freedom as well as collective prosperity. Civil society is key for mediating competing interests, Hegel argued, but it’s ultimately the modern State that can serve as the engine of national transformation—and the accomplishment of humanity’s greatest potentials. Millennia earlier, Aristotle argued that early polities are an organic outgrowth of our nature as “political animals.” For Hegel, however, the modern State represents the culmination of the transhistorical human quest for self-actualization.
Having been brought up in the American tradition, the Filipino mind tends to have a very narrow if not misguided understanding of the modern State. By default, most Filipinos tend to be libertarian, seeing the State more as a source of menace than mobilization of collective interests. Authoritative studies by the Pew Survey and Asia Barometer have consistently shown that Filipinos are simultaneously fascinated by strongmen as well as “small government.”
Compared to our Asian neighbors, we tend to be less interested in state-led distributive justice or systematic correction of historical injustices. As sociologists, such as University of Chicago’s Marco Garrido, have argued, we tend to be uncritically fascinated by the islands of corporate prosperity (i.e., malls) built by our oligarchs in the midst of the chaos of our patchwork cities. And as historian Lisandro Claudio of the University of California, Berkeley has argued in his latest book, “The Profligate Colonial” (2025), our policy elite has been ideologically allergic to state-led industrialization at the expense of modernizing our economy. The State, however, is our greatest hope to overcome dynasties and systemic injustice. In my next column, I will explain how the next administration should empower and leverage our state institutions to bring about both a free and strong Philippine republic.
richard.heydarian@inquirer.net
