Latin American Philosophy, Misc

This article describes why I used to teach Introduction to Latin American Philosophy monolingually in English, why I stopped, and how I am now teaching it using a flexible bilingual pedagogy, also sometimes called a translanguaging pedagogy, that has been transformative for my students and for me. By drawing upon the ventajas/assets y conocimientos/knowledge of our richly varied bilingualisms and biliteracies, the revised course contributes to the B3 (bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate) vision of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (...) (UTRGV). Students have the opportunity to honor, theorize, and cultivate their bicultural identities by “philosophizing in tongues” rather than being forced to assimilate to the monolingual and monocultural ideology that prevails across both mainstream Anglophone philosophy and the system of higher education in the United States of America. (shrink)

Our paper examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We demonstrate how Anzaldúa developed a transnational Philosophy of Mexicanness, effectively contributing to what has been recently characterized as the “multi-generational project to pursue philosophy from and about Mexican circumstances” (Vargas). More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using (...) the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers from the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. The three sections of our paper: 1) define the terms Mexican and philosophy in conversation with Anzaldúa’s work, 2) examine the Mexican philosophical sources that Anzaldúa cites in Borderlands/La Frontera, and 3) present the other major Mexican philosophical influences on Anzaldúa that we have found in her archive. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we discuss here include: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal examinar y determinar las consecuencias de las metáforas contenidas en las obras de Diego Domínguez Caballero, fundador de la filosofía académica panameña. Tales metáforas se volvieron fundamentales para el desarrollo discursivo de la filosofía panameña y también para las ciencias sociales en el país, como la historia y la sociología. Con este fin, recurriremos a la teoría de las metáforas conceptuales desarrollada por Lakoff y otros como una herramienta de ayuda para analizar las que (...) Domínguez emplea. Del mismo modo, intentamos dar cuenta de la larga incidencia discursiva de dichas metáforas a la luz de los resultados de la investigación psicológica sobre el esencialismo. -/- The main objective of this work is to examine and determine the consequences of the metaphors contained in the works of Diego Domínguez Caballero, founder of Panamanian academic philosophy. Such metaphors became fundamental for the discursive development of Panamanian philosophy and also for the social sciences in this country, as history and sociology. To this end, we will turn to the theory of conceptual metaphors developed by Lakoff and others as a helpful tool in analyzing the ones used by Domínguez. In the same way, we try to account for the long discursive incidence of these metaphors in the light of the results of psychological research on essentialism. (shrink)

A 10 años de su fallecimiento, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (1915-2011), sigue siendo el mismo ejemplo de pensador creativo y crítico que fue en vida. Es momento oportuno para cristalizar un homenaje que, como él mismo nos enseñara, más que meras palabras de elogio, entrañe un acercamiento reflexivo, valorativo y desarrollador a su legado, una contribución colectiva y diversa que muestre la vigencia de su pensamiento. El presente libro comenzó a germinar en junio de 2016 en un coloquio dedicado al maestro. (...) Es el segundo producto de la serie Homenaje de la Colección La Fuente. Incluye un extenso prólogo, 21 textos que hablan sobre su filosofía de la praxis, su estética y su vida, así como dos entrevistas, una realizada a él en Cuba y otra concedida, a propósito de este libro, por su hija, quien gentilmente nos facilitara, además, las fotografías del maestro que se insertan al final del libro. (shrink)

This paper offers a philosophical exploration of Nelson Maldonado-Torres’s formulation of the “decolonial reduction” as an instrument of phenomenology and ideological critique. Comparing the decolonial reduction to Edmund Husserl’s notion of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction or epoché, I argue that working through the demands of rigor for either mode of reduction points to areas of overlap: the work of transcendental phenomenology is incomplete without the performance of the decolonial reduction and vice versa. I then assess Maldonado-Torres’s anchoring of the decolonial reduction (...) in the spirit of the “decolonial attitude” and criticism of the Husserlian theoretical attitude. I conclude that foreclosing the theoretical attitude as a framework from which to perform the decolonial reduction implies significant limitations and pitfalls for the decolonial project. (shrink)

Study on the "philosophy of history" of three mexican intellectuals in the 19th century./ Estudio sobre la "filosofía de la historia" positivista y liberal en tres intelectuales mexicanos del siglo XIX,.

