Carlos Alberto Sanchez is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University (San Jose, California). He specializes in phenomenology. His work on Mexican philosophy has appeared in Continental Philosophy Review, Southwest Philosophical Studies, and the Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy (“The Phenomenology of Jorge Portilla: Relajo, Gelassenheit, and Liberation,” [2007] which received the American Philosophical Association’s Prize in Latin American Thought). Currently, he is working on a book manuscript on the Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla. |
How to cite this article: Sanchez, Carlos Alberto. "The Demands of a Mexican Philosophy of History ". Dissidences. Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism. On line. Internet: 15/12/08 (http://www.dissidences/ 4SanchezMexicanPhilosophy. html) |
| "So as to “teach the people to be shocked by themselves”, Zea describes the Mexican self as “incomplete,” “amputated, divided, crippled,” and the being of the Mexican (the ontological es gibt of the Mexican) as “oscillating, not between being this way or that way, but oscillating within two halves of the same being” " |
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Introduction
By “the demands of a Mexican philosophy of history” I have in mind the demands that arise
from philosophical analyses into the historicity of Mexican identity. My assumption is
that such demands are prima facie evident with any penetrating study of our everyday
forms of life. Such a study will reveal insights which will tell us what the structural
particularities of any given problem are (whether completely or partially) and on to these
insights we respond—or if we don’t respond, the problem at least demands a response.
We are, in fact, held responsible by the results of our analyses. This assumption informs
the claim of the present essay, namely, that the philosophical reflections into Mexican
identity carried out by Mexican philosophers in the middle of the last century—sometime in
the 1940’s and 1950’s, and particularly by Leopoldo Zea, resulted in the existential imperative
commanding Mexicans to own up to their history and to their identity despite the conquest,
the colonization, and 500 years of oppression and marginality.
My focus here is on Zea and, to a minimal extent, on Emilio Uranga and Jorge Portilla—
Mexican philosophers that, with Zea, dedicated their efforts to analyzing the existential and
historical underpinnings of the Mexican form of life as part of the “Hiperion Group,”
a philosophical circle headed by Zea and active primarily in Mexico City from 1948 to 1952.
[1] I will proceed first by considering, in a general way, Zea’s philosophical reflections into
the problems of Mexican historical identity. Next, I look into the “demands” that emerge
from such a reflection and what Zea and others prescribe as a response to those demands.
In this section I make a crucial, and unorthodox, claim regarding Zea’s philosophy in
particular, namely, that in the texts considered he exhibits a peculiar Marxist tendency that
has not been pointed out to date (what I call a “Neo-Marxist” tendency). [2] Finally, I
attempt to bridge the temporal and spatial gap between Zea’s considerations more than fifty
years ago and the ethical-existential problems related to Mexicans in the United States
today.
Philosophy and Mexican History
If anything, the Mexican revolution of 1910 made something exceedingly clear: Mexicans
were divided (in spirit and deed) and as such seeking one another’s death. While Hegel’s
philosophy had previously shown that the life and death struggle of separated beings would
be resolved through the emergence of a master and a slave, the struggle of the Mexican
would not be resolved by a mere class division. After more than a decade of fighting and
killing one another in the name of justice, it became apparent that the real struggle was
not between two separated beings who sought one another’s death; rather, the real life and
death struggle was internal, taking place in the solitude of the Mexican mind. It was not
hate of the other that motivated the violence; it was self-hate or self-loathing. The source of
this, philosophers will come to propose, is the historical circumstances of Mexico, which
are unique to Mexicans and to world history.
Philosophers spent the years following the revolution attempting to make sense of these
circumstances and of the corresponding sense of self to which these gave rise. The great
Mexican philosopher Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) was the first to articulate the problem in
Perfil del hombre y cultura en Mexico, his landmark 1934 treatise. There, Ramos diagnosed
the problem as essentially psychological. According to Ramos, Mexicans suffered from an
inferiority complex that, he argued, was rooted in the conquest and colonization and the
economic and cultural dependence that this involved. This sense of inferiority, Ramos
concluded, was the source of the self-hate and self-loathing that neither independence nor
revolution would eliminate. Despite the brilliance of his analysis, however, Ramos’s work did
not prove to be effective in rousing Mexicans from their apathetic, dogmatic slumbers.
It was Leopoldo Zea (1912-2004), beginning in the early 1940’s, who moved beyond
psychological description and attempted to provide a historico-philosophical account of the
Mexican self. Zea writes in 1952:
We know we are heirs to two great cultures, those same cultures that we are willing to undervalue
[menospreciar] for not being of use to us in our frustrating labors. We know ourselves heirs to two
great empires: the Spanish and the Aztec. An inheritance that we feel more like a weight than as an
asset [una herencia que sentimos más como lastre que como ayuda] (Filosofia como compromiso 186).
What Zea means is that the root of the problem (i.e., the self-loathing and accompanying
irresponsibility in the face of the Mexican reality) rests in the incapacity of Mexicans to fully
and resolutely appreciate their history—a remarkable, singular, and thus inimitable history
belonging solely to them as Mexicans in particular and Latin Americans in general. [3] This
lack of appreciation has nothing to do with a lack of understanding or exposure to the
historical record but with the fact, partially diagnosed by Ramos, that Mexicans feel that
Mexican and Latin American history is not their history. The past belongs to Spain, which
is absent in the everyday lives of Mexicans; it belongs also to Technotitlan, Teotihuacan, and
the glory of the Aztec empire, which is but a faint memory, more like a myth than a reality.
In spite of this lack of appreciation, however, Mexicans are burdened with carrying around
this history which is not their history. The burden is made heavier by the nostalgia contained
in their language and in their faces, which reveal neither Aztecs nor Spaniards, but mestizos:
Mexicans. Ultimately, the philosophical-historical question Zea asks has to do with the
particular way of life belonging to this mestizo, which will both determine the essential
nature of Mexicanos and prescribe a manner of living conducive to cultural and historical
praxis given their circumstances. Zea asks: ¿qué es lo Mexicano?
Zea understands the challenges in asking about the form of life he and others call “lo
Mexicano.” After all, philosophers are not supposed to ask these kinds of questions.
