Liberalismo armónico. La teoría política del primer krausismo español (1860-1868).

Abstract

What became known as Spanish Krausism was not just a philosophical school but also a well-defined political doctrine. Some years before the Krausist authors became leading lights in public life during the Restoration, they laid down the foundations of their future political ideas. As of 1860, Francisco de Paula Canalejas attempted to construct a new political science based on Krause’s philosophy and on Ahrens’ public law. First, via the La Razon journal and later through the pages of the Revista Ibérica, Canalejas expounded a new liberal credo informed by the ideas of reason, science, freedom and law. Harmonic liberalism rejected both the old Spanish moderate and progressive political parties and emerging political forces such as socialism. It tried to forge its own space within the spectrum of democratic groups. It proposed a kind of politics that would apply reforms and allow free association of individuals, seeing this as the best way to achieve progress in society. As a result of previous activity, when the 1868 revolution broke out in Spain, the group had already established a sound political theory that would exercise significant influence over the coming decades.