La Filosofía de G.k. Chesterton: un filósofo del siglo XX

Abstract

In this thesis we wanted to show that G.K. Chesterton is a twentieth century philosopher, who has a systematic philosophy, which is embodied in all his work: in his novels, plays, poetry, newspaper articles, but above all in his essays. We maintain that this philosophy begins and ends with theology, and from it derive the other branches of its philosophy: metaphysics, anthropology, ethics, politics, and economics. We defend that Chesterton's philosophy is framed within the Catholic worldview, but this does not prevent him from having his own critical and systematic philosophy. We will see how Chesterton defends that the true illustration is not the modern one but the medieval one, both from the philosophical, anthropological, and economic point of view. For Chesterton, medieval saints are figures to return to in order to rescue the world from the errors of the modern age. The saints Chesterton relies on the most will be Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Thomas Aquinas, the latter being for G.K., the true initiator of modern philosophy. We defend that Chesterton's philosophy is a materialistic and rational mysticism from which to start to understand man and build ethics, politics, and an economy in accordance with his supernatural nature. One of the crucial questions that he tries to answer and that recovers all his work is: what is man? Once man is situated in his natural place in the cosmos, Chesterton will outline an ethic (Christianity), an economy (distributism), and a theology (Catholicism), from which to think and understand the world in a rational and true within the limits of the human. For Chesterton, the Catholic worldview is the place from which to think the world, this worldview is given to man, and therefore the human being cannot invent a philosophy but only philosophize -as Kant would say-, or as Aristotle would say to be in search of the truth, being this for Chesterton the true attitude of the philosopher. We defend in this thesis that G.K. Chesterton is not only a philosopher of the 20th century, who has his own philosophy anchored in Thomism, but also a defender of the philosophical and critical nature of man in order to continue in search of truth, and therefore, we claim him as a critical philosopher of the contemporary era.