Philosophers are supposed to ask about humanity in general, about our place in the
universe, about the Good, about evil, and about death: questions that are general and of
universal scope (some would say “abstract”). Asking about “lo Mexicano” is to do the
opposite, it is to ask about a particular situation, a particular people. But, for Zea, if the
questions he asks grow out of philosophical curiosity, then what he is doing is philosophy. As
he puts it, what we are doing is “putting guaraches on Aristotle” (Filosofia 183). And
an Aristotle in guaraches has but one mission--to shed light on the particularities of the
Mexican way of life so as to “unburden” Mexicans of their confusion, and more importantly,
to give them a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, and a sense of history. [4]
Zea’s was indeed a philosophical task. Philosophy is, after all, a reflexive mental action; to
philosophize is to reflect, to take a step away from ourselves, to abandon our immediate
existence, to stop thinking about the traffic, our love lives, or our money troubles. In a
moment of philosophical reflection, we distance ourselves from ourselves too as to look at
ourselves, taking note of the way in which we exist, the way we are, what we are made of.
Zea and his contemporaries did just this: they took a step back and critically analyzed that
form of life which is called Mexican. The great Mexican poet/philosopher Octavio Paz had
called for such a reflexive move in The Labyrinth of Solitude, published in 1950: “It is
natural that the Mexican should withdraw into himself and after the explosive phase of the
Revolution, to spend a few moments in self-contemplation” (11). These “few moments”
reveal, among other things, a deep rooted sadness about Mexico and its place in the
universe; a sadness that emerges most noticeably in Mexican poetic expression. Likewise, in
his Anaylis del ser del mexicano, published in 1952, Emilio Uranga notes that “Mexican
life overflows [está impregnada] with a sentimental character” (28). It is not difficult to
illustrate what he means: think of our popular music and the timelessness of José Alfredo
Jiménez, Javier Solís, Pedro Infante, and Miguel Aceves Mejía. Did they ever express
anything but sorrow and sentimentality? Or, think of Mexico’s most popular style of music,
corridos, which are tragic lyrical poems in the oral tradition. For this reason, Uranga
remarks, “the Mexican always gives the impression of having already lived, of carrying in his
soul a history, a world that already was, and that because of sentimentality, has been
indelibly recorded. There is the source of our melancholy and that gesture [ademán] of a
man of bitter experience” (34). When we hear a song, read a poem by Ramón López Velarde
or Octavio Paz, or experience El llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo, we indeed feel nostalgic,
we get a sense that we have lived that experience, or that, inevitably, as Mexicans, we will.
So focusing their philosophical gaze, Mexican philosophers get a taste of what the Mexican
form of life is like: it is sentimental but at the same time nostalgic, trapped under the weight
of its own past. But why is it that Mexicans do not throw off the weight, or adjust it somehow,
so as to be free from its ontological heaviness? Zea notes: “In our feeling of inferiority,
insufficiency, resentment, and reduction, something hidden is made clear, a deeper
feeling, something that we don’t want to display because it would embarrass [avergonzaría]
given our current circumstances, and that is pride [soberbia]” (Filosofia 186). Pride.
Mexicans are proud. They would rather continue carrying on a diseased sense of self then
admit that this sense of self is diseased. Pride ties them to what they don’t understand; it ties
them to what they don’t want to understand.
But while the Mexican seldom complains, this does not mean that he or she does not blame
his or her condition on something other than him or herself. Ultimately, Mexicans blame
their condition on their throwness, or on the fact that they are not something other than
historical accidents, mestizos. Put differently, that they are thrown into the Mexican
historical circumstance (that they are not other) signifies that they lack the civilization of the
European; it means, moreover, that they lack the economic/capitalist intelligence of North
Americans, and it means, finally, that they lack any meaningful connection to indigenous
empires which sink ever deeper into oblivion and forgetfulness with each passing day. All of
this gives the impression that to be Mexican is to be mis-placed or displaced in world
history. The attitude of displacement Zea calls “irresponsibility.” Zea writes, “In order to
justify our irresponsibility we disparage ourselves, accusing fear, history, our blood and our
race for our incapacity to realize our projects” (Filosofia 188). Moreover, Zea continues,
“Instead of engaging the task of realizing a cultural and material world according to our
possibilities, we prefer to lament our incapacity of not being as great as or better than
Europe in the area of culture, or being as great as or better than the United States in the
material arena… Instead of creating we prefer to imitate” (188). Thus sentimentality, pride,
a sense of misplacement, and the need to imitate, characterize the nature of being Mexican
and the nature of not being responsive to the Mexican circumstances.
Thus, Zea’s philosophical diagnosis is scathing: Mexicans suffer from a burdensome history,
which justifies an unwarranted sentimentality and a self-defeating pride; this leads to
irresponsibility in the face of that history and a sense of inferiority and weakness in the face
of Europe and the industrialized “West,” namely, the US. Zea summarizes it thus:
Soon the Mexican found out that the past was a part of the Mexican self, but the shameful part, the part
which had implanted in him countless defects. The defective part of the self had its roots in this past;
there was the source of all his incapacities, the why of all of his failures, the reason why he couldn’t be
at the heights of other societies [pueblos] that belonged to other races, to other religions, to other
cultures. It was then that the lamentations and the useless demands began, and with them, the
justification for every irresponsible attitude. (Filosofía 181)
Indeed, the Mexican reproaches his or her past because of its defects and the defects it
reveals in the Mexican character, namely, his or her weakness, his or her lack of will, during
five hundred years of colonialism and domination. Now the Mexican blames that past for an
inability to be like other, advanced peoples, in other advanced societies. But the activity of
the will stops there, with the (willful) attribution of blame. Henceforth the Mexican adopts
what Zea calls his or her “irresponsible attitude”.
Responding to the Demands: Mexican Philosophy and Neo-Marxism
But is this the end of Zea’s philosophical account? In other words, does philosophy of history
itself end in giving a philosophical account of history? The answer to both questions
is negative, since Zea’s account is more of a philosophical critique than a philosophical
description. And it is here that Mexican philosophy becomes universal in its scope
and address; that is, it takes up universal scope when we consider Zea’s critique in a
particular way, namely, as prescriptive, and as such, it is a critique applicable not only
to Mexicans, but to Chicanos, to Salvadorians, to Eastern Europeans, to West Africans. The
“critical” nature of Mexican philosophy is suggested by Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude:
“To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. It is a moment of
reflective repose before we devote ourselves to action again” (10). What does it mean to say
that we (Mexicans) must “become aware of our singularity”? It means nothing less than
awakening to one’s particular historical circumstance, to one’s material and spiritual
conditions—to become aware of one’s destiny. According to Zea, for instance, this particular
circumstance, the Mexican circumstance, could be characterized by the idea of
“marginality.” Mexicans exist in the margins of Western history and in the margins of
contemporary culture. Mexicans take up the mode of marginality as an ontological
condition. Thus, with the concept of “marginality” Zea describes “a person who ‘lives in two
worlds but is not quite at home in either’” (The Role of the Americas in History xx). The
two worlds that the Mexican “lives in” are, again, the Spanish and the Aztec, or the
indigenous. (Notice that when the Mexican moves north, he is hyper-marginal, not only
living in two cultures, those present in his history, but existing in three cultures, those of
his/her past and his/her present. I’ll return to this below.) But this marginality is also part of
the Mexican identity, so it demands a certain manner of being towards Mexican reality; this
“demand” is what Zea’s philosophical critique is meant to make explicit.
