El Dios protestante, la libertad de la Ilustración y el mercado posmoderno: Quevedo en el siglo XXI — Transcript

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1. 0:00In this session, we're going to present a series of ideas that follow on from the last video
2. 0:28we dedicated to Quevedo's dreams, and to specifically interpret in Quevedo's dreams
3. 0:35a fundamental experience in every era and place: disillusionment. Disillusionment is
4. 0:41one of the most important characteristics of the literature of the Golden Age and also one of
5. 0:46the most relevant aspects within the Hispano-Greek-Latin literary tradition. This
6. 0:52literary tradition is basically oriented toward establishing a very important difference between reality
7. 0:59and the appearance that frequently replaces reality. Appearance is not outside of
8. 1:08reality, but it can sometimes overlap the truth of reality. This fundamental objective—
9. 1:15to discover the essence of things, to discover the reality of things beyond the apparent, beyond
10. 1:22the deception of the senses—is one of the fundamental objectives of Spanish literature
11. 1:27of the Golden Age and, as I say, also of the Hispano-Latin tradition.
12. 1:33Many of the works of the 10th and 11th centuries, and especially of the 10th century, are particularly oriented towards this objective.
13. 1:41Quebedo's Dreams is a work from 1627. 1627 is the year in which Góngora died and it is the date that the poets
14. 1:52of the Generation of '27 took as a reference in their famous homage to Góngora. a homage
15. 2:00to Góngora that was actually overrated, especially because he gave his name to a generation,
16. 2:06but in reality most of the poets of '27 were not strongly influenced by Góngora.
17. 2:12In fact, of the poets of the first half or even the first third of the 20th century, the one most
18. 2:20influenced by Góngora, more than any of those of the Generation of '27, was Miguel Hernández,
19. 2:26who was already someone or an epigone of '27 or even a representative of the generation of poets
20. 2:35of 1939, if in that fateful year one can speak of a generation of poets of '39 or
21. 2:42'36, already of the years of the Civil War. What I mean by this is that 1627 is the year of publication of this
22. 2:49work, Los sueños de Quevedo. And in this work, Dreams, Quevedo represents, exposes, presents almost
23. 2:58as if it were an interlude of figures, that is, a performed farce, although it is a novel
24. 3:05with a very strong essayistic and parenetic component, a parade of figures, that is,
25. 3:10different characters who carry out professional activities parade in a dream, in a
26. 3:18series of dreams that Quevedo H declares to have had during the night and recounts while awake, that is,
27. 3:27he remembers the dreams he has had and recounts what he has seen, the visions he has had in those
28. 3:32dreams. In these dreams, Quevedo recounts episodes by virtue of which Quevedo has been
29. 3:38in the afterlife, has been in hell, has encountered metaphysical characters such as Death,
30. 3:45even legendary, mythical, historical figures, from Judas to Virgil and eh, almost paraphrasing
31. 3:54episodes from the Divine Comedy, but in a deeply comic, deeply sarcastic,
32. 3:59deeply mocking format, he represents 70 visions of life that in a fictional format
33. 4:08have strong implications for reality. But as I say, all of this is aimed at disproving
34. 4:14appearances and making truths more visible. Quevedo's dreams are a vaccine against deception
35. 4:24, ultimately, and what they put is the finger of literature on the wound of human disillusionment.
36. 4:31This is basically the fundamental objective of this work, which, as I say and will also repeat at the
37. 4:37end, is a work written in an era in which human thought with a southern orientation,
38. 4:45a southern geography, Mediterranean Europe, a Europe of the Hispano-Greco-Latin tradition,
39. 4:52recognized that human freedom, the freedom of the human being, is above God. This
40. 4:58was a great achievement of philosophical thought with Christian roots, originating from Thomas Aquinas,
41. 5:04originating from Scholasticism, according to which, "reason is above faith, on a par
42. 5:13with faith." Something very different from what the Augustinian tradition proposes. Agustín Dipona believes
43. 5:18that faith is always above reason and that reason cannot question
44. 5:23faith or treat faith as "you." According to Agustín de Ipona, faith and reason cannot address each other informally because
45. 5:30faith is above reason. According to Thomas Aquinas, faith and reason cannot address each other informally,
46. 5:36But they must do so, because faith should not develop beyond what reason can
47. 5:42permit or dictate. Augustine of Ipona's approach is developed in Lutheranism
48. 5:49in an extreme, radical way. In fact, it's no coincidence that Luther is an Augustinian monk,
49. 5:58so much so that Luther starts from a premise very typical of Augustinianism, which consists of never
50. 6:04questioning faith. But this is a point that Luther, Nietzsche, Freud,
51. 6:10Kant, and all of German idealism have in common. Nothing can, and Hegel, of course, nothing can question
52. 6:17vital personal instincts. Nothing can question my imagination, so that
53. 6:27human imagination, fideism, beliefs, sensitivity can develop without limits,
54. 6:36without reason supervising them, without reason serving as an inquisitorial tribunal. This
55. 6:43is something very disturbing because, of course, what are the limits of human emotions then? If
56. 6:49human emotions exceed the possibilities of reason, everything is permitted. Everything is permitted
57. 6:54in the name of emotions, beliefs, desires, and boli. The will to
58. 7:01power has no limits because no rational criterion can limit power. The will
59. 7:07to feel alien has no limits because the psychological reality of a person
60. 7:13who feels alien is above any kind of scientific diagnosis. So
61. 7:19when emotions challenge reason, well, how does reason defend itself?
62. 7:26That's a problem that history has responded to very differently in certain contexts;
63. 7:33that is, certain ideologies, philosophies, or religions anathematize, condemn, that is,
64. 7:43establish an anathema against reason in order to completely free themselves from its limitations.
65. 7:51Keep in mind that Freud considers reason to be a kind of superego
66. 7:55that represses the truth that resides in the unconscious. Nietzsche does the same before Freud. In fact,
67. 8:01Freud is a vast Nietzschean paraphrase. Nietzsche believes that no rational criterion,
68. 8:07no rational disposition can limit or repress the will to power, the possibility of
69. 8:14becoming a superman who, by natural right, imposes his
70. 8:19strength on the rest of human beings. Nazism naturally finds in this genealogy a very powerful reason for being and
71. 8:25imposing itself. Cantian idealism is completely heir to this legitimization of
72. 8:33emotions above any rational criterion. Here we clearly have two
73. 8:38opposing conceptions, and of course the tradition in which Quebedo situates himself is the tradition
74. 8:45contrary to German idealism, to Nietzsche's thought, to Freud's ideas, and to everything that
75. 8:50has to do with a metaphysics of Northern Europe, the Anglo-Saxon world that will
76. 8:55definitively triumph in the Enlightenment. And in fact, the paradigm, the current paradigm, the
77. 9:01postmodern paradigm in which we live today is a paradigm completely inherited from the Enlightenment, and in it
78. 9:08live, codify reality, and interpret it, as do the intellectuals who habitually speak to us
79. 9:15about culture, literature, and the world around us, the world in which we live.
80. 9:20That is to say, we currently live in a world shaped by the Enlightenment, designed by the
81. 9:25Enlightenment, and frankly contrary, opposed to the vision of reality, of the world, of culture, and
82. 9:32of literature held by the so-called classics. The classics, who in some way,
83. 9:38eh, constructed literary thought until the 17th century, until the Enlightenment. Hispanic-Greco-Latin thought
84. 9:43is classical thought. Basically, this is what we are taught in universities;
85. 9:50it is not taught, this dialectic is not posed; a false dialectic is even presented.
86. 9:56It is said that Romanticism is a response to the Enlightenment, isn't it? Romanticism is the
87. 10:01butler of the Enlightenment. Romanticism is the eldest son of the Enlightenment. It is the
88. 10:07eldest son. It is the most powerful firstborn of the Enlightenment. Without the Enlightenment, Romanticism
89. 10:13would not have been possible. In fact, Romanticism is a permanent mental alienation, not transitory,
90. 10:18but permanent, and it continues to this day, legitimizing the impossible. But what I mean
91. 10:25is that at the time in which Quevedo wrote, the philosophy then in force in Europe
92. 10:31South establishes that human freedom is above God and that God does not intervene in
93. 10:36human freedom. Human beings are free to choose between good and evil and good
94. 10:41and evil, and to do whatever they want, goodness or evil. And then they will be judged according to what
95. 10:46the human being has freely chosen. In Protestant thought, this is not the case.
96. 10:52In Protestant thought, God does not withdraw. Protestant thought does not agree with its idea
97. 10:58of God that God withdraws so that human beings may freely choose between good and
98. 11:02evil. In Protestant thought, this human freedom does not exist. In Protestant thought,
99. 11:07what exists is a predestination according to which human beings are condemned or saved by
100. 11:13a prior divine disposition, even prior to their own conception, such that
101. 11:20there is absolutely no recognized freedom in human beings to act in one way or another,
102. 11:27as is the case in Southern European philosophy, which is mediated, completely
103. 11:34intervened by, the power of Catholicism. For the Protestant world, there is freedom of conscience,
104. 11:39but that freedom of conscience refers to the freedom to think against any
105. 11:45system of thought that is contrary to Protestantism. In other words, the freedom of
106. 11:50Protestantism only exists to think against the enemies of Protestantism. That is the
107. 11:56freedom Luther recognizes, basically. But Luther doesn't recognize any freedom for anyone who
108. 12:01dissents from Luther. Calvin doesn't recognize any freedom in Servetus; he doesn't recognize any freedom
109. 12:07of conscience in those consciences that think contrary to his own. In other words,
110. 12:13there is nothing more paradoxical than speaking of freedom of conscience in Protestantism, because there is no
111. 12:17real freedom of conscience in Protestantism. Protestantism is a
112. 12:21religion that doesn't exclude God from human freedom, but rather imposes it in such a way that
113. 12:28God's concept of human freedom, the Protestant God's concept of
114. 12:32human freedom, is equal to zero. It doesn't exist. Human beings in the Protestant world have no freedom;
115. 12:39they are predestined from birth to death. And the symptom that it will be
116. 12:46saved is that it generates wealth. And the symptom that it will be condemned is that it doesn't generate wealth. That is
117. 12:51the Calvinist conception. The fact that human beings can develop a recognized freedom
118. 13:00outside of God's intervention implies the secularization of human life. In short,
119. 13:06the 10th century is a much more secular century than the 17th century. What happens is that it has been explained
120. 13:12as if it weren't, as if it were precisely the opposite. And it is the opposite because the
121. 13:18exclusion of God from the exercise of human freedom is the suppression of a Big Brother that in
122. 13:25Catholicism leads to atheism, secular rationalism, and in Protestantism leads to Orwell;
123. 13:32it basically leads to a Big Brother that controls everything. Today this Big Brother is the Internet.
124. 13:37In short, everyone on the Internet is exposed to being controlled by the network;
125. 13:42they get into the network and become entangled through social networks, which, as their name indicates,
126. 13:47are a retiarium. Retiarius was the gladiator who destroyed his adversary using a net.
127. 13:56And obviously, everyone, hm, looks for a corner in the spider's web, that is, believing themselves to be Narcissus
128. 14:03, whom everyone looks at, the one who will look at you the most will obviously be the spider, which is
129. 14:06the one that weaves the web so that you become entangled in it and ultimately become its prey. But as I say,
130. 14:15the fact of excluding God from the possibilities of human freedom is the first stone of
131. 14:22secularization. That is to say, the 15th century was much more secular than the entire
132. 14:27European Enlightenment. What the European Enlightenment did was later replace God with the State,
133. 14:32such that everything that God previously controlled, now the State will control it. That is
134. 14:39the Enlightenment, basically the German, French, and Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment in philosophy,
135. 14:47in politics, and in the market or marketing. That is the Enlightenment. Philosophy in Germany, in
136. 14:54politics in France, and in marketing, the market in finance in England. These are the three faces,
137. 15:00the three heads of enlightenment. So that today, heirs of all that enlightenment,
138. 15:08Freedom lies beyond even the state and beyond reason. Freedom resides above
139. 15:14all in the market, and the market reasons with very different criteria than the state,
140. 15:19and it dictates that freedom has no limits. Freedom has no limits other than those of finance.
141. 15:26The boundaries of freedom are, ultimately, the boundaries of the power of money. And of course,
142. 15:32money has a very different map than the one that human reasoning can sometimes have
143. 15:37when it develops in other spheres. So, when freedom prevails over reason,
144. 15:45human beings can commit absurdities. Human beings can make many mistakes that
145. 15:50lead to failure. And that is the fundamental characteristic of the 21st century, of the era in which
146. 15:55we live. The 21st century has placed reason below freedom. Or, to put it another way,
147. 16:02hm, or engaging in isodynamics, explaining the same idea, but in reverse, that is, he has placed
148. 16:08freedom above reason, he has led human beings to believe that their possibilities and their rights to
149. 16:13exercise freedom are above any rational approach. And this is a huge error
150. 16:20because it can lead human beings to believe they can fly simply by moving their arms.
151. 16:27In other words, the freedom to fly cannot be beyond reason. In order to fly, human beings
152. 16:32need to develop devices that allow them to overcome the law of gravity. The law
153. 16:38of gravity is not resolved simply by moving our arms. We are not capable of
154. 16:45that. So, be very careful about believing in the error that freedom is above the
155. 16:50possibilities of human reason, because that is a shortcut to failure. In short, at the time
156. 16:57in which Quevedo writes his dreams, the argument that is being sustained is precisely the opposite.
157. 17:02Human freedom cannot be placed above reason, but it can be exercised outside of God.
158. 17:09Because, 15th-century Spanish Catholic thought is very skillful, very intelligent, and makes a pact
159. 17:15with God regarding the right to exercise freedom without God's presence. He has the final say, but
160. 17:20he doesn't have the media say. However, in Protestantism, God has all the say:
161. 17:26the first, the media say, and the final say. That is, He intervenes in the entire process because
162. 17:31human beings are predestined by God to salvation or damnation regardless of what
163. 17:38they do. There is no freedom. Therefore, to speak of freedom of conscience in Protestantism is
164. 17:43a complete deception. It makes no sense. Regardless of whether one is a believer, an atheist, a Catholic, or
165. 17:50a Protestant, we don't defend creeds, we don't speak in the name of philosophies, we explain what exists,
166. 17:55we don't subscribe to any of these issues, because the solution isn't in subscribing to an
167. 18:01ideology. The solution to problems lies in understanding reality and explaining the facts
168. 18:06we face, not in arguing over opinions. Each person will undoubtedly have their own ideas,
169. 18:16their own criteria, and their own way of thinking. And we're not going into that, no, we don't have the authority or desire
170. 18:23to go into that. We're simply explaining the facts. This exposition I'm going to give
171. 18:29below is developed in the critique of literary reason. It's developed in four
172. 18:35volumes—or it can be found in four volumes that refer to critical
173. 18:40or indicative literature, which are the volumes of the critique of literary reason, which, as you know, is a work
174. 18:47that was published this year, in 2025, in 25 volumes. The 25 volumes are available on Amazon, and four
175. 18:56of those volumes refer to critical or indicative literature. And in this section of
176. 19:04critical or indicative literature, Quevedo's work, Quevedo's Dreams, occupies a particularly
177. 19:11representative place. We're going to refer to this work here and quote a series of fragments,
178. 19:17continuing with the last video to which we dedicated this topic. Precisely, Quevedo is dreaming that he
179. 19:25finds himself in the other world. He's dreaming at that moment, dreaming that he's in the other world
180. 19:30, and upon waking, he transcribes what he dreamed, transcribes the content of what he's experienced. And he says that in hell,
181. 19:38on the day of final judgment, on the day when the reckoning is called, when the
182. 19:43human being is asked to account for what he has done throughout his life, he has been allowed to act freely,
183. 19:47But at the last moment he's judged. What have you done? And then the alchemists appear,
184. 19:54the alchemists who had a reputation for being crazy, for being morons, for being crazy people, for being people who
185. 19:59were looking to find or make the philosopher's stone or even to make gold from the vilest things
186. 20:08there were, right? To find the philosopher's stone. And then the alchemists appear in hell
187. 20:14and the devils ask them, "Are you the alchemists?" Yes, we are the alchemists.
