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The gift of Mexican historicism

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Abstract

The focus of this paper is Mexican historicism. It has three objectives: first, to introduce English-speaking readers to the nature and history of Mexican historicism; second, to defend Mexican historicism against the charges of relativism usually raised against historicism in general and “Mexican” philosophy in particular; and third, to argue for what I call the transcendental, or alternatively, “liberatory,” nature of Mexican historicism—a nature with philosophical and political consequences. The hope is that by making the clarifications and determinations made here, the tradition of Mexican philosophy, of which Mexican historicism is a key moment, may find its place in the increasingly pluralistic US philosophical landscape.

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Notes

  1. Emerson (1961, p. 18).

  2. Uranga (1952, p. 99).

  3. See Sánchez (2010) for a more detailed account of Uranga’s philosophy of generosity and how it compares to Levinas’ and others in the continental tradition.

  4. Reyes (2017, p. 240).

  5. Paz (1985, p. 194).

  6. We understand Weltanschauung as “an ethic or set of practical principles that both reinforce and originate in a distinct view of the world-order.” See Woodford (2012, p. 177).

  7. Cf., Ankersmit (1995) and Popper (1961).

  8. Hoover (1992, p. 356).

  9. As opposed to Karl Popper’s version which “defines historicism as deterministic, as holding that historical forces are irresistable” (Hoover 1992, p. 355).

  10. Berdyaev (1936, p. 24).

  11. Hoover (1992, p. 358).

  12. Ryn (1998, p. 87).

  13. See Miró Quesada (1991, p. 145) and Ankersmit (1995, p. 144).

  14. Ryn (1998, p. 89).

  15. Hoover (1992, p. 360).

  16. Miró Quesada (1991, p. 145).

  17. Ryn (1998, p. 90).

  18. Hoover (1992, p. 358).

  19. Iggers (1995, p. 130).

  20. Margolis (1984, p. 308).

  21. Ortega y Gasset (2000, p. 41).

  22. The doctrine of historicism is forcefully promoted by Ortega in his first book, Meditaciones del Quijote of 1914 and further elaborated in El tema de nuestro tiempo of 1923. See Ortega y Gasset (1958, 2000).

  23. Ortega y Gasset (1961, p. 168).

  24. Ibid. (p. 182).

  25. Ibid. (p. 195).

  26. Ibid. (p. 217).

  27. Ibid. (p. 217).

  28. Ibid. (pp. 232–233).

  29. Ureña (1995 [1925], p. 383).

  30. As in Ortega’s formula of 1914: “I am myself plus my circumstance, and if I don’t save it, I don’t save myself” (Ortega y Gasset 2000); see also, Miró Quesada (1991, pp. 153ff).

  31. Ortega’s philosophy was promoted directly through his books and journals and indirectly through his students, Spanish intellectuals fleeing the Spanish Civil War after 1937, such as José Gaos, Eduardo Nicol, and Xavier Zubiri.

  32. Zea (1945, p. 26).

  33. Ibid. (p. 26). Here, Zea echoes Ortega y Gasset. Ortega writes: “man always only has a necessity to think, because he is always in some sort of doubt” (quoted in Fernandez 1981, p. 116).

  34. Ibid. (p. 30).

  35. Ibid. (p. 29).

  36. Ibid. (p. 31).

  37. Ibid. (p. 33).

  38. Ibid. (p. 33).

  39. Uranga (1952, p. 45); see also, Sánchez (2012, 2016) for a comprehensive account and analysis of the project carried out by the philosophers of “lo mexicano.”

  40. Uranga (1952, p. 45).

  41. Villegas (1979, p. 216).

  42. Uranga (1952, p. 14).

  43. Ibid. (p. 14; italics in the original). The influence of historicism is also present in Luis Villoro’s masterpiece, Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México (1950), where Villoro employs the historicist method to lay out and properly analyze the ideology of indigenism that has, at that time and place in Mexico, gripped the Mexican cultural consciousness. This work, he writes, “responds to an intellectual project and a determinate cultural project” (Villoro 1987, p. 9). The analysis will likewise consider the historical dimension as shaping and influencing the manner in which the ideology of indigenism has entered the modern worldview. The analysis must be based on, ultimately, “a history of the ideological covering-up and of the manner in which it will be uncovered” (p. 11). This is a philosophical task that nonetheless begins and is “directed at given cultural and historical facts: the set of conceptions regarding the indigenous which have been expressed in the course of our history” (p. 15).

  44. Villaseñor (1945).

  45. See, Pie (2012) and Uranga (1977).

  46. Villegas (1979, p. 215).

  47. Ibid. (pp. 215–216).

  48. Ibid. (p. 217).

  49. Ibid. (p. 223).

  50. Ibid. (p. 228).

  51. Feyerabend (1989, p. 402).

  52. Villegas (1979, pp. 227–228).

  53. Ibid. (p. 228).

  54. Rorty (1984, p. 50; my italics).

  55. Miró Quesada (1991, p. 151).

  56. Villegas (1979, p. 231).

  57. Iggers (1995, p. 131).

  58. Uranga (1952, p. 99).

  59. Gracia (1992, 2003).

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    Carlos Alberto Sánchez

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Sánchez, C.A. The gift of Mexican historicism. Cont Philos Rev 51, 439–457 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-017-9425-5

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