4- The Basic Philosophical Themes in Modern Latin American Philosophy

By the beginnings of the twentieth century, the philosophical movement in Latin America became more diversified and open toward new philosophical currents, a state that is termed generally as ‘normal philosophy’. William Cooper describes such a transition state as follows,

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. During this period of ‘normal’ development, the study of philosophy becomes more widespread and the number of persons devoted to philosophical work increases considerably. Furthermore, as one would expect, the variety in philosophical perspectives also multiplies and the quality of the thought takes on added strength.

Are there any themes or issues that tend to permeate the philosophical landscape? Risieri Frondizi suggested in the mid-1970s that Latin American thinkers may tend to be more humanistically oriented in their philosophical work, leading to a healthy range of interests but at the same time an undesirable flexibility in the meaning of basic terms and some weakness in logical precision (Gracia, 1986, pp. 20–1). He also pointed out that social and political issues tend to be the magnets guiding philosophical work. This, in turn, has embedded in it a way of thinking that commends confronting the social and political issues from a given philosophical perspective. As a result of this emphasis many of the writings tend to emphasize one perspective rather than theoretical rigor. Romero (1952, p. 17) suggested somewhat tentatively some forty years earlier that issues relating to mind or spirit, values, and liberty found resonance with Latin American thinkers during this ‘normal’ period. (William F. Cooper. 2013. ‘‘Normal’ Philosophy’)

However, several philosophical currents flourished in this period under the two basic concerns of Latin American philosophy, namely Identity and Independence. Three basic currents dominated the scene: Phenomenology and existentialism, Marxism, and Liberation philosophy.

a- Phenomenology in Latin America

Nythamar De Oliveira presents the reasons for emergence and demise of phenomenology in the Latin American philosophical scene as follows,

The birth and fate of phenomenology in Latin America can be better assessed in light of the anti-positivist and culturalist trends that characterized the reception of Continental thought at the end of the nineteenth century. Just as Neo-Kantian philosophy and the search for a third way between rationalist and empiricist schools were so decisive for the emergence of Husserlian phenomenology at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Latin American reception of phenomenology (broadly conceived, so as to comprise also existentialism, personalism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction) has been frequently heralded as a new attempt to break away from colonialist, traditional conceptions of philosophizing. Nevertheless, as one revisits the existing writings on the reception of phenomenology in Latin America, one is struck by the tremendous contrast between a rather descriptive, often superficial appropriation of Husserl, Heidegger, Hartmann, and Scheler among Hispanic American thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century, and the highly original, creative profusion of works published in the second half of the same century (Sobrevilla, 1988; Rosales, 1998; Zirión & Vargas, 2000). That certainly has to do with the platitude that there has been a tangible, consistent evolution of Latin American philosophy toward the turn of the century, but that happens to be especially the case when one thinks of the consolidation of university systems, academic research, publications, colloquia, and symposia in such a vast philosophical, interdisciplinary field.

The very hermeneutic and deconstructionist transformations inherent in the phenomenological movement, which can be clearly traced in the development of phenomenological schools and immanent criticisms in Europe, can be thus also detected in the evolution of different trends in Latin American phenomenology. It was only with the creation of several phenomenological research groups, institutions, and societies in the late 1980s and ’90s that phenomenology was finally consolidated as a genuine major philosophical movement in Latin America, side by side with anti-positivism, culturalism, Marxism, and analytic philosophy. According to Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), phenomenology is to be variously conceived as the science of the essence of consciousness, the philosophical science of consciousness qua intentionality, the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view, the universal doctrine of essences (die allgemeine Wesenslehre), a rigorous science of all conceivable transcendental phenomena (especially, meaning). Phenomenology was thus conceived, in a nutshell, as a veritable interdisciplinary program to reconstruct and return to the things themselves (zu den Sachen selbst) (Husserl, 1999, pp. 9–66).

The Latin American reception of phenomenology is marked by the Husserl-Heidegger problematic relationship, initially almost taken for granted as two diametrically opposed approaches to ontology and philosophical anthropology. But in the postwar period, as will be shown, a more nuanced view will inevitably emerge as hermeneutics and deconstruction undermine these facile polarizations between phenomenology and existential philosophy.

