This volume presents 15 studies occasioned by the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of America. It covers both the initial encounters between the Europeans and native Americans and the golden age of Hispanic philosophy that followed the discovery - specifically between 1500 and 1650.

HISPANIC PHILOSOPHY. The notion of Hispanic philosophy is a useful one for trying to understand certain historical phenomena related to the philosophy developed in the Iberian peninsula, the Iberian colonies in the New World, and the countries that those colonies eventually came to form. It is useful for two reasons. First, it focuses attention on the close relations among the philosophers in these geographical areas; and second, other historical denominations and categorizations do not do justice (...) to such relations. This becomes clear when one examines the standard general categorizations according to which the philosophical thought of the mentioned geographical areas is divided and studied: Spanish philosophy, Portuguese philosophy, Catalan philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Spanish-American philosophy, and Ibero-American philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery ed. by Kevin WhiteIván JaksicKevin White, editor. Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 326. Cloth, $59.95.The quincentennial of what has been termed the “encounter” between Europeans and Indians in the New World in the late fifteenth century furnished the occasion for much denunciation of the (...) evils inflicted by greedy intruders on the indigenous population and their environment. Many a conference was convened to reflect on such [End Page 463] events from the perspective of what appeared to be a consensus on the ultimately negative effects of European discovery, conquest, and colonization. In this context, it is quite remarkable that a conference on Hispanic philosophy in the age of discovery should have been convened to examine the philosophical figures and treatises of the era. As it turns out, this volume represents probably one of the most enduring outcomes of the myriad activities of 1992. This is a volume that ranges widely into the philosophical world of the period, brings to light the richness and significance of philosophers and their work, and provides a coherent and consistently well-researched set of essays.The volume consists of fifteen essays divided into five parts. Part I consists of one essay by Jorge J. E. Gracia which offers a wide panorama of Hispanic philosophy from 1500 to 1650, as well as a lucid interpretation of the historical reasons why Hispanic philosophy seems to have reached a dead end in the context of modern European philosophy, and suffered the neglect of intervening centuries. Part II consists of one essay by Mauricio Beuchot on discussions concerning the conquest of Mexico; two essays by John Doyle and Marcelo Sánchez-Sorondo on the work of Francisco de Vitoria; and two essays on the celebrated dispute between Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de las Casas in 1550–51, the first by Eduardo Andújar and the second by Rafael Alvira and Alfredo Cruz. Part III includes essays by William Wallace on Domingo de Soto and Galileo’s science; Juan Antonio Widow on the economic thought of the Spanish Scholastics; Jean de Groot on the mysticism of Teresa de Avila; Yves Floucat on St. John of the Cross, and Mirko Skarica on the problem of future contingents. Part IV includes three essays by Norman Wells, Stephen Menn, and Carlos G. Noreña on the works of Francisco Suárez, probably the best-known Spanish thinker of the period. The volume closes with Part V, which has a long essay by John Deely on John Poinsot’s doctrine of signs.A volume of this scope and nature is bound to contain some overlap and repetition, as is the case with the pieces concerning the Las Casas-Sepúlveda debate. And yet these essays read well because the authors seriously undermine the conventional treatment of Sepúlveda as the hawkish defender of Indian slavery, and place him in the context of a larger Renaissance view of non-European peoples. Las Casas, in the view of the authors, had a great deal more in common with his opponent than the historiography has thus far suggested. In other sections of the volume, the variety of approaches and subjects on the part of the contributors challenges the reader to constantly shift grounds. Part III, for instance, takes us from the disquisitions on the velocity of falling bodies to the moral aspects of economic thought, and to the meaning of mystical theology. Fortunately, the competence of the researchers makes all individual pieces worthwhile even if this particular reviewer would have been somewhat more stringent with the space allotted to make a point.Contributors to this book leave no doubt as to the importance of their subjects, and yet they resist the temptation of exaggerating the extent of the influence of many of the Spanish authors on other European thinkers. Indeed, the essay by Norman Wells shows that while one must consider the linkages between Suárez and Descartes, there is [End Page 464] no reason to believe that the latter made Suárez’s position on the moderni... (shrink)