We can trace Zea’s critical philosophy to Karl Marx. [5] In his early manuscripts,
particularly the text “Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844), Marx
had been concerned with the liberation of the German working class, the proletariat, from
both psychological and material forces. The young Marx’s philosophy (what is now known
as “dialectical idealism”) aimed to “awaken” a revolutionary spirit of praxis in the German
people that would liberate them from their own negative, or oppressive, self-interpretations
and from those conditions of enslavement that were imposed on them from elsewhere by
either industrialization, religion, or the social mass. For Marx philosophy was “criticism”
which had but one aim, “not to allow the Germans a moment of self-deceit or resignation”
(66). As for Zea, philosophy for Marx was a living process, capable of changing the
status quo. “We must make the actual oppression even more oppressing,” writes Marx, “by
making them [the German Volk] conscious of it, and the insult even more insulting by
publicizing it… So as to give them courage, we must teach the people to be shocked by
themselves” (66). And this is precisely what Zea’s historico-philosophical analysis attempts
to do. So as to “teach the people to be shocked by themselves”, Zea describes the Mexican
self as “incomplete,” “amputated, divided, crippled,” and the being of the Mexican (the
ontological es gibt of the Mexican) as “oscillating, not between being this way or that way,
but oscillating within two halves of the same being” (Filosofia 173). Zea’s point is to expose
the existential condition that characterizes Mexican being, something akin to indecisiveness
or vertigo, what Zea believes leads Mexicans to adopt a form of life that is “irresponsible.”
Zea, following Marx, aims to force Mexicans to think of their actual material and spiritual
reality, the circumstances that define them as Mexicans and as humans; but more than this,
he aims, through critique and “shock,” to motivate Mexicans to engage those
circumstances and change them through some form of revolutionary action (praxis). This
accords with Marx, who proclaimed in his Theses on Fuerbach, “The coincidence of
the changing of the circumstances and of… self-changing can be conceived and rationally
understood only as revolutionary practice” (Thesis III). What does “revolution” mean here?
It does not mean—as it means for the mature Marx—violent struggle against oppressive
bourgeoisie or capitalists, but rather it means an action that changes both the circumstances
in which people live and their innermost self. This can be thought as an internal revolution,
where something happens to the inner life of the person who engages him or herself in
revolutionary praxis. Jorge Portilla, a contemporary of Zea, put it thus: “In internalization we
also find a subjective activity, a centrifugal movement analogous to the one involved in the
realization of an act toward the exterior. A process definitely similar to this is the acquisition
of a consciousness of class, in which the worker internalizes, that is, makes actively his, a
situation which before was merely suffered and external, and that in the process of its
internalization brings with it a certain liberation” (56).
So here is the process: convince the people of the necessity for an honest and brutal
inventory of their cultural and historical identity, or shock them, as Marx said, into
responding to such and inventory (whether from shame or necessity), and simultaneously
prescribe a manner of being appropriate for effective praxis and personal, social, and
ideological liberation. The prescription outlines the logic of “sublation,” or what Marx called
Aufhebung or aufgehoben, an untranslatable term which for Marx (in contrast to Hegel) meant
“abolition, transcendence, and preservation” of one’s material condition, i.e., one’s
(historical) circumstances (thus what makes it different from Hegel’s use of the term).
Mexicans must face their history as a nation (this means confronting the conquest, the
colonization, centuries of foreign ideological influence, their mestizaje, the evils of the
revolution, and their current condition of dependence and marginality) together with their
own personal narratives (which means confronting their own existential condition as
Mexicans); upon this encounter, Mexicans must then take ownership of their own being by,
in a moment of revolutionary praxis, forgetting (abolition) those aspects of their past
that harm the collective consciousness, safeguard (preservation) those moments of Mexican
history that give strength, and, finally, resolutely will what has not yet come (transcendence)
not only for the sake of future Mexican generations, but for the sake of humanity in general.
Mexicans in the United States: An Attempt at Application
Although philosophy’s preoccupation with the existential-historical condition of lo Mexicano
was abandoned before it made any real impact on either the Mexican intelligentsia or the
Mexican people in general, it is fruitful (at least at a theoretical level) to consider this
preoccupation fifty years later and from a vantage point radically different than that of Zea
and the rest, namely, as it applies to Mexicans in the United States.
The question is: What does any of this have to do with Mexicans who find themselves in the
US more than half a century after Zea’s analysis? What Zea would say is that whatever the
case may be, so long as these individuals continue to identify themselves somehow with
the history of Latin America then they are, by default, responsible for that history. In fact, the
situation of Mexicans and Latin Americans in the US is existentially more problematic than
that of their Latin American contemporaries in Latin America, since the former must deal
with the trauma of assimilation and acculturation in the great whale that is the United
States… i.e., el norte. For Mexicans, the case is particularly severe because of their
proximity to the US. Proximity is more of a problem for Mexicans because the US is, in fact,
attractive, but attractive in the sense of physics. Thus, Mexico’s close proximity to the
US attracts more Mexicans who gravitate toward it sometimes against the counsel of
practical reason—they know they are not welcome, they are aware that they might be
immediately deported, they understand that they will be treated unjustly, etc., and they still
come! From cities and pueblos throughout Mexico, the irrational desire is to dream the
American dream. The problem is, as we know, that this dream is quickly frustrated as the
Mexican finds it impossible to live up to the demands of that dream. The reason for this
frustration has much to do with Anglo-America’s negative perception of the Mexican as
intruder, as illegal, as parasitic on their way of life, but it also has to do, as Zea argued, with
the fact that the Mexican has yet to respond to those demands made upon him or her by
Mexican history itself. In other words, the marginality that goes hand in hand with being
Mexican due to the lack of a genuine historical identity is never completely overcome, so in
Anglo-America the Mexican’s marginal existence compounds—the Mexican exists as
hyper-marginal, marginal in relation to his/her historical identity plus marginal in relation to
North American (US) culture and ethos.