The emergence of phenomenology in Latin America, like the introduction and development of early philosophical trends in the subcontinent, hinges upon the very reception of phenomenology in the first and second decades by Iberian thinkers, particularly in Spain, since Portuguese phenomenologists who exerted some influence on Brazilian philosophers, such as Julio Fraga and Eduardo Soveral, did not flourish until the second half of the twentieth century. In any case, the Spanish reception of phenomenology and existential philosophy paved the way for the Hispanic American developments and later elaborations on phenomenological ideas. Many of the philosophers who contributed to consolidating the phenomenological movement in Latin America were not phenomenologists in the strict sense of the term used today, but their importance is mentioned here because of the legacies they helped to initiate. The influential writings of Spanish existential philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) were particularly embraced as a new way of recasting existence, culture, and history, as they ultimately contributed to become an integrating part of Latin American self-identity and self-understanding. (Nythamar De Oliveira. 2013. ‘Phenomenology’)

b- Marxism

For clear reasons related to external political and economic domination combined with ethnic inequalities, in addition to other theoretical motives, it was natural for Marxism to appeal for a wide section of the Latin American philosophical community. Renzo Llorente presents a detailed analysis for these reasons and the original contributions of Latin American philosophers to the theory as follows,

While the Latin American contribution to Marxist philosophy may appear rather modest when compared with Latin American Marxists’ influence on such disciplines as sociology or political theory, there can be no doubt that Latin America has produced a number of thinkers and philosophers who have made significant, original contributions to Marxism. Indeed, the works of Latin American theorists have enriched a number of debates concerning central problems and issues of Marxism. These include the analysis of alienation, the theory of ideology, the nature of Marxist humanism, the relationship between socialism and national liberation, and the implications of Marxist thought for fields such as aesthetics and education. In addition, Latin American thinkers have brought a Marxist conceptual framework to bear on the analysis of themes and phenomena that have been almost entirely neglected within the Marxist tradition, including the sociopolitical status of indigenous peoples and the nature and scope of their agency in connection with an eventual socialist transformation of society. Latin America’s Marxist thinkers have also done much to illuminate the nature of cultural and ideological domination rooted in economic dependency.

One reason that Latin America’s Marxist thinkers have succeeded in making notable contributions to existing debates within Marxist philosophy, while also expanding the range of social phenomena addressed by Marxism, has to do with the relatively local and/or applied orientation that has informed much of their writing. Indeed, it is safe to say that “the union of theory and practice,” a commitment that is supposed to define the very nature of Marxism as a political doctrine and philosophical perspective (and hence ought to govern all Marxist writing), has been far more characteristic of the work produced by Latin American Marxist philosophers than that of their counterparts in, say, Europe or North America. This has no doubt been due in part to the fact that some of these writers were themselves socialist or communist militants, or otherwise actively involved with practical politics in one capacity or another. Such was the case, for example, of the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930), perhaps the one indisputably outstanding Marxist thinker to have emerged from Latin America. Another factor has probably been the political volatility that plagued this region of the world during the twentieth century, along with the presence, especially in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, of insurrectionary movements that usually claimed to derive their inspiration from one variety or another of Marxism. But whatever the reasons for this particular, predominantly worldly orientation, it has clearly been one of the great virtues of Latin American Marxist philosophy, and the source of much of its vitality and originality. At the same time, however, the predominant tendency to adopt a more local and/or “applied” focus has perhaps also been the principal shortcoming of Latin American Marxism, insofar as the commitment to applying Marxism, or to addressing relatively immediate sociopolitical concerns, has been pursued to the detriment of a concern with more narrowly theoretical and conceptual concerns. Coupled, in recent years, with Latin American Marxists’ near-total disregard for the impressive body of work that has come to be known as “analytical Marxism,” the result has been relatively little development of Marxist theory in Latin America, at least as far as philosophy is concerned.

