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Jaime Balmes, Spanish Traditionalist: His Influence in Spanish America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Harold Eugene Davis*
Affiliation:
The American University, Washington, D.C.

Extract

It is often assumed that the most creative aspect of Latin American thought, since independence, has been revolutionary. To a considerable degree this is true, as this author has himself pointed out in previous writings. But Latin America has also felt the impact of a different stream of creative thought, Spanish in origin to a considerable degree, though not completely so—the stream of Hispanic and Christian traditionalism. But this traditionalism is a mixed current. Thus, Pablo González Casanova of Mexico has shown that while reactionary forces often opposed it, “modern” Christian thought in Spain and New Spain was absorbing the new philosophy and science of the eighteenth century. Alberto Caturelli and Enrique Zuleta Álvarez. of Argentina, in somewhat different ways, have pointed out a mixture of Christian traditionalism with liberal streams of thought in that country. Moisés González Navarro of Mexico found in the historian-statesman, Lucas Alamán, a mixture of Christian traditionalism and economic liberalism. Carlos Valderrama Andrade of Colombia has found that traditionalists such as Miguel Antonio Caro (1843-1909), and his father before him, mixed with the conservative elements of traditionalist thought progressive elements not unlike those of modern Christian democracy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1979

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References

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9 “El Papa y el gobierno,” in Obras Completas, II, 643–652.

10 Filosofía elemental: Ética, in Obras Completas, I, 341, 342, 343. The quotation is from p. 341.

11 Op. cit., I, 348.

12 “El Protestantismo comparado con el Catolicismo,” Obras Completas, Cap. lxxx, II, 1561–67. Quotation is at page 1564.

13 “La Tolerancia,” in Obras Completas, I, 982–87.

14 Obras Completas, I, 1129–1568. Beginning as a sociological enquiry, he finally asks: “What do the individual and society owe to the reform of the sixteenth century?”

15 Op. Cit., p. 1131.

16 Op. cit., p. 1564.

17 Op. cit., p. 775.

18 “Pensamientos sobre literatura, filosofía, política y religión,” Obras Completas, II 1544–53, at p. 1553.

19 “Cartas a un escéptico en materia de religión,” in Obras Completas, pp. 990, 991.

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22 Cartas a un escéptico en materia de religion. Obras Completas, I, 936–1054, at pp. 990–995.

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24 “La ciencia de la sociedad,” Obras Completas, I, 1111. See also “La civilización,” Obras Completas, I, 1091; “La prensa,” Ibid., I, 1117; and “El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilización europea,” Ibid., I, 1 125–1568. Many of Balmes’ works on social questions were published in the journal El pensamiento de la nación.

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34 El pensamiento político de Lucas Alamán. México: El Colegio de México, 1952, p. 29.