Gustavo Bueno: biography of this Spanish philosopher

Although it may surprise some, Spain is a country with a long philosophical history. Modern Spanish philosophers may not have had as much impact abroad as they have Noam Chomsky, Simone de Beauvoir or Jürgen Habermas had, but of course his approaches are well interesting.

Gustavo Bueno has been one of the contemporary thinkers of the Spanish philosophical scene, with interesting visions about the ideas left and right, a clear defense of Spain as a great nation and creator of a philosophical system that he called materialism philosophical.

Next we will see the interesting life, thought, ideology and work of this Spanish philosopher, considered one of the greatest of the 20th and early 21st centuries, through a biography of Gustavo Bueno.

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Brief biography of Gustavo Bueno

Gustavo Bueno Martínez was born in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja, on September 1, 1924. His parents were Gustavo Bueno Arnedillo, a doctor, and María Martínez Pérez.

In his youth he received a fundamentally Catholic education, which would allow him a good knowledge of theology. and the Christian roots of Spanish society.

His university life was spent at the prestigious universities of La Rioja, Zaragoza and Madrid. After completing his doctoral thesis as a fellow at the CSIC (Higher Council for Scientific Research) he obtained in 1949 and with only twenty-five years a chair of Secondary Education. It would be at that time that he would begin to teach at the Lucía de Medrano Institute in Salamanca, a place where he would work until 1960.

Gustavo Bueno became an apprentice to the Falangists Eugenio Frutos Cortés and Yela Utrilla while on scholarship holder at the Luis Vides Institute in Madrid, a place he had accessed thanks to his friendship with Rafael Sánchez Maces. In addition, he had the opportunity to receive knowledge from members of Opus Dei such as Raimundo Pániker and Rafael Gambra.

At the end of his teaching at the Lucía de Medrano Institute in 1960, Gustavo Bueno he moved to Asturias, the land where he would settle permanently. There he would work as a professor in Fundamentals of Philosophy and History of Philosophical Systems at the University of Oviedo until almost the end of the century in 1998. It would be from that year that he would found his Gustavo Bueno Foundation, having its headquarters in Oviedo from which he would carry out intense work.

Since the 1970s, Bueno has been developing his own philosophical system, which he would call philosophical materialism.. In addition, as the years went by, he would gradually acquire a vision that clearly defended the idea of ​​Spain as a great nation, with which, in addition to founding his own institution and expose his patriotic pride in his texts, Bueno was a member and honorary patron of the Foundation for the Defense of the Spanish Nation (DENAES).

In his last years he became involved in several controversies about his vision of Spain, the ideas of the left and right, and religion. All of them made him gain a lot of fame during the 2000s, for better or worse, and become a character quite media something quite remarkable in Spain since rarely a philosopher comes to have such an impact in the media ibericos

Gustavo Bueno Martinez he passed away on August 7, 2016 in Niembro Asturias, at the age of 91. He died two days after his wife Carmen Sánchez died. He was the father of Gustavo Bueno Sánchez, also a philosopher.

philosophical materialism

The philosophical materialism proposed by Gustavo Bueno shares with traditional materialism the denial of spiritualism, that is, the denial of the existence of spiritual substances. However, one should not think that he reduces his philosophy to corporeism, as is often the case with other materialisms. Bueno's philosophical materialism admits the reality of incorporeal material beings, such as the real (not mental) relationship of the distance that can exist between two physical objects, such as two glasses. The distance between those two vessels is incorporeal, it exists, but it is not spiritual.

Among the widely developed ideas that can be found within Bueno's philosophical materialism, we can highlight the following four:

• Ontology (general and special)
• Gnoseology (theory of categorical closure)
• Philosophy of religion (and the role of animals in the essence of religion)
• Literary theory

These were the most recurring themes in Bueno's work until the 1990s. However, At the beginning of the new millennium, he began to delve into topics related to ethics and social and political criticism.. The way in which he presented these new themes has been criticized since he did not present them with the same rigor as the previous ones. For example, it has been said that his criticism of pacifism is more a way of disqualifying than really exposing a well-founded opinion.

Among other themes that can be found in the work of Bueno in the early 2000s we can find:

• Criticism of the idea of ​​culture
• state theory
• Idea of ​​Spain, its unity and identity in history and today
• Analysis of the essence of television

his ideology

If Gustavo Bueno was quite controversial when expressing his philosophical visions, the way in which he did it with his political ideology was not going to be less. He was a pupil of the national syndicalist Santiago Montero Díaz whose ideological trajectory led him to embrace a mix between right-wing totalitarianism and on the left at the end of the Franco regime, coming to show sympathy for different paratotalitarian political projects, including the Soviet Union.