In this brief philosophical exposé, I will narrate the events as well as my personal and ecospiritual reflections pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic which began in Wuhan, China sometime in November 2019 and have spread sporadically across countries and continents wreaking havoc medically, politically, and individually, as it claimed more than three hundred thousand lives and had virally infected more than four million of the global population. This phenomenon had led us to confront inevitable eschatological questions: Is this a sign (...) of the end times? Will this efface the vulnerable human race? Will this disrupt the global economy as capitalism had collapsed worldwide? Do these events signal a new political era, perhaps the dawn of socialism and communism, as countries worldwide are led to confront its own deficiencies and inadequacies? Which social and political systems and worldviews are efficient particularly in this age of globalization? What are our chances for human survival? These apocalyptic questions had led me to my reflections on Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation, particularly on his concept of Christian ethics and the moral theology of liberation. In so doing, the paper incorporates a holistic outlook on the pandemic trying to look at the bigger picture in a global scale and considers an all-inclusive interpretation on the pandemic that ranges from the environmental, civic, cultural, political, and socioeconomic concerns. I shall try to sew and patch the pieces together into a much wider, integrated, and comprehensive outlook that includes both the global and the peripheral human experiences. (shrink)

This article examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We argue that Anzaldúa effectively contributed to la filosofía de lo mexicano by developing an Inter-American Philosophy of Mexicanness. More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at the Benson Latin American Collection at (...) the University of Texas at Austin. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we examine and discuss here are: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

Para Hegel, Asia señala el comienzo de la historia universal, mientras que Europa señala su consumación y final. La América precolombina, al igual que la África negra, están para Hegel fuera de la historia universal; en cuanto a la historia de América tras su descubrimiento por los europeos, Hegel sostiene que lo que ha sucedido desde entonces en el continente americano proviene, en rigor, del “principio de Europa”. Hegel contrapone a su vez la historia de América Latina a la de (...) los actuales Estados Unidos en términos del respectivo desarrollo económico y social. Hegel atribuye la brecha de desarrollo entre las dos Américas, por un lado, a que América Latina es católica y Estados Unidos es mayoritariamente protestante, y, por el otro, a que América Latina fue “conquistada”, mientras que Estados Unidos fue “colonizado”. Sobre la base del análisis de los textos pertinentes de la obra de Hegel, se reconstruirá su teoría sobre el desigual nivel de desarrollo socio-económico de América Latina y Estados Unidos y se evaluará la plausibilidad, actualidad y eventual deficiencia de la misma. (shrink)

This essay criticizes some strategies of Hegel scholarship, especially the non-metaphysical school and its recent metaphysical successor. My main claim is that these approaches are rhetorically opaque, and thus vulnerable to a certain anticolonial argument. In place of these strategies, I recommend and illustrate a more historically perspicuous approach that is sensitive to concerns about the role of European philosophy in the Americas.

This book offers a first rate selection of academic articles on Latin American bioethics. It covers different issues, such as vulnerability, abortion, biomedical research with human subjects, environment, exploitation, commodification, reproductive medicine, among others. Latin American bioethics has been, to an important extent, parochial and unable to meet stringent international standards of rational philosophical discussion. The new generations of bioethicists are changing this situation, and this book demonstrates that change. All articles are written from the perspective of Latin American scholars (...) from several disciplines such as philosophy and law. Working with the tools of analytical philosophy and jurisprudence, this book defends views with rational argument, and opening for pluralistic discussion. (shrink)

Professor Morales’ Coss Dialogue Lecture demonstrates the utility of pragmatism for his work as a social scientist across three projects: 1) field research studying the acephalous and heterogenous social order of Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market; 2) nascent research how unseen religious orders animate the lives of im/migrants and their contributions to food systems; and 3) large-scale longitudinal research on farmers markets using the Metrics + Indicators for Impact (MIFI) toolkit. The first two sections of my paper applaud and build upon (...) Morales’ first two projects, and my extremely brief third section raises some questions about positivist specters that may haunt the MIFI project insofar as it is conceptualized, described, and deployed using the terms favored by mainstream social science. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy is an important site for the study of non-Western philosophical traditions, but it has long been associated with “East-West” dialogue. Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies shifts this trajectory to focus on cross-cultural conversations across Asia and Latin America. A team of international contributors discuss subjects ranging from Orientalism in early Latin American studies of Asian thought to liberatory politics in today's globalized world. They bring together resources including Latin American feminism, Aztec teachings on ethics, Buddhist (...) critiques of essentialism, and Confucian morality. Chapters address topics such as educational reform, the social practices surrounding breastfeeding, martial arts as political resistance, and the construction of race and identity. Together the essays reflect the philosophical diversity of Asia and Latin America while foregrounding their shared concerns on issues of Eurocentrism and coloniality. By bringing these critical perspectives to bear on the theories and methods of cross-cultural philosophy, Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies offers new insights into the nature and practice of philosophical comparison. (shrink)

