The most permanent and most characteristic feature of Jovellanos' writings is his concern with education, the only source from which, in the last analysis, he expects economic improvement, and the sine qua non of meaningful and stable political progress. My purpose here is not to study Jovellanos' educational theories as such but to investigate the philosophical opinions which underlie them. The bulk of Jovellanos' writings on philosophical questions is devoted to these opinions, which we shall examine with special attention to the sources of his thought.
Like almost everything else about Jovellanos, his ideas on philosophical matters became the subject of polemics; and as a consequence, heated argument and the indiscriminate application of such labels as Catholic, Jansenist, sensualist, and traditionalist have too often taken the place of analysis and comparison. Among those who have seriously discussed the subject, however, two general lines of approach can be discerned.
The first is that of critics who recognize the influence on Jovellanos of «modern», that is, of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century post- (and often anti-) scholastic thinkers. This recognition, however, is generally accompanied by an effort to limit the admitted extent of this influence, especially that of the most «objectionable» authors. Thus P. Zeferino González in his history of philosophy acknowledges that Jovellanos is in part a sensualist but finds him closer to Locke than to Condillac138. Another clergyman, Hilario Yaben Yaben, whose principal enthusiasms are Catholicism and cooperatives, predictably atempts to convert Jovellanos to his ideas as well. His discussion of Jovellanos' philosophy is limited to a general declaration that the author accepted the epistemology of Locke and Condillac and that his doctrine, while not heretical, is «poco segura y nada recomendable desde el punto de vista teológico en algunas de sus partes» (Juicio crítico, 70, 73). Of all the critics of this group, A. G. Maceira gives the most careful analysis of Jovellanos' sensualism, devoting two pages to a discussion of the author's debt to Locke and Condillac139. He ends by declaring Jovellanos a traditionalist «tocado de sensualismo» but still a good Catholic. This is also Menéndez Pelayo's verdict: Jovellanos, «más que sensualista es tradicionalista acérrimo, como todos los buenos católicos que picaban en sensualistas» (Heterodoxos 5: 340).
A second and more uncompromising view is that represented by Patricio Peñalver Simó and Juan Luis Villota Elejalde. Peñalver stresses the «weaknesses» of the peculiarly eighteenth-century features of Jovellanos' thought.
According to Peñalver the Elogio de Carlos III, with its frank condemnation of medieval life and thought and its praise of the Enlightenment, best shows
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los dos defectos esenciales de Jovellanos: débil criterio filosófico y falta de visión histórica. Los dos defectos de la época -el siglo tuvo otros- que hicieron presa en él y de los que derivan todas sus demás desviaciones.140 |
For Villota, Jovellanos is neither a traditionalist nor, in spite of occasional innocuous resemblances to Locke, a sensualist; instead, his thinking, especially «en el campo de lo filosófico-jurídico y de lo moral», follows the scholastic tradition and specifically St. Thomas Aquinas141.
What is one to make of these discussions? One thing at least seems clear: critics, even those who are not simply violent propagandists without scientific pretensions, have been more concerned with the question of Jovellanos' religious orthodoxy than with an analysis of his thought. I should like here to take an opposite approach, leaving aside as much as possible any judgments concerning our author's Catholicism.
The questions to be discussed must, however, be put in the proper perspective. Jovellanos as an educated man is broadly concerned with philosophical problems, but he is most specifically interested in those hotly debated questions directly touching on education. An attempt, therefore, to link him to a particular philosophical school only because of a similarity of some beliefs, especially in the field of ethics, must encounter such difficulties as beset Villota. This author makes a great deal of certain doctrinal coincidences between Jovellanos and St. Thomas Aquinas, but without noting that on many of these points the «moderns» are similarly in agreement with scholasticism. If this fact is once accepted, however, one must ask whether in view of Jovellanos' expressed opinions of scholasticism the source in such cases must be sought in Aquinas or in a more recent philosopher. Even if we choose Aquinas, an argument based on such similarities does not go to the heart of Jovellanos' relation to scholasticism. No one, after all, claims that Aristotle, Aquinas, or scholasticism was at any specific date abandoned and forgotten by all thinking men; nor does anyone claim that Jovellanos rejected everything the schools had taught only because they had taught it. His quarrel with scholasticism does not so much concern the truths (real or fancied) which scholasticism taught as it does its method of seeking truth. More specifically, he condemns the deductive method of investigation and teaching, as opposed to the experimental and inductive method initiated, he believes, by Bacon. In addition, he questions the usefulness of scholastic doctrine, even if true, for the lay youth of a country desperately in need of material progress. This is the essence of his criticism of Aristotelian philosophy in his Elogio de Carlos III (1788):
Confused by the subtleties of the scholastic sects, «la doctrina del Estagirita era el mejor escudo de las preocupaciones generales»; but in the reign of Charles III, man,
| (O 1: 314) | ||
Jovellanos was especially anxious to promote the study of the natural sciences, and for this purpose he established the Real Instituto Asturiano. In that school he declared in 1799 that the Aristotelian method of investigation, trying «to establish general laws in order to explain natural phenomena», is mistaken: only the observation of phenomena can lead to the discovery of general laws. Aristotle closed the gates of wisdom. «La gloria de abrirlas de par en par estaba reservada al sublime genio de Bacon» (O 1: 336).
