From christian freedom to enlightened freedom. Notes for a history of ethics in Venezuela (1753-1839)

Abstract

The substitution of the monarchical order for a republican one, which becomes from Venezuela's independency, provoked a rearrangement of the standing ideas about what is and should be the good living of individuals. Thus, the standing ethic ideas, with a scholastic root and liked in its mains principles to the idea of divine right, was changed by another, with an enlightened nature, to five senses and new contents to the republican man. This evolution from the condition of vassal to moral citizenship had a related and necessary ideological production of books created ex profeso for the moral education of the Venezuelans. Therefore, taking as axle the idea of freedom, the base of every ethics, present in a text produced in the middle of XVIII century by Fray Agustín Quevedo y Villegas, in comparison to another produced after the independency was achieved by Francisco Javier Yanes - one of the republic's founders- is possible to evaluate the rise and real meaning of a republican moral in Venezuela.