Skepticism about Latin American Philosophy

Abstract

A long and varied history of claims about the nature of Latin American philosophy invariably features a normative claims concerning its shortcomings in virtues such as originality, authenticity, peculiarity, and internal or external recognition. As argued in this paper, what to make of such metaphilosophical skepticism depends on the semantics of the ambiguous term ‘Latin American philosophy.’ When interpreted as a distinctive branch of applied philosophy in the way I have proposed in some of my earlier works (2002, 2020), there are no good reasons for skepticism about this type of philosophy. By contrast, there are good reasons for skepticism when interpreted in the universalist way proposed, for example, by Venezuelan philosopher of science Carlos Ulises Moulines (2010). Since each of these interpretations captures what speakers might commonly mean by ‘Latin American philosophy,’ the question of what to make of the quality of the area of philosophy designated by this term is contingent on what we mean. In the course of arguing for this conclusion, this paper rules out some universalist as well distinctivist alternatives.