Around 1840, a group of Spanish jurists, notably Julián Sanz del Río, were seeking a political doctrine within the liberal tradition, in order to initiate a regenerative process that they felt was necessary to modify and extend the philosophical concepts then in vogue.
In this work, Ahrens affirmed that the foundation of law is "compliance": the set of external conditions upon which the fate of the rational man and humanity could be developed, systematically, as a universal order of piety, devotion, and altruism.
The essence of Ahrens' philosophy of law can be summarized in the phrase "harmonious rationalism", a concept which was the main theme of a work by Krause titled The Ideal of Humanity and Universal Federation (1811).
This movement, which later was promoted and continued by Dr. Rafael Cuevas Molina (born 1954), began with the rebellion of Augusto César Sandino (1895-1934) against the United States' occupation of Nicaragua.
Reyes, for example, gave lectures at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, whilst Rodo promoted aesthetic concerns through Krausism in his extensive correspondence with Leopoldo Alas.