Caballero y Rodríguez, José Augustín (1762–1835)

views updated

Caballero y Rodríguez, José Augustín (1762–1835)

José Augustín Caballero y Rodríguez (b. 28 August 1762; d. 7 April 1835), Cuban priest, philosopher, and educator. Along with Francisco Arango y Parreño, Caballero was a pioneer of reformism in Cuba. Born in Havana, he was ordained as a priest in 1785. He became professor of philosophy (1785) and later director at San Carlos Seminary, where he was able to influence the intellectual formation of Father Félix Varela y Morales, doubtless the most famous of his disciples. An eloquent orator and a gifted writer and critic, Caballero put his exceptional abilities at the disposal of Cuba's Patriotic Society, a respectable colonial institution where he pleaded constantly for a more flexible approach to human problems. Along with his newspaper articles and his speeches (some of which are magnificent rhetorical pieces), he left us a treatise on logic written in Latin, Lecciones de filosofía electiva (1796), the first text for the teaching of philosophy ever produced in Cuba by a Cuban.

Although he mentions in his work empiricist thinkers such as John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Caballero was by no means a radical innovator. Basically he was a follower of the Spanish thinker Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, whose chief concern was to free philosophy from its submission to Aristotle and scholasticism, maintaining that all authorities were acceptable provided they taught the truth. Caballero's contribution to modernity, therefore, never went beyond trying to reconcile Cartesian rationalism with Aristotelianism. Faithful to the church, he never hesitated to place faith above reason, although he did favor the teaching of experimental physics and advocated greater freedom for university teachers and broader and deeper techniques of inquiry.

Caballero was also a believer in self-government, and in 1811 he put forward a proposal for the establishment of quasi-autonomist rule in Cuba. Never favoring the separation of Cuba from Spain, he was a moderate, politically and socially. Moreover, he thought that, given the prevailing conditions, slavery was an inevitable crime, although he wrote numerous articles urging slave owners to treat their slaves better. Despite his moderation, Caballero must be credited with laying the groundwork upon which later Cubans built their more radical thoughts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There are few studies on Caballero's life and work; see Isabel Monal, "Tres filósofos del centenario," in Universidad de La Habana 192 (1968): 116-122; also, Emilio Roig De Leuchsenring, ed., Homenaje al ilustre habaneropbro. Dr. José Agustín Caballero y Rodríguez en el centenario de su muerte, 1835–1935 (1935).