 He was influenced by the works of Voltaire and Diderot, and especially by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract".He was a fellow student of men who would later have influence in the public life of South America, including Saturnino Rodríguez Peña, Juan José Paso, Manuel Alberti, Pedro Medrano, and Juan Martínez de Rozas, among others.He focused on studying philosophy and theology, but when his father died in 1785, he abandoned his career in the priesthood, for which he felt no strong vocation.