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Gracián y Morales, Baltasar

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy
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Introduction

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601–1658) was a Spanish Jesuit thinker and writer regarded as a master of Baroque “conceptist” prose and author of relevant philosophical and political works, the most influential of which, El Criticón, is considered the summit of the allegorical novel in Spanish.

The son of a doctor and his second wife, Baltasar Gracián was born in Belmonte (Calatayud, Zaragoza) in 1601. His family had a strong religious vocation; four of his siblings joined religious orders. After schooling in Toledo and Calatayud, he started his novitiate at the Society of Jesus in 1619, where he studied Philosophy and Theology and was ordained in 1627. He spent the following 10 years teaching in different schools of the Society and had his first controversy with his superiors while in Valencia. From 1637 to 1639, he was appointed at the Colegio de Huesca, which allowed him to meet Vicencio Juan de Lastanosa, who invited him to join his tertulia with local intellectuals at...

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References

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Correspondence to Miguel Álvarez Ortega .

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Álvarez Ortega, M. (2021). Gracián y Morales, Baltasar. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_854-1

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