Overview

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Overview

The study and teaching of philosophy in Latin America was established early in the period of Iberian colonial rule, when Spain and Portugal established imperial control over the region (sixteenth through the nineteenth century). It therefore occupies an important place in the history of the region, as many of the discipline's central themes developed in close contact with larger issues concerning the history and culture of Latin America. Philosophy not only has enjoyed continuity through five centuries of study and teaching but also has played a significant role in the discussion of contemporary social and political events. Philosophers in different periods have been prominent cultural, educational, social, and political figures. Various political movements, educational experiments, and cultural theories have been rooted in philosophical sources. Therefore, an understanding of the evolution of philosophy in Latin America is essential for the historian.

Although philosophy can and should be seen in the larger context of society, an understanding of the discipline also requires that it be viewed as an enterprise that poses its own methodological problems and questions, maintains a dialogue with issues and thinkers across chronological periods and geographical boundaries, and develops in the rather protected walls of the academy. The student of Latin American philosophy especially confronts a constant tension between the weight that should be given to the significance of philosophy for the larger society and that given to the field's character as a discipline of universal validity.

Another dimension of importance for understanding the evolution of philosophy in Latin America concerns the question of whether there is a philosophy that can be called "Latin American." Since the 1940s scholars have intensely debated whether philosophy can be understood independently of culture or nationality. They have thus utilized the discipline in an attempt to define a Latin American identity that in turn can provide the basis for an original Latin American philosophy. Scholars who understand philosophy as a discipline concerned with thought in its most general sense have strongly rejected any culturally or nationally bound interpretations of philosophical activity. Although this debate has not and probably will not be settled in the near future, it is apparent that philosophy in Latin America has historically engaged intellectuals to a very significant degree.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

Philosophical studies during the colonial period were primarily the province of clerical institutions. Although the debates between the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas and the theologian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in the sixteenth century regarding the humanity of the Indians were by no means disinterested philosophical speculation, their frame of reference was Aristotle and the larger tradition of scholasticism. In Brazil, the Jesuit priest Antônio Vieira put his rigorous training to use in order to defend Indians and slaves, and to oppose the Dutch occupation in the seventeenth century.

Scholasticism, which dominated the thinking of scholars during the colonial period, produced some fairly specialized philosophical treatises. Immersed as they were in a European climate of ideas, texts such as Alonso de la Vera Cruz's Recognitio summularum (1554) and Dialectica resolutio (1554), and Juan de Espinosa Medrano's Logica (1688), are fairly difficult to place in the context of contemporary social and political events in the Iberian colonies. But they demonstrate that philosophy played an important role in the training of civil and ecclesiastical personnel. Philosophy, in fact, was central to the curriculum of the colonial university. Its purpose was to provide students with scholastically inspired methods of thinking. Latin American philosophers discussed medieval scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) and Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), and Iberian commentators such as Francisco de Vitoria, Petrus Fonseca (1528–1599), and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). In some cases, their intellectual endeavors could be applicable to concrete legal problems and issues concerning Spaniards and Indians, but by and large they were concerned with themes such as individuation and the nature of universals.

Scholasticism had declined somewhat by the 1750s, coinciding with the Bourbon reforms, but its influence on logic and law remained paramount. Reflecting the Bourbon period's emphasis on enlightened thinking and scientific inquiry, Manuel Antonio Talavera's Triennalis phylosofici cursus (1792) contains remarkably current discussions on physics. In Brazil, where prominent families sent their children to the University of Coimbra, intellectuals such as José Bonifácio de Andrada absorbed the modernized curriculum introduced by the reforms of Pombal. Some scholars have argued that the roots of independence might be traced to the developing humanism of colonial thinkers, but philosophy overall was at best a contributing factor rather than a primary cause.

THE POSTINDEPENDENCE PERIOD

The process of independence in the early nineteenth century and the steady rise of liberalism as a dominant political force brought about the increasing secularization of society in general, and philosophy in particular. Philosophy, in fact, became a vehicle for the promotion of secular values, in the school curriculum, the periodical press, some literary societies, and even congressional debates. Initially, Latin American thinkers carefully crafted a secular philosophy that was not offensive to Catholic doctrine. While ostensibly confirming the fundamentals of Catholicism, thinkers increasingly incorporated secular authors into their discussions. Prominent among them were Juan Egaña Risco and Ventura Marín (1806–1877) of Chile, the Spanish emigré José Joaquín de Mora (1783–1864), and Félix Varela y Morales of Cuba. The most distinguished philosopher of nineteenth-century Latin America, the Venezuelan Andrés Bello, respectfully nodded to Catholic doctrine, but systematically introduced the work of secular authors such as James Mill (1773–1836) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) in his influential discussions on jurisprudence. He also brought the study of logic and psychology to unprecedented levels of philosophical sophistication, as shown in his posthumously published Filosofía del entendimiento (1881).

Other thinkers became increasingly less concerned about the intricacies of philosophical analysis and realized the potential of the discipline for promoting social change. Although not philosophers in the strictest academic sense of the word, intellectuals such as José María Luis Mora, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, and José Victorino Lastarria often discussed major philosophical movements and authors. Their primary concern, however, was not speculation but social change. Similarly, the emphasis on social change led an entire generation of Latin American thinkers to positivism during the second half of the nineteenth century. Intellectuals openly challenged Catholicism and sought to replace it with the "scientific" premises of positivism. Indeed, Latin American positivism stood for orderly social development and modernization—hence the movement's motto "order and progress." Positivism predominated in Latin America, although not to the exclusion of Catholic doctrines, or spiritualist movements such as Krausismo. Positivism itself was divided between those who followed different aspects of the philosophy of August Comte (1798–1857)—that is, between those who adhered to his scientific social program and those who followed his late religious inclinations and even founded positivist temples. Some positivists developed a form of social Darwinism (which never materialized into a coherent movement) by selectively reading authors such as Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), and Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) in order to address racial issues from a generally negative, sociobiological standpoint.