Hyper-marginality, however, can ultimately force an individual and a culture into self-
loathing or worse, imitation, into forgetting themselves completely and instead attempt to be
like the other. In his Analysis Emilio Uranga put it best: “A culture of imitation is a culture of
rest in the fundamental project of being saved by others. To imitate is to favor [propiciar], to
gain a favorable look” (40). And this applies specifically to Mexicans in America. After all,
here is a place (the US) worthy of being sought and here are a people worthy of being
imitated: this place has an abundance of resources and its people an over-abundance
of ambition, drive, determination, and know-how. However, the process of emulation, or
imitation, proves difficult because both the place and its people resist integrating Mexicans
into the pragmatic, secularized, and a-historical circumstance which defines Anglo-
American existence. This leads to a deliberate or unconscious denial of the Mexican
difference, of heterogeneity, and, ultimately, of rights. Zea put the matter in the following
way: “While to the north we have witnessed the growth of a state without a great history,
almost without traditions. A state inferior to ours…but a state that has beaten us, resting on
values that we did not recognize as such. This is the state, ultimately, which has frustrated
our dreams” (Filosofia 186). We can witness this frustration today. We can, for instance,
sense the resistance of difference and heterogeneity in irrational and inhumane immigration
laws and practices.
How does the process of “sublation” apply here? Mexicans in the US must confront their
marginal status, accept it, and transcend it. Most importantly, however, they must abolish
and transcend, or go beyond, the irrational, yet hegemonic discourse wherein they are
portrayed as unknowable, alien, absolutely different other. The transcendence of this
discourse requires an inner movement of the will comparable to a revolutionary change of
attitude (praxis). The material conditions, the circumstances, follow close behind.
Concluding Remarks
My aim in this paper has been to focus on the existential and cultural implications, or
demands, of a philosophical investigation into Mexico’s historical identity. With historical
identity I am saying that to be Mexican is to share in a unique historical experience, one
rooted in the conquest and colonization, one affirmed in wars of independence and
revolution, a historical identity shared by poetic experiences of alienation, death, and
existence, and one nourished by a common vision of the material conditions which give rise
to a consciousness of immigration, exploitation, and marginality.
I am not saying that everyone who is Mexican identifies themselves in this way. On the
contrary, the present paper assumes that not many people identity themselves in this way,
but if they did, they would be responsible for certain demands made upon their identity by
that identity itself.
So the story with “The Demands of a Mexican Philosophy of History” is that once you
identify yourself as Mexican, or as Salvadorian, or as Anglo-American, or as Mexican-
American, you are existentially obligated (morally speaking) to do certain things because
of that identity—to fulfill certain demands. What are these philosophical demands? In short,
you must assume your history, which means that you must take ownership of your history by
preserving those aspects of it that empower you, you must get rid of those elements of your
historical make-up that oppress you, and you must transcend, or overcome, superar, that
history as you move resolutely toward your future.
The Mexican historian and philosopher Edmundo O’Gorman who, around the same time
that Zea, took to analyzing the Mexican situation, proposed the thesis that America was not
discovered but invented. America, and particularly Mexico, argued O’Gorman, had
been idealizations in the European mind long before Columbus or Cortez set foot in its soil.
America was created from a dream of what the ideal world would be like: no laws, vast
amount of riches, and a place to begin anew—something like a “new” world, a paradise. The
Spanish conquest and colonization made the dream a reality—or at least attempted to do so.
Thus began, O’Gorman concludes, the invention of the Americas as the nesting grounds for
European dreams and ambitions. So America was not “discovered” ready-made, it was
invented before Columbus set his sights on the Caribbean, before Cortez destroyed the
Aztecs, before the Mayflower anchored on Plymouth Rock. It was a dream long before it
became a reality. And that is why there was so much destruction of lands, of peoples, of
empires, because they were not part of the dream. And now the dream has changed, and the
invention continues to get more complex, and as a result, there are people that must be dealt
with, left out, empires that must be forgotten, markets that must be created, and fences that
must be built. Motivating the studies of Zea and his Mexican contemporaries is the question:
why should Mexicans not be part of this continued re-invention of America?
Which gets us to a reiteration of Zea’s call for revolutionary praxis. To be part of the
permanent invention of the Americas, a psychic and a material change must take place, one
demanded by philosophical analysis and historical fact. This change is demanded by the
Mexican cultural and historical circumstance itself. As Zea puts it:
Nosotros tenemos que asumir, necesariamente, la responsabilidad de un pasado que no hemos hecho:
pero al mismo tiempo, con nuestra actitud, cualquiera que esta sea, comprometemos y hacemos
responsable de ella a un futuro que habrá de ser hecho por nosotros. En esta forma somos responsables
de los otros y ante los otros. [We have to assume, necessarily, the responsibility for a past that we have
not created. But at the same time, we compromise and hold responsible our attitude (or comportment),
whatever that may be, for a future that will be created by us. In this way we are responsible for others
and to others.] (Filosofía 13)
Nothing less than a revolutionary change is required, but one that gives way to generosity
instead of violence, respect instead of oppression, and praxis instead of irresponsibility.
Notes
[1] For a brief yet insightful history of “El Hiperion,” see Guillermo Hurtado’s editor’s
introduction to El Hiperion (2006).
[2]At least no one, to my knowledge, has made this claim. The usual line is that Zea was
responding to Hegel and Hegel’s absolutist philosophy of history (see for instance Saenz’s
Latin American Historicism and the Phenomenology of Leopoldo Zea).
[3]The singularity of the conquest of America is brilliantly illustrated in Tzvetan Todorov’s
The Conquest of America. In its first pages, Todorov writes:“the discovery of America…is
certainly the most astonishing encounter of our history. We do not have the same sense of
radical difference in the ‘discovery’ of other continents and of other peoples” (4).
[4]Of course it would have to be Aristotle that wears the guaraches and not, say, Plato.
Aristotle’s teacher was not, after all, concerned with the mundane particulars of this world,
which he considered but a copy of the perfect world of Forms. It was Aristotle that cared
enough about the minutiae to speculate about natural laws, poetry, and medicine.
[5]In order for this claim to be understood, one has to read Zea as a “materialist” in the
sense he regarded the historical circumstances as having priority over any sort of ideas or
value schemes. Moreover, I am not claiming that Zea’s Marxist tendency is informed
directly or indirectly by Marx’s economic theory; what I’m proposing is that Zea’s Marxist
tendency is a result of both his personal distrust of Hegel’s historical idealism and a natural
affinity to Marx’s humanist critique Hegel.
Works Cited
O’Gorman, Edmundo. El proceso de la invención de América. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 2000.
Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. Ed. David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. Trans. Lysander Kemp. New York: Grove Press,
1961.
Portilla, Jorge. La fenomenologia del relajo. Mexico: Ediciones Era S.A., 1966.
Ramos, Samuel. El perfil del hombre y cultura en Mexico. Mexico DF: Espasa Calpe
Mexicana, S.A., 1934.