With its fundamentally erroneous method Aristotelian philosophy could produce few useful discoveries, and the speculations to which it gave rise in the schools were in the main fruitless: «Desde Zenón a Espinosa y desde Thales a Malebranche ¿qué pudo descubrir la ontología, sino monstruos o quimeras o dudas o ilusiones?» (O 1: 320a) Its favorite form of reasoning, the syllogism, is an «especie de esgrima literaria»142. While Jovellanos does not absolutely condemn its use, he attacks its abuse, which encourages sophistic arguments. The syllogism, prized largely because it is so conspicuous a feature of scholastic logic, is responsible for the corruption of thought and language and the exaltation of subtlety and stubbornness in controversies.
These arguments against the syllogism and scholastic disputations in general parallel the complaints brought against them by Locke and by Condillac143. Jovellanos does not go any farther than these authors in his condemnation of the scholastic method of seeking knowledge, but he does go quite as far as they. In the Spanish intellectual world of his day, he sees two mutually hostile groups which during his ministry he describes in a report to Charles IV:
| (O 5: 293b-294a) | ||
While the description of the two warring bands seems impartial enough, the report proceeds to recommend as «el reformador de nuestra Sorbona» the bishop D. Antonio Tavira, usually associated with those groups loosely termed «Jansenist» and certainly closer to the filósofos than to the aristotélicos.
Regardless of occasional coincidences between Jovellanos and Aquinas it is clear that our author was constantly hostile to scholastic epistemology and logic and lost no opportunity of making this hostility evident. This attitude is recognized by Jesús Evaristo Casariego, who is not to be included among the partisans of the filósofos and who writes: «Cierto es que Jovellanos no fué nunca escolástico; más bien fué un enemigo de la Escolástica».144 It was also clear to Jovellanos' contemporaries, some of whom hailed him as a champion of anti-scholastic views. Thus Fray Dionisio Otaño, a Benedictine monk and a member of the Economic Society of Asturias, described Jovellanos' position in terms not at all flattering to the philosophy of the schools:
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Disgustado desde entonces de aquella filosofia que habia tiranizado por largos siglos la república de las letras, no pudiendo sufrir aquellas voces barbaras, aquellas sentencias obscurisimas, que eran gloria del peripato y delicia de sus creyentes, volvió su rostro nuestro amable Socio al gracioso simulacro de la verdad... ........... Convencido de la poca utilidad de aquella filosofía gritadora, fecunda madre de imaginarios entes y ocultas qualidades, que tan disfigurada nos dexaron las versiones de los Árabes, procuró de palabra y por escrito substituir á estas vanas sutilezas las mas acreditadas lógicas, las físicas mas exáctas, y el moral mas sano [sic].145 |
Otaño, Jovellanos, and countless others saw in scholasticism a barrier to the advancement of knowledge, particularly in the natural sciences, but also in such other sciences as ethics, which they considered capable of more exact and rigorous development. They could not reject all the thought of the past, but on the whole they did not consider its methods conducive to progress. It is within this context, then, that Jovellanos' relationship to scholasticism must be understood. His difference with it is largely one of method, but it is both plain and unquestionable.
