Abstract

Eliseo Vivas's intellectual life started at the political left and within the tradition of American naturalism, and has ended up somewhere to the political right and with some form of anti-naturalism. Vivas also started "with a great deal of cocksure confidence about his knowledge of the ills of society and the nature of the universe" and ended up recognizing that "he knew very little besides the fact that he did not know, because genuine knowledge about these matters does not exist". This book, written in the form of a biography of one Alonzo Quijano, is an intimate intellectual memoir of the changes in political attitude and philosophical conviction that went between. A flirtation with communism in the thirties and various political squabbles within academia are presented as stages on life's way, and serve as background for freely rambling discussions of naturalism, liberalism, the origin of man, ethical and aesthetic values, ultimate mysteries, and the nature and limits of philosophy.