Marxism and the problem of the Indian

On numerous occasions throughout his works, Mariátegui insists that “the problem of the Indian” – that is, the destitution, marginalization, and exclusion endured by Peru’s indigenous populations – is (or at least was during Mariátegui’s day) Peru’s primary or fundamental sociopolitical problem (see, e.g., 1994, p. 291; 1971, pp. 158, 171). His treatment of this problem in his book Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), generally regarded as the single most important and original work of Latin American Marxism, effectively inaugurates the Marxist analysis of the “problem,” an analysis which addresses both the causes of the problem and some possible solutions. In the chapter devoted to the Indian in his Seven Essays and elsewhere in his works, Mariátegui argues that the Indians’ oppression derives from Peru’s socioeconomic structure, and in particular from the prevailing system of land tenure, which he regards as feudal, or semi-feudal, in many respects. By demonstrating that an economic explanation of the Indians’ condition is more persuasive than alternative accounts (e.g., an “ethnic” explanation), Mariátegui’s account also shows both that the “problem of the Indian” is best explained in terms of Marx’s analytical framework (“historical materialism”) and that this framework points to the only real solution: a radical, and ultimately socialist, transformation of the relations of production. If, in addition, Mariátegui appears optimistic as regards the prospect for such a transformation, it is in large part because he assumes that a kind of communism existed in pre- Columbian Peru and that the contemporary Indians preserve the spirit of this “Inca communism” (1971, p. 35) in many of their communal relations and agricultural practices. Thus, in a manner reminiscent of the late Marx, who, in what is often viewed as a revision of his philosophy of history, came to believe that Russia’s rural communes might provide the basis for a socialist transformation of Russia, Mariátegui was confident that “the survival . . . of elements of practical socialism in indigenous agriculture and life” (1971, p. 33) might furnish the foundations for socialism in Peru, and perhaps even enable the country to circumvent some aspects or phases of capitalist development (1994, p. 188). Mariátegui’s approach to the “problem of the Indian” consists, at bottom, in a species of economic determinism – which is indeed how he tends to conceive of Marxism (see, e.g., 1996, pp. 58–9; and 1994, p. 1294) – even though historical materialism is more accurately categorized as, if anything, a variety of technological determinism. One short-coming of this approach is that it tends to ignore the autonomy of “the problem of the Indian,” i.e., the extent to which some factors in the Indians’ oppression, such as racism, may not be reducible to socioeconomic causes (although Mariátegui’s works also include numerous incidental remarks on race which do seem to accord some autonomy to “the problem of the Indian”). What is more, besides leading, in all likelihood, to an oversimplification of the Indians’ oppression, the reduction of this oppression to socioeconomic causes appears to generate an undue optimism in Mariátegui with regard to the possibility of eliminating this oppression. All the same, Mariátegui’s analysis of the Indian question has proven extraordinarily influential, owing precisely to his efforts to situate the Indian’s oppression within a larger context of oppression, and hence link their liberation to a broader project of human emancipation.

Marxism and Latin American liberation

A probing, perceptive analysis of the impediments to Latin American liberation was, however, developed by a fellow Peruvian, the marxisant, and in many respects neo-Marxist, philosophy professor Augusto Salazar Bondy (1925–74). Employing concepts heavily indebted to Marx’s writings and those of thinkers working within the Marxist tradition, Salazar Bondy maintains that the chief obstacle to Latin America’s liberation is to be found in the relations of economic dependency and domination which generate an entire “culture of domination.” Salazar Bondy’s view can in fact be understood as a philosophical extension, or correlate, of “dependency theory,” a culture of domination being one expression of “underdevelopment” (which is the central concern of dependency theory). The most distinctive and most important features of such a culture include a tendency to imitation, a lack of creative vigor, an inauthenticity in its creations, disintegration and disequilibrium (1995, p. 128). The realization that Peruvian society, and that of the Latin American nations generally, is shaped by a “culture of domination” is, Salazar Bondy claims, a precondition for creating a “culture of liberation,” itself a precondition for a genuine political and economic liberation. As a contribution to this realization, Salazar Bondy began work on an ambitious “anthropology of domination” (1995, pp. 281–322) shortly before his death. Though unfinished, this work offers useful conceptual analyses of various relations that typically accompany domination, such as dependence and liberation, as well as suggestions for typologies of domination (master/slave, employer/wage-earner, etc.) and for a phenomenology of domination.

One of the most noteworthy dimensions of Salazar Bondy’s thought is his attempt to specify the ways in which Latin American philosophy, which should be viewed as a philosophy produced by domination (1995, p. 179), reflects the culture of domination from which it has emerged. The hallmarks of Latin American philosophy, according to Salazar Bondy, include its imitative character, its universal receptivity as regards foreign theories and doctrines, the absence of any characteristic or definitive tendency, and a failure to produce any original contributions to world thought (2004, pp.388–9). (Similar criticisms of Latin American philosophy were expressed by the Chilean philosopher Juan Rivano (b. 1926) during his Marxist period in the mid to late 1960s; see Rivano, 1965, pp. 166–7 and pp. 170–2). If Latin American philosophy has assumed these traits or features, Salazar Bondy argues, it is because this philosophy has arisen and evolved within a culture permeated by domination. Significantly, he claims that philosophy itself should contribute to the elimination of domination and that it can in fact do so if Latin American philosophers turn their attention to the social realities of their own countries; such a reorientation will make it possible for their philosophy to become “authentic” and to generate a consciousness that both “cancels prejudice, myths, [and] idols,” and “awaken[s] us to our subjection as peoples and our depression as men” (2004, p. 397; cf. Rivano, 1965, pp. 166–7 and pp. 170–2 for a somewhat similar prescription). Thus, Salazar Bondy’s pessimism regarding the depth and pervasiveness of domination in Latin American countries, and the Third World as a whole, is to some extent offset by a surprising optimism concerning the potential of philosophy to dispel domination. Whether or not a Latin American philosophy duly attentive to the region’s sociocultural realities can help to engender a “culture of liberation” – and can do so without lapsing into an excessive provincialism – is an open question. In any case, Salazar Bondy’s interpretation of Latin American philosophy remains the most impressive attempt to date to explain the apparent shortcomings of this tradition from a broadly Marxist perspective.

