Three philosophical interpretative frameworks of the Spanish Baroque: Wilhelmsen, Abellán, De la Flor

Abstract

In this article we analyze and compare three different philosophical interpretative frameworks of the Spanish Baroque: that of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, who from the ranks of Catholic traditionalism understands the Baroque as the «civilization of the Counter-Reformation» and the purest manifestation of Hispanic idiosyncrasy, performing the only barrier to stop the secularizing ideas of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation; that of José Luis Abellán, who from a progressive view of history explains the Spanish Baroque as a symptomatic period of decadence, social regression, antihumanism and misoneism, in contrast to the modernizing currents that were then emerging throughout Europe, and that of Fernando Rodríguez de la Flor, who from Freudian assumptions analyzes the symbolic production and the imaginary of the Spanish Baroque in order to unveil the hidden psychology of the baroque subject, crossed by the skepticism and the nihilistic energy.