Objective:

The article's objective is to explore the notion of sacrificial moral regime in the oeuvre of poet, educator and Catholic apologist José Joaquín Ortiz (1814-1892), particularly in his polemical essay Las Sirenas, which was directed against Utilitarianism and its supposed moral regime.

Methodology:

An analysis of the intellectual field to which Ortiz belonged, a historical contextualization of his oeuvre among a wider debate, and a meticulous close-reading of Las Sirenas and other similar texts such as press articles, pamphlets and essays.

Originality:

Apart from rediscovering the scantily explored figure of Ortiz, whose texts enjoyed a great impact in the public sphere, the article investigates the crucial notion of voluntary sacrifice, widely debated at the time though scarcely explored by scholarly literature. The article elaborates as well on the concept of sacrificial moral regime and the social hierarchization it implied, very useful to approach Nineteenth-Century arguments around Utilitarianism.

Conclusions:

The notion of voluntary sacrifice played a key role in how from both Catholic and Conservative viewpoints the moral influence of Utilitarianism, described as an untimely irruption of paganism, wished to be countered and replaced by a Catholic citizenship, Republic, and Nation. Besides responding to conjunctural reasons such as Archbishop Manuel José Mosquera's martyrological paradigm, the sacrificial moral regime would consolidate itself by introducing a Christian aesthetic at the primary education level, through which the habits and emotions of the would-be citizenship would be disciplined.