Latin American thinkers have made a number of original contributions to Marxist philosophy. Impressive in their own right, the accomplishments of Latin American Marxist thinkers appear even more striking in light of the obstacles, impediments, and misfortunes which these thinkers have had to confront. In any case, as noted at the outset and as should now be clear, one of the great virtues of Latin American Marxist thinkers and philosophers has been their insistence on applying Marxism to relatively local concerns, or to specific historical processes or movements. That is, many of the most important thinkers’ writings have been concerned with relatively immediate social and political issues – issues which have been ignored by European and North American Marxists – which they have used Marxist thought to illuminate and analyze.

Yet if this tendency to adopt an “applied” orientation has been one of Latin American Marxist philosophy’s great strengths, it is also the source one of the tradition’s principal shortcomings, insofar as this attention to concrete developments among many of the tradition’s most distinguished thinkers has involved a certain disregard for more narrowly theoretical problems and conceptual questions. (Renzo LLorente. 2013. ‘Marxism’)

c- Liberation Philosophy

The third dominating philosophical current in Latin American philosophy, which has its roots in the discussions during the colonial Era, is what became collectively termed ‘Liberal Philosophy’. David Gandolfo describes the motives for the appearance of such current as follows,

One of the dominant themes in Latin American philosophy over the last century has been the search for identity and, within that, the question of what should constitute Latin American philosophy. Latin American poetry, literature, art, and theology were fast constituting an identity recognized and respected as unique and important - could philosophy do the same? (Cf. Ellacuría, 1985.) One of the results of this search for identity - both at the level of Latin American identity and within the discipline of philosophy - is Latin American liberation philosophy.

From another side,

By the mid-twentieth century, most of Latin America was over a century into formal independence and yet found itself very much dependent upon economic, political, and social forces outside of its control. Philosophers began to reflect critically on what would constitute real independence, real progress. They became more concerned with the material, social, political, and economic conditions of the possibility of real independence and real progress. Latin American intellectuals began to conceive of the status quo, not as an absence of progress but as a presence of oppression, and the solution as a liberation from this oppression. In the region and all around the world grassroots movements for social change flourished as colonized and oppressed people began to demand and work for a different distribution of power. This was the praxis out of which philosophical considerations of liberation emerged.

With respect to the content of the newly introduced direction, David Gandolfo presents its philosophical topics as follows,

Philosophical questions concerning liberation involve ontological inquiries about the nature of being human, ethical inquiries about valuation, and sociopolitical questions about what would constitute a more just, humane, and humanizing society. The result of pressing forward on these inquiries has been the original contribution to philosophy known as Latin American liberation philosophy. When the owl of Minerva surveyed the reality of the region, it found poverty, oppression, dependency, neocolonial imperialism, and a population that was increasingly impatient to liberate itself from these conditions. In the efforts of Latin American philosophers to construct their own philosophy, distinct from the philosophy of the colonial and neo-colonial regimes, they employed the tools of the discipline to see what could be said philosophically about this reality.

He then describes the historical evolution of this current as follows,

The standard presentation of the history of Latin American liberation philosophy places its beginnings in Argentina in the early 1970s when, inspired by efforts in theology to thematize liberation, a core group of philosophers began to thematize how philosophy could enlist itself in the struggle to achieve a fuller realization of the humanity of the people of Latin America. This group, which included Enrique Dussel (b. 1934), Juan Carlos Scannone (b. 1931), Arturo Andrés Roig (b. 1922), and Horacio Cerutti Guldberg (b. 1950), coined the name, “liberation philosophy.” The 1976 military coup in Argentina scattered most of these thinkers throughout Latin America. Out of this dispersion developed quickly, throughout Latin America, liberation philosophy, a philosophical approach that is one of the most unique contributions of Latin American philosophy to philosophy in general and, as such, has become one of the more widely known aspects of Latin American philosophy. In many ways, Latin American philosophy came into its own as liberation philosophy.