Despite predictions that Hispanics will soon outnumber all other minority groups combined in the United States, philosophy has remained indifferent to the growing Hispanic population. This paper offers several hypotheses why this is the case, arguing that Hispanics and Hispanic thought are perceived as unphilosophical (or only narrowly philosophical) and are thus perceived as ill-suited for academia and academic discussions in the United States. The author concludes by proposing strategies for overcoming this marginalization of Hispanics and (...) class='Hi'>Hispanic philosophy. (shrink)

Collections tend to the hazardous. The present volume illustrates the pitfalls as well as the successes of the genre. Fifteen contributions uneven in quality and disparate in theme are here placed under the serendipitous umbrella of “Hispanic Philosophy.”.

A surprising fact in the historiography of the Hispanic philosophy of this century is its almost total opacity towards the American philosophy, in spite of the real affinity between the central questions of American pragmatism and the topics addressed by the most relevant Hispanic thinkers of the century: Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, d'Ors, Vaz Ferreira. In this paper that situation is studied, paying special attention to Charles S. Peirce, his personal connections with the Hispanic world, (...) the reception of his texts in Spanish, and some of the connections that lie almost hidden under the mutual ignorance which divides the two traditions. -/- . (shrink)

After presenting a brief history of philosophy in Hispanic-America since the XVI century, we discuss whether the idea of province and empire is applicable to contemporary Hispanic-American philosophy, investigate the form these ideas adopt in this region, and inquire into the ways in which provincialism i s present in philosophical work. We conclude that there are three main groups that understand their peripheral position in different ways, with different views on the way in which they should (...) insert into the mainstream of Western philosophy. (shrink)

in two letters concerning the Spanish-American War of 1898, Charles Sanders Peirce openly expresses some egregious prejudices against several groups of people, including Hispanics—people of at least partly Spanish origin in the Iberian Peninsula or the Americas (L 254 and L 339; reprint, translation to Spanish, and commentary in Nubiola and Zalamea 76–811). In an undated letter to his cousin Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts politician, Peirce writes regarding the war: “I don’t believe the Spaniards will make a good fight; (...) for as I have studied them in Spain, the whole people has been corrupted with the centuries of cruelty, injustice and rapine they have indulged in, and have little real manhood left” (L 254; .. (shrink)

We concentrate on four questions among the many posed by this special collection of papers on Pragmatism and the Hispanic world. They are, first, what took pragmatism beyond the borders of the United States and into the Hispanic world? Next, what are the ideas of Dewey that have had the greatest impact on Hispanic culture? Third, what are the past and present obstacles that has kept the Hispanic world from using pragmatism to deal with many of (...) their educational and social problems? Finally, why does pragmatism still hold great promise and potential for the Hispanic world? (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu in Hispanic Literature and Culture is a collective reflection on the value of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's work for the study of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture. The authors deploy Bourdieu's concepts in the study of Modernismo, avant-garde Mexico, contemporary Puerto Rican literature, Hispanism, Latin American cultural production, and more. Each essay is also a contribution to the study of the politics and economics of culture in Spain and Latin America. The book, as a whole, (...) is in dialogue with recent methodological and theoretical interventions in cultural sociology and Latin American and Iberian studies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe the situation of mutual ignorance between American and Hispanic philosophical traditions, paying special attention to the figure and thought of the founder of pragmatism, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914). In order to do this, first of all I will justify the usage of the expression "Hispanic Philosophy", highlighting its heuristic and practical value. Secondly, I will discuss some of Peirce's comments in relation with the Hispanic world. And finally, by (...) way of conclusion, I will mention some of the connections that lie nearly hidden under the cloak of ignorance which divides the two traditions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Vasconcelos and Essentialist Conceptions of Mestizaje Gloria Anzaldúa: The New Mestizaje María Lugones: Mestizaje and Hybridity The New Mestizaje and Race Mestizaje and Pan‐Hispanic Identity References Further Reading.

