Home > Positioning > Subjects > Metaphilosophy > Philosophy in Latin America > The founders and normality

The Founders and Normality

Around 1900 a generation broke with positivism. Francisco Romero (1891–1962) called them the founders, among them Alejandro Korn (1860–1936) in Argentina and Antonio Caso (1883–1946) of the Ateneo de la Juventud in Mexico. Beside them in Uruguay stood José Enrique Rodó (1871–1917).

Rodó’s Ariel (1900) set thought against utility. “Pensar, soñar, admirar: he ahí los nombres de los sutiles visitantes de mi celda”, to think, to dream, to admire: those are the names of the subtle visitors to my cell; the ancients gave them a place in their “noble inteligencia del ocio”, their noble understanding of leisure. The inner life, “la meditación desinteresada, la contemplación ideal, el ocio antiguo”, disinterested meditation, ideal contemplation, the leisure of the ancients, keeps “la integridad de vuestra condición humana”, the integrity of your human condition, against “el interés utilitario”, utilitarian interest. And against imitation of the North: “Tenemos nuestra nordomanía. Es necesario oponerle los límites que la razón y el sentimiento señalan de consuno”, we have our mania for the North; it must be held within the limits that reason and feeling set together.

Caso drew the line between knowing and acting. “Lector: lo que aquí se dice es sólo filosofía, y la filosofía es un interés de conocimiento. La caridad es acción. Vé y comete actos de caridad. Entonces, además de sabio, serás santo. La filosofía es imposible sin la caridad; pero la caridad es perfectamente posible sin la filosofía”: reader, what is said here is only philosophy, and philosophy is an interest of knowledge. Charity is action. Go and do acts of charity; then, besides wise, you will be holy. Philosophy is impossible without charity, but charity is perfectly possible without philosophy (La existencia como economía, como desinterés y como caridad, 1919, from a pamphlet of 1916). Its method is “a posteriori siempre; respetuosa de la santa realidad, humilde servidora de su fin, que es la verdad”, always a posteriori, respectful of holy reality, humble servant of its end, which is truth, against the systems that give “la efímera ilusión del conocimiento total”, the passing illusion of total knowledge.

Korn gave philosophy its object. “El objeto de la filosofía es el hombre, esto es, el sujeto valorante. En tanto no invada el dominio de las ciencias exactas o de la especulación metafísica, la filosofía es teoría de los valores o sea axiología” (“Axiología”, 1930): the object of philosophy is the human being, that is, the subject who values; so long as it does not invade the domain of the exact sciences or of metaphysical speculation, philosophy is the theory of values, or axiology. It “contempla la multiplicidad de las valoraciones, las agrupa, distingue y califica, estudia su génesis, su jerarquía y su trasmutación … y por fin su posible síntesis”, considers the many valuations, groups, distinguishes and grades them, studies their origin, their hierarchy and their transformation, and at last their possible synthesis.

Romero, in 1940, saw a new stage beginning: “se inicia una etapa de normalidad filosófica … Ante todo, el ejercicio de la filosofía como función ordinaria de cultura, al lado de las otras ocupaciones de la inteligencia. No ya como la meditación o creación de unos pocos entendimientos conscientes de la indiferencia circundante”: a stage of philosophical normality begins; above all, the practice of philosophy as an ordinary function of culture, beside the other occupations of the mind, no longer as the meditation or creation of a few minds aware of the indifference around them. Philosophy had been done from the professor’s chair or by isolated men, “maestros de sí mismos”, their own teachers; now it would have a “clima filosófico”, a philosophical climate, “una especie de opinión pública especializada”, a kind of specialised public opinion, and like any theoretical trade it “permite y aun requiere el aporte de mentes no extraordinarias: basta el indispensable sentido para estos problemas, la seriedad, la información, la disciplina”, allows and even requires the contribution of minds that are not extraordinary: a sense for these problems, seriousness, information and discipline are enough. And it had a direction: “La filosofía está animada en nuestra América de un enérgico sentido continental”, philosophy in our America is moved by a vigorous continental sense.