Baltasar Gracián: Política de El Político

Abstract

The terms “politics” and “politician” offered a wide range of meanings by Gracián’s times (1601-1658). To the thick Aristotelian and Humanist heritages, there was recently added a new, pejorative meaning, born during the wars of religion, which made it synonymous of Machiavellism. From Counter-Reformation circles, though, both terms received a renewed, favourable meaning as well. The Aragonese Gracián is an outstanding figure in this field. In The Politician (1640) and his other treatises, he made frequent use of both of them. Following current historiographical concern on political semantics, this article traces the meanings he gave them. Gracián alternated the favourable sense, as the one appearing in the title itself, tantamount to the condition and virtues of a great, Catholic prince, with the negative, accusatory sense. Moreover, it deals with the kind of politics deriving from the book, that is, the model of ruler being proposed. Besides drawing an archetypical portrait of the virtuous prince, according to Ferdinand the Catholic’s idealized pattern, he referred, either directly or obliquely, to many of the contemporary political debates. He did so by means of his characteristic concise, conceptista style, so that it should be analysed. Thus, this article takes Gracián as a vantage point from which one can look over to Spanish political thought.