Abstract
The best and the worst in the world comes from humans. We need to defend ourselves from others, such as enemies (pre-Hobbes). It is best for the strong and the weak to be united, and much better under the king. In a controlled power, modesty is best, but arrogance and pride destroys it. To have order, we need the law and the king a united power.
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Notes
- 1.
Ibidem, 663–667.
- 2.
Ibidem, 672.
- 3.
Ibidem, 674–675.
- 4.
Ibidem, 676–683.
- 5.
Ibidem, 684–687.
- 6.
Ibidem, 688–690.
- 7.
The critical edition of García Calvo (2000) appropriately includes, at the end, some poems that have little or nothing to do with the content of the rest of the book. One is the so-called Respuesta de las canas, where he speaks of dyeing his white hair to get people to stop asking for his advice as and old and wise man because they might not find it. From this, some scholars have inferred that Santob was already old when he wrote these proverbs, but it could also be a literary resource. Another is la Loa de la pluma, in which he talks of the wonder of the writing instrument that is a pen, which does not protest or wear out, “a wonderful thing and very great miracle: I don’t have to say anything but it does what I want” and “it has no eyes, but sees what I have in my heart; no ears, but it hears and then does”; although perhaps this could be interleaved with considerations on oral and written language. However, his humorous tone, hardly seeking metaphysical depth and just playing with the verses and the images to distance it from the rest of the document. Something similar occurs with El escarnio de la tijera, La trova del beso en sueños and La trova del no, where he uses his dialectic way of understanding the world as a poetic motif, as there are times when a “no” is what one expects to hear; from there, negation becomes an affirmation.
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Galán Díez, I. (2017). XXII: United Power in the King. In: The Birth of Thought in the Spanish Language. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 127. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50977-8_34
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