Krausism

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause on his deathbed.

Krausism is an idealistic doctrine that is based on a reconciliation between theism and pantheism, according to which God, without being the world (pantheism) or outside of it (theism), it contains it in itself and transcends it. Such a conception is called panentheism. It owes its name to the German post-Kantian thinker Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832). This philosophy was widely disseminated in Spain, where it reached its maximum practical development thanks to the work of its great promoter, Julián Sanz del Río, and the Institución Libre de Enseñanza directed by Francisco Giner de los Ríos, as well as the contribution of the jurist Federico de Castro and Fernandez.

Krausism defends academic tolerance and academic freedom against dogmatism.

Spanish Krausism

Around the year 1840, a group of Spanish jurists, including Julián Sanz del Río, sought a political doctrine that within liberalism would initiate the regenerative process that the country needed and contain in itself a spiritual element that is not found in the formulation doctrine of liberalism then in vogue. They found it when Ruperto Navarro Zamorano, a member of Sanz del Río's group of friends, translated in 1841 the Curso de Derecho Natural, o Filosofía del Derecho by Heinrich Ahrens published in Paris in 1837, where he stated that the The foundation of Law consists of "conditionality": the set of external conditions on which the rational destiny of man and humanity depends, which must develop systematically as a universal order of mercy, self-denial and altruism. This philosophy is summed up in the formula of "harmonic rationalism" or "panentheism" and in Krause's work Ideal of humanity for life (1811).

The pedagogical implications of the Krausist philosophy make it necessary to put the student in direct contact with nature and with any object of knowledge (hence the importance of experimental classes and excursions), as well as to establish a gradualism from the beginning. germs of each discipline of knowledge to the extreme complication and interconnection of the higher levels. On the other hand, secularism and the antidogmatic belief in a god alien to regulations of any kind are fundamental in Krausism.

Although Krause had faithful followers in Belgium (Heinrich Ahrens, Guillaume Tiberghien), the Netherlands and Latin America, it was in Spain where he applied himself and exerted a lasting influence on artistic and intellectual life between 1868 and 1936, the date on which the Civil War Civil dispersed its most prominent members mainly in Latin America. Among these it is worth mentioning María Dolores Gómez Molleda, Blas Infante, Pablo de Azcárate, Elías Díaz, Julio Caro Baroja, Eloy Terrón, Franco Díaz de Cerio, José Luis Abellán, Joaquín Xirau, Juan López-Morillas and Alberto Jiménez Fraud.

Krausism in Latin America

Because of the common language, certain Spanish Americans were exiled to Spain where they came into contact with Krause's doctrines. The most direct case was that of the Puerto Rican Eugenio María de Hostos, who studied with Sanz del Río and whose novel La peregrinación de Bayoán is totally imbued with a unitary philosophy of the social organism. Hostos, for example, preaches the liberation of women, but more than as a human right, rather as a greater good for the community, for the social organism. Another Caribbean man, the Cuban hero and writer José Martí, after suffering a political prison of forced labor and a shackle for having written letters against the military brutality of the transatlantic colonial regime, and despite his youth, manages to get out of prison and go into exile in the peninsula. After six months of hard work he was able to study law when he too came in contact with Krause's doctrines.

Both of them, Martí and Hostos, although with their own and original speech, formulate a speech with influence at the beginning of that kind of Krausist liberalism where the individual acts for the improvement of society. In both cases, this discourse evolved into the so-called "anti-imperialist nationalism" (a term elaborated by Dr. Rafael Cuevas, and referring to the analysis of the speech of the Nicaraguan patriot Augusto C. Sandino who fights against the US occupation). Hostos and Martí finished being pro-independence heroes and allies in their anti-colonial struggle, in this case of both Cuba and Puerto Rico, against Spain. In addition, both were initiated into Freemasonry, confirming the mutual influence between Krausism and Freemasonry. This promotes a kind of social network to support the emigration of Krausist liberal educators who arrive in the independent republics with Latin American liberal rulers, and stand out in education, as was the case in Costa Rica.

Later, figures such as Hipólito Yrigoyen, José Batlle y Ordóñez, ^{[citation required]}Alfonso Reyes, José Enrique Rodó, Alejandro Deústua, ^{[citation needed]}and Alejandro Korn appropriated the doctrine already in America or still in their travels through Europe. Reyes, for example, gave lectures at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and Rodó began to experience Krausism through his long correspondence with Leopoldo Alas. In Rodó, Krausism fosters an aesthetic concern.

General bibliography on Krausism

• López Morillas, Juan. Spanish krausism: Profile of an intellectual adventure. (1956).
• Jimenez Garcia, Antonio. Krausism and the Free Institution of Teaching(1985).
• Gil Cremades, Juan José. Spanish reformism: Krausism, historical school, neotism(1969).
• Lipp, Solomon. Francisco Giner de los Ríos (1985).
• Leon Esteban, Leon. “The krausism in Spain: theory and circumstance.” History of education 4 (ene-dic 1985), pp. 97-117.

Bibliography on Krausism in America

• Arturo Ardao, Spiritualism and positivism in Uruguay: University philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century (1950).
• José Luis Gómez Martínez, “Hispanic American Thought: the Case of Krausism”, Acts of the II Spanish Philosophy History Seminared. Antonio Heredia Soriano (1982), pp. 155-172.
• Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Fe Institute and Secularity, Krausism and its influence in Latin America (1989).
• José Luis Gómez Martínez, “Hispanic American Thought: the Case of Krausism”, Acts of the II Spanish Philosophy History Seminared. Antonio Heredia Soriano (1982), pp. 155-172.
• Arturo Andrés Roig, Argentinian krausists (1969).
• Otto Carlos Stoetzer, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause and his influence in the Hispanic World. (1998) (ISBN 3-412-13597-6)
• Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Krausism and its influence in Latin America (1989).
• Thomas Ward, Literary theory: romance, krausism and modernism in the face of industrial globalization (2004).