«Mon ouvrage est scientifique, mais d'un ordre peu commun». Nostalgia, Catolicismo y Progreso en el pensamiento de Joaquín de Yrizar Moya (1793-1878).

Joaquín Yrizar Moya (1793-1878) stands as a peculiar example of Counter-Enlightenment. Born to a family of the Basque elite, he experienced a sharp ideological shift during his long life: from being a young radical liberal, he became disillusioned with the Enlightened philosophy and veered toward more and more conservative theses up to embracing carlist absolutism. Trained as a military and mathematician, he wrote several works on the origin of languages, nations or myths, and published minor works against what he deemed as materialist deviations of modernity. His texts express nostalgia for a lost confessional and hierarchical society but, at the same time, he believed that the knowledge of the past could contribute to human progress, understood as a fulfilment of God's design. His vision of progress encompasses enlightened and millenarian aspects, showing the various meanings this concept could entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]