Enlightenment, The

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Enlightenment, The

Historical opinion on the role of the Enlightenment in Ibero-America was for a long time paradoxically united in that two different groups, each proceeding from wholly different premises, saw little of the light of the eighteenth century in the Hispanic and Portuguese worlds.

Catholic traditionalists, vociferously captained by the Spanish polymath Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (1856–1912) and loudly heard in Spain till the demise of Franco, gloried in what they saw as scant Hispanic involvement in a movement that to them was both repugnant and dangerous. Viewing the same complex history from beyond the Pyrenees or from overseas, many of the self-styled "lights" of Paris and their heirs saw little of their own brand of enlightenment and ample justification for the famous jeer of the encyclopedist Nicolas Masson: Has any good thing ever come out of Spain?

It would be misleading to say that either of these two views was entirely wrong. Certainly enlightenment in the Iberian world did not flourish from the beginning. The ideas and attitudes clustered around scholasticism long remained powerful. They continued to be intellectually satisfying to most Hispanic people well into the nineteenth century, and they were closely identified with strong vested interests. Yet, in spite of all these reservations, it is clear that Hispanic and Portuguese intellectual life did change in the course of the eighteenth century. Moreover, this change was instigated by an active, articulate minority that perceived the possibility of a different world but that, with few exceptions, remained emphatically Hispanic and Portuguese in fundamental outlook. The key point seems to be that all but a few reformers retained some aspect or form of Catholicism.

The most clear-cut of the changes was the entry of modern science. Its presence in Ibero-America can first be seen in the work of a few lonely pioneers. One was Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora in Mexico, who as early as 1681 criticized scholasticism, explained comets in Copernican terms, and showed familiarity with the works of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi. Another pioneer was Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo y Rocha in Peru.

More appreciable change came a generation later, perhaps from about 1720 on. Over the next half century, the freely circulated works of such authors as the Spanish reformer Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, the Portuguese João Baptista da Silva Leitão de Almeida Garrett and Luis Antonio Verney, and the Italian Antonio Genovesi; the "Port Royale" logic of Antoine Arnauld; and the works of "Lugdenensis" (Antoine de Montazet, archbishop of Lyon) all advocated mathematical education and set forth new scientific ideas drawn from Descartes, Gassendi, Locke, Newton, and others.

In the eighteenth century, the Inquisition was no longer an effective block against new scientific ideas. Control of the book trade was ineffective; much seminal scientific work was never on the index of proscribed works; and popularized or adapted versions of new discoveries and ideas were found in numerous legally circulated books. Poverty and poor communications constituted far more significant obstacles.

Frequently, new works and ideas became known through the scientific and technical missions that came to America. Groups led by Charles-Marie de La Condamine; Aimé Jacques Bonplánd; Thaddeus, Baron von Nordenflycht; Helm; Anton Zaccarias; Thaddeus Haenkes; and Alexander, Baron von Humboldt as well as José Celestino Mutis, Hipólito Ruiz, José Pavón, José Longinos, and Alessandro Malaspina, to cite only the best known, traveled extensively and had free interchange with local scholars. The travelers had new books and scientific apparatus; they knew the latest scientific gossip; and they generated immense interest.

New ideas and innovative organizations received strong official backing after Charles III came to the Spanish throne in 1759. The king's ministers, many of the officials he appointed, and the policies they put into action had clear ties to the Enlightenment. The attempts to rationalize administration, centralize authority, update law codes, collect accurate demographic and economic information, and improve the economy—to somehow manage Spain and its empire into a prosperous, well-ordered, and unified state—paralleled similar attempts all over Europe.

All these factors came together in the last third of the eighteenth century. There were numerous changes in university and in some seminary and convent school curricula that provided more training in mathematics and modern physics. The hitherto dominant training in Aristotelian logic and scholastic metaphysics, though hotly defended, was gradually reduced and made available only to those preparing for the clergy. The gradualness of this process and the determination—based partly on prudence but also on conviction—to preserve fundamental Catholic values must be emphasized.