In this essay I examine the contributions of the pragmatist tradition to the philosophy of ethnicity. From the pragmatist philosophies of Dewey and Locke I derive a reconstructive model for the clarification and improvement of the life experiences of ethnic groups. Addressing various problems and objections, I argue that this Deweyan and Lockean reconstructive model rejects any sharp separation between race and ethnicity and avoids the pitfalls of the biologist race paradigm and the culturalist ethnicity paradigm. I explore some (...) of the social and political implications of this reconstructive model through a discussion of José Martí's inspiring account of Hispanic identity. (shrink)

This translation of Enrique Dussel's “‘Ser-Hispano’: Un Mundo en el ‘Border’ de Muchos Mundos” offers an interpretation of hispanos (Latin Americans and U.S. latinos) as historically, culturally, and geographically located “in-between” many worlds that combine to constitute an identity on the intercultural “border.” To illustrate how hispanos have navigated and continue to navigate their complex history in order to create a polyphonic identity, the essay sketches five historical-cultural “worlds” that come together to form the hispanic “world.”.

In this essay I examine the contributions of the pragmatist tradition to the philosophy of ethnicity. From the pragmatist philosophies of Dewey and Locke I derive a reconstructive model for the clarification and improvement of the life experiences of ethnic groups. Addressing various problems and objections, I argue that this Deweyan and Lockean reconstructive model rejects any sharp separation between race and ethnicity and avoids the pitfalls of the biologist race paradigm and the culturalist ethnicity paradigm. I explore some (...) of the social and political implications of this reconstructive model through a discussion of José Martí's inspiring account of Hispanic identity. (shrink)

I present a novel position vis-à-vis the views in the Latin American philosophy literature regarding whether subjects more aptly use "Hispanic" or "Latinx" to refer to Hispanic- or-Latinx people. To this end, I will argue (C) the term "Afro-Latinx" is more apt than "Hispanic" or "Latinx" in a significant number of cases. This conclusion is based on three premises. The first premise (P1) is that use of "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with understanding of how certain events depend (...) on anti-Black racism, US society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The second premise (P2) is that that neither the term "Hispanic" nor the term "Latinx" provide subjects with this understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The third premise (P3) is that the term "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with more understanding of these events than the terms, "Hispanic" and "Latinx.” I present three cases which feature the experiences of Afro-Dominican people. The 1992 murder of Dominican man Kiko García by New York Police officer O’Keefe is first case. The second case is the Washington Heights Uprising that ensued Kiko García’ murder. An instance where a nightclub bouncer in the Dominican Republic denies a Dominican women entry because of her hair texture composes the third case. (shrink)

The politics of ethnic names, such as ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’, raises legitimate issues for three reasons: because non-political considerations of descriptive adequacy are insufficient to determine absolutely the question of names; political considerations may be germane to an ethnic name’s descriptive adequacy; and naming opens up the political question of a chosen furture, to which we are accountable. The history of colonial and neo-colonial conditions structuring the relations of the North, Central and South Americas is both critical in understanding (...) the political condition of Latinos in the USA and relevant in current colonial relations. Key Words: ascriptive class segment • colonialism • ethnic names • Hispanic • Latino • neo-colonialism • political contestation. (shrink)

The politics of ethnic names, such as ‘Latino’ and ‘Hispanic’, raises legitimate issues for three reasons: because non-political considerations of descriptive adequacy are insufficient to determine absolutely the question of names; political considerations may be germane to an ethnic name’s descriptive adequacy; and naming opens up the political question of a chosen furture, to which we are accountable. The history of colonial and neo-colonial conditions structuring the relations of the North, Central and South Americas is both critical in understanding (...) the political condition of Latinos in the USA and relevant in current colonial relations. (shrink)

This article analyses the sign systems or semiotic models that make up the meaning of a double face or mask drawing in the pre-Columbian rock art of Colombia, also discussing two human figures with depicted faces associated with the main picture. The sample of rock art was detected on the walls of the Chicamocha Canyon at the Mirador de Barcenas site in the Santander Department in Northeast Colombia. Its origin is attributed to the Guane chiefdom. We hold as a central (...) argument that this face and its gestures were part of a sign system or visual semiosphere that spread along the banks of the Chicamocha Canyon. However, the image shared some semiotic models and visual communication strategies with societies that inhabited areas in central Colombia located hundreds of kilometers away from the site studied. We support this claim because the forms, the use of the space in the images, and the gestures of a hieratic character appear both in the faces of the petroglyphs of the Huila Department as well as in some pre-Hispanic gold masks from the Cundinamarca region. The images of the rock art faces were analysed using a visual semiotic model based on the suggestions of the Mu group and analyses by Felix Thurleman and Jean Marie Floch. The analysis was complemented by Jacques Fontanille’s proposal for the levels of semiotic relevance, with Juri Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere employed as a key concept. (shrink)