Saenz, Mario. Latin American Historicism and the Phenomenology of Leopoldo Zea.
Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Harper
Collins Publishers, Inc., 1984.
Uranga, Emilio. Análisis del ser del mexicano. Mexico: Porrúa y Obregón, S.A., 1952.
Zea, Leopoldo. La filosofía como compromiso y otros ensayos. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1952.
----. The Role of the Americas in History. Trans. Sonja Karsen. Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1991.
By “the demands of a Mexican philosophy of history” I have in mind the demands that arise
from philosophical analyses into the historicity of Mexican identity. My assumption is
that such demands are prima facie evident with any penetrating study of our everyday
forms of life. Such a study will reveal insights which will tell us what the structural
particularities of any given problem are (whether completely or partially) and on to these
insights we respond—or if we don’t respond, the problem at least demands a response.
We are, in fact, held responsible by the results of our analyses. This assumption informs
the claim of the present essay, namely, that the philosophical reflections into Mexican
identity carried out by Mexican philosophers in the middle of the last century—sometime in
the 1940’s and 1950’s, and particularly by Leopoldo Zea, resulted in the existential imperative
commanding Mexicans to own up to their history and to their identity despite the conquest,
the colonization, and 500 years of oppression and marginality.
My focus here is on Zea and, to a minimal extent, on Emilio Uranga and Jorge Portilla—
Mexican philosophers that, with Zea, dedicated their efforts to analyzing the existential and
historical underpinnings of the Mexican form of life as part of the “Hiperion Group,”
a philosophical circle headed by Zea and active primarily in Mexico City from 1948 to 1952.
[1] I will proceed first by considering, in a general way, Zea’s philosophical reflections into
the problems of Mexican historical identity. Next, I look into the “demands” that emerge
from such a reflection and what Zea and others prescribe as a response to those demands.
In this section I make a crucial, and unorthodox, claim regarding Zea’s philosophy in
particular, namely, that in the texts considered he exhibits a peculiar Marxist tendency that
has not been pointed out to date (what I call a “Neo-Marxist” tendency). [2] Finally, I
attempt to bridge the temporal and spatial gap between Zea’s considerations more than fifty
years ago and the ethical-existential problems related to Mexicans in the United States
today.
Philosophy and Mexican History
If anything, the Mexican revolution of 1910 made something exceedingly clear: Mexicans
were divided (in spirit and deed) and as such seeking one another’s death. While Hegel’s
philosophy had previously shown that the life and death struggle of separated beings would
be resolved through the emergence of a master and a slave, the struggle of the Mexican
would not be resolved by a mere class division. After more than a decade of fighting and
killing one another in the name of justice, it became apparent that the real struggle was
not between two separated beings who sought one another’s death; rather, the real life and
death struggle was internal, taking place in the solitude of the Mexican mind. It was not
hate of the other that motivated the violence; it was self-hate or self-loathing. The source of
this, philosophers will come to propose, is the historical circumstances of Mexico, which
are unique to Mexicans and to world history.
Philosophers spent the years following the revolution attempting to make sense of these
circumstances and of the corresponding sense of self to which these gave rise. The great
Mexican philosopher Samuel Ramos (1897-1959) was the first to articulate the problem in
Perfil del hombre y cultura en Mexico, his landmark 1934 treatise. There, Ramos diagnosed
the problem as essentially psychological. According to Ramos, Mexicans suffered from an
inferiority complex that, he argued, was rooted in the conquest and colonization and the
economic and cultural dependence that this involved. This sense of inferiority, Ramos
concluded, was the source of the self-hate and self-loathing that neither independence nor
revolution would eliminate. Despite the brilliance of his analysis, however, Ramos’s work did
not prove to be effective in rousing Mexicans from their apathetic, dogmatic slumbers.
It was Leopoldo Zea (1912-2004), beginning in the early 1940’s, who moved beyond
psychological description and attempted to provide a historico-philosophical account of the
Mexican self. Zea writes in 1952:
We know we are heirs to two great cultures, those same cultures that we are willing to undervalue
[menospreciar] for not being of use to us in our frustrating labors. We know ourselves heirs to two
great empires: the Spanish and the Aztec. An inheritance that we feel more like a weight than as an
asset [una herencia que sentimos más como lastre que como ayuda] (Filosofia como compromiso 186).
What Zea means is that the root of the problem (i.e., the self-loathing and accompanying
irresponsibility in the face of the Mexican reality) rests in the incapacity of Mexicans to fully
and resolutely appreciate their history—a remarkable, singular, and thus inimitable history
belonging solely to them as Mexicans in particular and Latin Americans in general. [3] This
lack of appreciation has nothing to do with a lack of understanding or exposure to the
historical record but with the fact, partially diagnosed by Ramos, that Mexicans feel that
Mexican and Latin American history is not their history. The past belongs to Spain, which
is absent in the everyday lives of Mexicans; it belongs also to Technotitlan, Teotihuacan, and
the glory of the Aztec empire, which is but a faint memory, more like a myth than a reality.
In spite of this lack of appreciation, however, Mexicans are burdened with carrying around
this history which is not their history. The burden is made heavier by the nostalgia contained
in their language and in their faces, which reveal neither Aztecs nor Spaniards, but mestizos:
Mexicans. Ultimately, the philosophical-historical question Zea asks has to do with the
particular way of life belonging to this mestizo, which will both determine the essential
nature of Mexicanos and prescribe a manner of living conducive to cultural and historical
praxis given their circumstances. Zea asks: ¿qué es lo Mexicano?
Zea understands the challenges in asking about the form of life he and others call “lo
Mexicano.” After all, philosophers are not supposed to ask these kinds of questions.
Philosophers are supposed to ask about humanity in general, about our place in the
universe, about the Good, about evil, and about death: questions that are general and of
universal scope (some would say “abstract”). Asking about “lo Mexicano” is to do the
opposite, it is to ask about a particular situation, a particular people. But, for Zea, if the
questions he asks grow out of philosophical curiosity, then what he is doing is philosophy. As
he puts it, what we are doing is “putting guaraches on Aristotle” (Filosofia 183). And
an Aristotle in guaraches has but one mission--to shed light on the particularities of the
Mexican way of life so as to “unburden” Mexicans of their confusion, and more importantly,
to give them a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, and a sense of history. [4]
Zea’s was indeed a philosophical task. Philosophy is, after all, a reflexive mental action; to
philosophize is to reflect, to take a step away from ourselves, to abandon our immediate
existence, to stop thinking about the traffic, our love lives, or our money troubles. In a
moment of philosophical reflection, we distance ourselves from ourselves too as to look at
ourselves, taking note of the way in which we exist, the way we are, what we are made of.