Throughout the period, the study of philosophy was firmly enthroned in the secondary-school curriculum and in higher education. Positivist-oriented "scientific" philosophy became particularly influential in Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, where it informed the educational system, the military, and the platforms of some political parties. Prominent thinkers of a positivist bent were Gabino Barreda and Justo Sierra Méndez of Mexico, Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães and Luis Pereira Barreto (1840–1923) of Brazil, Enrique José Varona y Pera of Cuba, Mariano Cornejo of Peru, José Ingenieros of Argentina, and Valentín Letelier Madariaga of Chile.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The positivist agenda of social and economic modernization remained largely unfulfilled by the 1920s. Latin American intellectuals who became aware of European reactions to positivism launched a movement against the predominance of this school of thought and ushered in philosophical currents that emphasized spiritual development, aesthetic concerns, and a hierarchy of human values in which the allegedly materialistic concerns of the positivists occupied the lowest position. Such anti-materialist concerns were also a response to the rise of mass politics and Marxism. A generation of thinkers between 1920 and 1950 attempted to guide society through philosophy by affirming the centrality of human values. Known as the fundadores because of their knowledge of current European philosophy and to some extent because of the originality of their contributions, these philosophers included Antonio Caso y Andrade and José Vasconcelos Calderón of Mexico, Alceu Amoroso Lima of Brazil, Carlos Vaz Ferreira of Uruguay, Alejandro Korn of Argentina, Enrique Molina Garmendia of Chile, and Alejandro Deustua of Peru. Some of the major themes of Latin American philosophy, such as the human person, values, and cultural identity, are associated with this generation. Although more versed in current trends on philosophy, these thinkers retained some of the traditional social concerns of their predecesors.

In contrast, the new generation that became established in the 1950s fundamentally changed the nature of philosophical activity in the region by emphasizing scholarship and shunning social advocacy. This is the period of professionalization of the discipline, bolstered in important ways by the arrival of several European scholars in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. During this period the first university departments of philosophy were established, philosophical journals appeared, and national and international congresses convened regularly. A strong academic orientation successfully separated philosophy from social and political concerns. Classical philosophy became central to the curriculum, as had been the case in colonial times. Strong emphasis was placed on commentary and textual analysis of traditional philosophical sources. German philosophy as expounded by Max Scheler (1874–1928), Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950), Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), and Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and as disseminated by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), dominated the terms of discussion and the writings of Latin American philosophers. Other philosophical currents included existentialism, neoscholasticism, and to a lesser extent, analytical philosophy. The range of subjects of philosophical interest became as wide as it became specialized, although few philosophers achieved recognition beyond their own countries. Those who did tended to emigrate to Europe or the United States, because neither the academic climate nor the resources available in Latin America were conducive to competitive research in the field. Yet the majority of philosophers retained a professionalist emphasis, and continued to look toward Europe and the United States for models of philosophical activity.

The professionalist version of philosophical activity did not go unchallenged. Some philosophers questioned the entire academic philosophical enterprise. Beginning in the 1940s, scholars engaged in discussions concerning the nature and purposes of philosophical activity. The debate polarized between those who, like the Argentines Francisco Romero and Risieri Frondizi, viewed the discipline as a professional field that generated its own epistemological problems, and those who, like Mexico's Leopoldo Zea, argued that philosophy had to be grounded on sociocultural realities. Such debates were reformulated in the 1960s, when Marxism received stronger theoretical attention as a result of the ascendancy of leftist political parties and the continuing Cold War. A critical current of philosophers including Zea, Carlos Astrada (1894–1970) of Argentina, Juan Rivano (b. 1926) of Chile, and Augusto Salazar Bondy (1925–1974) of Peru criticized the detached and antipolitical cultivation of the discipline and called for a stronger emphasis on social and political issues. In the 1970s a movement known as the "philosophy of liberation" developed in response to the perceived need to maintain a specialized disciplinary focus while addressing wider social concerns. Originally developed in Argentina, the movement flourished in Mexico, where many of its major representatives resided.

The fundamental tension between the academic and the critical views of philosophy remains strong. As a result of the wave of military rule that swept Latin America in the 1970s and early 1980s, philosophers discovered to their dismay that philosophical activity could not function as usual in a context of repression and radical economic change. Chilean philosopher Jorge Millas, who had been a major contributor to the establishment of philosophical professionalism, now became a critic of military rule and economic neoliberalism. During this period, philosophy lost not only much of the social stature that allowed philosophers in the past to articulate influential social and political views, but also the means to cultivate the most specialized aspects of the field. The return of most Latin American countries to democratic rule in the last two decades of the twentieth century brought some relief and new opportunities for dialogue among embattled philosophers. With the advent of the twenty-first century, Latin American philosophers are confronting important questions about their social and educational relevance. Although a strong professionalist current persists, thematically, philosophers have shown more willingness to look into a variety of contemporary Latin American problems, including the impact of globalization, human rights, environmental issues, and various demands for the recognition of diversity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Gracia, Jorge J. E., and Mireya A. Camurati, eds. Philosophy and Literature in Latin America: A Critical Assessment of the Current Situation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

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Salles, Arleen, and Elizabeth Millán-Zaibert, eds. The Role of History in Latin American Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Sánchez Reulet, Aníbal, ed. Contemporary Latin American Philosophy. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1954.

Schutte, Ofelia. Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

White, Kevin, ed. Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1997.

Zea, Leopoldo, ed. Pensamiento positivista latinoamericano, 2 vols. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1980.

IvÁn Jaksi?

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture