Alegoría, violencia y lenguajeUn estudio sobre el Criticón de Baltasar Gracián

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study of Baltasar Gracián´s writings has not been one of the clear centers of attention in the history of philosophy carried out at the spanish university. This thesis is based on different studies on the culture of the European and Latin American Baroque (Wölflflin, D'ors, Sarduy, Echeverría, Maravall) and on the thought of Gracian, identifying the opportunity to recognize in a work such as El Criticón a diagnostic paradigm of the present. The approach of the thesis intends to contribute to draw a reading of the Gracian´s work in a primarily philosophical key, a path certainly little traveled according to the current state of the research in studies about Gracián´s thought. The analysis is organized around three relevant issues to convey the analysis of Gracián's thought: allegory, violence and language. For each of these questions, a thinker is selected as a reference for the discussion, generating a certain impression of anachronism that goes through the thesis: W. Benjamin, R. Girard and E. Laclau function as calls for attention about the proximity that the Gracian´s evaluation of history, social fact and discourse maintains with the problems of the present. Like these authors, Baltasar Gracián is shown as a crisis thinker, whose diagnosis of human reality is still fully operational today.