Authority, Liberty and Function

You do not know why you kill me, but I know why I die: That your children may be better men than you. These are the last words of Spanish political theorist Ramiro de Maeztu (1875-1936), spoken just before his murder during the Spanish Civil War. Having become disillusioned early in life with modern Enlightenment philosophy, he eventually rejected liberal political principles altogether ( Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ) as an insufficient basis for civilization. He saw what he called the crisis of humanism, and he sought to answer this crisis by once again acknowledging man as a spiritual being: It has been said that the central ideas of the Middle Ages consisted in looking upon the world as a vale of tears, and upon man as ‘I, a sinner.’ That is why the Middle Ages have been accused of darkening the world and diminishing man…But that the world is a vale of tears, and that man is ‘I, a sinner, ’ are not judgments characteristic of a given period of humanity. They must have been thought by men of all ages in consequence of that which really distinguishes man from all other beings on earth: the ideal of perfection in his soul. (Excerpt, Chapter 1)