Zea and his contemporaries did just this: they took a step back and critically analyzed that
form of life which is called Mexican. The great Mexican poet/philosopher Octavio Paz had
called for such a reflexive move in The Labyrinth of Solitude, published in 1950: “It is
natural that the Mexican should withdraw into himself and after the explosive phase of the
Revolution, to spend a few moments in self-contemplation” (11). These “few moments”
reveal, among other things, a deep rooted sadness about Mexico and its place in the
universe; a sadness that emerges most noticeably in Mexican poetic expression. Likewise, in
his Anaylis del ser del mexicano, published in 1952, Emilio Uranga notes that “Mexican
life overflows [está impregnada] with a sentimental character” (28). It is not difficult to
illustrate what he means: think of our popular music and the timelessness of José Alfredo
Jiménez, Javier Solís, Pedro Infante, and Miguel Aceves Mejía. Did they ever express
anything but sorrow and sentimentality? Or, think of Mexico’s most popular style of music,
corridos, which are tragic lyrical poems in the oral tradition. For this reason, Uranga
remarks, “the Mexican always gives the impression of having already lived, of carrying in his
soul a history, a world that already was, and that because of sentimentality, has been
indelibly recorded. There is the source of our melancholy and that gesture [ademán] of a
man of bitter experience” (34). When we hear a song, read a poem by Ramón López Velarde
or Octavio Paz, or experience El llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo, we indeed feel nostalgic,
we get a sense that we have lived that experience, or that, inevitably, as Mexicans, we will.
So focusing their philosophical gaze, Mexican philosophers get a taste of what the Mexican
form of life is like: it is sentimental but at the same time nostalgic, trapped under the weight
of its own past. But why is it that Mexicans do not throw off the weight, or adjust it somehow,
so as to be free from its ontological heaviness? Zea notes: “In our feeling of inferiority,
insufficiency, resentment, and reduction, something hidden is made clear, a deeper
feeling, something that we don’t want to display because it would embarrass [avergonzaría]
given our current circumstances, and that is pride [soberbia]” (Filosofia 186). Pride.
Mexicans are proud. They would rather continue carrying on a diseased sense of self then
admit that this sense of self is diseased. Pride ties them to what they don’t understand; it ties
them to what they don’t want to understand.
But while the Mexican seldom complains, this does not mean that he or she does not blame
his or her condition on something other than him or herself. Ultimately, Mexicans blame
their condition on their throwness, or on the fact that they are not something other than
historical accidents, mestizos. Put differently, that they are thrown into the Mexican
historical circumstance (that they are not other) signifies that they lack the civilization of the
European; it means, moreover, that they lack the economic/capitalist intelligence of North
Americans, and it means, finally, that they lack any meaningful connection to indigenous
empires which sink ever deeper into oblivion and forgetfulness with each passing day. All of
this gives the impression that to be Mexican is to be mis-placed or displaced in world
history. The attitude of displacement Zea calls “irresponsibility.” Zea writes, “In order to
justify our irresponsibility we disparage ourselves, accusing fear, history, our blood and our
race for our incapacity to realize our projects” (Filosofia 188). Moreover, Zea continues,
“Instead of engaging the task of realizing a cultural and material world according to our
possibilities, we prefer to lament our incapacity of not being as great as or better than
Europe in the area of culture, or being as great as or better than the United States in the
material arena… Instead of creating we prefer to imitate” (188). Thus sentimentality, pride,
a sense of misplacement, and the need to imitate, characterize the nature of being Mexican
and the nature of not being responsive to the Mexican circumstances.
Thus, Zea’s philosophical diagnosis is scathing: Mexicans suffer from a burdensome history,
which justifies an unwarranted sentimentality and a self-defeating pride; this leads to
irresponsibility in the face of that history and a sense of inferiority and weakness in the face
of Europe and the industrialized “West,” namely, the US. Zea summarizes it thus:
Soon the Mexican found out that the past was a part of the Mexican self, but the shameful part, the part
which had implanted in him countless defects. The defective part of the self had its roots in this past;
there was the source of all his incapacities, the why of all of his failures, the reason why he couldn’t be
at the heights of other societies [pueblos] that belonged to other races, to other religions, to other
cultures. It was then that the lamentations and the useless demands began, and with them, the
justification for every irresponsible attitude. (Filosofía 181)
Indeed, the Mexican reproaches his or her past because of its defects and the defects it
reveals in the Mexican character, namely, his or her weakness, his or her lack of will, during
five hundred years of colonialism and domination. Now the Mexican blames that past for an
inability to be like other, advanced peoples, in other advanced societies. But the activity of
the will stops there, with the (willful) attribution of blame. Henceforth the Mexican adopts
what Zea calls his or her “irresponsible attitude”.
Responding to the Demands: Mexican Philosophy and Neo-Marxism
But is this the end of Zea’s philosophical account? In other words, does philosophy of history
itself end in giving a philosophical account of history? The answer to both questions
is negative, since Zea’s account is more of a philosophical critique than a philosophical
description. And it is here that Mexican philosophy becomes universal in its scope
and address; that is, it takes up universal scope when we consider Zea’s critique in a
particular way, namely, as prescriptive, and as such, it is a critique applicable not only
to Mexicans, but to Chicanos, to Salvadorians, to Eastern Europeans, to West Africans. The
“critical” nature of Mexican philosophy is suggested by Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude:
“To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. It is a moment of
reflective repose before we devote ourselves to action again” (10). What does it mean to say
that we (Mexicans) must “become aware of our singularity”? It means nothing less than
awakening to one’s particular historical circumstance, to one’s material and spiritual
conditions—to become aware of one’s destiny. According to Zea, for instance, this particular
circumstance, the Mexican circumstance, could be characterized by the idea of
“marginality.” Mexicans exist in the margins of Western history and in the margins of
contemporary culture. Mexicans take up the mode of marginality as an ontological
condition. Thus, with the concept of “marginality” Zea describes “a person who ‘lives in two
worlds but is not quite at home in either’” (The Role of the Americas in History xx). The
two worlds that the Mexican “lives in” are, again, the Spanish and the Aztec, or the
indigenous. (Notice that when the Mexican moves north, he is hyper-marginal, not only
living in two cultures, those present in his history, but existing in three cultures, those of
his/her past and his/her present. I’ll return to this below.) But this marginality is also part of
the Mexican identity, so it demands a certain manner of being towards Mexican reality; this
“demand” is what Zea’s philosophical critique is meant to make explicit.
