Three Domains of Original Contributions of Latin American Philosophy

It is possible to single out three sectors in which philosophical reflection and research has demonstrated original and specific traits in Latin America, they belong to philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history and the philosophy of liberation (they have also received a kind of standardized denomination in Latin America as the “ontological”, “historicist” and “liberationist” trends).

2.1 The Ontological Trend

The denomination “ontological” must not induce one to believe that this trend belongs to ontology understood in its classical traditional sense of the general the­ory of being, of what exists, but rather in the more modern sense that we find, for instance, in Heidegger’s work Being and Time, where “being” refers to human existence. Therefore, this trend is inspired by the idea that Latin-Americans have something peculiar in their own nature, in their constitution, that characterizes them in comparison with other humans belonging to different cultures. This is why we have said that this ontological trend can perhaps be referred to philosophical anthropology, but even such an attribution would be debatable, as we shall see, because the deepest motivations of this human ontology are of a social-political nature. If we wanted to find an analogy, we could refer to thinkers (like Fichte or Gioberti) who, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, nourished the spirit of countries such as Germany or Italy that were starting the struggle for their national independence: they stimulated the national pride by presenting an alleged specific­ity and superiority of their people in comparison with other nations.

Indeed the birth of the first trend (that is also known as “philosophical Americanism”) can be traced back to the first decades of the twentieth century in Mexico, as a product of the nationalist milieu that had promoted the Mexican revolution of 1910, with its traits of nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-oligar- chism.

Starting from Mexico, the philosophical Americanism produced a display of works in the whole of the continent during a temporal span of about four decades (1930-1970). A particular mention deserve the following books: La seduction de la barbarie. Andlisis heretico de un continente mestizo (1953) and America profunda (1962) by the Argentine Rodolfo Kusch; America Bifronte. Ensayo de ontologia y filosofla de la historia (1961) also by an Argentine author, Alberto Caturelli; Pueblo continente (1937) by the Peruvian Antenor Orrego; El problema de America (1959) by the Venezuelan Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla; El sentimiento de lo humano en America (1951) by the Chilean Felix Schwartsmann; La invention de America. Investigation acerca de la estructura historica del nuevo mundo y del sentido de su devenir (1968) by the Mexican Edmundo O’Gorman; La filosofla de lo mexicano (1960) by Abelardo Villegas.

All these works produced a lively discussion in the whole continent concerning the existence or non-existence of an original Latin-American philosophy, discus­sion whose elements are present, for example, in works like Filosofla Argentina (1940) by Alejandro Korn; Sobre la filosofla en Iberoamerica (1940) by Francisco Romero; Hay una filosofla iberoamericana? (1948) by Rizieri Frondizi; Cuales son los grandes temas de la filosofla latinoamericana? (1958) by Victoria Caturia de Bru; El problema de la filosofla hispdnica (1961) by Eduardo Nicol: Filosofla espanola en America (1967) by Jose Luis Abellan; La filosofla iberoamericana (1968) by Francisco Larroyo.

2.2 The Historicist Trend

Also the second line was started in Mexico and was initially prompted by the influence of the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset through the media­tion of his disciple Jose Gaos who landed in Mexico at the end of the 1930s as a refugee from the Spanish civil war. Following the historicist thesis of his teacher, Gaos outlined the project of reconstructing the history of ideas as the ground for the elaboration of a Philosophy in Spanish language, as sounds the title of his most important work published in 1945. Nevertheless the great figure of the Latin-American historicism is certainly Leopoldo Zea, a direct disciple of Gaos, who proposed and developed a systematic reflection on the history of the ideas in that continent as a necessary precondition for the creation of a native philos­ophy. Starting with his doctoral dissertation El positivismo en Mexico (1943), passing through America en la historia (1957), El pensamiento latinoamericano (1965) and Dialectica de la consciencia americana (1976) up to his very origi­nal Filosofla de la historia americana (1978), Zea has realized a trajectory that has made of him the most powerful promoter of the project of a Latin-American philosophy.

The pioneering work of Leopoldo Zea had continental impact and counted with important followers among which four most salient figures should be mentioned: the Uruguayan Arturo Ardao, the Peruvian Francisco Miro Quesada Cantuarias, and the Argentine Arturo Andres Roig and Horacio Cerutti Guldberg. The contribution of these scholars concerns mainly their methodological reflection on the problem of the history of ideas. Of Ardao is particularly noteworthy his semi­nal paper Historia y evolution de las ideas filosoficas en America Latina (1979), and of Miro Quesada two excellent books: Despertar y proyecto del filosofar latinoamericano (1974) and Proyecto y realization del filosofar latinoamericano (1981). Arturo Andres Roig has developed an extraordinary work of reflection on the history of ideas in his books Teona y critica del pensamiento latinoameri­cano (1981) and Rostros y filosofla de America Latina (1994).

The legacy of the Latin-American history of ideas has been received in sev­eral countries whose authors we briefly mention: Yamandu Acosta in Uruguay; Hugo Biagini, Adriana Arpini, Clara Alicia Jalif de Bertanou and Dina Picotti in Argentina; Joao Cruz Costa in Brazil; David Sobrevilla in Peru; Carmen Bohorques and Javier Sasso in Venezuela. In Cuba is noteworthy the work of Pablo Guadarrama of the University of Santa Clara while in Colombia has been important the constitution in 1977 of the Grupo de Bogota on the initiative of a few professors of the Saint Thomas University. In Mexico is prominent the activity of Mario Magallon in the Centre for Latin. American Studies of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. As to other countries, deserve mention the work of Jose Luis Abelan in Spain and of Jorge Gracia, Ofelia Schutte and Jose Luis Gomez Martinez in the USA.

