The role of eclecticism in the introduction of modern philosophy in eighteenth century New Spain

Abstract

The idea that there is a straightforward causal connection between the expulsion of the Jesuits and the beginning of a real Enlightenment in Iberian America–that the absence of the Jesuits from New Spain after 1767 might have allowed a stronger influence of Enlightenment ideas that they did not accept, such as liberalism–needs to be reconsidered. This article aims to show continuities between the Mexican Jesuit generation of 1750 and the generation of Mexican scholars who replaced them in the chairs of philosophy and physics, and occupied prominent positions in New Spain’s academic life after 1767. It deals especially with Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos, an author who is usually associated with the Mexican Enlightenment and understood as opposed to the Jesuits, condemned for their traditionalism and medievalism. I argue that the process of introducing modern philosophy in New Spain started with the 1750’s Mexican Jesuit generation and was followed by a second generation–represented mainly by Gamarra and Alzate–after the expulsion of the Society of Jesus in 1767.