We can trace Zea’s critical philosophy to Karl Marx. [5] In his early manuscripts,
particularly the text “Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1844), Marx
had been concerned with the liberation of the German working class, the proletariat, from
both psychological and material forces. The young Marx’s philosophy (what is now known
as “dialectical idealism”) aimed to “awaken” a revolutionary spirit of praxis in the German
people that would liberate them from their own negative, or oppressive, self-interpretations
and from those conditions of enslavement that were imposed on them from elsewhere by
either industrialization, religion, or the social mass. For Marx philosophy was “criticism”
which had but one aim, “not to allow the Germans a moment of self-deceit or resignation”
(66). As for Zea, philosophy for Marx was a living process, capable of changing the
status quo. “We must make the actual oppression even more oppressing,” writes Marx, “by
making them [the German Volk] conscious of it, and the insult even more insulting by
publicizing it… So as to give them courage, we must teach the people to be shocked by
themselves” (66). And this is precisely what Zea’s historico-philosophical analysis attempts
to do. So as to “teach the people to be shocked by themselves”, Zea describes the Mexican
self as “incomplete,” “amputated, divided, crippled,” and the being of the Mexican (the
ontological es gibt of the Mexican) as “oscillating, not between being this way or that way,
but oscillating within two halves of the same being” (Filosofia 173). Zea’s point is to expose
the existential condition that characterizes Mexican being, something akin to indecisiveness
or vertigo, what Zea believes leads Mexicans to adopt a form of life that is “irresponsible.”
Zea, following Marx, aims to force Mexicans to think of their actual material and spiritual
reality, the circumstances that define them as Mexicans and as humans; but more than this,
he aims, through critique and “shock,” to motivate Mexicans to engage those
circumstances and change them through some form of revolutionary action (praxis). This
accords with Marx, who proclaimed in his Theses on Fuerbach, “The coincidence of
the changing of the circumstances and of… self-changing can be conceived and rationally
understood only as revolutionary practice” (Thesis III). What does “revolution” mean here?
It does not mean—as it means for the mature Marx—violent struggle against oppressive
bourgeoisie or capitalists, but rather it means an action that changes both the circumstances
in which people live and their innermost self. This can be thought as an internal revolution,
where something happens to the inner life of the person who engages him or herself in
revolutionary praxis. Jorge Portilla, a contemporary of Zea, put it thus: “In internalization we
also find a subjective activity, a centrifugal movement analogous to the one involved in the
realization of an act toward the exterior. A process definitely similar to this is the acquisition
of a consciousness of class, in which the worker internalizes, that is, makes actively his, a
situation which before was merely suffered and external, and that in the process of its
internalization brings with it a certain liberation” (56).
So here is the process: convince the people of the necessity for an honest and brutal
inventory of their cultural and historical identity, or shock them, as Marx said, into
responding to such and inventory (whether from shame or necessity), and simultaneously
prescribe a manner of being appropriate for effective praxis and personal, social, and
ideological liberation. The prescription outlines the logic of “sublation,” or what Marx called
Aufhebung or aufgehoben, an untranslatable term which for Marx (in contrast to Hegel) meant
“abolition, transcendence, and preservation” of one’s material condition, i.e., one’s
(historical) circumstances (thus what makes it different from Hegel’s use of the term).
Mexicans must face their history as a nation (this means confronting the conquest, the
colonization, centuries of foreign ideological influence, their mestizaje, the evils of the
revolution, and their current condition of dependence and marginality) together with their
own personal narratives (which means confronting their own existential condition as
Mexicans); upon this encounter, Mexicans must then take ownership of their own being by,
in a moment of revolutionary praxis, forgetting (abolition) those aspects of their past
that harm the collective consciousness, safeguard (preservation) those moments of Mexican
history that give strength, and, finally, resolutely will what has not yet come (transcendence)
not only for the sake of future Mexican generations, but for the sake of humanity in general.
Mexicans in the United States: An Attempt at Application
Although philosophy’s preoccupation with the existential-historical condition of lo Mexicano
was abandoned before it made any real impact on either the Mexican intelligentsia or the
Mexican people in general, it is fruitful (at least at a theoretical level) to consider this
preoccupation fifty years later and from a vantage point radically different than that of Zea
and the rest, namely, as it applies to Mexicans in the United States.
The question is: What does any of this have to do with Mexicans who find themselves in the
US more than half a century after Zea’s analysis? What Zea would say is that whatever the
case may be, so long as these individuals continue to identify themselves somehow with
the history of Latin America then they are, by default, responsible for that history. In fact, the
situation of Mexicans and Latin Americans in the US is existentially more problematic than
that of their Latin American contemporaries in Latin America, since the former must deal
with the trauma of assimilation and acculturation in the great whale that is the United
States… i.e., el norte. For Mexicans, the case is particularly severe because of their
proximity to the US. Proximity is more of a problem for Mexicans because the US is, in fact,
attractive, but attractive in the sense of physics. Thus, Mexico’s close proximity to the
US attracts more Mexicans who gravitate toward it sometimes against the counsel of
practical reason—they know they are not welcome, they are aware that they might be
immediately deported, they understand that they will be treated unjustly, etc., and they still
come! From cities and pueblos throughout Mexico, the irrational desire is to dream the
American dream. The problem is, as we know, that this dream is quickly frustrated as the
Mexican finds it impossible to live up to the demands of that dream. The reason for this
frustration has much to do with Anglo-America’s negative perception of the Mexican as
intruder, as illegal, as parasitic on their way of life, but it also has to do, as Zea argued, with
the fact that the Mexican has yet to respond to those demands made upon him or her by
Mexican history itself. In other words, the marginality that goes hand in hand with being
Mexican due to the lack of a genuine historical identity is never completely overcome, so in
Anglo-America the Mexican’s marginal existence compounds—the Mexican exists as
hyper-marginal, marginal in relation to his/her historical identity plus marginal in relation to
North American (US) culture and ethos.
Hyper-marginality, however, can ultimately force an individual and a culture into self-
loathing or worse, imitation, into forgetting themselves completely and instead attempt to be
like the other. In his Analysis Emilio Uranga put it best: “A culture of imitation is a culture of
rest in the fundamental project of being saved by others. To imitate is to favor [propiciar], to
gain a favorable look” (40). And this applies specifically to Mexicans in America. After all,
here is a place (the US) worthy of being sought and here are a people worthy of being
imitated: this place has an abundance of resources and its people an over-abundance
of ambition, drive, determination, and know-how. However, the process of emulation, or
imitation, proves difficult because both the place and its people resist integrating Mexicans
into the pragmatic, secularized, and a-historical circumstance which defines Anglo-
American existence. This leads to a deliberate or unconscious denial of the Mexican
difference, of heterogeneity, and, ultimately, of rights. Zea put the matter in the following
way: “While to the north we have witnessed the growth of a state without a great history,
almost without traditions. A state inferior to ours…but a state that has beaten us, resting on
values that we did not recognize as such. This is the state, ultimately, which has frustrated
our dreams” (Filosofia 186). We can witness this frustration today. We can, for instance,
sense the resistance of difference and heterogeneity in irrational and inhumane immigration
laws and practices.
