page_title: Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century
section_title: Concept and Authors
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century / Concept and Authors
caption_attribution_description: English: José Celestino Mutis, botanist of New Granada (Colombia), born in Cádiz, Spain, in 1732. (Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd, London, UK) Español: José Celestino Mutis, botánico de Nueva Granada (la actual Colombia), nacido en Cádiz, España, en 1732.
context_page_description: The Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century is mainly defined by Juan Andrés, Lorenzo Hervás and Antonio Eximeno as main Authors, but also by his close collaborators: the botanist Antonio José Cavanilles and the great Americanists Francisco Javier Clavijero, José Celestino Mutis, Juan Ignacio Molina and Joaquín Camaño, the bibliographer Ramón Diosdado Caballero, the Cosmographer-major of the Indies Juan Bautista Muñoz, the Philippine Juan de la Concepción and Miguel Casiri, a Lebanese-born Arabic-language expert.
  This school is about a culminating universal humanistic science project, both in a culminating sense of the disciplines as in a geographic-cultural sense of the world through the convergence of tradition of classical humanism with modern empirical science. In a methodological sense, it deals with the development of modern Comparative Studies, as well as a singular universalist Enlightenment that brings together human sciences and physical-natural sciences alike. Its consideration transforms remarkably and enriches the face of modern European culture.
context_section_description: Due to an extraordinary universalist dimension shared in their works and to the close intellectual, and even personal relationships among them, the concept of the "Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century" concerns mainly and decisively Juan Andrés, Lorenzo Hervás and Antonio Eximeno. The major works of these three expelled Jesuits (1767) represent respectively, the construction of the emerging Universal and Comparative History of the Sciences and Arts, of Languages, music and likewise, the comparative theory itself. But from a more realistic and complete insight of cultural heritage, established in Italy by Hispanic diaspora, it is attributed to approximately thirty Authors who cover a wide range and character of intellectual property.
  Aside from distant and close precedents such as, on the one hand, the teachers of the University of Cervera (Mateo Aymerich, Juan Bautista Corachán) and, on the other hand, especially the multifaceted figure of Jorge Juan and his environment, as well as Pedro Murillo Velarde, creator of a Universal Geography, the school consists of the following members: firstly Miguel Casiri, librarian of El Escorial, the naturalist Antonio José Cavanilles, who can be joined by the also botanist Franco Dávila, creator of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, José Celestino Mutis, director of the Expedition of New Granada, or Juan José de Cuéllar, and, among others, Vicente Requeno, Carlos Andrés, Antonio Pinazo, Joaquín Millás, Buenaventura Prats, Antonio Ludeña, José Pintado, Esteban de Terreros, Raimundo Diosdado Caballero, Juan Bautista Muñoz, Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Juan Nuix y Perpiñá, the Chilean Juan Ignacio Molina, Joaquín Camaño from La Plata, the Honduran José Lino Fábrega, the Mexicans Francisco Javier Clavijero and Pedro José Márquez. Philippines barely recherched like Juan de la Concepción, Bernardo Bruno de la Fuente or José Antonio Tornos. Lately, certain late Enlighteners should be considered, thus the great meteorologists Benet Viñes (Havana) and Federico Faura (Manila) and even their disciples.
  The Universalist School proposed the association of modern empiricist epistemology, incorporated into the studies of both bibliography and historiography and of physics and cosmography, with that of a humanistic tradition. From this tradition the comparative method was born. It would be extended to the historic and scientific theory, as well as an extraordinary convergence of humanism and humanitarianism, able at keeping the primacy of the common good and that of education and knowledge based on the study of classical and modern languages.
  Whilst Juan Andrés created the Universal History of Arts and Sciences, Lorenzo Hervás concluded the establishment of universal and comparative linguistics. Antonio Eximeno, author of an empiricist and comparative epistemology, will introduce the universal idea of music in a completely innovative way through the concept of "expression". To this broader sense corresponds an exemplary case such as that of the study and reformulation of the language of the deaf-mute or sign language carried out by Juan Andrés and Lorenzo Hervás. A Spanish tradition that had been born with Pedro Ponce de León up in the 16th century was at long last revived.
  The global paradigm of the Universalist School emerged from the Enlightenment, but it is mainly a scientific and historiographical Enlightenment rather than a political one. The fact of the 18th century being a poorly studied century has been a common and accepted situation by the Spanish literary criticism. Nevertheless, the returning criterion to the Foundation of Modern culture represented by the Enlightenment has also been and continues to be a common phenomenon of the contemporary thought. However, the study of the Enlightenment has paradoxically sometimes been victim of simplification under certain dogmatic guidelines which have already been widely spread and promoted by the Enlightenment, especially in its encyclopaedic field. Such field iit s well known to be overvalued and has badly been calculated socio-politica
caption: José Celestino Mutis (1732-1808).
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