This paper intends to expose and analyze the arguments of philosopher Julián Marías regarding the problem of ethics of the human person, from the approach of human life and the metaphysical anthropology. A member of the “School of Madrid”, his thinking has been inspired by the philosophy of Ortega y Gasset. This paper seeks to recover that influence’s context, to introduce the main concepts of its theoretical model, and to present their considerations about life as a projective, biographical argument, (...) an installation of the circumstances and mundane situations, as ways of constructing the person. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe Dewey’s reception in the Spanish-speaking countries that constitute the Hispanic world. Without any doubt, it can be said that in the past century Spain and the countries of South America have been a world apart, lagging far behind the mainstream Western world. It includes a number of names and facts about the early translation of Dewey’s works in Spain, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina in the first half of the century and (...) a brief explanation of the decline of Dewey in the second half. To a great extent, Dewey’s conception of education was immersed in the international movement of reform that started at the turn of the century and would eventually slowly but surely, renovate the structure of the educational system throughout the entire century, including that of South America. But it is equally clear that the Spanish-speaking countries have displayed a general ignorance of Dewey and, by extension, of American pragmatism during most of the century. In spite of mutual incomprehension, a deep affinity between Dewey’s pragmatism and Hispanic philosophy is suggested in this paper, anticipating that the gradual process of democratization of Spain and the Hispanic countries of South America may be in some sense related to the rediscovery of Dewey and to the application of his key ideas in education. After decades of neglect of Dewey and of his contribution, there is a strong feeling not only that his conception of things is important to understand the last century but that Dewey – along with Peirce and other American classical pragmatists – may very well prove to be a key thinker for the XXIst century also in the Hispanic world. Along this vein, the recent resurgence of pragmatism can be understood not as the latest academic fashion but the occasion to start to close the gap between the two worlds. (shrink)

Contemporary genetic and biomedical research on race and ethnicity has reignited the debate over the biological significance of these categories. This article provides an overview of the critical literature concerning the categorization of Hispanic and Hispanic populations within these research programs. More specifically, this article focuses on issues regarding: The conceptualization of Hispanic identity, issues of data collection and generalization (e.g., the use of a specific Hispanic nationality as a stand‐in for all Hispanics), the tension between (...) social and biological classifications of ethnic populations, and the social, political, and scientific implications of genetic research for Latin America. (shrink)

According to public health data, the US Hispanic population is far healthier than would be expected for a population with low socioeconomic status. Ever since Kyriakos Markides and Jeannine Coreil highlighted this in a seminal 1986 article, public health researchers have sought to explain the so-called “Hispanic paradox.” Several candidate explanations have been offered over the years, but the debate goes on. This article offers a philosophical analysis that clarifies how two sets of obstacles make it particularly difficult (...) to explain the Hispanic paradox. First, different research projects define the Hispanic paradox phenomenon in substantially different ways. Moreover, using Bas van Fraassen’s pragmatic theory of explanation and Sean Valles’s extension of it with the concept of “phenomenon choice,” it also becomes clear that there are also multiple ways of explaining each individual definition of the phenomenon. A second set of philosophical and methodological challenges arises during any attempt to study “Hispanic” phenomena, with one key challenge being that the “Hispanic” panethnic concept was intentionally made vague as it was developed and popularized during the 1960s–1970s. After comparing this case with similar cases in the philosophical literature, the article concludes with observations on what makes this problem unique, particularly its ethical features. (shrink)

Risieri Frondizi was arguably the Latin American philosopher with the strongest personal ties to philosophy in North America. His relation with North American philosophers was key to his philosophical development. Frondizi won a scholarship to do advanced studies at Columbia University in New York. This chapter explores Frondizi's thought and questions whether his philosophy was consonant enough with the core philosophical insights of pragmatism to consider him part of the pragmatist family.

