Ateneo del Uruguay

Ateneo del Uruguay, a forum founded in 1877 for intellectuals in Uruguay. It reached its zenith in the 1880s. The Ateneo was a product of the fusion of the Club Universitario with the Sociedad Filo Histórica (1874–1877), the Club Literario Platense (1875–1877), and the Sociedad de Ciencias Naturales (1876–1877). The Ateneo was romantic and spiritualist. It encouraged moderate rationalism, critically debated positivism and philosophical materialism, and rejected artistic realism. Born during the Lorenzo Latorre dictatorship, it brought together a young, professional elite whose members possessed or were heirs to the liberal creed of the "princi-pista" generation of 1870, who were now opposing militarism. From its ranks came politicians and polemicists such as Julio Herrera y Obes, Joaquín de Salterain, and Carlos María Ramírez, who would succeed the militarists. It also provided early schooling for youths who, like José Batlle y Ordóñez, twice president of the republic, would succeed these men. In 1886, the Ateneo merged with Sociedad Univer-sitaria to form the Ateneo de Montevideo. It was eclipsed by new cultural movements toward the end of the nineteenth century, but would again become a political and intellectual rallying point in opposition to the dictatorship of 1933.

See alsoLatorre, Lorenzo .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ardao, Arturo. Espiritualismo y positivismo en el Uruguay and La sección filosófica del Ateneo (1950).

Burgueño, María Cristina. La modernidad uruguaya: Imágenes e identidades, 1848–1900. Montevideo, Uruguay: Librería Linardi y Risso, 2000.

Buscio, Jorge. José Batlle y Ordóñez: Uruguay a la vanguardia del mundo: Pensamiento político y raíces ideológicas. Montevideo, Uruguay: Editorial Fin de Siglo, 2004.

Felde, Alberto Zum. Proceso intelectual del Uruguay y crítica de su literatura, vol. 1 (1930).

                                        Fernando Filgueira