The crown demanded and won significant changes in the teaching of law and some aspects of theology. Spanish law replaced Roman law as the dominant subject of study, and canon law strongly emphasized the regalias, the rights of the crown over the church. The most dramatic manifestation of this matter was the repression of the Jesuits and the proscription of their doctrines. A more constructive approach sought to use the critical study of church councils and ecclesiastical history to strengthen the position of the crown and the bishops against the papacy. This new approach to ecclesiastical history went hand-in-hand with a shift in emphasis toward dogmatic theology at the expense of speculative scholasticism.

In many respects, more up-to-date education exemplified the Enlightenment's preoccupation with useful projects. There were numerous attempts to develop the economy by official action, including encouraging private enterprise. The inmates of asylums and orphanages were put to work, cabildos (town governments) and intendants (provincial governors) saw to it that land was paved and drained. Newly founded economic societies discussed schools and new crops.

Just as the presence of the Enlightenment is in dispute among historians, so too is its outcome. Many have discerned its most clear impact in the Wars of Independence, in which they clearly see the influence of the political writings of the Baron de Montesquieu, John Locke, Gaetano Filangieri, Emmerich von Vattel, Samuel von Pufendorf, Thomas Jefferson, and other theorists of natural law. But traditionalists do not see this. For them, the wars of independence are conservative movements based on the scholastic natural law of Francisco Suárez and Saint Thomas Aquinas. A third group of historians see home-grown revolutionary movements such as Tupac Amaru's having a significant impact in weakening the colonial state. Most likely all three elements had their role, the Enlightenment representing a major ideological force.

Resolution of this problem seems to depend on how one sees the wars of independence. If they were the culmination of a developmental era, then the question of sources is all-important. If, however, independence came more from the collapse of the Spanish throne than from any process of colonial maturation, then the effects of the Enlightenment are to be seen not so much in the wars of independence as in the tumultuous struggles of the nineteenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Indispensable for seeing the spectrum of views on the Enlightenment in Latin America are Arthur P. Whitaker et al., Latin America and the Enlightenment (1961), and A. Owen Aldridge, ed., The Ibero-American Enlightenment (1971). A useful bibliography on the Enlightenment as well as other aspects of the Bourbon period is Jacques A. Barbier and Mark A. Burkholder, "Colonial Spanish America: The Bourbon Period," in The History Teacher 20, no. 2 (1987): 221-250. On university curricula see John Tate Lanning, The Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment in the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (1956). For a model treatment of a scientific expedition see Arthur R. Steele, Flowers for the King: The Expedition of Ruíz and Pavón and the Flora of Peru (1964). For two representative and differing treatments of the Enlightenment in specific areas see José Carlos Chiaramonte, La Ilustración en el Río de la Plata (1989), and Juan Manuel Pacheco, S.J., La Ilustración en el Nuevo Reino (1975). O. Carlos Stoetzer, The Scholastic Roots of the Spanish American Revolution (1979), presents the case for the continued influence of scholasticism.

Additional Bibliography

Díaz Caballero, Jesús. "Nación y patria: Las lecturas de los Comentarios reales y el patriotismo criollo emancipador." Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 59 (2004): 81-107. Available from http://www.dartmouth.edu/?rcll/rcll59/59pdf/59diaz2.pdf

Maher, John, ed. Francisco De Miranda: Exile and Enlightenment. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2006.

Rodríguez O., Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge Latin American Studies 84. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Saladino García, Alberto. Ciencia y prensa durante la ilustración latinoamericana. Toluca: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, 1996.

Soto Arango, Diana, Miguel Angel Puig-Samper, and Luis Carlos Arboleda. La ilustración en América colonial: Bibliografía crítica. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1995.

Williams, Jerry M., and Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo. Censorship and Art in Pre-Enlightenment Lima: Pedro De Peralta Barnuevo's "Diálogo de los muertos: La causa académica." Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1994.

George M. Addy

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture