Krausism as an international university reform movement

Abstract

This paper tries to help interpretate the Spanish krausism phenomenon. After showing a brief path of krausism´s historiography, I propose — based on Randall Collins´s work— understanding it as a part of an international movement of university reform, which hatched in Europe, United States and Japan during the 70´s of XIX century. Krausism would be the Spanish variant of philosophical idealism, turned into the ideology of the Humboldtian reform of the university. I hold this thesis showing: how Spanish krausists shared sociological traits with whom carried out the reform in Germany and the rest of countries, how these traits determined a specific philosophical type in the field of the Spanish philosophy, and finally haw in the Krausit discourse there is an explicit defense of the reform inspired in the German model.