Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century

The Spanish Universalist School of the 18th century (Spanish: "Escuela Universalista Española del siglo XVIII") (also labelled "Hispanic", or "Hispano-Italian", known as "Spanish Universalist School") is mainly defined by Juan Andrés, Lorenzo Hervás and Antonio Eximeno as the main Authors, but also by his close collaborators: the botanist Antonio José Cavanilles and the great Americanists Francisco Javier Clavijero (Nueva España- at the moment Mexico), José Celestino Mutis (Colombia), Juan Ignacio Molina (Chili), Joaquín Camaño (Argentina), Francisco Javier Alegre and Rafael Landívar, Junípero Serra (California), the Philippine Juan de la Concepción or Miguel Casiri, a Lebanese-born Arabic-language expert.

[3] The greatest direct influence of the Spanish universalists in the Anglo-Saxon world was that of Juan Andrés on the historiographer and literary critic Henry Hallam.

But from a more realistic and complete insight of cultural heritage, established in Italy by Hispanic diaspora, it is attributed to approximately thirty Authors who cover a wide range and character of intellectual property.

[5] The Universalist School proposed the association of modern empiricist epistemology, incorporated into the studies of both bibliography and historiography and of physics and cosmography, with that of a humanistic tradition.

It would be extended to the historic and scientific theory, as well as an extraordinary convergence of humanism and humanitarianism, able at keeping the primacy of the common good and that of education and knowledge based on the study of classical and modern languages.

Antonio Eximeno, author of an empiricist and comparative epistemology, will introduce the universal idea of music in a completely innovative way through the concept of "expression".

It is evident that there are several "Enlightenments" whether they are the Scottish and English empiricism, the French encyclopaedism, the German idealism and the Spanish or Hispanic or Spanish-Italian one with a scientific empiricist base as well as humanistic and epistemologically historical and progressive as an alternative to the Encyclopaedia.