Se analizan los textos de Rafael Gutiérrez-Girardot sobre F. Nietzsche en torno a la tragedia y el pesimismo. Esta aproximación se elabora a partir de tres temas: estilo, nihilismo y estética. Se argumenta que la interpretación de Gutiérrez-Girardot sobre Nietzsche impide que este sea visto solo como un crítico literario. Asimismo, este trabajo brinda el tono a la escritura de Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot y, de este modo, configura su estilo personal.

This book is a philosophical account of a Central American immigrant's personal experience in the United States. Narrative and reflective at once, it is written from the standpoint of American philosophy enriched by fiction, poetry, song lyrics and memoirs from the Americas. It recommends an ethic of love—resilient loving—for the interpersonal relations and day-to-day interactions between immigrants and hosts in the United States today.

Throughout the present text, an account of the main contributions of Luis Villoro Toranzo will be made as a tribute to three years after his death.

Cesar Chavez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993), who co-founded with Dolores Huerta the United Farm Workers (UFW), organized nonviolent strikes, marches, and national boycotts in service to securing labor rights and better working conditions for farm workers in the USA. His birthday is widely celebrated as a holiday commemorating the movement and its values.

Enrique Dussel and John Dewey share commitments to philosophical theory and practice aimed at addressing human problems, democratic modes of inquiry, and progressive social reform, but also maintain productive differences in their fundamental starting point for political philosophy and their use of the social sciences. Dussel provides a corrective to Dewey’s Eurocentrism and to his tendency to underplay the challenges of incorporating marginalized populations by insisting that social and political philosophy begin from the perspective of the marginalized and excluded. Simultaneously, (...) Dewey encourages a modest experimental and fallibilist approach to social transformation that promises more feasible social reforms than Dussel’s approach rooted in phenomenology and the critical social sciences. (shrink)

En "Elementos esenciales de una hermenéutica analógica", Mauricio Beuchot trata de ubicar su hermenéutica analógica como una posición intermedia entre lo que él llama el univocismo y la hermenéutica alegórica. En este comentario busco mostrar, tomando como punto de partida que los objetivos teóricos de la hermenéutica no se encuentran muy distantes de los de las teorías analíticas de la interpretación, que el debate sobre el papel de los elementos extralingüísticos en la interpretación es mucho más complejo de lo que (...) el trilema de Beuchot sugiere. In "Essential Elements for an Analogical Hermeneutics", Mauricio Beuchot seeks to place his analogical hermeneutics in a position between what he calls univocism and allegorical hermeneutics. In this commentary I intend to show, taking into account that the theoretical goals of hermeneutics are not so different from those of analytical theories of interpretation, that the debate over the role played by extralinguistic elements in interpretation is much more complex than what Beuchot's trilemma suggests. (shrink)

Estudio sobre diferentes aspectos, desde la E. Moderna a la Contemporánea, en el pensamiento de J. Gaos en sus textos de los años 40.

The main theme of this work is rescue the Samuel Ramos proposal for a philosophical anthropology from his new humanism. Two main issues discussed: the dichotomy material-spiritual world; and the sense of complexity that resizes the man as ideal being or identity in response to the Kantian question: Was ist der Mensch?

Latin America plays an increasingly important role in the development of modern Christianity yet it has been underrepresented in current scholarship on religion and science. In this first edited volume on the subject, contributors explore the different ways that religion and science relate to each other, how developments in natural science shaped religious views from the pre-Hispanic period until the nineteenth century and the current debates over evolution and creationism. It will appeal to those researching theology, divinity, philosophy, history of (...) science and Latin American studies. (shrink)

The history of Latin America, the history of disease, medicine, and public health, and global history are deeply intertwined, but the intersection of these three fields has not yet attracted sustained attention from historians. Recent developments in the historiography of disease, medicine, and public health in Latin America suggest, however, that a distinctive, global approach to the topic is beginning to emerge. This essay identifies the distinguishing characteristic of this approach as an attentiveness to transfers of contagions, cures, and medical (...) knowledge from Latin America to the rest of the world and then summarizes a few episodes that demonstrate its promise. While national as well as colonial and neocolonial histories of Latin America have made important contributions to our understanding, works taking the global approach have the potential to contribute more directly to the decentering of the global history of disease, medicine, and public health. (shrink)

