Spanish philosophy
Spanish philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the people of territories that make up the modern day nation of Spain and of its citizens abroad. Although Spanish philosophical thought had a profound influence on philosophical traditions throughout Latin America, political turmoil within Spain throughout the 20th century diminished the influence of Spanish philosophy in international contexts. Within Spain during this period, fictional novels written with philosophical underpinnings were influential, leading to some of the first modernist European novels, such as the works of Miguel de Unamuno and Pío Baroja.
Spanish philosophy reached its peak between the 16th and the 17th century. Francisco Suárez was the most influential Spanish philosopher of the period. His works influenced subsequent thinkers such as Leibniz, Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, Schopenhauer, and Martin Heidegger. Like Suárez, other notable philosophers at the time who studied at the University of Salamanca were Luis de Molina, Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, and Martín de Azpilcueta.
Another school of thought, the School of Madrid, founded by José Ortega y Gasset included thinkers like Manuel García Morente, Joaquim Xirau, Xavier Zubiri, José Luis Aranguren, Francisco Ayala, Pedro Laín Entralgo, Manuel Granell, Antonio Rodríguez Huéscar and their most prominent disciple, Julián Marías.
More recently, Fernando Savater, Gustavo Bueno, Antonio Escohotado and Eugenio Trías have emerged as prominent philosophers.Medieval philosophy
Isidore of Seville
was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world".
At a time of disintegration of classical culture, aristocratic violence, and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Chalcedonian Christianity, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville and continuing after his brother's death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville.
His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. This work also helped standardize the use of the period, comma, and colon.
Since the early Middle Ages, Isidore has sometimes been called Isidore the Younger or Isidore Junior, because of the earlier history purportedly written by Isidore of Córdoba.was the author of the Tractatus, later known as the Summulae Logicales, an important medieval university textbook on Aristotelian logic. As the Latin Hispania was considered to include the entire Iberian Peninsula, he is traditionally and usually identified with the medieval Portuguese scholar and ecclesiastic Peter Juliani, who was elected Pope John XXI in 1276. The identification is sometimes disputed, usually by Spanish authors, who claim the author of the Tractatus was a Castilian Blackfriar. He is also sometimes identified as Petrus Ferrandi Hispanus.Ramon Llull
Ramon Llull was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1232, three years after James I of Aragon had successfully besieged and recaptured Majorca, after more than 300 years of Muslim rule. The king had brought Christian officials, tradesmen, and landowners to the island, among them Llull's father. Llull himself began his career at the king's court managing the royal household. He was married and had two children. His spare time was devoted to writing troubadour poetry. All this we know from Lull himself, because while in Paris in 1311 he dictated the Vita coaetanea, an autobiography modelled on Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions. As he describes it there, around the age of 30 he experienced a conversion: while writing a poem to a beautiful lady, he saw the crucified Lord appear on five subsequent evenings. Llull felt that from then on his life had to change, and so he devoted himself to converting the Jews and Muslims, in order to spare them eternal damnation. He strove to write the ‘best book in the world to confute their errors’. Instead of enrolling in one of the newly founded universities, none of which taught what he really wanted to learn, Llull studied Arabic and Islamic philosophy and theology for nine years with an Arab slave. His vast knowledge of Christian theology, on the other hand, seems to have been acquired autodidactically. This accounts for the Neo-Platonic background of his theological writings and for the way his use of Aristotle is mediated by Islamic philosophers such as Al-Ghazali, whom he read in the original Arabic. Though a layman, he founded a monastery where future missionaries could learn Arabic and Hebrew. In 1311, he brought the Council of Vienne to the point of decreeing that lectureships in these oriental languages should be established at several European universities. Llull also took a number of missionary journeys to North Africa. By the time he died in 1316, he had written more than 250 books. In his works, Llull developed a daring vision of one single faith rather than different religions competing with each other. He thought this one and most desirable religion was already embodied in Christianity, or more exactly in its Catholic version, for he was convinced that the Christian belief offered more rational and more plausible explanations than any other belief. To explain this, he started from the attributes of God, for reflecting on them touched upon questions common to all three monotheistic religions in his time. But Llull had to learn that ‘infidels do not pay heed to the authorities of the faithful’, such as the Bible, early Christian writers, and the prestigious theologians. Nevertheless, they follow rational arguments. They are guided by the reason God gave to all men and women when he created them. This explains why Llull is not in favour of argument based on authorities but on ‘commonsense’ reasoning. Even authorities like the Bible do not constitute a reliable common ground in his view. They can be interpreted in different ways, as debates between Christians and Jews, such as the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263, proved. Since Llull leaves the evidence of authority completely aside, he very rarely quotes any text literally, the Bible included. A notable exception is his favourite biblical quotation, Isaiah 7:9 in the Vetus Latina version: ‘unless you believe, you will not understand’.Lullism
