When an allegedly intelligent person places the origin of modern rationalism in the Enlightenment, it tells us a lot about their education, thinking, and originality.
It tells us, above all, that they lack original thought and personal education. It tells us, above all, that they have no alternative to the conventionally received education, and that they have settled into it, uncritically and irresponsibly, as one might become entrenched in any kitsch, in an eternal hibernation.
It also tells us that they are incapable of perceiving, identifying, and even less so interpreting, the essential rationalism of the Modern Age, that is, the rationalism of the Baroque.
To equate reason with the Enlightenment is to graze in the barren field of the infertile seed of Anglo-Saxon idealism. In particular, the most sterile of all seeds, that of German idealism. And —with Rubén’s permission— it tells us, quite clearly, "we do not know where we are going, nor where we come from."
Those who explain Cervantes' rationalism through the rationalism of the Enlightenment and Romanticism have not lost their reason: they never had it. Nor do they know what reasoning is. Those who fail to realize that Quevedo is more rational than Rousseau are not just missing a summer: they are missing three decisive centuries of the Modern Age, including the Golden Age, of course.
This is the way of "thinking" of almost all of our intellectuals, philosophers, professors, and the rest of the clan. A broken record that has been playing and reciting the same message for over 300 years. The same nonsense. The Enlightened Eclipse.
Jesús G. Maestro
