Abstract EN:

From aproximately 1760-1808, that is around half a century, a cultural transformation process known as la ilustracion took place in the new grenade viceroyalty. One of the main consequences of this phenomenon whas the appearance of a group of intellectuals named as los ilustrados whose central features are carefully studied in the different chapters of this research. The most meaningful result of the mentioned transformation process was the emergence, within a relatively homogeneous culture, always dominated by a religious world perspective, of a new social life vision, according to which the rational exploitation of natural ressources, on the basis of science, will parallel the begining of a secularization process in some realms of the society. The new grenade territory was traveled and explored and, in a more general sense, the social and individual life was valued as a world perspective. Beyond salvation, the dominant ideal, of social life during the xvi and xvii, and most of the xviii century, happiness on earth by the way of material enrichment and earth exploitation will be looked for. These new ideals introduced a fundamental transformation in the value orientation of social life uo to that time. Nevertheless, the salvation idea didn't dissappear, embedded into a partial and limited mutation, wich didn't produce either a radical rupture. Therefore, it cant be conceived as a phenomenon which combined continuity and transformation in an original way, giving place to a particular synthesis between tradition and modernity.