Notes about the Phenomenology of José Gaos

Abstract

For a certainty, José Gaos has been the Mexican philosopher who has contributed the most to the spreading of Phenomenology in Mexico.^* Perhaps it is high time that his countless courses, essays and conferences devoted directly or indirectly to Phenomenology be remembered; part of his effort that it is certainly not necessary to call to mind are his translations of some of the main works of Husserl, including those two that Gaos calls “classics”: Logische Untersuchungen and the First Book of Ideen. They are still present, as they have been during the last half century, to those who approach with more or less care the work of Husserl in all Spanish-speaking countries.¹

A Spanish version of this paper, with some changes and a different title, was read at the Simposio Internacional Filosofia y Educación, organized in homage to Fernando Salmerón on his 70th birthday, at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, November 13–17, 1995. This paper benefits from my first approach to Gaos' Phenomenology, in Zirión 1995.

Gaos translated Logische Untersuchungen (see Husserl 1929), Cartesianische Meditationen (see Husserl 1942), and the First Book of Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie (see Husserl 1949).