Philosophia Electiva

José Agustín Caballero is one of the most relevant thinkers of nineteenth-century Cuba, his Philosophia Electiva is an attempt to systematize his ideas in an ambitious and comprehensive book.
The Philosophia Electiva is a work that manifests the origins of an autochthonous Cuban thought, which was consolidated in the nineteenth century. With it he incited the rupture with the traditional and the dogmatic, to transgress the boundaries of domination and intellectual subordination and projected a critical study on reality and thought.

“It is more convenient for the philosopher, even the Christian, to follow several schools at will, than to choose a single one to which to subscribe. … Choosing a single school with pre-ference to the others deprives us of freedom to philosophize because affection for the school and its teacher obscures our judgment and puts obstacles in the way of the attainment of truth.”

The electivism of José Agustín Caballero transmits to the new generations the fundamental message of free choice. Supported mainly by the theoretical presuppositions and the influence of modern philosophy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it prepared the youngest and most knowledge-hungry minds to think about their own society, Creole, Cuban.

“The Greek word Logic, rational in Latin, means the discipline of reason, which prepares the spirit to attain truth anywhere and at all times. It is also called Dialectics, that is, discipline of discussion. It is divided into natural, the faculty of discourse born in us of nature itself; and artificial, or faculty achieved through use and effort, and which contains the precepts that direct us in the correct reasoning.
It is also divided into Teaching and Usual Logic: the first teaches the rules of good exposition; The second is the application of those same rules. The Scholastics further divide Logic into Major and Minor: the former contains questions; this, precepts.
Zeno of Elea is generally credited with restoring Logic; but it was Aristotle who raised it to perfection and has set it so clearly and so beautifully, that he has rightly been regarded by some as its creator.
We will divide Logic into as many parts as are the operations of the spirit.”

Fragment of the work