The conservative Aufklärung: Spanish thought of Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora.

Authors

  • PEDRO CARLOS GONZÁLEZ CUEVAS

Keywords:

Franquism, Spanish right, modernization.

Abstract

From the 60’s, Spanish society underwent qualitative changes in its socioeconomic structure, albeit still affected by the religious and cultural repercussions of the Civil War. This helped to discredit the doctrinal foundations of the regime that had prevailed since the Civil War. The work of Fernández de la Mora was an attempt to draw up a new set of doctrines for the Spanish right. Their historical importance, in our opinion, is rooted in their ability to apply a new kind of conservatism based on verificable criteria of emperical character and on aims of economic development in order to have an intellectual base from which to make the necessary shift away from a discredited counter-revolutionary traditional perspective. This led to a project of conservative modernization or Aufklärung. His work as a critic of the Spanish contemporary thought thus forms an essential part of that project, since it provided an attempt at intellectual reform to accompany the mainly economic modernization of the time.

Published

2008-04-04