2.3 The Liberationist Trend

While the first two trends originate at the Northern border of the continent (Mexico), the philosophy of liberation was born in its most Southern part, that is, in Argentina. It was there that, at the beginning of the 1970s, moved its first steps a philosophical movement that was sensitive to the concerns already expressed in other sectors of the Latin-American intellectual life, such as the sociology of dependence and the theology of liberation. An important preparation was the publi­cation in 1968 of the book by the Peruvian author Augusto Salazar Bondi in which the thesis is advocated that the authenticity of a Latin-American philosophy will come as a consequence of the self-consciousness of the situation of alienation and dependence in which that continent had remained submitted.

The persecution realized by the military dictatorship in Argentina compelled the philosophers of liberation to a massive exodus around the 1970s. In Mexico settled Enrique Dussel, who was to become the most outstanding figure if this movement, and with whom are strictly associated its most salient theoretical developments. He wrote there his programmatic book, Filosofia de la liberation (1973), and from there started the “continentalization” of the movement. In Mexico was signed in 1975 the famous “Declaration of Morelia” in which there is a convergence of philosophers belonging to the three trends just mentioned: Abelardo Villegas, Leopoldo Zea, Francisco Miro Quesada, Arturo Andres Roig, Enrique Dussel. The tireless prolific work of Dussel, whose scope is comparable only with that of Leopoldo Zea, had made of the liberation philosophy a move­ment known worldwide. It is sufficient to recall the dialogues hold in the 1980s with philosophers of the level of Karl-Otto Apel, Richard Rorty, Paul Ricoeur and Gianni Vattimo. Among the many works of Dussel those that could deserve a special mention are: Filosofia etica latinoamericana (1973), Metodo para una filosofia de la liberation (1974), Introduction a la filosofia de la liberation (1977), 1492:el encubrimiento del otro. Hacia el origen del mito de la modernidad (1992), Etica de la liberation en la edad de la globalization y la exclusion (1999), Politica de la liberation (2008).

Liberation philosophy has found diffusion in various countries. In Brazil one must note the work of Hugo Assman, Roberto Gomes and Sirio Lopez Velasco; in Colombia that of Jaime Rubio Anguio and German Marqumez Argote; in Costa Rica has been very important the contribution of Franz Hinkelammert, an origi­nal German thinker known for his books Critica de la razon utopica (1984), La fe de Abraham y el Edipo occidental (1990) and El grito del sujeto (1998); in Bolivia are notable the contributions of Juan Jose Bautista, a disciple of Dussel and Hinkelammer.

The legacy of Latin-American philosophy, in its three mentioned trends, has been substantially transformed at the beginning of the twenty-first century thanks to the work of three chief figures: the Cuban Raul Fornet-Betancourt (Raul Betancourt), who wrote Critica intercultural de la filosofia latinoamericana actual (2004); the Ecuadorian Bolivar Echeverria, who authored La modernidad de lo barroco (1998); and the Colombian Santiago Castro-Gomez, author of Critica de la razon latinoamericana (1996) and La hybris del punto cero (2005). Fornet- Betancourt proposes an “intercultural turn” of the liberation philosophy that could promote it to being a privileged tool for the dialogue between distinct philosophi­cal traditions; Echeverria’s work could be considered as a critical development of the ontological trend along the patterns of the philosophy of culture, especially in those texts where he characterizes a “baroque ethos” of Latin America at vari­ance with the capitalist rationality of European modernity; Castro-Gomez appears in line with the historicist trend, revisited according to the genealogy of Michel Foucault and of the Latin-American post-colonial studies.

2.4 General Considerations

The cursory but also rather detailed sketch we have given of Latin-American philosophy should be sufficient to give an idea of its peculiarity: it cannot be equated simply with the philosophical studies and institutions present in Latin America (that are comparable with those realized in other regions of the world, and especially of the Western world). Neither can it be identified with the philo­sophical work of thinkers born in a country of Latin America. For example, Mario Bunge was born in Argentina, but his academic activity took place at the McGill University of Montreal, so that he can be qualified as an Argentine-Canadian philosopher; his thought, however, constitutes a systematic, self-contained and widely articulated system that has acquired a reputation as a significant ele­ment of contemporary philosophy as such, and to qualify it as an expression of Latin-American philosophy might sound restrictive. The same applies in a way to Francisco Miro Quesada: we have mentioned him as one of the most significant thinkers of Latin-American philosophy, but at the same time one must recognize that his philosophical work and reputation have been much broader than the the­matic field of Latin-American philosophy as we have considered it thus far (let us mention simply his contributions to logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of law). Finally, there are many philosophers, born in Latin America or active in Latin America, who have done a professionally excellent and influential work in different fields of philosophy without having devoted special attention to the top­ics of the Latin-American philosophy as we have described it here (let us simply mention Juliana Gonzalez in Mexico). Therefore, what can be considered specific of Latin-American philosophy is that it has been characterized by certain rather precise thematic issues and, at the same time, that it has been elaborated by pro­fessional philosophers and not, for example, as something like an “implicit phi­losophy” couched in ideological doctrines, literary works, popular customs or traditions: it is precisely this aspect that will help us understand why Evandro Agazzi has had some special merits with respect to Latin-American philoso­phy understood in a broader sense, a sense that put it on the same level as other “regional philosophies” quite independently from its most peculiar products.

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