This essay discusses Jorge Portilla’s phenomenological analysis of values and freedom in his essay, “The Phenomenology of Relajo.” Portilla argues that genuine freedom requires seriousness and sincerity; it requires wholehearted participation in cultural practices that one finds truly valuable. To support his argument, Portilla examines the ways that values and freedom are undermined when cultural practices are disrupted and break down as a result of the antics of the so-called "relajiento," a kind of “class clown” figure in Mexican culture who (...) refuses to take anything seriously. Carlos Sánchez has criticized Portilla's rejection of the relajiento, suggesting that the relajiento’s disruptive behavior may be a liberatory act of defiance against the legacy of colonialism. I argue, however, that Portilla was right to see the relajiento’s behavior as counterproductive in the fight for liberation from oppression. (shrink)

Este artículo quiere investigar el lugar que tienen los afectos en el modo de hacer filosofía en América Latina. Para esto, la investigación se centra en las reflexiones de un grupo de filósofos que se autodenomina Equipo Jesuita de Reflexión Filosófica de América Latina, activo desde 1981. Utilizaré textos de su primera etapa cuando el equipo quiso expresamente reflexionar sobre una filosofía propia de América Latina, proyecto que denomina “filosofía inculturada”. Espero mostrar que las reflexiones de este grupo abordan tanto (...) el acto integral del filosofar como el pensamiento filosófico teórico. En el primer sentido, propone una “deontología del filósofo latinoamericano” cuyo método incluye como uno de sus pasos esenciales el “dejarse afectar” por la realidad según el principio de la simpatía, el cual generará otros sentimientos o afectos respecto a la realidad como encuadre para el filosofar. Pero el equipo no deja muy en claro la relación entre afectos y compromiso: ¿quién precede a quién? (shrink)

This essay explores the participation of Latin America and the Caribbean in the construction and circulation of tropical agricultural science during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It uses the term “islands of knowledge” to underscore the idea that each producing region across the global tropics, including Latin America and the Caribbean, was instrumental in the creation, adoption, and application of scientific procedures. At the same time, it emphasizes the value of interchange and interconnection between (...) these regions, as well as the many and heterogeneous local areas, for analyzing what it calls “global archipelago agricultural scientific knowledge.” This focus challenges the traditional center/periphery hierarchy and opens it to a wider vision of science and practice in agriculture. This essay shows how writing in related areas of research—specifically, commodity histories, biological exchange studies, and knowledge exchange studies—introduces approaches and case studies that are useful for the history of tropical agricultural science. In particular, this work provides analytical frameworks for developing studies of exchanges across the Global South. (shrink)

En este comentario se ofrece una explicación alternativa a la que dio Guillermo Hurtado en su diagnóstico de la filosofía analítica actual en general y de su ejercicio en el mundo latinoamericano, y, por consiguiente, se concluye con una muy diferente apreciación de los méritos de la filosofía analítica. This note provides an alternative explanation to the one offered by Guillermo Hurtado in his diagnostics of present-day Analytic Philosophy and its practice in the Latin-American world, and as a result offers (...) a very different appraisal of its merits. (shrink)

Fundado en un vasto conocimiento de la historia y cultura occidentales, Cristóbal Holzapfel describe el guión de acuerdo al cual se presentan las diferentes concepciones acerca de lo humano que rigen en la conformación de cada época.

Fundado en un vasto conocimiento de la historia y cultura occidentales, Cristóbal Holzapfel describe el guión de acuerdo al cual se presentan las diferentes concepciones acerca de lo humano que rigen en la conformación de cada época.