In place of the reasoning methods of the schools, which he decries, Jovellanos calls for the adoption of the «new» logic developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: «Locke la restauró, si ya no la fundó; Condillac simplificó sus principios; Bonet los mejoró, y, a lo que creo, nuestro Eximeno los depuró y perfeccionó»146. Among these authors, Locke and Condillac are evidently the principal sources to which Jovellanos looks: «¡Dichoso Vm. a quien no son desconocid[a]s ni la exacta Logica de Condillac, ni la sublime Methafisica de Lock[e]!» (MSC 3, No. 21, ord. 318) In modern times, logic has become, according to Jovellanos, an experimental science; and now that this has happened, its perfection cannot be far off (O 4: 233a).
In his Curso de humanidades castellanas (1794)147 Jovellanos adheres to a Lockeian concept of logic: logic explains the origin of ideas and uses this knowledge to elucidate the nature and process of thought. In order to explain the origin of ideas, however, it must study also the nature of the being that forms them -i. e., logic necessarily involves ontology and consequently metaphysics, especially «natural theology» (O 1: 101b). Much the same concepts are retained in the Tratado teórico-práctico de enseñanza, though ontology is now somewhat more stressed. Realizing that his definition of logic goes beyond the logic of the schools, Jovellanos here writes:
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Se nos dirá tal vez que nada de esto pertenece a la lógica, y no sin alguna razón, si se atiende a la vulgar acepción de esta palabra. Pero ¿no pertenecerá a la ciencia de las ideas? Y ¿no es esta ciencia la verdadera llave de las demás, la que debe colocarse a su entrada y ocupar el lugar dado al arte del raciocinio? Désele, pues, el nombre de ideología, que sin duda le conviene mejor; pero adjudíquesele la doctrina que pertenece esencialmente a su objeto.148 |
This study of «ideology» is to deal with the nature of the soul, «esta sustancia simple, incorpórea, inteligente, activa, inmortal, unida a nuestro ser, a la cual fue dada la facultad de sentir y percibir las impresiones que recibe de los objetos exteriores»; with the faculties of the soul; and with the nature of the impressions «que por el ministerio de los sentidos envían a ella [i. e., al alma] los objetos exteriores». «Ideology» must further explore how the soul, though unable to penetrate to the essence and substance of things and perceiving only their «accidentes y propiedades o modos de existir», can distinguish among different objects and come to understand the relations among them. These relations include the series of efficient and final causes that unites all things, even a partial understanding of which leads to the knowledge of a first cause and an order, that is, to the recognition of «un Ser eterno, necesario, omnipotente, sapientísimo y perfectísimo por esencia», and, ultimately, to knowledge of the eternal ethical principles «engraved in the soul» by God.
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En suma, nuestra ideología deberá reunir y enlazar en el orden indicado por su misma naturaleza las ideas principales de la dialéctica, psicología, cosmología, ontología, teología natural y ética; en una palabra, todos los principios de la filosofía racional.149 |
As a program of studies for young children, «ideology» is ambitious indeed; like Condillac, Jovellanos assumes that the study of epistemology should precede all other studies, and that the child will learn specific «subjects» better and more easily if he has first studied the theory of knowledge and how knowledge is acquired. This study is to be carried on through experiment and self-analysis, applying, in other words, the introspective psychological method of Locke, whose doctrine Jovellanos recommends, as he does Condillac's, as «muy perspicua y sólida» (TTP 1: 250b). «Ideology» is part of «speculative philosophy» as opposed to «practical [or natural] philosophy»150. Its fundamental assumptions evidently relate it not to scholastic but to sensualistic epistemology, Jovellanos' debt to which we shall now examine in more detail.
Jovellanos adheres to the basic tenet of sensualistic epistemology, the experiential origin of ideas. Like Locke and Condillac, he sees sensation and reflection as the dual source of ideas. Our knowledge of «los objetos de la naturaleza» is acquired through the senses, while we know spiritual things through reflection. This is the same distinction made by Locke, for whom «external material things» are the «objects of sensation» and «the operations of our own minds within» are the «objects of reflection»151. But for Locke, «having ideas» and «perception» are the same thing (II: i, §9), while Jovellanos seems to distinguish: «Llámase sensación la impresión que el alma recibe de los objetos que están presentes, e idea la imagen que el alma conserva de los objetos que están ausentes» (CHC 1: 102b). In the same way that «impression» is here distinguished from «image», so also is «sensation» considered separate from and presumably prior to «idea»152. The same distinction is made by Condillac: perceptions become ideas only when reflected on and considered as images153. This, as we shall see, is only one of several, instances in which Jovellanos adheres more closely to Condillac's doctrine than to Locke's.
