My friend Angel writes to me in disgust. He argued with the philosophy professor about Don Marcelino. Dr. Sidad almost accidentally discovered five minutes later that his interlocutor had not read anything about the illustrious hero, because he devoted himself to insulting him without rhyme and reason, as soon as he said that he had a wonderful time reading Don Marcelino. I smiled and replied: calm down and continue enjoying the philosopher’s readings Menendez Pelayo… This is the best way to fight the kaffirs. For decades, the meager mental energy of Spanish society in general and the university in particular paid little attention to the great Spanish thinkers or foreigners (they only translate the latter into embalming). In the so-called field of thought and ideas in higher educational institutions, almost everything works by inertia. The university and the government bureaucrats of this “democratic” regime legitimize such inertia.
In Spain, a thinker or an artist is doomed to become a thing. Objectifying the author is the best way to relieve and comfort a society in which apathy and laziness reign. Reduced to things, great writers, philosophers, literary critics and thinkers lose their relevance and social significance. All great thinkers were formed by gangs of madmen who “rule” universities and so-called knowledge accreditation agencies. Most of the masses, inhabiting universities, publishing houses, press pages and cultural and educational institutions, have adapted to life with great people who have turned into things; or worse, they mummify them, especially if these great writers have been recognized and preserved by other societies. Here you are offering Menendez Pelayo’s doctorate at the university and they report you to the student ombudsman. We will not say if you are proposing to the publisher a project to update Don Marcelino. It’s a tricky thing.
Therefore, dear Dr. Cidad, in order to give life to philosophers like Don Marcelino, I can think of nothing else but read and re-read them. What else could we have done! Let’s continue reading it for fun or whatever it suggests. A friend of mine gets to the top as soon as he reads about reading for pleasure. And he asks me about other texts by Don Marcelino about mysticism, because after reading the text Spanish mystical poetryDr. Sidad is unwilling to agree with anyone who criticizes the mystic for being a “crazy philosopher,” that is, a bad philosopher. Don Marcelino’s persuasiveness affected my friend Angela. I have a feeling that he will never admit the thesis Ortega representations as the opposite of the figures of the mystic and the philosopher. Although not all philosophers of Ortega’s orbit, by the way, think like a teacher, for example, Joaquin Xirau, wrote excellent philosophical books on mysticism, in which he emphasizes the inseparability “in every great mysticism of two elements closely related and inextricably linked: personal experience and doctrine. If one of them is absent or the second is enclosed in pictures “of metaphysics and natural theology, or the former are lost in the obscurity of the dream, the imagination is left to itself. Saint Teresa claims that receiving favor from God is the first grace, knowledge of the nature of the gift received is the second grace; In short, it is the third grace, the ability to explain and give reason. “
By the way, Xirau, the author of one of the most beautiful books on the philosophy of love, at the end of each chapter of his work dedicated to Lull, gives advice for the correct understanding of the works Menendez Pelayo, among them I single out History of aesthetic ideas in Spain… Indeed, we will misunderstand the work of Xirau without participation Don Marcelino to the study of our philosophical traditions, especially to the study of Platonism in Spain in the 16th century. Yes, it is impossible to understand the originality of Menendez Pelayo, for example, when studying Spanish lyrics, including mystical poetry, without taking responsibility for his studies of the history of philosophy, especially those collected in his aforementioned History aesthetic ideas in Spain… Literary criticism is inseparable from philosophical and proper historical research in the work of a humanist of our time, such as Don Marcelino.
Obviously, the sources of inspiration for Spanish mystic poets are multiple, but none of them could do without Platonism simply because it was established in Spanish society in the 15th and 16th centuries. Incidentally, Platonism is truly Latin American, although it originated in Florence the Magnificent Lorenzo. Few have studied with the precision of Don Marcelino the historical process of the installation in Spain of this Neoplatonism Italo Hispanic, the main source of inspiration for the Golden Age: “Platonic aesthetics was a philosophy popular in Spain and Italy throughout the sixteenth century. And how many wonderful features he has inspired poetry “since Lope de Vega to his father Luis de Leon…
Many of these were studied by Don Marcelino about the relationship between Plato and Aristotle at the time, but perhaps the most important of these are biobibliographic, data and the work of the prosecution, which he devotes to work Hebrew Lion, Dialogues of love… I think this commentary remains one of the most important in the history of Spanish philosophy of all time. According to Don Marcelino, the Spanish Jew Leon Ebreo, among the thorns of exile, achieves with this work “the most remarkable monument of Platonic philosophy of the 16th century and even the most beautiful work of this philosophy since the time of Plotinus. or a modern presentation of the teachings of a student of Socrates about love and beauty, or it is plagiarism and the memory of it, or it seems like a short stream by this vast ocean. There was never, before Hegel, an idealistic aesthetics. “
Since Don Marcelino did not overlook the recommendation of the greatest ingenuity of letters that Spain has ever given, Cervantes, in the prologue Genius hidalgoWorking for Leon Ebreo, he wanted to give his work all the speculative and philosophical packaging, that is, the rational rationale, which, perhaps, was lacking in the masterpiece of entertainment literature of all times. And no doubt he succeeded. I suspect that without these comments by Don Marcelino on the works of Leon Ebreo, there would not have been excellent philosophical works in 20th century Spanish such as Love and peace, from Xirau, and Double flame, from Octavio Paz…
In any case, dear Dr. Sidad, I hope that these notes about the lord of the heterodox have definitely brought you out of the melancholy into which you have been plunged by the stupidity that offended Don Marcelino.