How does the process of “sublation” apply here? Mexicans in the US must confront their
marginal status, accept it, and transcend it. Most importantly, however, they must abolish
and transcend, or go beyond, the irrational, yet hegemonic discourse wherein they are
portrayed as unknowable, alien, absolutely different other. The transcendence of this
discourse requires an inner movement of the will comparable to a revolutionary change of
attitude (praxis). The material conditions, the circumstances, follow close behind.
Concluding Remarks
My aim in this paper has been to focus on the existential and cultural implications, or
demands, of a philosophical investigation into Mexico’s historical identity. With historical
identity I am saying that to be Mexican is to share in a unique historical experience, one
rooted in the conquest and colonization, one affirmed in wars of independence and
revolution, a historical identity shared by poetic experiences of alienation, death, and
existence, and one nourished by a common vision of the material conditions which give rise
to a consciousness of immigration, exploitation, and marginality.
I am not saying that everyone who is Mexican identifies themselves in this way. On the
contrary, the present paper assumes that not many people identity themselves in this way,
but if they did, they would be responsible for certain demands made upon their identity by
that identity itself.
So the story with “The Demands of a Mexican Philosophy of History” is that once you
identify yourself as Mexican, or as Salvadorian, or as Anglo-American, or as Mexican-
American, you are existentially obligated (morally speaking) to do certain things because
of that identity—to fulfill certain demands. What are these philosophical demands? In short,
you must assume your history, which means that you must take ownership of your history by
preserving those aspects of it that empower you, you must get rid of those elements of your
historical make-up that oppress you, and you must transcend, or overcome, superar, that
history as you move resolutely toward your future.
The Mexican historian and philosopher Edmundo O’Gorman who, around the same time
that Zea, took to analyzing the Mexican situation, proposed the thesis that America was not
discovered but invented. America, and particularly Mexico, argued O’Gorman, had
been idealizations in the European mind long before Columbus or Cortez set foot in its soil.
America was created from a dream of what the ideal world would be like: no laws, vast
amount of riches, and a place to begin anew—something like a “new” world, a paradise. The
Spanish conquest and colonization made the dream a reality—or at least attempted to do so.
Thus began, O’Gorman concludes, the invention of the Americas as the nesting grounds for
European dreams and ambitions. So America was not “discovered” ready-made, it was
invented before Columbus set his sights on the Caribbean, before Cortez destroyed the
Aztecs, before the Mayflower anchored on Plymouth Rock. It was a dream long before it
became a reality. And that is why there was so much destruction of lands, of peoples, of
empires, because they were not part of the dream. And now the dream has changed, and the
invention continues to get more complex, and as a result, there are people that must be dealt
with, left out, empires that must be forgotten, markets that must be created, and fences that
must be built. Motivating the studies of Zea and his Mexican contemporaries is the question:
why should Mexicans not be part of this continued re-invention of America?
Which gets us to a reiteration of Zea’s call for revolutionary praxis. To be part of the
permanent invention of the Americas, a psychic and a material change must take place, one
demanded by philosophical analysis and historical fact. This change is demanded by the
Mexican cultural and historical circumstance itself. As Zea puts it:
Nosotros tenemos que asumir, necesariamente, la responsabilidad de un pasado que no hemos hecho:
pero al mismo tiempo, con nuestra actitud, cualquiera que esta sea, comprometemos y hacemos
responsable de ella a un futuro que habrá de ser hecho por nosotros. En esta forma somos responsables
de los otros y ante los otros. [We have to assume, necessarily, the responsibility for a past that we have
not created. But at the same time, we compromise and hold responsible our attitude (or comportment),
whatever that may be, for a future that will be created by us. In this way we are responsible for others
and to others.] (Filosofía 13)
Nothing less than a revolutionary change is required, but one that gives way to generosity
instead of violence, respect instead of oppression, and praxis instead of irresponsibility.
Notes
[1] For a brief yet insightful history of “El Hiperion,” see Guillermo Hurtado’s editor’s
introduction to El Hiperion (2006).
[2]At least no one, to my knowledge, has made this claim. The usual line is that Zea was
responding to Hegel and Hegel’s absolutist philosophy of history (see for instance Saenz’s
Latin American Historicism and the Phenomenology of Leopoldo Zea).
[3]The singularity of the conquest of America is brilliantly illustrated in Tzvetan Todorov’s
The Conquest of America. In its first pages, Todorov writes:“the discovery of America…is
certainly the most astonishing encounter of our history. We do not have the same sense of
radical difference in the ‘discovery’ of other continents and of other peoples” (4).
[4]Of course it would have to be Aristotle that wears the guaraches and not, say, Plato.
Aristotle’s teacher was not, after all, concerned with the mundane particulars of this world,
which he considered but a copy of the perfect world of Forms. It was Aristotle that cared
enough about the minutiae to speculate about natural laws, poetry, and medicine.
[5]In order for this claim to be understood, one has to read Zea as a “materialist” in the
sense he regarded the historical circumstances as having priority over any sort of ideas or
value schemes. Moreover, I am not claiming that Zea’s Marxist tendency is informed
directly or indirectly by Marx’s economic theory; what I’m proposing is that Zea’s Marxist
tendency is a result of both his personal distrust of Hegel’s historical idealism and a natural
affinity to Marx’s humanist critique Hegel.
Works Cited
O’Gorman, Edmundo. El proceso de la invención de América. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 2000.
Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. Ed. David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. Trans. Lysander Kemp. New York: Grove Press,
1961.
Portilla, Jorge. La fenomenologia del relajo. Mexico: Ediciones Era S.A., 1966.
Ramos, Samuel. El perfil del hombre y cultura en Mexico. Mexico DF: Espasa Calpe
Mexicana, S.A., 1934.
Saenz, Mario. Latin American Historicism and the Phenomenology of Leopoldo Zea.
Lanham: Lexington Books, 1999.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Harper
Collins Publishers, Inc., 1984.
Uranga, Emilio. Análisis del ser del mexicano. Mexico: Porrúa y Obregón, S.A., 1952.
Zea, Leopoldo. La filosofía como compromiso y otros ensayos. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1952.
----. The Role of the Americas in History. Trans. Sonja Karsen. Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1991.
| Carlos Alberto Sanchez, San Jose State University |
| The Demands of a Mexican Philosophy of History |
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