A general consensus has emerged in the scholarship on Latin American thought dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the first quarter of the twentieth. Latin American intellectuals widely adapted the European philosophy of positivism in keeping with the demands of their own social and political contexts, effectively making positivism the second most important philosophical tradition in the history of Latin America, after scholasticism. However, as thinkers across Latin America faced the challenges of the twentieth century, they (...) grew increasingly disappointed with positivism, so that “anti-positivism” stands out as a defining feature of Latin American philosophy in the early twentieth century. In this essay, I challenge or at least add nuance to this widely accepted narrative by demonstrating considerable continuity rather than simple rupture between positivism and “anti-positivism” in Latin America. I focus on Mexico, where both positivism and the reaction against it are generally taken to have been strongest, or at least most politically significant. After tracing the history of positivism’s transformations in Mexico from Auguste Comte (1798-1857) to Gabino Barreda (1818-1881) to Justo Sierra (1848-1912), I show how Mexico’s leading “anti-positivist” philosophers—José Vasconcelos (1882-1959) and Antonio Caso (1883-1946)—draw substantially upon their positivist predecessors. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo realizar una revisión epistémica o desfundamentación de los principios que sustentan las propuestas modernas de política social. Se concluye que, los cambios ocurridos en el proceso de producción de conocimientos por la llamada crisis del paradigma moderno ab..

La idea es realizar un evento donde se presenten y discutan comunicaciones y conferencias de investigadores de nuestro país y de la región, especialmente Argentina y Brasil.

This article argues that ethics and spirituality are therefore interdependent. One cannot be practiced without paying attention to the other. One needs to be shaped and informed by the other. This article intends to support this claim by briefly using the book and story of the Old Testament prophet Amos. Here, a brief but fair description and definition of postmodernity is provided in order to prepare the ground for an examination, discussion, and reflection of the interdependency of ethics and spirituality (...) rooted in the book of Amos. This is followed by a description and discussion of the several principles or issues that are pertinent to address and attend to the interdependency between ethics and spirituality as it relates the story of the Old Testament Amos. Principles and issues are grounded the author’s perspective and experiences of the reality of the Hispanic Latin-American/Hispanic Pentecostal Church. The author is speaking and writing as a Puerto Rican – from which fairly or unfairly many assertions, statements, and conclusions that may or may not apply to the entire Hispanic/Latino(a) context are gathered. Critical and reflective thoughts conclude this article. (shrink)

El trabajo muestra cómo la apropiación del marxismo en América Latina se ha debatido siempre entre dos maneras diferentes de relacionarse con las fuentes teóricas europeas, las que, apropiándonos del léxico de Mariátegui, podríamos calificar como "calco y copia" y "creación heroica".

This chapter examines the connection between culture and democracy with an eye toward developing a foundation for American citizenship that is informed by the experiences of Latinos/as in the United States. It begins by surveying arguments from philosophers within the American pragmatist tradition that correlate the stability of a democratic political regime with habits, tastes, and attitudes of a given people. These thinkers, namely Horrace Kallen, Jane Adams, and John Dewey, have developed two models to conceptualize the relationship of immigrant (...) communities to democratic citizenship and governance: cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. The chapter intends to demonstrate that Latino cultural citizenship is a form of cultural pluralism and, as such, does not seek to transform liberal representative democracy in any deep, significant sense. We can see this when we hold up Latino cultural citizenship to the radical challenge posed by progressive thinkers, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., who argued that social justice in the United States cannot be achieved unless we move beyond liberal multiculturalism, and the idea of what it means to be an American is altered to reflect the experiences of non-white peoples. (shrink)

The book will prove an invaluable source for philosophers and philosophy students, as well as for scholars from other disciplines (e.g., history, political science, sociology, diversity studies, and gender and race studies) to begin understanding the dynamic relationship in thinking between the two Americas. In addition to documenting the results of a new and thriving area of research, it can also function as a primer to direct and provoke further inquiry. -/- Its essays, from North American, Spanish, and Latin American (...) scholars, fill a void in the humanities and introduce a number of Hispanic pragmatists who have not been included in standard pragmatist texts. (shrink)

Mujica, representa unos de los intelectuales más importantes del marxismo venezolano del siglo XX. Las ideas que guían el presente estudio, recogen su postura ante la historia, la religión, los medios de comunicación, así como su tesis sobre el progreso y su postura antiimperialista y, de manera muy particular, la teoría socialista como instrumento de interpretación y trasformación de la realidad.Mujica represents one of the most important intellectuals in twentieth-century Venezuelan Marxism. The ideas guiding this study include his posture regarding (...) history, religion and mass media as well as his thesis about progress, his anti-imperialist posture and especially, socialist theory as an instrument for interpreting and transforming reality. (shrink)

Esta obra procura celebrar a conclusão do restauro de 56 pinturas da paisagem urbana carioca, que se encontram desde o Caju à Rodoviária Novo Rio. No livro, os autores registram o processo e documentam as imagens, além de trazer as versões das mensagens do Profeta em inglês e espanhol.