Empirismo y luces en la misión cultural de Feijóo

Abstract

This article intends to prove that Feijoo’s ideas pertain within the Spanish illustrated movement in their own right. Feijoo’s uniqueness is not so much due to the doctrines he defends -—even though he shows substantial differences with regards to the “novatores”— as the intention which moves them: the recovery of experience as a basic instrument for philosophical practices in the development of the modern scientific stance, with the aim of controlling nature to make her a servant of mankind. This is the idea behind a methodic thinking which rejects any systematic construction and whose aim is to criticize the great hallmarks of his time in Spain: intolerance, religious superstition and scholastic Aristotelism. These are the bases of the cultural heritage of 17th century Spain. His criticism is basically emancipating and the tool he uses his experimental reasoning. Here we have the two great vectors which have always defined any truly illustrated thinking.