Raquel Lázaro gives a seminar of department of Philosophy on the modern sage.

Raquel Lázaro, professor of History of Modern Philosophy of the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Navarra, gave last January 26th a seminar of department of Philosophy on "The Sage in Early Modernity". Professor Lazaro told the audience that the reason for this topic is that during her degree program, while studying Montaigne, Descartes and Spinoza, she "stumbled upon the concept of the sage". The surprising thing about this meeting is that sage is a classical category, and it is interesting to elucidate what it means in the new modern era.

As Lazarus is accustomed to do in his expositions, he illuminated the Cartesian Philosophy in contrast with the light of the classical Philosophy . Thus, if the classical sage is the one who joyfully contemplates something, the modern sage is a technical researcher who knows in order to be satisfied with himself. The modern sage is the one who knows himself in order to have self-mastery of his passions and to be able to dominate what is not him.

Moreover, Professor Lazaro showed that this stoic Cartesian view of wisdom is not new. Although Descartes has gone down in history as the one who restarted the Philosophy, Lazaro stressed that "it is not original". "Without Montaigne's Essays, we would not have speech of the Method," he said. To illustrate Descartes' debt to the past, Lázaro explained the influence of Ramón Sibiuda's "science of man," the rationalism of the Council of Basel and even the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the Cartesian Philosophy .

During the question and answer session at seminar, Lázaro concluded that not only "there is no such rupture" with tradition, but that "modernity is a parasite". It is worth noting that this critical view of the myth of modernity is something Raquel Lázaro shares with her teacher Rafael Alvira, who taught the previous seminar of department.