 Philosophers in the immediate post-independence period, and up to the arrival of Positivism in the 1860s, had to confront the complexities of the changing relations between Church and State. The independence struggle which pitted Chileans against Chileans had been a struggle against arbitrary and unstable colonial rule, not against the Catholic Church. On the contrary, the Church was seen as an indispensable ally in the building of new republican institutions. Hence, all Chilean constitutional documents in the nineteenth century proclaimed Catholicism as the official religion of the State. As a result, public institutions, including educational institutions, had to conform to Catholic doctrine. Because most philosophers were believers this limitation did not necessarily mean a problem. But as philosophers they were compelled to examine doctrines and schools that were secular or even antagonistic to Catholicism. In such cases they discussed the doctrines but suppressed that which could be seen as beyond the pale of the Catholic Church. As a result, a thinker like David Hume could be commented upon but in the end heavily criticized because of his skepticism. A school such a French Idéologie could be discussed, but again deprived of its most materialistic edges. The outlet for philosophical production was by and large the secondary school textbook, which had to be approved by the appropriate governmental mechanisms, and this usually meant applying Catholic Church criteria for the philosophically permissible and the theologically acceptable. There was no room for openly anti-Catholic tracts such as Francisco Bilbao’s Sociabilidad chilena (1844, collected in 1866), which ended up burnt for blasphemy and immorality.