Early in his Essai sur l'origine des conoissances humaines Condillac derives ideas from the same two sources as Locke: sensation and reflection. In subsequent passages of the same work, however, sensation is stressed at the expense of reflection; and in later works, particularly in the Traité des sensations, reflection is gradually eliminated as a source of ideas and treated only as a special kind of sensation154. While Jovellanos does not come to assert a single source of ideas, he also, in his later writings, increasingly emphasizes sensation «El hombre, recibe todas sus primeras ideas por los sentidos: su alma, las percibe y compara, y obra sobre ellas».155 The temporal priority here given to sensual knowledge is more explicit in the Introducción a un discurso sobre el estudio de la economía civil, dating from about the same period: «¿Puede dudarse que el alma piensa porque siente, y que si el sentir y el pensar no son una misma cosa, es preciso decir que primero siente que piensa?»156 The same order is maintained in the Tratado teórico-práctico, where it is asserted (1: 240a) that we perceive things through the senses or deduce them by reflection, equally implying that knowledge by reflection is somehow less direct, less immediate than sensual knowledge and, being acquired by deduction, necessarily subsequent to the sensual knowledge from which presumably it is deduced.
Thought is for Jovellanos the operation of the mind on ideas: «vemos que [el hombre] percibe, compara, judga [sic], en una palabra, que piensa».157Comparison is particularly essential to thought and to the formation of abstract ideas:
| (MSC 3 o 58, ltr. 3) | ||
Comparison, however, is only one of the «faculties of the soul» which Jovellanos recognizes and which he enumerates as attention, comparison, judgment, reflection, reasoning, and memory (CHC 1: 103b). This list recalls both Locke and Condillac, but in its specific terms it once more places Jovellanos closer to the latter. At various points in his Essay Locke speaks of «faculties of the mind» and gives several groupings of them which on the whole differ from Jovellanos'158. Condillac's Essai adheres in a general way to Locke's discussion, though a tendency to systematize and simplify becomes evident and comparison is increasingly stressed as the basis of judgment and reasoning (38 ff, 96-101, 113-116). These tendencies bear fruit in the Logique, where the «faculties of the soul» are listed as attention, comparison, judgment, reflection, imagination, and reasoning159. We see that the number, names, and even the order of these «faculties» are almost exactly the same as in Jovellanos' Curso de humanidades castellanas. The only differences are that Jovellanos lists reasoning fifth instead of sixth and adds memory in place of imagination. The two latter terms, however, are closely related; in Condillac's system both are concerned with past perceptions, which memory recalls and imagination recreates (Essai, 55 ff). In the Economía civil, which is presumably slightly later than the Curso de humanidades, Jovellanos reduces the «faculties» to perception and volition, a clear reflection of Locke's Essay (O 5: 16b; HU, II: vi).
Locke, Condillac, and Jovellanos all reject the Cartesian view of animals as automata. The English philosopher, however, seems to find a clear qualitative difference between animal and human intelligences; for him, the formation of general ideas sharply distinguishes men from beasts. Jovellanos, while also denying that animals can form general or universal ideas, sees no real qualitative difference between the instinct of the animal and human reason. Both are «el conocimiento de las relaciones que hay entre nuestra existencia y los demás entes», and the difference between them «no tanto se halla en su esencia, cuanto en la perfección». Here again Jovellanos is closest to the position of Condillac, who, while recognizing the difference between animal and human intelligences, regards reason as only a further development from the level of instinct, not something intrinsically different160.