This standard history of Latin American liberation philosophy must be tempered by recalling three additional factors. First, as Ofelia Schutte demonstrates, serious philosophical thinking in Latin America about liberation has a long and rich history, going back at least as far as José Carlos Mariátegui (Peru) and Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Uruguay) in the early part of the twentieth century, and involving a wide range of thinkers throughout the region (Schutte, 1993, pp. 35–73; Roig, 1981, pp. 115–21). Indeed, the presence of a thinker like Bartolomé de las Casas right at the birth of Latin America, critiquing the oppression of the Conquest, shows that the project of thematizing liberation from the side of the oppressed has roots going back to the very beginning of the Latin American people, to say nothing of critiques from within indigenous cultures.

Second, at the same time as the Argentine philosophers were appropriating the term, there were other thinkers, such as Ignacio Ellacuría in El Salvador, also writing explicitly on the topic. And third, due to the prolificity and success of one member of the original group, Dussel, the term “liberation philosophy” came to be associated with his particular way of thematizing liberation, with the result that some of the other philosophers working on liberation stopped using the term (cf. Roig, 1984). The result of these three factors is that the field of liberation philosophy is an even bigger part of Latin American philosophy than it initially seems to be.

What unites the thinkers in liberation philosophy, despite significant differences among them, is a rejection of idealism and a concern for the material conditions of life; a recognition of the importance of thematizing the historicity of philosophy and the philosopher; an appreciation for the importance of the history, experience, and thought of the marginalized.

In addition to the Argentine thinkers mentioned above, other major figures in the movement have included: Leopoldo Zea (Mexico, 1912– 2004), Augusto Salazar Bondy (Peru, 1925–74), Ignacio Ellacuría (Spain, El Salvador, 1930–89), and Ofelia Schutte (Cuba, United States, b. 1945). Interest in liberation philosophy reached a crescendo in the 1980s, and work in this tradition has continued since then, especially in the thought of Roig, Dussel, Cerutti, and Schutte, and in work inspired by the assassination of Ellacuría.

As an elucidation of the philosophical arguments of liberal philosophy, David Gandolfo briefly introduces the central arguments of two eminent contemporary Latin American philosophers.

Arturo Roig was born in Mendoza, Argentina. Roig’s initial training, research, and publications were in the field of ancient Greek philosophy, especially Plato. But he became increasingly interested in Latin American philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, dependency theory, Hegel, and Marx. With these tools, he searched for a way for philosophy to contribute to the needs of the region.

Roig’s liberation philosophy begins by building upon Hegel’s argument for how philosophy began among the Greeks. There, spirit becoming conscious of itself entails a three-fold recognition: spirit’s self-recognition, its recognition of itself as valuable, and the recognition that the culture in which it comes to these recognitions is itself valuable for fostering the other recognitions. The “for itself ” this recognition entails is, thus, also a “for us.”

The subject that affirms itself as valuable, which according to Hegel constitutes the condition through which philosophy had its beginnings among the Greeks . . . , is thus not a singular but a plural subject, insofar as the categories of “world” and “people” properly refer to a universality that is only possible within a plurality. This is the reason why we can enunciate the anthropological a priori referred to by Hegel as a regard for ourselves as valuable and consequently as a holding the knowing of ourselves as valuable even when it may be this or that particular man who puts into play this point of departure. (Roig, 1981, p. 11; Schutte’s translation, with minor changes, 1993, p. 128)

The “for us” entails a consciousness that the way of life that constitutes our cultural identity is valuable. Thus, it is important to know one’s culture, to know its history, what outside influences there are or have been, where the seat of agency lies, and whether one’s culture has been hijacked. This knowledge, then, leads to the recognition of the need to be mindful of nurturing one’s culture against such imperialism.

The “for us” is also in contrast to a “for another” that is the hallmark of colonialism. Given that the being of human being presents itself only by way of human actions; given that human actions gather as history; and given further that this gathering happens locally; it follows both that humans are grouped together into different cultures and that individuals find themselves thrown into a cultural-historic space in which they have a range of options. Thus, human existence unfolds within a cultural identity and a philosophy of liberation must also be concerned with the agency of that identity.

