2-Sources of Latin American Philosophy

Generally, there are three sources for the Latin American Philosophy: the indigenous pre-Columbian thought/philosophy; the scholastic colonial philosophical thought; and the Wester modernist philosophical thought.

a- Pre-Columbian Philosophy

The largest and most notable of the indigenous civilizations are: the Aztec (in present-day central Mexico), the Maya (in present-day southern Mexico and northern Central America), and the Inca (in present-day western South America centered in Peru). James Maffie describes how the philosophical thought of these indigenous civilizations is reconstructed as follows,

Our understanding of Andean and Aztec philosophies is limited by the fact that we lack pre-contact primary sources written in their respective indigenous languages. Reconstructing pre-Columbian philosophies therefore involves triangulating from a variety of alternative sources. First, we have the ethnohistories of early indigenous, mestizo, and Spanish chroniclers. For Andean philosophy, these include the writings of Spaniards such as Pedro Cieza de Léon (1967), Juan de Betanzos (1996), and Bernabé Cobo (1990), and of indigenous Andeans such as Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1936) and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (1873). For Aztec philosophy, these include the writings of Spanish missionaries such as Bernardino de Sahagún (1953–82), Diego Durán (1971, 1994), and Alonso de Molina (2001). Second, we have Andean quipus or knotted-strings that were used for recording information, and Aztec pictorial histories, ritual calendars, maps, and tribute records. Third, in both cases we have archaeological evidence such as architecture, statues, pottery, jewelry, tools, and human remains. Finally, we have contemporary ethnographies of relevant surviving indigenous peoples, e.g.: Classen (1993), Isbell (1978), Seibold (1992), and Urton (1981) in the case of Andean philosophy; Sandstrom (1991) and Knab (2004), in the case of Aztec. (James Maffie. 2013. ‘Pre-Columbian Philosophies’).

Within this general state of affairs, Luis Fernando Restrepo describes the circumstances that accompanied preserving/reconstructing one of important Mayan books in the post conquest era, which is the Popol Vuh, as follows,

There are several existing post conquest texts such as the Cantares Mexicanos, the Mayan Books of Chilam Balam and the Popol Vuh, among others, that have been used to reconstruct pre-Hispanic thought. The Popol Vuh or Council Book is the foundational Maya book narrating events from creation to historical events of the mid-sixteenth century in the town of Quiche, Guatemala. The surviving manuscript is a copy made in 1701 by Dominican priest Francisco Ximénez. The anonymous sixteenth- century native writers announce that they will write the Ancient Word about the origin of everything: “We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God, in Christendom now. We shall bring it out because there is no longer a place to see it” (Tedlock, 1996, p. 63). This clear reference to the conquest and Christian thought expresses a conscious affirmation of Maya knowledge, which was being suppressed under colonial rule.

Acknowledging the repressive colonial context, the autochthonous intellectual tradition is surreptitiously affirmed by the anonymous writers: “There is the original book and ancient writing, but the one who reads and assesses it has a hidden identity” (Tedlock, 1996, p. 63). Although lost, the hieroglyphic Popol Vuh dates from the classic Maya period (AD 300–600). It was transcribed into alphabetic script in ca. 1550 by three Maya lords who most likely were taught to write alphabetically by Spanish missionaries. In this context, the secret retelling of the Popol Vuh may be read as an act of resistance to Christian thought and the Spanish colonization.

Drawing from a rich oral narrative tradition, the Popol Vuh offers a number of entertaining stories about creation, mythic heroes, and the first humans that unfold apparently quite easily and straightforwardly. However, its highly symbolic narrative condenses numerous aspects of the Maya worldview, presenting a multilayered native knowledge (botanical, astronomical, geographical, historical, etc.), that requires sophisticated competence in Maya culture. (Luis Fernando Restrepo. 2013. ‘Colonial Thought’)

From another side, James Maffie, devoted a specific project that aims at contemporary reconstruction of the Aztec philosophy, he describes his project as follows,

I come to Aztec metaphysics as someone trained in contemporary academic Anglo-American analytic philosophy, history of Western philosophy, and comparative world philosophy. What makes mine a philosophical rather than a historical, religionist, or anthropological examination and interpretation is the fact that I bring to bear upon our understanding of Aztec metaphysics the analytical tools, concepts, hermeneutical strategies, lessons, and insights of these areas of academic philosophy. Doing so, I hope, enables me to shed new light upon the Aztecs’ views about the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. This project reconstructs Aztec metaphysics in the sense of presenting and explicating the concepts and claims of Aztec metaphysics in a manner not necessarily identical with the Aztecs’ manner of presentation. Doing so inevitably involves highlighting and making explicit certain aspects of Aztec metaphysics at the expense of others. What’s more, many of the terms and concepts I employ – beginning with the concept of metaphysics itself – are alien to Aztec thought. This is unavoidable in any explication that involves interpreting and translating one way of thinking about things into an alien system of thinking about things. Although alien, my hope is that the terms and concepts I employ are not hostile to and do minimal violence to Aztec metaphysics. I will let my critics determine the degree of violence my interpretative translation of Aztec metaphysics into non-Aztec metaphysics wreaks upon Aztec metaphysics.

