Gumersindo de Azcárate (1840, León - 1917,

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

) was a Spanish philosopher, jurist and politician.

Biography

After law studies in

Oviedo Oviedo () or Uviéu (Asturian language, Asturian: ) is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain and the administrative and commercial centre of the region. It is also the name of the municipality that contains th ...

, he taught

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

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 and Julián Sanz del Río to teach at the

Institución Libre de Enseñanza The Institución Libre de Enseñanza (ILE, English: ''Free Teaching Institution'') was a pedagogical experience developed in Spain for more than half a century (1876–1939). It was inspired by the Krausism, Krausist philosophy introduced at the Co ...

(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 ...

, 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 (American English) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning, decision-making, and framing strategies and policies, become concentrated within a particular ...

, proposed

privatisation Privatization (rendered privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation w ...

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 20th-century Spanish philosophers 19th-century Spanish philosophers Reformist Party (Spain) politicians {{Spain-law-bio-stub