188. 20:17And are you looking for the philosopher's stone? Yes, we are looking for the philosopher's stone. And you know that the
189. 20:21philosopher's stone is made from the vilest things there are. Well, yes, we are looking for the vilest things. Well,
190. 20:27and then even Quebedo comes to ask himself, right? Talking with some of the devils, well,
191. 20:33if they make the philosopher's stone from the vilest thing, then they'll make it from the scribes or
192. 20:39the brackets, right? And the devils say, "No, no, no, no." What could be the most vile thing? The
193. 20:43alchemists themselves. And then the alchemists say, "Well, then if we are
194. 20:49the most vile thing, as long as we make the philosopher's stone, they'll melt us in the fires of hell,
195. 20:55right?" And Quevedo relates cynically. Look, Quevedo's cynicism is truly extreme. I mean,
196. 21:00it's a cynicism that would be intolerable today. My Borges can surpass this. Do you want to know what
197. 21:07the most vile thing is?" a devil says to the alchemists themselves. He says, "Yes, we do," he says, "
198. 21:13the alchemists." And so, in order for the stone to be made, it's necessary to burn you all. God,
199. 21:19the devils set fire to the alchemists, and the alchemists burned almost willingly just to
200. 21:24see the philosopher's stone. That is to say, notice how Quebedo mocks the fanaticism of many people
201. 21:30who, in order to take their ideas to the extreme, die by burning at the stake. Of course,
202. 21:38naturally one could think of Joan of Arc, eh, I mean, one could even think of martyrdom.
203. 21:46Quebedo is a radically Catholic author, he's an ultra-Catholic author. His thinking
204. 21:52is extremely Catholic, so it would be very difficult to maintain that Quebedo
205. 21:58makes this statement to support such ideas. But hm, if we take into account that martyrdom,
206. 22:05as Nietzsche suggested, is one of the forms of suicide authorized by religions, eh, it gives the
207. 22:12impression that the act of being burned alive for ratifying an idea or defending a religion
208. 22:20is in some way what Quevedo paraphrases here, ridiculously turning alchemists
209. 22:26into protagonists of an act of this nature. That is to say, what Quevedo is proposing here is very strong,
210. 22:32extremely strong, and surely the censors didn't see it, didn't observe it, but
211. 22:37Quevedo's criticisms sometimes, although they may stop at certain religious dogmas,
212. 22:44question them periphrastically in a very sharp and very serious way. That is to say, using
213. 22:50both registers, gravity and sharpness, gravity of content and sharpness of wit. On
214. 22:57the other hand, there was no less a rabble of astrologers and superstitious people, that is, they appear in the
215. 23:02same group as philosophers, palmists, and alchemists. The rabble of
216. 23:07astrologers, the rabble, the noisy rabble, right? The rabble of astrologers and superstitious people. He says,
217. 23:14"A palmist was taking the hands of all the others who had been condemned, saying,
218. 23:20look, this scene is typical of a mental asylum, almost a medieval, Renaissance, or
219. 23:25Baroque mental asylum. How clear it is that these people had to be condemned by the Mount of Saturn. That is, he
220. 23:32reads their hands and confirms that their condemnation is diagnosed in their hands. Another one was on all fours
221. 23:41with a compass. Look at the image; I insist, it seems like it was taken from one of these mental asylums from
222. 23:46the medieval era. Another one who was on all fours with a compass measuring heights and
223. 23:54noting stars surrounded by anniversaries and tables, stood up and said out loud, this suddenly,
224. 24:00right? Imagine yourself in a library reading, studying in silence.
225. 24:05When people went to libraries to read and study in silence and suddenly a guy who is
226. 24:08at a desk in a library or on all fours under a table looking for combinations astrological signs,
227. 24:16suddenly starts screaming. By God, if my mother had given birth to me half a minute before I
228. 24:21Except, because Saturn at that point was changing its aspect and Mars was moving into the house of life.
229. 24:26Scorpio was losing his malice, and as a solicitor, I, like a poor beggar. Of course, these kinds of
230. 24:33statements are absolutely terrifying and chilling, but between this and geopolitics,
231. 24:38there's sometimes very little difference because there are people who, when they talk about geopolitics, get
232. 24:43so excited that they think they've discovered the solution to the future, and it turns out they're simply describing a
233. 24:49form of horoscope, but instead of applying it to the day, it's applied to military
234. 24:54or strategic combinations. But anyway, it's a form of communication along with any other. And then
235. 25:00Quebedo continues. Another one behind him was telling the devils who were tormenting him to take a good look at
236. 25:06whether it was true that he had died, which couldn't be, because he had Jupiter as his ascendant and
237. 25:13Venus in the house of life without any bad aspects, and that it was necessary that he live to be 90 years old.
238. 25:19So, in other words, it's a guy who, let's say, once his death is already consummated in hell,
239. 25:25on the eve of the final judgment, tells the devils to look, to look into it,
240. 25:30to review that because they're wrong. They're wrong because according to their own calculations, he
241. 25:35's still alive and shouldn't be there. Well, that's an extreme thing, isn't it? Look, I was saying that
242. 25:41I'm notifying you to look carefully if I'm deceased, because on my own, it's impossible for me to be. Of course, that
243. 25:47's like when someone files a complaint—I, myself, uh, a student who leaves the exam
244. 25:55blank and files a complaint saying they've been unfairly failed, because of course, in
245. 26:00reality, uh, the blankness of the exam expresses an asymptomatic knowledge that requires
246. 26:07special attention on the part of the professor, something the professor isn't capable of achieving, and
247. 26:11what he says in that expression of silence and blankness on the paper, well, it's something that hasn't been
248. 26:17taken into account, that hasn't been evaluated, right? For example, and according to his own data,
249. 26:20he has an honors degree. The thing is, you haven't reviewed that test properly, right? I mean,
250. 26:27if I fail, it's your fault, not mine. That's how he went back and forth without
251. 26:32anyone being able to get him out of here. I mean, he was completely crazy, I mean, it was impossible to reason with him.
252. 26:37Of course, Quevedo presents a series of psychopathic, neurotic, but
253. 26:41above all psychotic characters who have lost their minds, who have completely lost their minds and who have
254. 26:48developed their freedoms above a completely lost and completely
255. 26:53misguided reason. Of course, this may have been very funny in its time or in any other time,
256. 26:58but from the point of view of a dark interpretation of the matter, that is, as dark humor, it
257. 27:07evidently reveals very tragic situations. Crazy people without literature are very attractive
258. 27:11because they are harmless, they don't leave the text, but in the reality of life, mental illnesses
259. 27:17lead to tragic outcomes for the person who suffers from them and the people around
260. 27:26them. I mean, psychiatry isn't really there to entertain people, but to solve
261. 27:32mental health problems that are truly serious. So, of course, this is very funny,
262. 27:37it's very funny for some people, but reality isn't
263. 27:45always expressed in literary terms. Reality is something else. Uh, now it's the turn of another prototype of characters:
264. 27:52the merchants. Quevedo, as we know, is someone who, uh, seems very, uh, antipathetic to everything
265. 28:02that has to do with money and commerce. Quevedo is an enemy of commerce.
266. 28:09Quevedo is one of the greatest enemies there has ever been of commerce, finance, and
267. 28:14activities in which money is involved. So, uh, Quevedo in hell meets
268. 28:22a series of people who are walking around very happily, uh, showing their enthusiasm. So, of course,
269. 28:28he's surprised and says, "But how can it be that there are people so cheerful, so happy, so delighted
270. 28:33to meet each other in hell?" And he asks the devils, "Who are those walking around so
271. 28:38happily?" And he says, "They are merchants, that is, traders, what we would call friends
272. 28:43of commerce today, right? They are merchants, traders, people who are dedicated to business, to commerce.
273. 28:49Commerce, thanks to which society has advanced so much. In other words, it's about condemning commerce,
274. 28:55that is, those who engage in commerce are very bad people because they exploit others.