In addition, he clarifies his approach in such a reconstruction process, in the following paragraph,

I approach Aztec metaphysics as a systematic, unified, and coherent corpus of thought, worthy of consideration in its own terms and for its own sake (quite apart from what contemporary Western readers may find instructive or valuable in it). I accordingly aim to understand the internal logic and structure of Aztec metaphysics – that is, how its claims, concepts, metaphors, and arguments fit together – rather than causally explain Aztec metaphysics in terms such as genes, memes, collective unconsciousness, dietary needs, social-political function, mode of production, or physical environment.

Following, based on his research, he presents the following justification for giving such material the status of philosophical thought in the contemporary meaning of the term,

Like León-Portilla, I maintain the Aztecs not only had a philosophy but also did philosophy. They engaged in self-consciously reflective and critical endeavors that satisfy the definition of philosophy advanced by North American philosopher Wilfred Sellars: “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” Their endeavors like- wise satisfy William James’ definition of philosophy as “the unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.” Indigenous North American philosophers Thurman Lee Hester Jr. and Dennis McPherson claim the thought systems of indigenous North American peoples satisfy the basic definition of philosophy lying at the roots of the Euro-American tradition: “a thoughtful interaction with the world.” Every culture has people who give themselves to reflecting upon the world in this manner. “These are their philosophers.” Granted, the Aztecs’ philosophical journey took a different form and took them to a different set of answers. Yet this is irrelevant. As John Dewey once noted, “I think it shows a remarkable deadness of imagination to suppose that philosophy [must] revolve within the scope of the problems and systems that two thousand years of European history have bequeathed to us.” Aztec and European philosophies represent two alternative philosophical orientations and trajectories rooted in two alternative forms of life or ways of being human in the world. Aztec philosophy need not ape European philosophy in order to count as “real” philosophy. There is no law of reason, thought, or culture requiring that all peoples think alike or follow the same path of philosophical development. (James Maffie. 2014. “Aztec Philosophy - Understanding a World in Motion).

b- Colonial Thought

The second source of Latin American philosophy is the post-conquest scholastic thought. Luis Fernando Restrepo describes the circumstances through which such a thought has been introduced to “Latin Americans” by the Spanish and Portuguese authorities as follows,

With universities founded in Mexico, Lima, and Santo Domingo by the mid-sixteenth century, and later in every other major colonial city such as Córdoba, Havana, and Santa Fe de Bogotá, the study and teaching of philosophy in the Indies has a rich institutional history. The Jesuits, for example, established an impressive network of schools (colegios) and universities that educated a significant section of the region’s elite until its expulsion in 1767. As conceived by the founder of the order, St. Ignacio de Loyola, the Jesuit higher education curriculum or ratio studiorum included three years of grammar, rhetoric, logic, physics, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and mathematics followed by four years of specialization in theology, law, or medicine, with two additional years for a doctorate in theology. Texts such as Aristotle’s Politics and his Poetics were regularly taught at the colegios and universities throughout Latin America. At the University of Mexico, for instance, courses on St. Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez were regularly offered.

The academic philosophical tradition in the Indies initially followed Iberian scholasticism and humanism, and later incorporated many modern thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Galileo, and others. However, it was never a unified school of thought. Instead, there were marked differences among the philosophical traditions of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Jesuits, and other religious orders.

Colonial Latin America’s contributions to and critical reception of the metropolitan (continental) philosophical traditions are a debated topic. In his History of Philosophy in Colonial Mexico, Mauricio Beuchot argues that scholasticism has been viewed as an ideological weapon for colonial control by thinkers such as Agustin Rivera, Samuel Ramos, and Leopoldo Zea. For others, scholasticism also served to fight for justice, human rights, and independence by figures such as Fray Bartolomé de las Casas and Fray Servando Teresa de Mier. (Luis Fernando Restrepo. 2013. ‘Colonial Thought’)

c- Modern Western Philosophy

The third source of Latin American philosophy is the modern Western philosophy represented by its successive phases, starting by enlightenment thought and passing by specific philosophical doctrines of the 19th century.
Luis Fernando Restrepo describes the transition period to the new ways of thinking and its relation to the political and economic conditions of the region in the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries as follows,