At his death, Llull left three complete collections of his works, entrusting his disciples with the task of continuing to propagate them. The Parisian centre was associated with the Chartreuse of Vauvert, where a synthesis of his philosophical teaching was made. The Genoese nucleus was linked to the Spinola family, then to the monastery of San Girolamo della Cervara, where the logical aspects of Lullism were particularly explored. At Majorca and in Catalonia generally, the Lullist movement had connotations of religious radicalism: it was more diffuse and more in tune with the needs of the new spirituality. Particularly well-documented is the case of Valencia, where disciples of Lull and of Arnaldus de Villa Nova seem to have been in agreement. The spread of Lullism was opposed in Catalonia by the Aragonese inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich, a Dominican who managed to obtain a condemnation from Pope Gregory XI in 1376, and in France by Jean Gerson who, after the condemnation by the University of Paris in 1390, developed more than one attack on Lull culminating in the Contra Raimundum Lullum. Meanwhile, at least from the second half of the 14th century, with the Liber de secretis naturae seu de quinta essentia, a rich pseudoepigraphical tradition of alchemical writings began to flourish around Lull's name, and the idea grew up of a fundamental agreement between his natural philosophy and alchemy. The manuscript tradition of these texts grew, with progressive additions and adaptations, and circulated throughout Europe until the 17th century. This phenomenon was interwoven with legendary motifs, and in the 17th century a union between Hermeticism and Lullism seemed inevitable. The suspicion of Heresy and the spread of pseudo-Lullian literature greatly influenced the character of Lull's reputation, and in a contradictory way. The problem of the relationship between Lull's own doctrine and the “Lullism” that developed in Humanism and the Renaissance, in France, Germany, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, still remains open. Early and important evidence of Lullism appears at Padua in the early 15th century, with the lectures of Joan Bulons in 1433. From these first episodes, Lullist penetration would become quite strong in Italy, becoming concrete in figures like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The phenomenon had analogous aspects in France, with Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Charles de Bovelles. The situation was different in Catalonia where a real Lullist school was established at Barcelona, and in Majorca where as early as c. 1453 Lullism was taught by friar Joan Llobet at Randa. In Germany, there was a more precise convergence of Lull's thought with the philosophical experience of Albertism at Cologne, a convergence that found mature expression in Heymeric de Campo and especially Nicholas of Cusa, who became acquainted with Lullian texts on successive journeys to Italy. In Germany would also occur the most notable modern reflection on the Lullian philosophy, in the speculative work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and conditions were ripe for a rebirth of Lullian studies through the erudite work of Ivo Salzinger, who published the Opera omnia Raimundi Lulli in the Mainz edition.Arnaldus de Villa Nova
Arnaldus' early biography is poorly known. Although his date and place of birth are unknown, Arnaldus called himself a Catalan and from boyhood he lived at Valencia, in the territories recently reconquered by James I. In 1260 he was a student at the University of Montpellier. After 1280, having left Valencia for Barcelona, he became doctor to the royal house of Aragon-Catalonia and frequented the Dominican studium linguarum. In 1282 he translated Galen's De rigore, iectigatione et spasmo, and from 1290 he was a master of medicine at the University of Montpellier. He formed confidential relations with the sons of Peter the Great, in particular James II and Frederick III. It was during a diplomatic mission to Paris for James that he published his De tempore adventus Antichristi. From this time on, his spiritual commitment increased: he had to sustain grave conflicts with the masters of the university, then with the Order of Preachers. Arnold was doctor to Pope Boniface VIII in 1300, then to the royal house of Provence and Pope Clement V, with whom he was connected even before he became pope. Counting on this set of relationships, he tried to assume the role of spiritual and political reformer, but his programme had some application only in Sicily. After his death and with the accession of John XXII, new attacks began on his work, which was condemned by a provincial court at Tarragona in 1316, even though, since the time of Boniface VIII, the pope had reserved the examination of Arnold's writings for himself. Arnold circulated collections of his writings, partly using his own private scriptorium, partly with the help of James II and Frederick III. These summae were addressed to a wide public and brought together texts in Latin and/or the vernacular. Some of these collections, in accordance with his proposed programme of conversion, were translated into Greek. More occasional was his circulation of lectures and advice for Beguines while his frequent writings defending himself against the ecclesiastical and civil authorities were circulated in the same way as his spiritual works. Much of his theological output was destroyed after the condemnation of 1316, and important works like the Alia informatio beguinorum have survived only through the documentation of notaries. His numerous medical works consist of translations from the Arabic as well as writings on medical training, natural philosophy, clinical practice and hygiene. They were circulated through the traditional channels of the School or dedicated to important persons, and were in great demand until the first years of the 17th century. In some cases medical concerns were joined to spiritual ones. The authenticity of many works is uncertain, including the abundant alchemical output attributed to him, which is probably entirely apocryphal. Arnold's work was the basis of the birth of medicine as a scientific discipline: he studied its epistemological basis and took an active part in organising its study in universities. He combined a precise knowledge of the Greek-Arabic scientific tradition with a conscious insistence on experiment. Of great importance was his contribution to medicines and their dosage. His spiritual doctrine was close to that of his radical Franciscan contemporaries: imminent end of the world, coming of an Antichrist, the problem of recognising “true” Christians. These ideas led him to advocate a direct use of the Bible and a radical evangelism, and to give credit to new revelations and visionary experiences, his own and others. Much of his literary output consists of “autohagiography”, in which he represents his own experience as evidence of sanctity.