He was widely recognized for his Europhobic views.. He used to say that Europe was the problem and Spain the solution, seeing the old continent as a source of danger for the survival of the Spanish nation. The idea that Europe could be the natural place for Spain's international projection seemed horrifying to him.

He was more in favor of continuing the legacy of the Spanish Empire and promoting the idea of ​​Hispanicity. in his works he expounds the idea of ​​predatory and generative empires, Spain being in this second category.

It should be said that throughout his life Gustavo Bueno was not a person with a fixed or obvious political ideology. The only thing in which it seems that he was well pigeonholed was being a Spanish nationalist. On the rest of the issues he spoke about, he showed somewhat varying opinions, such as considering himself a Catholic atheist, in the sense that he did not profess any religion but recognized the importance of the Catholic faith in the culture Spanish; and heterodox Marxist, criticizing vulgar Marxism and promoting a recovery of the most classical Marxism.

Also he has been considered a Thomist non-believer, being a defender of the Spanish scholastic tradition already started from times as old as those of the School of Translators of Toledo in the 13th century. He has also been classified as Platonic, comparing himself to Plato's Academy itself and knowing it well.

His location within the political spectrum is by no means fixed. One might think that being a Spanish nationalist he would have embraced right-wing and extreme-right theses, an aspect that seems to be true in part at the end of his life.

Nevertheless, He has also been considered to be on the left, denying right-wing particularism, although no less critical of the Spanish left.. In his last years, he was publicly a supporter of the Spanish Popular Party, supporting the candidacy of President Mariano Rajoy.

It is considered that Bueno's philosophy and his homonymous foundation have served as an ideological reference, in one way or another, for the formation of the Vox party. Many of the similarities between the Bueno school and the far-right party are noteworthy, being considered that many of the keys that mark the party of Santiago Abascal the same ones that he always defended Well.

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polemics

It is not surprising that a person as controversial as Gustavo Bueno was, maintained several controversies throughout his life, both with the left, right, atheism, Catholics, Maoists... His ideas about the Spanish nation, the Christian faith and the role of the right and the left aroused many blisters in broad Spanish philosophical sectors. There are so many controversial episodes around his person that he would practically give us to make a schedule with each year since he finished his university studies until his death.

On December 1, 1970, some Maoist students from the Proletarian Communist Party of Barcelona they threw a can of paint, attacked him and tried to put a sign on him that said "laccao del capitalism". They were protesting not because of their Falangist friends or controversial views on Spain. They protested because Bueno positioned himself in favor of the USSR, a communist regime, against China, another communist regime. Seven years later the aggression would come from the other side of the political spectrum, this time being the right-wing group AAA (Anti-Communist Apostolic Alliance) setting fire to his SUV.

in 1989 he engaged in a strong discussion in the program "La Clave" by José Luis Balbín on Spanish Television. There he argued with a Jesuit about the supposed miracle of Fatima, accusing the religious man that he did not know his own religious dogma and telling him that this miracle was truly absurd.

in 2003 he published "The myth of the left" in which he earned the enmity of various groups of independence from Spain. They accused him of being a fascist, as did several political scientists who criticized his theory of the generations of the left. Ironically, he was also accused of being a Stalinist for trying, according to his detractors, to create a great alliance between liberals, communists and Catholics against social democracy.

In 2007 he was involved in another controversy, this time coming from the hand of Andalusian independentistas, who described him as conservative and Islamophobic after criticizing the designation in the new Andalusian Statute of Autonomy Blas Infante as father of the Andalusian homeland. In addition, some statements that he made after the jihadist attack on the Torres came to light again. Twins on September 11, 2001, statements in which he asserted that the roots of Islam.

He tried to qualify by saying that he was not attacking the Muslim religion itself, nor was he blaming all of Islam for the terrorist attacks. However, he did clarify that it is typical of Islam and Buddhism to immolate oneself for religious reasons, something in his eyes quite typical of less thoughtful religious fanaticism. Furthermore, he said that when he spoke of destroying the roots of Islam he was saying it in the same sense that in the 17th and 18th centuries philosophical rationalism did with its Christian ideological roots..

Among other of his controversies are having been considered to advocate gender violence, showing himself against abortion, consider the animal movement nonsense and grant any right to animals, and he also considered people in favor of historical memory and the recovery of the corpses of their relatives who died during the Spanish Civil War "obsessed by the bones".

Bibliographic references:

• Núñez Seixas, Xosé Manoel (2007). Conservatives and patriots: the nationalism of the Spanish right in the XXI century. In: Carlos Taibo (Ed.). Spanish nationalism, essences, memory and institutions (Madrid: Catarata): 159-192. ISBN 978-84-8319-332-7.
• Gustavo Bueno Foundation (s. f.) Gustavo Bueno Foundation. Spain http://www.fgbueno.es/