Like other contributors to Latin American liberation philosophy, Roig is concerned with the role philosophy is to play in the context in which it finds itself in Latin America. Under conditions of dependency, philosophy must find a new way. Knowledge has a social function; within that context, Latin American philosophers must recognize that a new mission is required of their discipline because their context is different than that of philosophers in Europe or the United States. Philosophy has to be thematized in full consciousness of where it fits and what role it plays in the social system. Philosophers must ask of their discipline, whether it will be “added to those processes that move toward what is historically new or if, in the maturity of times, it will play a mere role of justification” (Roig, 2004, p. 402). That is, will Latin American philosophy be “for us,” for the struggles needed to instantiate human justice in Latin America, or not? In short, will it be part of the liberation struggles, or simply serve to justify, after the fact, whatever emerges as the new status quo?

According to Roig, constructing a liberation philosophy depends upon recognizing the need to highlight the historicity of human beings and the struggles they have engaged to overcome otherness – and this is found, not in academic philosophy, “but in the ‘political discourse’ of marginal and exploited elements . . .” (Roig, 2004, p. 412). The political discourse of the marginalized as they struggle against their poverty, oppression, and marginalization shows (a) that the people are dehumanized by conditions of marginalization; (b) that they recognize their conditions as dehumanizing, which is why they struggle against them; and (c) that they therefore have an (at least implicit) understanding of what would constitute humanized and humanizing conditions, i.e., what would constitute liberation. Liberation philosophy needs to be grounded in such insights.

On the other hand,

Ofelia Schutte was born in Cuba and migrated to the United States with her family at the age of 14 (cf. Schutte, 2003). A Nietzsche specialist by training and a leading feminist scholar, she approaches philosophy with a suspicion for grand narratives and absolutes, a concern for the marginalized and the place of gender in philosophizing and in oppression, and a suspicion of all norms that are not open to the possibility of transvaluation. She comes to liberation philosophy primarily through her work on the topic of cultural identity.

Schutte’s 1993 work, Cultural Identity and Social Liberation in Latin American Thought, is the most comprehensive evaluation of the philosophical treatment of liberation in the region since Cerutti’s Filosofía de la liberación latinoamericana a decade earlier. Her study is responsible for re-framing liberation philosophy as part of a longer history of Latin American liberatory thought. Cerutti (1998, p. 6) characterizes it as “the best analysis in English of the tradition which spans from Mariátegui to Latin American philosophy and theology of liberation.” This book and her more recent work in postcolonial theory have received a good deal of attention in the past decade (e.g., being the focus of a “Scholar’s Session” at the 2001 annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) and of a 2004 issue of Hypatia). This kind of recent scholarly attention, in addition to honoring an individual scholar, highlights the continued relevance and importance of liberation philosophy.

Linda Martín Alcoff (1995, p. 178), in characterizing the key aspects of Schutte’s liberatory thought, notes that she (a) recognizes “the importance of a critical orientation that rejects all dogmas;” (b) sees “the need for a dynamic approach to theory, without seeking closure or finality;” (c) is attentive “to internal difference as it manifests itself in concrete reality,” by which is meant the need to pay attention to the diversity internal to important terms used in liberatory thought, like “the people” or “women,” so that they do not take on a monolithic, homogeneous, essentialist character; and (d) repudiates all dualisms. Schutte herself sees her work as an attempt to understand the relationship between liberation, cultural identity, and Latin American social reality from the standpoint of a historically rooted critical philosophy. . . . I am concerned with exploring the relationships between cultural identity, sociopolitical theory, and social change. . . . The persistent question, how can one do philosophy from the standpoint of a Latin American interested in liberation from social oppression, has led me to a consideration of three interrelated topics: cultural identity, liberation theory, and feminist thought. (Schutte, 1993, p. 1). More broadly, she states, “I have engaged philosophy to understand the roots of oppression and to seek clarity about ways in which social justice and personal fulfillment can be enhanced” (Schutte, 2004, p. 183). (David Gandolfo. 2013. ‘Liberation Philosophy’)

Cited Works

Cooper, William F. 2013. ‘‘Normal’ Philosophy’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
De Oliveira, Nythamar. 2013. ‘Phenomenology’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
Gandolfo, David Ignatius. 2013. ‘Liberation Philosophy’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.
Llorente, Renzo. 2013. ‘Marxism’, in Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte, Otavio Bueno (Ed’s.) “A Companion to Latin American Philosophy”, Wiley-Blackwell.