Accompanying la Condamine were two Spanish officials, Jorge Juan (1713–73) and Antonio de Ulloa (1716–95), who wrote Noticias secretas de América (1749), a confidential report on the state of the colonies based on their travels. Similar initiatives such as the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada (1783–1808) and the visit of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) to the Indies (1799– 1804) made a significant impact on the academic culture of the region, promoting a renovated curriculum based on the experimental and exact sciences, and challenging the traditional scholastic education. In such contexts, it is important to consider the impact of the expulsion of the Jesuit order in 1767, whose colegios and universities were the leading educational institutions of the region. The expulsion of the Jesuits left a significant vacuum in the intellectual field of the region. But the establishment of Royal Universities and libraries (with the confiscated collections of the Jesuits) created the conditions for a new intellectual culture that included literary salons and academies such as the Sociedades de Amigos del País where elite culture met to discuss a variety of topics including politics, the economy, and literature. In these associations, a strong opposition to colonial rule was developed, and it would eventually lead to the national independence movements. (Luis Fernando Restrepo. 2013. ‘Colonial Thought’).

However, the transition to the new methods based on reason and experiment continued well into the eighteenth century, according to Alexander V. Stehn,

Although leading Latin American intellectuals in the eighteenth century did not completely abandon scholasticism, they began to draw upon new sources in order to think through new social and political questions. Interest grew in early modern European philosophy and the Enlightenment, especially as this “new philosophy” entered the curriculum of schools and universities. The experimental and scientific methods gained ground over the syllogism, just as appeals to scriptural or Church authority were slowly replaced by appeals to experience and reason. The rational liberation from intellectual authority that characterized the Enlightenment also fueled desires for individual liberty and national autonomy, which became defining issues in the century that followed. (Alexander V. Stehn, ‘Latin American Philosophy’).

The result of such a transition period was the proliferation of positivism in various forms. According to Meri Clark,

Latin American positivism emerged after a period of competition between scholasticism and Enlightenment philosophies, which led to a break with Spain that the Spanish American elite deemed necessary – if not entirely viable. Soon after independence was consolidated across Latin America in the 1820s, many elites argued that social disorder and political chaos dispensed with the possibility of direct representative governments. European-descended elites worried that enslaved and free peoples of color threatened to overturn their tenuous authority. Positivism developed during this long period of turmoil in concert with elite views that social hierarchy formed the back-bone of political and economic progress.
Comtean positivism appealed to Latin American elites facing political turbulence and social disorder during national consolidation. Auguste Comte’s “positive philosophy,” developed in his Cours de philosophie positive (1830–42) and Système de politique positive (1851–4) among other works, traveled across the Atlantic after the 1850s. Comte’s positivism also represented anti-clericalism and anti-conservative politics to many of his followers and interpreters. These ideas and politics became popular from the 1850s onward, especially in France and Latin America. Brazil adopted positivism in the First Republic (1889–1930); the country’s motto became “Order and Progress.” (Meri L. Clark. 2013. ‘The Emergence and Transformation of Positivism’).

Despite domination of positivism in the nineteenth century, another transition state began to formulate characterized by anti-positivist movement and openness to wider scope of European Philosophies. According to William Cooper,

In the years that followed, other influences came to bear, the most important being those of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill. These influences, collectively known as positivism, came to dominate much of the nation-building activity of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Eventually, beginning with Korn in Argentina and Enrique Molina in Chile, José Vasconcelos, Antonio Caso, and others in Mexico, and throughout Latin America, the shift away from this positivism gathered steam and opened the intellectual doors to other influences. Francisco Romero referred to this setting aside of positivism as the beginning of the ‘normal’ development of philosophy in Latin America. One of the dimensions that emerged was a more careful and methodical study of works in philosophy published in Europe and to some degree in the United States. In some cases what resulted from this more thorough study was critical exposition and analysis of the texts being studied. With some thinkers this study became the basis for the development of a philosophical perspective with a quality of its own. (William F. Cooper. 2013. 'Normal Philosophy').

Cited Works

- Clark, Meri L. 2013. ‘The Emergence and Transformation of Positivism’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
- Cooper, William F. 2013. ‘‘Normal’ Philosophy’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
- Maffie, James. 2013. ‘Pre-Columbian Philosophies’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
- Maffie, James. 2014. “Aztec Philosophy - Understanding a World in Motion”, University Press of Colorado – Boulder.
- Restrepo, Luis Fernando. 2013. ‘Colonial Thought’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
- Stehn, Alexander V. ‘Latin American Philosophy’, in “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy”.