Filosofía Fundamental, Tomo IV

In this thought‑provoking treatise, the author turns a critical eye toward the dominant materialist philosophy of the eighteenth century, which reduced the world, mind, and morality to mere mechanical processes. He contrasts that view with a growing nineteenth‑century movement that re‑introduces the language of the infinite, the absolute, and the spiritual as essential tools for understanding human experience. By tracing how earlier thinkers dismissed ideas such as free will, moral dignity, and the very notion of God, the work sets the stage for a renewed dialogue between sensation and intellect.

The author argues that the prevailing reductionism has stifled the spirit, likening it to a butterfly forced to become a clumsy worm. He proposes that true progress lies in reclaiming the realm of ideas—cause, freedom, moral responsibility—and allowing them to coexist with empirical observation. Readers are invited to follow his early analysis of the present reaction against degrading philosophies, a call to re‑examine the boundaries between the finite and the infinite.