Jovellanos' adherence to the doctrine deriving ideas from sensation obliges him, like his predecessors, to limit the possibilities of knowledge. Thus he declares that our senses can perceive only the qualities of objects, not the objects themselves; and an object is for him nothing but «un punto de varias calidades»161. The knowledge accessible to us suffices to assure us of the existence of individual objects, but we have no such assurance of the existence of classes or sorts. These, for Jovellanos, are not the products of nature but of man; they are the result of a process of abstraction which seeks to overcome the inconvenience of countless individual names by applying general names. The general name, given to many objects, therefore represents a human invention existing not in nature but in the human mind or spirit. Thus far Jovellanos is mainly in agreement with the teaching of Locke and of Condillac's Essai162. Condillac, however, was to go farther and to deny the reality of abstractions altogether in his Logique:
| (132) | ||
Only in one passage of Jovellanos' works do we find anything comparable to this. In it, we are told that all ideas of individuals are ideas of sensation, while the idea of a class is an idea of reflection. The senses pre sent no such idea to the soul, which forms it «de por sí, por medio de varias expresiones; luego el nombre general no representa una cosa que existe verdaderamente». No conclusion can be based on this passage, however, since it is one of those whose authorship is open to question163.
According to Locke and his followers the human mind arbitrarily forms general terms and applies them to complex ideas. When so used, these terms fully express the nominal essences of substances and the real essences of «mixed modes», since these ideas are equally arbitrary products of the mind. If such ideas and terms are to be used correctly they must, however, be fully understood; and this can best be accomplished through their analysis, a method which accordingly becomes the principal tool of inquiry164. For Jovellanos the analytic method «es el único que puede conducir seguramente a la indagación de la verdad» (TTP 1: 250b; cf. 1: 150b) -an unequivocal expression of preference which recalls Condillac's categorical statement in his Essai:
| (TTP 1: 250) | ||
The consequent close identification of thought and Language may also be traced primarily to the influence of Condillac. This is not to say that the importance of language is not also recognized by Locke, who devotes the third book of his Essay to it; thought is for Locke almost always carried on with words, especially when it involves complex ideas. Hence the danger of mistaking words for ideas and using words that stand for no clear and distinct ideas165. Yet language seems to be for Locke a convenience, the use of which does not exclude the possibility of thinking without words. In fact, since thought is or should be concerned with ideas, the elimination of words from our thought could only serve to clarify and simplify it. For Condillac, however, the role of language is much greater. Language gives man control over memory, imagination, and contemplation and thus makes possible reflection, without which there could be no advances in thought. Complex ideas in particular cannot exist without their names, whose function may be compared to that of «substance» for qualities: the simple ideas composing a complex one are held together by the name much as qualities are said to reside in a substance (Essai, 85-92, 176-182). Hence the importance of analysis in the development of clear language and clear thought, which come to be the same thing. In the Logique, language itself is presented as an analytic method: through language we analyze and thus acquire knowledge (117 ff). Thought thus comes to be entirely dependent on and identified with language,
| (134) | ||
This is exactly the position adopted by Jovellanos. Language for him is the instrument not only of expression but also of analysis: though we could have perceptions without language, we could not think about these perceptions (O 2: 145b). In the Tratado teórico-práctico he writes that
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como el hombre para pensar necesite de una colección de signos que determinen y ordenen las diferentes ideas de que sus pensamientos se componen, la lengua ha venido a ser para él un verdadero instrumento analítico, y el arte de pensar ha coincidido de tal manera con el arte de hablar, que vienen ya a ser virtualmente uno mismo.166 |
Once more Jovellanos, though fundamentally in agreement with both Locke and Condillac, moves rather toward the more extreme position represented by the Frenchman.
If language is equivalent to thought, the improper use of a language must produce errors of thought. The meanings of words, even those indicating objects perceivable through the senses, are sometimes unclear; and this danger becomes far more acute when we deal with «nociones formadas por reflexión y conceptos a que hemos dado en nuestro espíritu una existencia meramente ideal» (MJC 1: 619a). Philosophical disputes could therefore be greatly reduced if only the meanings of words could be fixed and made clear to all. A universal language, though only a hope, «o sea dulce y piadosa ilusión», would establish «un vínculo de unión y fraternidad» among all men; and even in the absence of such utopian blessings, the perfection of language will produce the perfection of reason (TTP 1: 247b; MSC 3, no. 58, ltr. 3). Jovellanos' ideal of an exact language, like Locke's and Condillac's, is mathematics . Geometry, he writes,
| (O 2: 146a) | ||
The great virtue of mathematics, which makes it an exact science, is the exact correspondence between words and ideas that prevails in it; and the establishment of a similarly exact correspondence is the only way of «elevating» the intellectual sciences «a la clase de demostrativas»167.
