Meshico is a term which began to be employed in the middle of the 20th century by a group of Mexican intellectuals connected to the influential magazine Meshico Grande in order to define a philosophical and sociological stance based on an authentic ontology of the Mexican person, one that would serve, as well, as a means of confronting the dependency of the official intelligentsia on ways of thinking perceived as being too foreign to permit a true understanding of Mexican reality.
The group decided on the unusual spelling in order to differentiate itself from the official Europeanizing intelligentsia; they believed that the spelling "meshico" was historically more accurate as it reflected the original Nahuatl pronunciation of the word, and, for this reason, would be an appropriate name for a group dedicated to a professedly authentic understanding of Mexican identity (Mexicanidad).
Among the many notable members of the group were Rosario María Gutiérrez Eskildsen, Manuel Sánchez Mármol, Francisco Javier Santamaría, and José Vasconcelos. The Tabascan Dr. Ricardo Alfonso Sarabia y Zorrilla was one of the group's more assiduous promoters and served for a time as director of Meshico Grande. He also contributed to a wider awareness of the group's goals and positions by writing, among other works, a paper entitled "Filosofía de la acción y reseña del pensamiento filosófico de Meshico" [Philosophy of Action and Review of the Philosophical Thinking of Meshico], which was originally published in the Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Philosophy, Brussels 1953.
Sarabia y Zorrilla cites, in the aforementioned work, the definition of Truth given by the obscure and retiring Mexican philosopher and mathematician Edmundo Cetina Velázquez: "[it is knowledge] which corresponds to the integral unity of being; the world of thought will always reveal to us an external world, sensible or abstract; but always unilateral. 'Truth,' which is reality, is the patrimony of the totality of being." Sarabia y Zorrilla saw in such a statement a correct testimony of faith in an epistemological holism functioning in opposition to the notion of knowledge as a goal obtainable only through a scientific vision which is essentially and necessarily ontic and a posteriori (compare the avowal made by Sarabia himself in the same text: "everything is related, coordinated, linked harmoniously and amorously").
José Gómez Robleda, a teacher, psychiatrist and Subsecretary of Public Education during the Adolfo Ruiz Cortines administration, published in 1947 a book titled Imagen del Mexicano (Image of the Mexican). Sarabia y Zorrilla describes the study as "the work which for the first time studies the way of being of the Mexican man," especially in his ethnopsychological dimensions, and praises it for a vision of the human which, owing to its philosophical balance, succeeds in avoiding the worst rationalistic tendencies of ComtianPositivism, without falling into the no less problematic cosmic mysticism of José Vasconcelos (who Professor Sarabia once described, with no intended harshness, as a "philosopher-artist").
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical movement that arose in the second half of the 20th century as a critical response to assumptions allegedly present in modernist philosophical ideas regarding culture, identity, history, or language that were developed during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment. Postmodernist thinkers developed concepts like difference, repetition, trace, and hyperreality to subvert "grand narratives", univocity of being, and epistemic certainty. Postmodern philosophy questions the importance of power relationships, personalization, and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. Many postmodernists appear to deny that an objective reality exists, and appear to deny that there are objective moral values.
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification", often in contrast to other possible sources of knowledge such as faith, tradition, or sensory experience. More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".
Jaime Luciano Balmes y Urpiá was a Spanish philosopher, theologian, Catholic apologist, sociologist and political writer. Familiar with the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Balmes was an original philosopher who did not belong to any particular school or stream, and was called by Pius XII the Prince of Modern Apologetics.
Intellectualism is the mental perspective that emphasizes the use, development, and exercise of the intellect, and is identified with the life of the mind of the intellectual. In the field of philosophy, the term intellectualism indicates one of two ways of critically thinking about the character of the world: (i) rationalism, which is knowledge derived solely from reason; and (ii) empiricism, which is knowledge derived solely from sense experience. Each intellectual approach attempts to eliminate fallacies that ignore, mistake, or distort evidence about "what ought to be" instead of "what is" the character of the world.
Actual idealism was a form of idealism, developed by Giovanni Gentile, that grew into a "grounded" idealism, contrasting the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, and the absolute idealism of G. W. F. Hegel. To Gentile, who considered himself the "philosopher of fascism" while simultaneously describing himself as liberal and socialist, actualism was presented the sole remedy to philosophically preserving free agency, by making the act of thinking self-creative and, therefore, without any contingency and not in the potency of any other fact.
José Vasconcelos Calderón, called the "cultural caudillo" of the Mexican Revolution, was an important Mexican writer, philosopher, and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of the "cosmic race" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic policies.
