ABSTRACT
The goal of this article is to discuss how the Uruguayan thinker José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917) and the Spanish thinker Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) understood the so-called end-of-century crisis in Spanish America. The interest in approaching the reflections of two authors from different geographic contexts is precisely to perceive complementarities in these reflections that point to a consensual direction with regards to religion and science in the late nineteenth century. For them, the total absence of spiritual power could bring about a moral, intellectual and psychic disorder in society, since religion was previously established as the main pillar of the world. Therefore, the intellectual mission of both was to try to find the exact balance between scientific framework and sensitivity in a context marked by the process of society´s modernization.
Miguel de Unamuno; José Enrique Rodó; Hispanic-American social thought; modernization; crisis