275. 28:59Well, eh, but bad people who exploit others don't need commerce to practice
276. 29:05evil and exploit others. In other words, there are bad people everywhere and there are good people
277. 29:10everywhere, and we can't fall into this Manichaeism. I'll explain to you what Quebedo says,
278. 29:16but don't identify me with Quebedo or with Quebedo's enemies. Don't identify me
279. 29:20with the friends of commerce or the enemies of commerce. Because the problem many
280. 29:25people have when they hear an interpretation is that they are unable to interpret the interpretation
281. 29:31they receive without associating the interpreter with one option or another. In other words,
282. 29:36ideology has so taken hold of the human will that human beings are incapable of
283. 29:42interpreting a discourse without considering that the speaker in the discourse takes sides for one option or
284. 29:47another. We don't discuss opinions, we don't defend or condemn the friends or enemies of
285. 29:53commerce because that's not our job. Our job isn't to pontificate for or against
286. 29:59anyone. Our goal is to interpret literature and interpret reality based on
287. 30:04what literature says. If some of you want to interpret something else or understand
288. 30:09something else, that's your responsibility, but it's not my job, it's not my activity. So, Quevedo clearly
289. 30:16places himself among the enemies of commerce, and so, to denigrate merchants,
290. 30:24traders, whom he detests, he presents them as people who are very happy, very content in
291. 30:29hell. And you might ask, why is that? Quevedo asks himself naively, right? And you ask
292. 30:34the devils, how is it possible that there are such happy people in hell, so content, so
293. 30:38happy, laughing, celebrating, and so on, delighted to know themselves. And the devils say to him,
294. 30:43"And are they merchants? And why are they happy?" He says, "Because they go with Judas. Because they come to
295. 30:49hell to see Judas." Because for them Judas is God. And why is Judas God? Because Judas
296. 30:55is the greatest of merchants. Because Judas has sold God. Of course, the greatest of merchants
297. 31:02is the one who sells the best of products. There is nothing better than a God. There is nothing more
298. 31:07valuable than a God. While Judas has sold Christ, he has sold a God, betraying him,
299. 31:15of course, because of course, evidently the objective of every merchant in his curriculum
300. 31:22vitae is to sell the most valuable product. There is nothing more valuable than a divinity. to sell a
301. 31:28divinity eh for 30 Tyrian tetadragmas, which was the price that they paid eh to Judas,
302. 31:39which was the price of slaves at the time. We have also told this in our story
303. 31:44The Currency of Judas. We have made an interpretation of the figure of Judas at this point. So,
304. 31:50of course, the best of merchants is the one who has sold the best of the products.
305. 31:55So Judas's CV doesn't say traitor, but rather merchant. And what have
306. 32:02you sold? Well, you've managed the transaction of a god, the buying and selling of a god.
307. 32:08That's the approach Quebedo makes in his dreams, which is a ridiculous, comical,
308. 32:14but very serious approach, obviously. And then he presents the merchants as Judas's pupils, eh, that
309. 32:21is, he places them in the most infamous context there can be. Now, I insist, no, please
310. 32:29don't interpret that I'm talking about the merchants as Quevedo does. I'll explain what Quevedo is saying
311. 32:35now. eh, what you do with the ideas that literature puts on history and puts
312. 32:41on the table is another thing. Evidently, this mention isn't biased toward the merchants,
313. 32:49right? And he says, "They are the merchants who are damned for selling. They are with Judas, but they are very
314. 32:54happy with Judas." It's not that they're sorry for what they've sold, but that they're
315. 33:01actually happy with Judas, right? So, Quevedo also makes a series of references to
316. 33:07money, the powerful knight, who is Don Dinero. Then, he says that in money, which he
317. 33:13even presents as an allegorical character in the dream of death, no longer in that of the final judgment,
318. 33:18But in the dream of death, he says that money synthesizes the three enemies
319. 33:26of the soul, which are the world, the devil, and the flesh, because money has the worst of the world,
320. 33:32the worst of the devil, and the worst of the flesh. In other words, money, let's say, is the worst of the worst,
321. 33:40and it synthesizes the power of the three enemies of the soul according to Christian theology, which are the world,
322. 33:45the devil, and the flesh. And in dialogue with death, in the dream of death, when Quevedo dreams that
323. 33:52death accompanies him on a journey to the afterlife, and he explains to him, he describes what the afterlife is like.
324. 33:59Bedo isn't accompanied by Virgil, whom he ridicules like Dante, but is accompanied by
325. 34:05death in this case, right? And death asks him, "Who is that," I said, "the one standing there,
326. 34:11tearing himself to pieces with these three, with so many faces and figures?" That is to say, money is
327. 34:16fighting with the world, the devil, and the flesh. That is, it presents a dispute between four
328. 34:21allegorical characters. Money, which fights with three at once: the world, the devil, and the flesh. And
329. 34:28Death tells him, that's it, said Death, money, which has sued the three enemies of the soul:
330. 34:35the world, the devil, and the flesh. That is, I sued them in court.
331. 34:38You tell me what courts there are in the afterlife where money can file a lawsuit against
332. 34:43the world and the devil of the flesh. And why does it sue them? Why does money sue
333. 34:48the world, the devil, and the flesh in the afterlife courts? Saying that it wants to avoid
334. 34:54emulators, that is, those who engage in unfair competition because they fraudulently imitate it, because it is
335. 35:00the true protagonist and manager of what the world, the devil, and the flesh do. And they usurp,
336. 35:06usurp its role, that is, they compete with it in a way that, uh, they pirate it, so to speak,
337. 35:11right? Because the true protagonist of the world's evils, the devil and the flesh, is money and
338. 35:16the sun. And yet, the others try to compete with it under conditions of
339. 35:21unfair competition. That's what he accuses them of. He accuses them of unfair competition. He wants to avoid
340. 35:26rivals, and where he is, neither the world, nor the devil, nor the flesh are needed, because he alone
341. 35:31is all three enemies. In other words, he alone takes care of it. I mean, imagine
342. 35:35Quevedo's concept of money. And of course, you'll always tell me, "Well, Quevedo also used
343. 35:41money and wanted money and all that." But tell that to Quevedo. I'll tell you what Quevedo says;
344. 35:45I don't go into those matters. And the reason for saying that money is the devil is that
345. 35:51you all say, "Money is day, and what money doesn't do, the devil won't do."
346. 35:58Money is a devilish thing. That is to say, what I see here refers to popular expressions that credit
347. 36:04money as one of these three enemies of the soul. To be the world, he says that you say,
348. 36:11"There is no world but money. Whoever doesn't have money, leave the world. To whom
349. 36:17money is taken away, you say that they should throw them out of the world and that everything is given for money." I myself have said many
350. 36:23times that work is that which is only done for money, but I could not say that work is
351. 36:28one of the three enemies of the soul. It may be one of the great enemies of human beings, but
352. 36:32the fact is that without work one cannot survive. Most people cannot survive without working.
353. 36:37And some people cannot survive even by working, but that is another matter. The point is
354. 36:42that returning to what Quevedo says, which is what we are talking about, to say that money is flesh,
355. 36:47he says money, say it the flesh and refer, says Quevedo, and refer to whores and bad women,
356. 36:54which is the same as interested parties. End of quote. in the dream of death. Eh, you see that
357. 37:02Quevedo's thinking doesn't shy away from anything like Baying Clan's and is extremely critical,
358. 37:08extremely harsh. Regarding justice, what idea does Quevedo have? Well, Quevedo wants justice,
359. 37:16but he considers justice to be prostituted, at the service of spurious interests and alien
360. 37:23to justice. And then he says of justice that its name was usurped to honor tyrannies. But
361. 37:30of course, it's the same thing that can happen to democracy. Democracy's
362. 37:35name can be usurped to legitimize totalitarianism. Some people considered that the adjective democratic
363. 37:42For the Republic of East Germany, the German idea was a fraudulent use of democracy because
364. 37:49it legitimized tyrannies. Others, however, feel that calling a country
365. 37:54like the United States democratic legitimizes a tyranny typical of globalization, of totalitarianism,
366. 38:01of globalization. What this means is that I don't defend either idea; I'm simply
367. 38:07presenting them to you. No, no, I don't subscribe to either option. I present
368. 38:12the options available, and if you associate any of them with me, that's your responsibility, not mine.
