Filosofía Fundamental, Tomo I

Jaime Luciano Balmes wrote this treatise as a direct challenge to the skeptical tendencies that had come to dominate European philosophy. In this work, Balmes argues that philosophy has gone terribly wrong by beginning with doubt, by treating certainty as something to be achieved rather than something already present in human consciousness. He contends that the Cartesian method of universal doubt is philosophically untenable because humans possess an instinctive, pre-reflective knowledge of fundamental truths: that they exist, that the external world exists, that basic logical principles are valid. These are not conclusions arrived at through reasoning but givens that make reasoning possible. Balmes saw his task as rebuilding philosophical foundations on this principle of inherent certainty, defending philosophy against both radical skepticism and idealist solipsism. His work represents a significant 19th-century response to the problem of knowledge, written by one of Spain's most important philosophers attempting to establish a distinctly Spanish philosophical tradition.