__Forging People __explores the way in which Hispanic American thinkers in Latin America and Latino/a philosophers in the United States have posed and thought about questions of race, ethnicity, and nationality, and how they have interpreted the most significant racial and ethnic labels used in Hispanic America in connection with issues of rights, nationalism, power, and identity. Following the first introductory chapter, each of the essays addresses one or more influential thinkers, ranging from Bartolomé de Las Casas on (...) race and the rights of Amerindians; to Simon Bolívar's struggle with questions of how to forge a nation from disparate populations; to modern and contemporary thinkers on issues of race, unity, assimilation, and diversity. Each essay carefully and clearly presents the views of key authors in their historical and philosophical context and provides brief biographical sketches and reading lists, as aids to students and other readers. “Latin American philosophy has a long history of engagement with issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality. To date, however, there has been no volume that focused on the contributions of the major figures in the Latin American tradition, to illustrate their connections, and to illuminate the context in which much of their work occurred. This volume fills that gap and takes an important step in remedying this shortcoming in the existing philosophical literature, and also in the literature of related fields such as Latin American studies, ethnic studies, and the cross-disciplinary work of race, ethnicity, and nationality.” —_Manuel Vargas, University of San Francisco _. (shrink)

SummaryBoth Iberian and Spanish American liberals in the early decades of the nineteenth century based their political stances upon a particular vision of Spanish history. This vision, nourished by the stereotypes of the so-called ‘black legend’, correspond to an extremely gloomy picture of the main events and processes that had been taking place in the Hispanic monarchy since the late fifteenth century, such as the discovery and conquest of America and the outcome of the Comunidades of Castile war. This (...) essay shows how those first Hispanic liberals, many of whom spent several years in exile, hoping to make sense of that period of uncertainty and revolutionary crisis, sought inspiration in the philosophies of history which were beginning to spread from Northern Europe regarding the decisive role of Protestantism in the origins of modernity. In endorsing such a derogatory vision of the history of their own countries, which included an evaluation of Catholicism as a retrograde factor, those liberal writers and politicians bequeathed to their descendants an interpretative framework that would prove to be very long lasting. In fact, much of the political and intellectual historiography on the Iberian world would be conditioned for a long time by a paradigm which described its past as an anomaly in the Euroamerican context, and assumed the subordinate and peripheral position of the region, portrayed as a kind of ‘interior Orient’—that is, as an aberration of Western civilisation. (shrink)

How diverse is philosophy? In this paper we explore recent data on the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of philosophy students and faculty in the United States. We have found that women are underrepresented in philosophy at all levels from first-year intention to major through senior faculty. The past four years have seen an increase in the percentage of women philosophy majors at the undergraduate level, but it remains to be seen if this recent increase in (...) the percentage of women will eventually also show at more advanced stages. Temporal trends since 2000 also show substantial increases in the racial and ethnic diversity of philosophy majors at all levels of education from first-year undergraduate through PhD, with substantial declines in the percentage of non-Hispanic White philosophy majors and substantial increases in all other commonly measured racial/ethnic groups except for Native American / Alaska Native. Despite generally increasing diversity, people who identify as Hispanic (any race), or non-Hispanic Native American, Alaska Native, or Black remain substantially underrepresented in philosophy at all levels compared to their presence in the U.S. population, and in some cases also as compared to other majors. (shrink)

Text prednáöky, pôvodne pripravenej pre medzinárodnú konferenciu Hispanizmus ako interkultúrny dialóg, Bratislava 199. preloûila Martina Sentálová. / Traducción de “Hispanismo filosófico. Problemas de su constitución,” en: El reto europeo: identidades culturales en el cambio de siglo. . I Jornadas de Hispanismo Filosófico [1992], Jose Luis Abellán (ed), Madrid: Editorial Trotta; Asociación de Hispanismo Filosófico, 1994, págs. 133-142.

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss various articles within the issue on topics including Baroque history in Europe and Latin America, aesthetic tradition of Latin America, and Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset's aesthetic work.