369. 38:18I don't subscribe to any of this. I am an interpreter of literature and reality
370. 38:23based on what exists. People like to ascribe, eh, and label their fellow human beings,
371. 38:30but that's not the case. It's not my case, neither mine nor the character's, although the character has a
372. 38:37longer tongue than mine. But the fact is that this use of justice to legitimize tyrannies,
373. 38:45to honor tyrannies, is something that Quevedo objects to and that Quevedo questions. That is,
374. 38:52Quevedo doesn't deal with idealisms, he doesn't idealize politics, he rejects idealisms in the face of the
375. 38:59great values that are instruments of government. And of course, clearly, what happens? The thing is that if this is
376. 39:08the ideal of the Baroque, delegitimizing idealisms, this becomes precisely the opposite
377. 39:16when the Enlightenment erupts. The Enlightenment enormously mythologizes idealisms to such
378. 39:21an extent that the Enlightenment exalts the ideals of the State, and above all, the ideals
379. 39:28of the democratic State, to the point of idolatry. But of course, ideals today have shifted from the State to the market. In other words,
380. 39:35the Enlightenment idealizes the ideals of the State to the point of ideolatry in the name of democracy.
381. 39:42And the market, inherited from this idolatry, has intensified the idealization of these
382. 39:48ideals, previously in the hands of the State and now in the hands of the market. And at this stage, we live
383. 39:53in the idealization of market agents. Today, the figure of the leader is idealized. Note
384. 39:59that even at the university, professors are evaluated today not so much on what they know—what
385. 40:06a professor knows is increasingly less valued—but on their leadership capacity as a professor,
386. 40:12not as a bureaucrat. That is to say, today, accreditation agencies for professorships value professors more,
387. 40:21not on what they know, not on what they research, but on what is called their leadership capacity in
388. 40:28the management of management positions—that is, in the administration of administrative positions, if you'll pardon the
389. 40:34redundancy, completely deliberate. eh, it's a complete reiteration, that is, in the gestation
390. 40:41of management, it's a polyptoton, that is, it's an emphatic use of derivative terms,
391. 40:48that is, it emphasizes above all the dimension of the professor as a leader of a management that
392. 40:54is also unverifiable, because the professor is not an entrepreneur. The professor is a generator
393. 40:59of new knowledge based on preexisting knowledge and is someone accredited to know how
394. 41:05to transmit in the best possible way this knowledge that they are obliged to generate,
395. 41:10that they are obliged to create, not simply to retransmit. Because today, the promotion of
396. 41:16a tenured university professor in Spain, a professor, is not valued so much for what they know,
397. 41:22for what they are familiar with, but for a supposed management capacity that is identified with the figure of a
398. 41:27leader, who is a figure completely imported from the Anglo-Saxon world and is completely
399. 41:31irrelevant. That is to say, no, a professor is not a leader, they are not a manager of public administration
400. 41:37. A professor is someone who generates new knowledge based on
401. 41:42preexisting knowledge. Knowledge that has value and utility for its practical reason of being applied
402. 41:50to the improvement of human life, and not just for its theoretical reason. Eh, now, if what
403. 41:55is intended to be promoted is precisely an ideal, the leader is an elite slave, ultimately,
404. 42:02and a self-deceiver. Everyone can do what they want, but what this does is devalue the
405. 42:07university instead of improving it. But I don't know if anyone would care about this anymore. If they did,
406. 42:14the things that are happening in this sense, in this context, wouldn't happen. And speaking of
407. 42:20the university, Quevedo himself says at one point about dreams, I'm not saying that because it was lesser.
408. 42:26The battalion of doctors, of academic university doctors, not of physicians,
409. 42:31of doctors, whom he calls "graduated poisons," a new eloquence, since it is known that in their
410. 42:37universities they study for poisons. That is to say, a completely derogatory,
411. 42:44negative reference is made to a certain concept of university already present even in 1627.
412. 42:50Imagine if Quevedo lived today and saw today's society, today's university, what
413. 42:56he would write in his dreams, what he would say in a work like his dreams. The key character of dreams
414. 43:04here is disillusionment. And this appears in a dream titled El mundo por dentro (The World Within), that is, the
415. 43:11world within, the world within, beyond appearances. And here Quevedo himself,
416. 43:18a reflection of himself, transformed into a character, says he encounters another character, an
417. 43:26allegorical character who will be disillusionment. It is called El desengaño (The Disillusionment). This man is an allegorical character
418. 43:34whom Quevedo encounters in his dream. And this is how the encounter is described. When they bump into each other,
419. 43:43disillusionment tells him, "My habit and dress say I'm a good man and a lover of speaking the truth about brokenness
420. 43:51and the undeveloped. And the worst thing about your life is not having seen my face until now." It's not
421. 43:58having seen my face until now. That is to say, since you haven't yet been disillusioned, you haven't matured.
422. 44:05That is to say, the worst thing that can happen to you in life is not living the experience of disillusionment, not having
423. 44:10a date with me, a date with disillusionment. What makes us mature is what a
424. 44:15disillusionment produces in us that at a certain moment changes our lives. Disillusionment changes your life. In other words,
425. 44:20the failure of certain experiences, if it has any use, is precisely because it teaches you
426. 44:26to identify that obstacle so you don't fall into it again. In other words, disillusionment is
427. 44:32one of the most important life experiences. For this reason, from the Golden Age perspective
428. 44:39, it is considered that human education should be oriented toward disillusionment and should never, ever
429. 44:45be oriented toward deception, which is what happens with 21st-century education, with the education
430. 44:49of postmodernity. That is to say, the education of the Enlightenment is basically oriented toward
431. 44:55deception, toward idealism. Idealism is the fear of reality. And an education based
432. 45:02on idealism is an education based on the fear of reality. Because it is unbearable,
433. 45:07because it is insurmountable, one creates an alternative reality to overcome the
434. 45:13obstacles one faces. This is the case of Licenciado Vidriera in Cervantes' novel,
435. 45:20who, because he is afraid of others, declares himself made of glass to demand that no one
436. 45:26touch him. This is the case of Don Quixote, who, feeling uncomfortable in the world he lives in, feigns
437. 45:33madness, thereby transforming himself into a knight-errant and taking a series of
438. 45:40liberties that he otherwise could not. Hm. Hm. The fear of reality, ultimately,
439. 45:45is the seed of idealism, and idealism is the strategic way to avoid disillusionment. There
440. 45:53is no antidote to idealism. Idealism doesn't allow disillusionment of any kind. And this character
441. 45:59we're dealing with here—disillusionment—is precisely the limit of idealism, the end of idealism.
442. 46:05Disillusionment is the disintegration of idealism. Disillusionment is the cornerstone of the 10th century.
443. 46:12And yet, disillusionment is something that the Enlightenment outlawed. In the Enlightenment,
444. 46:19in Enlightenment thought, disillusionment is not permitted; it's completely repealed.
445. 46:24"I am disillusionment," the character tells him. "These tears in my clothes are from the tugs
446. 46:31they give me from those who claim to love me throughout the world. And these bruises on my face, these
447. 46:37blows and kicks they give me, both because I came and because I left. They don't want to be disillusioned. People
448. 46:43don't want to be disillusioned. As López de Vega said, reason is worthless against obstinacy. People don't want
449. 46:49to lose faith in exchange for reason. People feel more secure with faith than with reason. This is the
450. 46:53Augustinian tradition. Lutheranism shares this criterion. That is, I don't want to be
451. 47:00questioned. I don't want any rational criterion to impose itself on my imaginary desires. I don't want
452. 47:06any reason to proscribe my fantasy. That is, I protect myself and appeal to freedom, not of conscience,
453. 47:15but of desire, to legitimize any deprivation of freedom in others who, in the
454. 47:20name of reason, try to close down my faith. That is the approach, ultimately, of idealism,
455. 47:26that is, the legitimization of a freedom that is above reason. Idealism is this,
456. 47:32a freedom that moves beyond reason. But a freedom that moves beyond reason
457. 47:37is a freedom that has lost sight of reality. That is why we speak of idealism. It is
458. 47:42very difficult for an idealist to accept that human freedom must always be in motion,
459. 47:49must always move within the limits of human reason, because outside of human reason, the
460. 47:55coordinates disappear. So, if reason has been lost, everything is permitted. It's not
461. 48:00that if God is dead, everything is permitted, no. It's that God is a synonym for reason in
462. 48:06Nietzsche's words. Nietzsche isn't interested in the death of God; he's interested in the destruction of reason,
463. 48:10because that grants a series of freedoms to those who don't want to be accountable to anyone for what they do, and
464. 48:15there's no international criminal court to limit or control them. Ultimately, then, of course,
465. 48:22the question is that if there's no disillusionment, if faith is above reason in the
466. 48:29Augustinian tradition of dogmatic theology, then you have freedom for everything, because there's no
467. 48:34reason that demands an account of what you do. But reality demands certain norms, and ignoring them
468. 48:44means making us fail. So reason is precisely what human beings
469. 48:50are obliged to know so that reality doesn't crush them. Because reality doesn't accept anyone who is
470. 48:55incompatible with it, and reality doesn't accept idealists. It doesn't accept idealists.