Ethics is one of the most important sciences which might be so «elevated». This is already Locke's position: since the names of mixed modes or archetypes refer to real essences which are the arbitrary creation of man, these terms and the ideas to which they are attached are fully analyzable, making possible a precision similar to that of mathematics. Morality is therefore «capable of demonstration»168. For Jovellanos ethics or morality is one of the sciences of «speculative philosophy», along with logic and metaphysics; and it is one of those which he most stresses in his educational writings169. In his instructions for the governance of the Colegio de Calatrava (1790) he writes:
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Y pues que la razón pura y despreocupada es la única fuente de la ética, del derecho natural y aun del público universal, el regente guiará a sus discípulos en la aplicación de esta luz celestial, que el Criador colocó en nuestras almas para que discerniésemos y conociésemos los derechos imprescriptibles del hombre, sus primitivas obligaciones, y los oficios a que está obligado respecto de su eterno Hacedor, de sí mismo, de sus prójimos, de la sociedad universal del género humano, de las particulares en que está dividida, y de aquella bajo cuya protección vive y goza de su libertad personal y de todos los derechos unidos a ella.170 |
In an undatable draft we are told that «la moral tiene sin duda su fuente en la razón», through the exercise of which the natural law is revealed to men. The Gospels themselves are no abrogation of this law but, on the merely human level, «la flor de la razón más ilustrada y el compendio de la más pura y santa filosofía» (O 5: 332). If ethics is derived from reason it must be subject to analysis and calculation, and so Jovellanos writes his friend Vargas Ponce in 1799:
| (O 2: 268b) | ||
In all this Jovellanos stands fairly close to Locke. The latter denied the existence of innate moral principles but believed in a «law of nature» which, though not «imprinted on our minds», we can know «by the use and due application of our natural faculties» (HU, I: ii, §13). Since man necessarily chooses what he considers the greatest good, his choosing according to «wrong measures of good and evil» shows that he has miscalculated (II: xxi). Hence the importance of correct thinking for morality in Locke's view. Fortunately for both Locke and Jovellanos, the language and ideas (mixed modes) involved in ethical speculations so lend themselves to analysis as to make morality a science «capable of demonstration».
Jovellanos' position is not, however, unequivocal. Reason is the «source» of ethics; but it helps us to «discern and know» the moral law, not to frame it. This law is «engraved in human hearts» as «the true expression of the will of the supreme lawgiver». Virtue is a science; but the law it follows is not the work of nature, which is only a general term, nor the creation of reason, which is not a being but a faculty of the soul. Reason can teach us the norms of conduct and guide us by them, but it is not itself the norm (O 1: 104a, 251b 253a, 261b). In fact, it is not the only way in which we come to the knowledge of moral truths, which Jovellanos defines as «verdades de sentimiento»..
| (TTP 1: 235b-236a) | ||
In this sense, knowledge of moral truths is less a product of reasoning than of unanalyzable immediate perception; moral truths are now self-evident. This does not mean that such knowledge is innate, though the ability to acquire it is.
The phrase «verdades de sentimiento» recalls Condillac, who distinguishes among «evidence de raison», «evidence de fait», and «evidence de sentiment», ascribing knowledge of subjective phenomena to the last of these (Logique, 179); but it may also reflect Francis Hutcheson's System of Moral Philosophy, in which the existence of a specific moral sense is asserted171. Hutcheson, though making this assertion, holds that we arrive at moral ideas through observation and reasoning (1: 97); and in his Introducción a un discurso sobre el estudio de la economía civil Jovellanos, in the same belief, writes that, while there is «una moral de sentimiento que, impresa en el corazón de los hombres, puede no necesitar de instrucción», even it needs to be cultivated and perfected by education (O 5: 12b). The Tratado teórico-práctico adds that to act virtuously is to do one's duty and that education must therefore teach man what that duty is, showing him at the same time the true nature of the Good which he naturally seeks (1: 231b).
