 Appealing to the philosophy of the Enlightenment—though not always explicitly—several Mexican thinkers and political activists argued that the colonies did possess the right to self-government. Such was the case of Miguel Hidalgo (1753–1811), one of the fathers of Mexican Independence. Hidalgo was well known for his predilection for French ideas and for his opposition to Scholastic theology, as is demonstrated in his Disertación sobre el verdadero método de estudiar teología escolástica (1784). Francisco Severo Maldonado (1775–1832) was another philosophically-minded priest who wrote in favor of independence and about the philosophical foundations of nationalism.