The focus of this paper is Mexican historicism. It has three objectives: first, to introduce English-speaking readers to the nature and history of Mexican historicism; second, to defend Mexican historicism against the charges of relativism usually raised against historicism in general and “Mexican” philosophy in particular; and third, to argue for what I call the transcendental, or alternatively, “liberatory,” nature of Mexican historicism—a nature with philosophical and political consequences. The hope is that by making the clarifications and determinations made here, (...) the tradition of Mexican philosophy, of which Mexican historicism is a key moment, may find its place in the increasingly pluralistic US philosophical landscape. (shrink)

“Exiled” Spanish philosopher José Gaos was the first to translate, in its entirety, Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit . Emilio Uranga, a student of Gaos in Mexico City (exiled since 1938), appropriates Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics in an effort to expose the historico-existential structures making up “ lo mexicano, ” or Mexicanness. Uranga’s Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) freely and creatively employs the methods of existential analysis, suggesting that the being-there of the Mexican being is ontologically “insufficient” and “accidental”—modes of (...) being reflected in existential expressions of sentimentality, indifference, and angst particular to this form of life . As a work indebted to Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Analysis of the Being of the Mexican fails to be faithful to this method. This, however, is the source of its value. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: one, to introduce the Anglo–American philosophical readership to Uranga’s existential phenomenology; and, two, to disentangle the lines of thought that make up Uranga’s Análisis and in the process defend Uranga from the possible charge that he ignorantly misappropriates Heidegger’s method. (shrink)

This essay examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of two Mexican philosophers in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera: Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz. We argue that although neither of these authors is cited in her seminal work, Anzaldúa had them both in mind through the writing process and that their ideas are present in the text itself. Through a genealogical reading of Borderlands/La Frontera, and aided by archival research, we demonstrate how Anzaldúa’s philosophical vision of the “new mestiza” is a critical (...) continuation of the broader tradition known as la filosofía de lo mexicano, which flourished during a golden age of Mexican philosophy (1910–1960). Our aim is to open new directions in Latinx and Latin American philosophy by presenting Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera as a profound scholarly encounter with two classic works of Mexican philosophy, Ramos’ Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico and Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude. (shrink)

Nuestro interés es trabajar en el ámbito de la historia de las ideas latinoamericanas a partir de la hipótesis de que junto a las ideas que orientaron el proceso modernizador que resultó hegemónicamente implantado desde fines del siglo XIX, durante un lapso que abarca poco más de una centuria, existió otro conjunto de ideas y/o proyectos que fueron alternativos o abiertamente críticos de aquellos que acabaron por imponerse. El objetivo es rastrear en el pensamiento de Abelardo Villegas la original conjunción (...) dialéctica de problemas, por un lado, propios de la filosofía política y, por otro, de la Historia de las ideas. Conjunción original por cuanto surge del análisis de una realidad concreta, la de América Latina en el siglo XX y es articulada como búsqueda de respuestas alternativas frente a la implantación de sucesivos esquemas de modernización dependiente. Para ello nos detenemos en los siguientes temas trabajados por Villegas: La filosofía de lo mexicano y de los mexicanos; la historia como aplicación y como libertad; la ampliación de la noción de libertad; el antagonismo dominante en el siglo XX; la crítica al liberalismo; la superación de visiones hipostasiadas de la historia; la soberanía popular; la relación entre libertad y democracia, y entre igualdad y democracia. (shrink)