Abstract

Three of the most notable Latin America writers of the genre known as ‘Essayistic’ have been Simon Bolivar, Jose Martí and Leopoldo Zea. And three of their most memorable essays are, respectively, “Response of a Meridional American to a gentleman of this island”, published in 1815; “Our America”, from 1891 and “Around to an American philosophy”, dated 1942. Are these three texts literature? Can they be considered as philosophical texts? Would we be in the presence of essayistic texts that display a type of discourse belonging to philosophy and written in a poetic language? Our proposition is that they are philosophical texts belonging to political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology; they have a palpable poetic component: a strong use of metaphors, self-reflective language, and aesthetics intention. Such texts would be in a line inaugurated by Montaigne, continued mainly by Rousseau. They would constitute, as in the case of various regional philosophies, a philosophy corresponding to particular circumstances referring to conflicts, inequalities, and injustices.