471. 49:01The end of idealism is failure. There is no other possible outcome.
472. 49:06That in the world you all tell me you want disillusionment, and when you understand it, some of you wake up, others
473. 49:13curse the one who gave it to you, and others, more courteously, don't believe it. If you want to see the world, son,
474. 49:19come with me, I'll take you to the main street, which is where all the figures come from, and there
475. 49:24you will see together those who walk divided here without tiring. I will show you the world as it is, which you
476. 49:30cannot see, except what it seems. Note here this contrast between what is and what seems,
477. 49:36being and appearance, reality and dissimulation, pretense. And what is it called?
478. 49:43I said, the main street of the world, where we must go. It is called, replied disillusionment, hypocrisy,
479. 49:50let's say, avenue of hypocrisy, isn't it? That is the main street of the world, a street that begins with the
480. 49:57world and will end with it. There's hardly anyone who doesn't have more than one house, one room, or one chamber in
481. 50:06it. Some are neighbors and others are passersby, and there are many differences among hypocrites, and everyone
482. 50:12you see around here is. Of course, this is a completely sad conception of the world,
483. 50:19disappointing in the world, disillusioned with the world, and it's going to tell of the disillusionment. Disillusionment is
484. 50:23disillusioned with everything and they'll tell you, "Well, you can apply for this, but it's full of
485. 50:29injustices. You can apply and send your resume to different companies, but they won't respond,
486. 50:35they'll reject you, they'll say no. Eh, that weighs heavily. Eh, you apply for a professorship
487. 50:41and they don't accredit you, although it turns out they accredit someone else who has much less of a resume than you,
488. 50:46which is outrageous, and it's a new disillusionment. I don't even want to think about what happens in the
489. 50:53political sphere when people compete for different political positions in the business world,
490. 50:58but life is like that. Eh, I mean, until one day an illness strikes us and we
491. 51:04die more or less suddenly or slowly. I mean, those are the conditions of life,
492. 51:11right? There are only those conditions of life. So, the experience of disillusionment is something
493. 51:16that human beings are inevitably familiar with, whether they want it or not. It's That is, disillusionment
494. 51:21catches you when you least expect it. You can deny disillusionment. Yes, you can deny it, just like
495. 51:28you can deny any evidence, but that means absolutely nothing. That's right, that
496. 51:33means absolutely nothing. You can deny the intelligence of others, but that doesn't mean
497. 51:37they're stupid. If you deny the intelligence of others, you're probably the stupid one.
498. 51:42Not the neighbor. I mean, for that reason, when someone criticizes another person, without reason,
499. 51:48without motive, the only thing they express is the envy they have for that person. I mean, basically.
500. 51:55Therefore, relationships with disappointment are translated in many ways.
501. 52:02Hm. Of course, a statement of this type could give rise to self-help interpretations. They say,
502. 52:07"Well, that character isn't the... it's not disappointment, it's self-help." Well,
503. 52:12self-help is the name the English give to disappointment when they market it. But of course,
504. 52:17if you talk to someone about disappointment, it's a much more complex experience than if you
505. 52:21talk to them about self-help, because it gives the impression that everything today is self-help. They say, "But self-help
506. 52:26can't exist because self-help is the help one gives to oneself and no one can help
507. 52:31themselves. Others help you or you help others, but there is no self-help." That is a completely idealistic and narcissistic statement
508. 52:37that can only spring from an Anglo-Saxon culture
509. 52:43that ultimately commodifies deception and self-deception. Keep in mind that, on the other hand,
510. 52:52this conception of parenesis, of the instruction of helping others, is very common in
511. 53:02Hispano-Latin literature, but the Enlightenment greatly destroyed this conception of the
512. 53:10Erasmian humanist. It completely destroys him because the humanist of the Hispano-Greek-Latin tradition
513. 53:17, and Erasmus was one, he was one to the highest degree, has nothing to do with the Enlightenment humanist.
514. 53:23The Enlightenment humanist has all the books in the world, has the Google library,
515. 53:29has the library Borges speaks of, but hasn't read any of those books. The
516. 53:34Renaissance humanist has a limited, punctual, reduced library. He doesn't have all the books
517. 53:39in the world. He has, as I would say, a few scholarly books together. I live in conversation with
518. 53:44the deceased and I listen to the dead with my eyes. If they are not always understood, always
519. 53:49open, they amend or fertilize my affairs and in silent musicians counterpoints to the dream of
520. 53:55awake life. Eh, it's the poem eh From the Tower, which constitutes a praise of the books read,
521. 54:03not a praise of the book in general, because a book is also Hitler's Mein Kampf and that is an
522. 54:09abominable thing, as is also Hitler's genealogy of morality, which is a book that
523. 54:15is in the same link in the chain of books as Hitler's Mein Kampf. In short, it is one
524. 54:21of the antecedents of that book by Hitler, that of Nietzsche's genealogy of morality. But
525. 54:29the classical humanist, the humanist of the Hispano-Latin tradition, doesn't have a large library; he doesn't
526. 54:34live in Google's library. Rather, he lives in a room with books, with his own books,
527. 54:40with books he's read, which he reads not once, but several times, and which he contrasts and compares. But he doesn't live
528. 54:47in an infinite and limited library because that implies not having read a single one of those
529. 54:52books. That is to say, this idolatry of books is more a legacy of the Enlightenment and
530. 54:58Romanticism. That is to say, someone who collects books like someone who collects bells or
531. 55:04bottle caps, for example, corks or anything of that sort, who collects padlocks or bonnets—
532. 55:09I mean, that doesn't make any sense. I mean, books aren't for collecting,
533. 55:14they're for reading. Which doesn't mean that people whose bibliographic interest is to acquire
534. 55:22certain books engage in any kind of work that's unworthy of them. No, we're not saying that;
535. 55:27I mean, not at all. But this idealistic image of the humanities
536. 55:35is very unrealistic compared to the concept of humanism held by the
537. 55:40Hispano-Latin tradition. Where Quevedo, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Luis Vives, Miguel Servet,
538. 55:47even Pedro Sánchez de Acre, are key figures of humanism, even
539. 55:55Michel de Monteñán, for example. That is to say, these are authors like Plutarch of Chaeronea,
540. 56:02well, they're authors who don't live in Google's library. That idealization
541. 56:07of the Library of Alexandria, of having all the books in the world, that's a concept
542. 56:12more enlightened and romantic than genuinely classical, genuinely Hispano-Greco-Latin.
543. 56:19In short, in fact, the destruction of the humanities is carried out by the Enlightenment
544. 56:24and Romanticism, destroying classical studies of poetics and rhetoric and turning
545. 56:30Latin and Greek into dead languages, already subject to autopsies. In short,
546. 56:36obviously, we're going to underline two more phrases here to conclude this session.
547. 56:47These two phrases are the ones that appear here, noted down, and that Quebedo quotes at different
548. 56:52moments in his dreams. Hm. First of all, Quebedo says in the mouth of disillusionment, "You will see with what
549. 56:58truth being belies appearances." Here we see a dialectical relationship
550. 57:04between being, ontology, and appearances, sophistry, that is, psychology. Today,
551. 57:11appearances are in psychology. Today, psychology is given the value of ontology,
552. 57:18such that feelings, which are what most apparently manifest themselves to the senses,
553. 57:24replace being, ontology. That is to say, if I feel like an extraterrestrial, you are obliged
554. 57:29to treat me as if I were an extraterrestrial in fact, not simply in consciousness. It
555. 57:36's one thing to be an extraterrestrial in consciousness, freedom of conscience to say I am an extraterrestrial, and another
556. 57:41thing to have ontological freedom to say I am an extraterrestrial. And since extraterrestrials are like me,
557. 57:46of course, I can say they're like me. Well, you're very similar to the guy next door. I mean
558. 57:51, neither are they, and then I can say, well, it's that extraterrestrials are like us.
