Abstract

The aim of the article is to establish the way in which Resurrección [Resurrection], a novella by Jose Maria Rivas Groot, reflects the debates over the psychophysiological conception of consciousness that took place in Colombia at the beginning of the twentieth-century. The analysis, made from the standpoint of cultural history, explores the ideas of experimental psychologists and intellectuals, such as Claude Bernard, William James, Émile Zola or Paul Bourget, who, contrary to hegemonical discourses, suggested a sensory cause for consciousness. The article also studies, through a hermeneutical approach, the way in which such conception is developed within Rivas Groot’s work. This study reveals the interest of the writers of this period to explore the aesthetic elements provided by this new conception of the human being, which was undertaken by contrasting it with the forms and paradigms of the metaphysical stance and preferring the latter as the most plausible explanation for existence.