Abstract

The article makes available for the first time a crucial text witnessing Manuel Antonio Talavera’s teaching activity in Santiago de Chile. The first part of the article presents new biographical findings about the life of the Paraguayan author, expanding on his activity as a theologian and lawyer of the Real Audiencia and his teaching of philosophy at the end of the 18th century. The second part of the paper offers the transcription of a part of a course on natural philosophy (De corporibus coelestibus) that Talavera gave to his students at the Real Convictorio Carolino of Santiago de Chile. While Talavera is mostly renowned as the first chronicler of the Independence of Chile, the present article sheds light on his activity as professor of natural philosophy. In the present work we can appreciate and discover his status as a philosopher in Chile during the end of the colonial period.