Jerónimo Molina Cano

Jerónimo Molina Cano (born September 22, 1968) is a jurist, polemologist and historian of political and legal ideas, occupations that he combines with translation. He is a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Awarded the Luis Díez del Corral Prize in 2017 by the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies. His fundamental concern is political realism, a political mentality that he defines as the "imagination of disaster". A specialist in the French polemologist Gaston Bouthoul, he is the author of several books on Julien Freund, Raymond Aron, Carl Schmitt and Wilhelm Röpke. He has edited the journal Empresas Políticas since its foundation, with a special focus on the state jurists of the Franco era and the study of the thought of Diego de Saavedra Fajardo.

Biography

Early life and education

Jerónimo Molina Cano was born at Blanca in the Province of Murcia. He studied at the National Public School Antonio Molina González and at the High School of Abarán. The General Captaincy of the Mediterranean Maritime Zone appointed him Honorary Navy Specialist in 1983, which stimulates his military vocation. Pensioned by the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks, he embarked on the ship Guanahani and participated in the Aula Navegante de Estudios Iberoamericanos in 1985.

He studied political science with a scholarship at the Complutense University and, simultaneously, law at the UNED, graduating in 1991 and 1993. At the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology he met one of his teachers, Dalmacio Negro Pavón, who directed him towards political realism, the historiography of political forms and, finally, towards other teachers ex lectione (Julien Freund, Carl Schmitt, Raymond Aron or Bertrand de Jouvenel, among the French and Germans; Francisco Javier Conde or Jesús Fueyo among the Spaniards) and ex auditu (Rodrigo Fernández-Carvajal, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora or Günter Maschke). He also meet other teachers, such as Carlo Gambescia.

In 1998, he received his PhD in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis on The legal and political thought of Julien Freund, directed by Dalmacio Negro. Likewise, in 2017, she obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra with a thesis on Polemology or War. The Polemological thought of Gaston Bouthoul, directed by Alexandre Franco de Sá.

Academic career

Until now Molina Cano has developed his teaching career at the University of Murcia, where he joined as Assistant Professor in 1992. Since then he has taught the subjects Social Policy and Theory of Social Services. In 2000 he was appointed Full Professor. Director of the Department of Social Work and Social Services (2017–2019). Dean of the Faculty of Social Work (since 2019). He directs the Luis Olariga Seminar on Social Policy at the University of Murcia, in which he promotes, together with his collaborators Sergio Fernández Riquelme and Jesús A. Guillamón, the Elmare collection, dedicated to the recovery of Spanish political-social authors of the twentieth century. He has been a visiting researcher at the Central Archive of Rhine-Westphalia, in Düsseldorf, with a DAAD scholarship, and at the University of Navarra, invited by the Culture and Society Institute (ICS).

Founder of the Society of Political Studies of the Region of Murcia (SEPREMU) and founding member of the Argentine Association of Political Law. Member of the Technical Advisory Council of the Region of Murcia for the Reform of the Law of the Presidency of the Autonomous Community. Partner of the Carl-Schmitt-Gesellschaft (Berlin, formerly Plettenberg). Member of the Institute of Philosophical Studies of the University of Coimbra.

Research

The State jurists who developed the essential part of their careers under the dictatorship of General Franco have been neglected in the Spanish academy and university since 1978. There are exceptions, of course, but in Molina Cano's opinion a grave intellectual injustice has been done to most of them. In his opinion, there is a "sidereal" distance between those professors of Political Law and State Theory and the majority of contemporary cultivators of Constitutional Law.

Contrary to the prevailing opinion, Molina Cano has strongly emphasized the continuity between this intellectual group and the best of the political and constitutional legal thought of the Second Republic, well represented by Nicolás Pérez Serrano. Among the jurists who made up the "Spanish School of Political Law", Francisco Javier Conde García, the first Carlos Ollero Gómez, Jesús Fueyo and Rodrigo Fernández-Carvajal stand out. Alongside others who share some common general features (influence of the teaching of Xavier Zubiri; a very good knowledge of the thought of Carl Schmitt and Hermann Heller; intimacy with history — Pedro Laín Entralgo dixit —; political realism; a clear notion of the political and the State; an agnosticism of the form of government), they form the most compact and brilliant group of political thinkers since the Golden Age.

Their intellectual quality, the author often says, is inversely proportional to the silence that suffocates their names. On them has also fallen the damnatio memoriae that haunts Spanish intellectuals of the post-Civil War and economic developmentalism. To those already mentioned, Professor Molina Cano adds others, directly or indirectly ("in constellation") related to the group. For example Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora and Álvaro d'Ors.

Works

Political realism

• Julien Freund, lo político y la política (2000)
• Carl Schmitt: Derecho, política y Grandes espacios (2009; editor; with Jorge A. Giraldo)
• Raymond Aron, realista político (2013)
• Contra el mito Carl Schmitt (2014; 2019)
• Los enemigos de España son mis enemigos. Bibliografía pranhispánica de Carl Schmitt (2022; with José Díaz Nieva)

Social policy

• La filosofía de la economía de Julien Freund ante la economía moderna (1997)
• La Tercera vía en Wilhelm Röpke (2001)
• La política social en la historia (2001; 2004)
• Röpke (2006)
• Epítome de la Política social 1917-2007 (2007)

Polemology

• Conflicto, gobierno, economía. Cuatro ensayos sobre Julien Freund (2004)
• Gaston Bouthoul, inventor de la polemología. Demografía, guerra y complejos belígenos (2019)

Miscellania

• En la cabellera de un cometa llamado Ernesto Giménez Caballero (2010)
• Nada en las manos (2013)

As editor

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Monarquía, democracia y orden natural (2004; 2013)
• Francisco Javier Conde, Teoría y sistema de las formas políticas (2006)
• Francisco Javier Conde, Introducción al Derecho político actual (2006)
• Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Cartageneras (2007)
• Georg Simmel, El conflicto (2010)
• Georg Simmel, El pobre (2011; 2014).
• Wilhelm Röpke, La crisis social de nuestro tiempo (2010)
• Francisco Javier Conde, El hombre, animal político (2011)
• José Ortega y Gasset, Aufbau und Zerfall einer Nation (2013)
• Carlo Gambescia, Liberalismo triste. Un recorrido de Burke a Berlin (2015)
• Christopher Dawson, Los dioses de la Revolución (2015)
• Robert Michels, Studi sulla democrazia e sull’autorità (2015; with Carlo Gambescia)
• Francisco-Félix Montiel, Los almendros de Urci. Memorias de una vida revuelta (2017)
• Oswald Spengler, Prusianidad y socialismo (2020)

Translator

• Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Monarquía, democracia y orden natural (2004; 2014)
• Carlo Gambescia, Liberalismo triste. Un recorrido de Burke a Berlin (2015)
• Christopher Dawson, Los dioses de la Revolución (2015)
• Winston Churchill, Europa Unida. Dieciocho discursos y una carta (2016)
• Julien Freund, La aventura de lo político (2019; with J. C. Valderrama)

External links

• Works by Jerónimo Molina Cano at Dialnet