Gumersindo de Azcárate (1840, León - 1917,

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

) was a Spanish philosopher, jurist and politician.

Biography

After law studies in Oviedo, he taught

comparative law Comparative law is the study of differences and similarities between the law (legal systems) of different countries. More specifically, it involves the study of the different legal "systems" (or "families") in existence in the world, including the ...

in Madrid since 1864 and represented León in the

Cortes Cortes, Cortés, Cortês, Corts, or Cortès may refer to: People * Cortes (surname), including a list of people with the name ** Hernán Cortés (1485–1547), a Spanish conquistador Places * Cortes, Navarre, a village in the South border of ...

. In the 1870s, he joined

Francisco Giner de los Ríos Francisco Giner de los Ríos (10 October 1839 in Ronda, Spain – 18 February 1915 in Madrid) was a philosopher, educator and one of the most influential Spanish intellectuals at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Bio ...

and Julián Sanz del Río to teach at the

Institución Libre de Enseñanza La Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE, English: ''The Free Institution of Education''), was an educational project developed in Spain for over half a century (1876–1936). The institute was inspired by the philosophy of Krausism, first introd ...

(Institute of Free Teaching). De Azcárate was a leading representative of Krausismo, a philosophy based on the teachings of

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (; 6 May 1781 – 27 September 1832) was a German philosopher whose doctrines became known as Krausism. Krausism, when considered in its totality as a complete, stand-alone philosophical system, had only a small f ...

, in law. In his works, which include ''Estudios económicos y sociales'' (1876), ''El self-government y la Monarquía doctrinaria'' (1877), ''Estudios filosóficos y políticos'' (1877) and ''Concepto de la Sociología'' (1876), he opposed excessive political

centralism Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...

, proposed privatisation of nonessential governmental functions and studied models of parliamentary and decentralised government. In 1912, he was the co-founder of the Reformist Republican Party.

References

External links

* 1840 births 1917 deaths People from León, Spain Spanish jurists Spanish philosophers Reformist Party (Spain) politicians {{Spain-law-bio-stub