559. 57:55Well, then we'll have to look for differences elsewhere because, well, they're—they're
560. 58:01very curious extraterrestrials, aren't they? They're very similar to those from Vigo, for example, we could say,
561. 58:06right? If such a premise were true, which isn't possible because I'm not an extraterrestrial,
562. 58:12lest someone think I'm an extraterrestrial, because there are all kinds of people. Uh,
563. 58:16confusing usage and mention sometimes gives rise to many problems. This also happens
564. 58:21very frequently to artificial intelligence, which confuses use and mention, which
565. 58:27are two concepts that in linguistics are very clearly divided, and sometimes not even
566. 58:32artificial intelligence itself grasps it, just as it often doesn't grasp irony. But this
567. 58:36statement, I mean, you'll see how truly being belies appearances. It's a
568. 58:43clear dichotomy between being and appearance, between thinking and feeling, and even more clearly
569. 58:49between being and feeling. Feeling like an alien isn't the same as being an alien.
570. 58:54Of course, I can say, "I was at a meeting with other people and I felt like an alien."
571. 58:58That has a metaphorical meaning, but it doesn't mean we're going to have a meeting today and we're going
572. 59:03to have an alien among us. Of course, we can't refer to a male
573. 59:07or female departmental colleague saying, "We're going to have a departmental council meeting
574. 59:11and here's so-and-so, an alien, listen, with respect and decency, I mean,
575. 59:17those jokes can't be made." So, of course, sometimes someone makes a joke about themselves and says,
576. 59:22"The thing is, I feel like an alien among you." That means many things. But no one
577. 59:27can say, "The thing is, I'm an alien in this, in this neighborhood community, in this
578. 59:32university community, or in this world." Eh, of course, evidently, we can't reduce
579. 59:39ontology to psychology and expect people to respect us, or believe us, or for nothing to happen, or for them
580. 59:47not to criticize us. That is absolutely impossible. I mean, a statement of this kind—you'll see
581. 59:53how truly being belies appearances—is totally anti-Cantian, totally contrary
582. 59:58to German idealism. Keep in mind that this motto—you'll see how truly being belies
583. 1:00:04appearances—is the negation of enlightenment, and enlightenment is the negation of this
584. 1:00:09approach. Enlightenment says precisely the opposite. You'll see how truly appearances
585. 1:00:14belie being. I mean, enlightenment is the opposite of this statement. The success of
586. 1:00:20Anglo-Saxon culture consists in turning this statement of Quevedo's disillusionment on its head and
587. 1:00:24imposing precisely the opposite. The success of Anglo-Saxon culture consists in demonstrating,
588. 1:00:29You'll see how truly appearances belie the being. This is what can explain why someone
589. 1:00:34falsifies their CV and is forced to leave their political position, for example. Because
590. 1:00:41falsifying a BTE CV, for example, implies putting appearances before being, before reality.
591. 1:00:47And if you don't know this, it's fine, but if you do know, what it demonstrates is that appearances can't
592. 1:00:53replace reality. I can't say I've studied three or five degrees when I've only
593. 1:00:58studied one, nor can I say I've completed a degree when I haven't. Of course,
594. 1:01:04obviously, if appearances replace reality, well, this is a deception. It's a
595. 1:01:11deception. But if you know it, because if you don't know it, appearances supplant ontology.
596. 1:01:18Philology supplants ontology. I am an extraterrestrial. And you'll tell me, "No,
597. 1:01:24you're not an extraterrestrial." Well, but if you don't have the resources to verify it, you have
598. 1:01:28to believe it. Or worse yet, if there is a law that supports this statement, you are obligated
599. 1:01:33to acknowledge it, even if you think otherwise. That is, if Galileo knows that the Earth moves,
600. 1:01:39but Cardinal Bellarmine forbids him from saying so, then Galileo will have to retract what he said,
601. 1:01:45even if the Earth moves. So reality doesn't fit into philology, and reality can't
602. 1:01:52be reduced to psychology. Now, from here on, everyone can think what they want, say
603. 1:01:56what they want, and feel what they want, but it moves. So, another of the statements that
604. 1:02:02Quevedo himself establishes at the end of All Dreams is the last statement: "People,
605. 1:02:10people without pretensions and disillusioned, are more concerned with teaching than entertaining." This is another
606. 1:02:18very important phrase in literary interpretation because it distinguishes between two types of people:
607. 1:02:24those who lack pretensions in life, without goals, and those who live in disillusionment,
608. 1:02:31those who know disillusionment. Of course, there are very few unpretentious people because everyone
609. 1:02:37has many pretensions. And there are people capable of making themselves compatible with disappointment and
610. 1:02:40surviving it, because the problem isn't simply having a date with disappointment;
611. 1:02:46we all have that. Another question is how to survive disappointment. What will you do when
612. 1:02:51reality destroys your dreams? What will you do when disappointment pokes its finger at the wound? Hey,
613. 1:02:57what will you do next? You can do two things: ignore it and continue affirming your idealisms until
614. 1:03:02reality finishes you off completely. Because disappointment is a warning, disappointment is
615. 1:03:06information, it's a warning that tells you, "You're going to fail this way." This isn't the procedure,
616. 1:03:13this isn't the path to survival. Hey, disappointment tells you, "By behaving
617. 1:03:19this way, you're making yourself incompatible with reality and you could fail, you could end up badly."
618. 1:03:25That's what disappointment tells you. Reality, ultimately, is a source of information. It's
619. 1:03:29a source of information, information that we shouldn't dismiss or undervalue, and
620. 1:03:34that constitutes the main guide for human beings to move forward in an exercise of
621. 1:03:38survival throughout life. Therefore, disillusionment isn't bad, it's not harmful in any way.
622. 1:03:45It prevents, and develops a series of strategies that allow human beings to overcome problems. The
623. 1:03:51problem with disillusionment arises when one can't cope with it or its consequences,
624. 1:03:55when one can't recover and perhaps has psychological or psychiatric problems, and
625. 1:04:01requires help, the help of a psychologist, a psychiatrist to help us overcome that
626. 1:04:07experience, that experience of disillusionment in the face of the loss of a loved one, a
627. 1:04:11professional failure, or whatever. And at that point, there are mechanisms in our society that, when properly
628. 1:04:18used, can help us overcome problems. But of course, burying our heads in the sand,
629. 1:04:25as the ostrich supposedly does, doesn't solve the problem, right? But it simply
630. 1:04:30prolongs it, perpetuates it. On the other hand, people without pretensions, well, that happens like in positions.
631. 1:04:35There are people who want the position for everything and others who don't want it for anything.
632. 1:04:40It was always said that Cardinal Cisneros never wanted the position for anything and he recommended that positions
633. 1:04:45They will be filled by unpretentious people, because there are people who want the position for everything and there are
634. 1:04:50people who don't want the position for anything, and there's a big difference between those two types of people.
635. 1:04:54But he also points out that I see a very important difference, a difference that breaks with some
636. 1:04:59aspects of the Hispano-Latin tradition, which is that these types of people,
637. 1:05:05the disillusioned and the unpretentious, focus more on teaching than entertaining. Here,
638. 1:05:12a very classic scheme of the Hispano-Latin tradition is broken, since Horace, where it was
639. 1:05:18affirmed that the purpose of literature was to teach and delight, to instruct and entertain. Here,
640. 1:05:26however, Quebedo already establishes a iato, a dialectic, a separation, an excision,
641. 1:05:32a rupture of this union, of this dictatorial system. And he says that teaching is one thing and entertaining is another.
642. 1:05:38And certainly Quevedo himself entertained a lot with his teachings. Dreams are certainly very
643. 1:05:44delightful. But here he already points out this difference, he already points out a significant touch of bitterness. Hm.
