"Horizonte del liberalismo" by María Zambrano

María Zambrano (1904-1991) was a Spanish female philosopher and essayist. Juan Fernando Ortega Muñoz has written a very complete biography about her. “Horizonte del liberalismo” (The Horizons of Liberalism) was her first published book (1930). It is a philosophical essay about the essence of politics, and the problems with liberalism. It uses an easy oratory that helps us to understand her most complicated thoughts.

This essay focuses on two main basic concepts: politics and liberalism. She thinks that politics is a desire to accept change and requires of the society. There are two kinds of politics: the conservative and the revolutionary. The first one betrays the very nature of politics because it goes against the change. Those who support a conservative party do so for laziness and selfishness.  When she talks about liberalism it is to improve it. She considers that liberalism has many paradoxes, but these paradoxes help us to think harder and improve it. She proposes a social liberalism that stay away from any liberal economy.

During the second half of the twentieth century, there was a debate in the Spanish intellectual community about liberalism. This book is one example of many. Ortega y Gasset, the most famous Spanish philosopher at the time, also wrote about this topic. This discussion about liberalism was also taking place in other countries of Europe. Just to give an example, the German Carl Schmitt wrote “The crisis of parliamentary democracy” (1923).