Sentimiento with the meaning of «sentiment» is also very much a part of Jovellanos' ethics. The man who wrote El delincuente honrado and who read and translated (probably from the French) Gessner's Tod Abels could hardly be expected to see Virtue only as a matter of calculation. On the contrary, virtue is for Jovellanos a source of pleasure which, if inferior to the highest satisfaction derived from a sense of harmony with God, is still superior to aesthetic pleasure (TTP 1: 253a, 266a). Thus he tells his students at the Real Instituto Asturiano:
| (O 1: 334a) | ||
and he writes his friend Ceán Bermúdez,
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| (Caso, Poesías, 327) | ||
Such sentiments are of course a pervasive feature of eighteenth-century literature. María Ángeles Galino relates them to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and indirectly to Hutcheson and Shaftesbury (212); but except for Hutcheson, we have no proof of Jovellanos' knowing these works. Without conjectures, however, we can find among his readings such passages as that in which Adam Ferguson tells us that
| (Moral phil., 152) | ||
With respect to ethics, then, Jovellanos begins with a Lockeian position, stressing the role of reason in the discovery of moral truths, though reason does not itself create these truths. In later works, he tends to give less weight to rational ethics and more to sentimental values in morality. The change is not one of fundamentals but one of emphasis; throughout his works, Jovellanos' insistence on education and on the development of civic virtues remains constant.
With all his affinities to the new philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jovellanos is strong and insistent in his denunciations of what he considers exaggeration and impiety. Hobbes, Spinoza, and Helvétius are singled out for condemnation172. His faith in «la razón pura y despreocupada» is matched by his distrust of «la razón libre y desarreglada», which may, if unchecked by authority and revelation, lead men into error (Calatrava 1: 209a, §12). This is not to say that Jovellanos opposed the new spirit of free inquiry or that he sided with prejudice and reaction in their efforts to condemn the Enlightenment; far from it. His comments on a country priest's diatribe against «los espíritus fuertes» indicates his opinion of fanatical resistance to all that is new:
| (D 13.vi.97, 2: 353-354) | ||
Jovellanos does, however, try to maintain an attitude of common sense between warring extremes. Thus he condemns the ancients for basing their philosophy only on their reason without trusting the observations of their senses, and at the same time deplores the attempt of some moderns to discard reason and «enslave truth to the tyranny of the senses».
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¿Qué de sistemas absurdos, qué de hipótesis atrevidas y locas no ha producido esta manía, este nuevo frenesí en el estudio de la física? Pero ¿acaso puede desconocer el hombre su propio ser? ¿Puede ignorar que le fue comunicado este destello de la luz celestial para socorro de sus débiles y falaces sentidos? ¿O puede olvidar que su espíritu fue atado a la materia y como aherrojado en medio de ella para que recibiese las ideas por medio de las sensaciones, y para que no pudiese percibir sin sentir, ni pensar sin haber sentido? Huyamos, amados compatriotas, de tan funestos, de tan locos extremos.173 |
Like Locke (e. g., HU, IV: iii, §21), Jovellanos urges a common-sense acceptance of our intuitive knowledge of the existence and nature of the self. Neither the doctrine that man could think without receiving ideas through the senses, nor the extreme view of man only as a bundle of sensations, a kind of sentient machine, satisfies him; and in this respect he remains squarely in the Lockeian tradition.
The philosophy which Jovellanos has formed, drawing largely on Locke and Condillac, is essentially optimistic. Its stress on the importance of analysis leads to a belief in the possibility of clearer and more effective thought, of intellectual and also moral advancement; and Jovellanos did believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man. By this he does not mean that man is infinitely perfectible or that his knowledge will ever be perfect, for in keeping with his sensualistic philosophy, Jovellanos denies that men will ever discover the essence of matter or the substance of other beings or arrive by their-own efforts at a full understanding of supernatural beings. The precise limits to human knowledge, however, are unknown.
This progress is possible through improvement of the reason and even through training of the senses; and the advances made in this way by the individual, whose possibilities are still limited by his life-span, can be transmitted to others through language. In this sense, then, human perfectibility consists of a continual interaction between the individual and the species: the species as a whole is improved by each advance communicated to it by an individual, and each individual can build on the basis of the accomplishments of the species174.
Human perfectibility is the work of education, for
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la instrucción mejora el ser humano, el único que puede ser perfeccionado por ella, el único dotado de perfectibilidad. Este es el mayor don que recibió de la mano de su inefable Criador. Ella le descubre, ella le facilita todos los medios de su bienestar, ella, en fin, es el primer origen de la felicidad individual.175 |
With this we come full circle to the importance of education.