644. 1:05:52I must emphasize that my contributions, my interpretations of literature, are more
645. 1:05:58oriented toward teaching than entertaining, but I'm aware that many people have
646. 1:06:04extracted fragments to entertain themselves and to interpret them in ways that are sometimes totally
647. 1:06:09different, or radically different, from the original meaning. But well, that's already
648. 1:06:14part of what each person, according to their intelligence, knows how to do with their sense of humor. That's another
649. 1:06:19matter. But what I do want to say is that this rupture between teaching and delight,
650. 1:06:25between instruction and entertainment, didn't occur in the classics like Horace,
651. 1:06:30but rather their synthesis, their combination, their juxtaposition, their coordination, and here
652. 1:06:35that breaks down. In other words, Bedo is a very bitter man. Quevedo is a person deeply
653. 1:06:40bitter about life, and that shows everywhere. M is a profoundly bitter man, and
654. 1:06:47in fact, he has tried to supplant scorn, ridicule, and sarcasm to hide—
655. 1:06:57he has tried to use them to hide a profound bitterness that he never truly overcame. Quevedo
656. 1:07:02wasn't a happy person in his life, of course. I don't know what his nights were filled with. I think he was
657. 1:07:07even more unpleasant than Virgilio, but he was a profoundly bitter person,
658. 1:07:13I mean, truly bitter. He wasn't able to construct a character dissociated from himself either. He
659. 1:07:18was his character. He was his character. There was nothing in him other than his own character. He was
660. 1:07:24a truly bitter character. I mean, he had no more faces than what was seen.
661. 1:07:30But truly, these statements are enormously important. Quevedo's dreams
662. 1:07:36naturally unfold with a critique of the rich. Quevedo doesn't sympathize with the
663. 1:07:42rich at all and identifies with the rich. And with this, we conclude: he identifies the rich with
664. 1:07:47a series of people who invest their money surrounding themselves with buffoons who flatter them,
665. 1:07:52praise them, and deceive them, obviously, in exchange for money. What more misery do you want from these
666. 1:07:59rich people? The disillusionment of Quevedo tells his interlocutor, who spends all year buying lies
667. 1:08:05and flattery and spending their fortunes on false testimonies. He sees him so happy because the
668. 1:08:11scoundrel told him there's no prince like him and that all the others are squires, as if
669. 1:08:16that were the case, and they differentiate very little, because one is a minstrel from the other. In this way, the rich man
670. 1:08:22laughs with the jester and the jester laughs at the rich man. That is, the rich man with the jester and the jester at the rich man
671. 1:08:30because he pays attention to what the jester flatters, of course. On the Internet, you have this with every keystroke.
672. 1:08:37I mean, on the Internet, there are basically two types of people: those who insult and those
673. 1:08:41who are entertained, right? Those who seek leisure and those who seek to vent their resentment, in a
674. 1:08:49word. That is, the resentful and the idle will tell me, "Well, there are also intelligent people,
675. 1:08:54because we're all on the Internet." Yes, of course. But many of these
676. 1:08:58intelligent people sometimes lose their intelligence simply in the name of resentment,
677. 1:09:03in the name of leisure, in the name of answers. People get carried away very easily because it's very easy
678. 1:09:08to talk and say anything on the Internet, and this also has its inconsistencies.
679. 1:09:16and its limitations. But this tendency—lying as the will to deceive, to
680. 1:09:24mislead, that the rich sometimes pay other people to surround themselves with a happy world,
681. 1:09:30a world without dissent, without opposition—is something that Quevedo himself also questions here.
682. 1:09:37The triumph of lying, in fact, is the failure of any political society, and yet,
683. 1:09:41no political society can prosper without lying triumphing. Therefore, the Baroque,
684. 1:09:47which is a period that understands human experience very well and
685. 1:09:51how reality works and how everything that is part of that reality works, in my opinion,
686. 1:09:56was one of the most important and relevant historical stages of human thought. The
687. 1:10:01Enlightenment was a very impoverishing dimension of human experience, tremendously idealistic,
688. 1:10:06just as the 15th century was also idealistic, and that idealism was paid for dearly in the 15th century with
689. 1:10:12very strong disillusionments. Today we live in an era where idealism has unleashed a headlong flight
690. 1:10:20without knowing where. We don't know where this idealism, which currently reigns in
691. 1:10:2721st-century society, will lead us, but it probably won't have a peaceful ending. It's very difficult to imagine
692. 1:10:34a peaceful end to a race between idealists. That ends badly. It actually ends quite badly.
693. 1:10:44And if I had to somehow summarize the end of this entire intervention—
694. 1:10:52there are no more quotes to allude to and mention in the case of Quevedo's dreams—I would simply
695. 1:10:58say that the most important contribution of the Baroque, in authors like Cervantes or Quevedo, is to
696. 1:11:04warn us of this, to warn us that or what it warns us about. Well, it warns us that
697. 1:11:11human freedom is above God. And this was one of the great achievements, wasn't it?,
698. 1:11:16of the Enlightenment, which represented a setback on this point, a setback they don't mention, but which
699. 1:11:20is there. And which represented, I insist, a setback that paved the way for secular rationalism.
700. 1:11:28The Baroque excludes God from human freedom. And this was one of the great achievements of the 15th century,
701. 1:11:35one of the great achievements of literature, not of the Spanish Golden Age, but of the literature of the
702. 1:11:40Spanish Golden Age. Politics was going in a different direction, but the authors of literary works,
703. 1:11:45conservatives at the forefront, Quevedo, López de Vega, different from each other, all of them, Góngora even,
704. 1:11:52of course, with mythology as their center of reference, placed human freedom,
705. 1:11:59the freedom of men and women, and Cervantes, you won't let me lie, placed
706. 1:12:03human freedom, the freedom of men and women above God. above
707. 1:12:08God so that in this way the human being could have a freedom in his life that would later
708. 1:12:13be seen. In the world of metaphysics, God rules, but in this world, the human being rules. And
709. 1:12:18that was the great contribution that allowed theological reason
710. 1:12:24to impose itself over anthropological reason. That is to say, that was the great contribution that allowed
711. 1:12:29human reason, anthropological reason, to be above God's reason,
712. 1:12:33above theological reason. With the enlightened world, with the emergence of the Enlightenment,
713. 1:12:44the problem is inverted, turned upside down, so that human freedom is not above
714. 1:12:51God, but below the state. Here, the Enlightenment transforms God
715. 1:12:57into the state, so that Protestant thought, the father of the Enlightenment,
716. 1:13:05designs a political world where God is now the state. Theological reason is political reason,
717. 1:13:11not anthropological, political. And political reason will dominate human freedom, so that
718. 1:13:17human beings can only achieve the freedom that the state recognizes. That is Rousseau, the God of
719. 1:13:23the French Revolution. Nietzsche would say that human feelings ultimately determine
720. 1:13:29the configuration of reason. Reason is once again in the prison of feelings, once again
721. 1:13:34silent. Nietzsche, the God of the Nazi revolution, in short, believes that the state will
722. 1:13:43be the prison of human freedom. The human being will be free within the state. But to say
723. 1:13:49that the human being is free within the state is the same as saying that the human being is free within
724. 1:13:53of a labyrinth. Because, of course, the Enlightenment turned the state into a labyrinth, and in the 21st century,
725. 1:13:59postmodernism has turned that labyrinth into an incomprehensible world, a perfectly idealistic world.
726. 1:14:07I insist that one of the mottos of the Enlightenment is to say that freedom is what
727. 1:14:11human beings can do within the laws of a state. But that's the same as saying that
728. 1:14:16freedom is what human beings can do within a labyrinth from which they can never escape and in which
729. 1:14:21there are cameras in every corner of the labyrinth. This is already Orwell, this is already the 21st century,
730. 1:14:25this is already postmodernism, in short. So the world we live in is a world
731. 1:14:30formatted by the Enlightenment. It's a world by virtue of which human freedom is
732. 1:14:34below the state, is below God, and is below any possibilities that
733. 1:14:42feelings don't authorize. Feelings rule more than thoughts. Feeling is
734. 1:14:47more important than thinking. And being, being is something that is prohibited. Consider, therefore,
735. 1:14:53that the Baroque world had a much broader concept of freedom than that of
736. 1:14:59the Enlightenment, and certainly infinitely broader, with which one may or may not agree,
737. 1:15:04of course, infinitely broader than that offered by the era in which we live today,
738. 1:15:09the 21st century. Was there more freedom in the Baroque than in the 21st century? Well, from certain
739. 1:15:15points of view, yes? Why? Because then, human freedom was beyond
740. 1:15:21the intervention of God and even the state, just as the Enlightenment would later propose.
741. 1:15:27The freedom that human beings can exercise within a labyrinth is not freedom; it's self-deception.