Fides et ratio is an encyclical promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998. It was one of 14 encyclicals issued by John Paul II. The encyclical primarily addresses the relationship between faith and reason.
Leonardo Polo was a renowned Spanish philosopher best known for his philosophical method called abandonment of the mental limit and the profound philosophical implications and results of the application of this method.
María Zambrano Alarcón was a Spanish essayist and philosopher associated with the Generation of '36 movement. Her extensive work between the civic engagement and the poetic reflection started to be recognised in Spain over the last quarter of the 20th century after living many years in exile. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award (1981) and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1988).
Joseph Zalman Margolis was an American philosopher. A radical historicist, he authored many books critical of the central assumptions of Western philosophy, and elaborated a robust form of relativism.
Leopoldo Zea Aguilar was a Mexican philosopher.
Juan David García Bacca was a Spanish-Venezuelan philosopher and university professor. He was born in Pamplona on June 26, 1901, and died on August 5, 1992, in Quito, Ecuador. Bacca began his education under the Claretians and was ordained as a priest in 1925. He continued his studies at the University of Munich, the University of Zurich, and the University of Paris. However, during the 1930s, he left the Church and pursued philosophy at the University of Barcelona. In 1936 after criticizing Francisco Franco, Bacca was forced to live in exile. He first traveled to Ecuador where he taught at the Central University of Ecuador (1939-1942). While in Ecuador he became close friends with a writer named Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco. He then went to Mexico where he taught at UNAM from 1942 to 1946. He eventually established himself in Venezuela in 1946 and was granted citizenship in 1952. Bacca was a professor at the Central University of Venezuela until his retirement in 1971. He was recognized for his life's work and was awarded the National Prize for Literature in 1978.
Antonio Caso Andrade was a Mexican philosopher and rector of the former Universidad Nacional de México, nowadays known as the National Autonomous University of Mexico from December 1921 to August 1923. Along with José Vasconcelos, he founded the Ateneo de la Juventud, a humanist group against philosophical positivism. The Athenian generation opposed Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer’s philosophical views, giving credence to and expanding on the ideas of Henri Bergson, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and José Enrique Rodó. Caso opposed rationalism. His group the ateneistas believed in a moral, willing, and spiritual individual being. He was the older brother of archaeologist Alfonso Caso.
The Mexican Youth Athenaeum, later known as the Athenaeum of Mexico, was a Mexican civil association founded on October 28, 1909 with the purpose of working in favor of culture and art, by means of organization public meetings and debates. Born as a response of a generation of young intellectuals who in the decline of the rule of President Porfirio Díaz set a series of criticisms to determinism and mechanism set by the Comtian and Spencerian positivism as the development model of Porfirio Díaz's administration and the group of the científicos. Through a series of conferences and different cultural efforts they activated a reflexive awareness on education. It was an association of intellectuals, primarily writers and philosophers. Most of the members were indeed young and came to represent a new generation of Mexican scholars, reacting specifically against positivism and its prevalence in the ideology of the regime of Dictator Porfirio Diaz. The group sought a revindication of the humanities as the center of cultural creation.
Horst Matthai Quelle was a Spanish-speaking German philosopher.
Emilio Uranga González was a Mexican philosopher.
Manuel Sánchez Cuesta is philosopher, ethicist and humanist.
José Luis Gómez Martínez is a professor emeritus of Spanish at the University of Georgia. Essayist and literary critic, his research into the theory of the essay, along with his work on Hispanic thought and Latin American fiction helped push literary boundaries and open up new lines of thinking within and outside of academia. During his professional career José Luis Gómez won several awards for his scholarly contributions, including the prestigious Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1984–1985), the Albert Christ-Janer Award (1988), named Professor of the Year by the AATSP-GA, the 1989 Sturgis Leavitt Prize. In 2000 he was elected Membro Correspondente da Academia Brasileira de Filosofia.
Julio Cabrera is an Argentine philosopher living in Brazil. He is a retired professor of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brasília and former head of the department. Previously he taught in Argentina, at the National University of Córdoba, the University of Belgrano and then in Brazil at the Federal University of Santa Maria. He is best known for his works on "negative ethics" and cinema and philosophy. Other areas of philosophy that he deals with are philosophy of language, logic and Latin American philosophy.
Francisco José Ramos is a Puerto Rican philosopher, poet, and retired university professor. He is the author of the philosophical trilogy Aesthetics of Thought. He is also a numerary member of the Puerto Rican Spanish Academy.
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