Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century

Abstract

Sánchez and Sanchez have selected, edited, translated, and written an introduction to some of the most influential texts in 20th century Mexican philosophy. Together, these texts reveal and give shape to a unique and robust tradition that will certainly challenge and complicate traditional conceptions of philosophy. The texts collected here are organized chronologically and represent a period of Mexican thought and culture that emerges out of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and cultimates in la filosofía de lo mexicano (the philosophy of Mexicanness), which reached its peak in the 1950s. Though the selections respond to a variety of philosophical questions and themes and will be of interest to a wide range of readers, they represent a tendency to take seriously the question of Mexican national identity as a philosophical question—an issue that is complicated by Mexico’s indigenous and European ancestries, its history of colonialism, and its growing dependency on foreign money and culture. More than an attempt simply to describe the national character, however, the texts gathered here represent an optimistic period in Mexican philosophy that aimed to affirm Mexican philosophy as a valuable, if not urgent, contribution to universal thought and culture.