A Study in Recent Mexican Thought

Author(s): Risieri Frondizi

Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Sep., 1955), pp. 112-116
Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20123488
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 A STUDY IN RECENT MEXICAN THOUGHT
RISIERI FRONDIZI

-American interest in Latin-American philosophy is of very recent

origin. Once it appeared however, William Rex Crawford's
volume, A Century of Latin-American Thought, arrived in time to
channel it in the proper direction. In spite of its faults, this first
survey study devoted entirely to Latin-American thought did
manage to fulfill the goal of intercultural rapprochement it had set
for itself. In addition, the Inter-American Congresses of Philos
ophy held in New York in 1947 and in Mexico in 1950, which
were preceded by the Inter-American Conference at Yale in 1943
and the Congress in Haiti in 1944, gave philosophers of the two
Americas the first real opportunity to get acquainted with each
other personally and to carry on formal and informal discussions.
Soon afterwards several American universities (Boston, Penn
sylvania, Yale, etc.) began to offer special courses in Latin
American philosophy.
A worthy product of the growing interest on the part of
North Americans in Ibero-American philosophy is Patrick
Romanell's Making of the Mexican Mind: A Study in Recent
Mexican Thought.1 This is the first book published in English, or,
for that matter, in any language, on twentieth-century Mexican
philosophy. The fact that Romanell's book was translated into
Spanish and published in Mexico soon after the appearance of the
American edition is clear proof that it is not a mere expository
work written primarily for home consumption. Besides, the
volume is not restricted, as its subtitle might suggest, to a study
of contemporary Mexican philosophy. It aims at something more
than that: to discover the essence of the Mexican way of life and
thus to uncover the Latin-American soul.
The author is quite justified in insisting from the very
beginning that the philosophy of a country cannot be reduced to

1 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1952).

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A STUDY IN RECENT MEXICAN THOUGHT 113

a conceptual scheme, since pre-conceptual attitudes, reactions,

and feelings reveal much better the deeper level of a people's
mentality. Romanell thinks that "the tragic sense of life" charac
terizes Hispano-American culture, while "the epic sense of life"
may be said to characterize Anglo-American culture. The Mexican
painter Jos? Clemente Orozco and William James are the symbols
of the two attitudes in question, according to Mr. Romanell.
These ideas are expressed in the introductory chapter, entitled
"A Character Sketch of the Two Americas." The second chapter
contains an historical survey of Mexican philosophy from the
colonial period down to the present. The third and fourth chap
ters are devoted to Antonio Caso and Jos? Vasconcelos, respec
tively, and the fifth to Mexican existentialism. A very well
selected bibliography on contemporary Mexican philosophy com
pletes the volume.
According to the author, there are five principal stages
involved in the making of the Mexican mind: the Scholastic, the
Enlightenment, the Anti-Rationalistic, the Positivistic, and the
Anti-Positivistic. As the book is concerned chiefly with Mexican
thought after 1910, no one can blame the author for the sketchy
character of his second chapter. As a matter of fact, it was a
good idea to include such a chapter, especially when one considers
that the original was to circulate among readers who were not
familiar with what had happened intellectually in Mexico prior to
1910.
The two chapters dealing with Caso and Vasconcelos may be
considered the substance of the book. After pointing out the
three stages discernible in the development of Caso's thought (the
anti-intellectualist, the pragmatist, and the dualist), the author
takes up briefly the first two, devoting most of his attention to the
last stage, referred to as Caso's "Christian Dualism." There he
examines Bergson 's influence on the Mexican philosopher, calling
him "a Christian interpreter of Bergson 's philosophy." At the
end of the chapter, Mr. Romanell maintains that Caso's "meta
physics adds virtually nothing new to the old debate of vitalism
versus mechanism, except the multiplication of unnecessary
entities," though he recognizes fully the timely significance of

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 114 RISIERI FRONDIZI

Caso's heroic challenge to the doctrine of the "impetus of power"

inspired by Nietzsche.
In the fourth chapter Romanell studies Vasconcelo's Aesthetic
Monism in terms of its three main assumptions, namely, "(1) That
beauty is a special form of cosmic energy. (2) That the proper
way of comprehending the nature of things is through aesthetic
emotion. (3) That the universe is not only running downwards
but running upwards also, getting more and more beautiful."
The author compares Vasconcelos with Bergson and Croce, and
concludes that "while Bergson tried to tell the contemporary
world what is wrong with science, Vasconcelos has aimed at
telling it what is right with art. The latter's message is doubt
less the other (positive) side of the former's." One should bear
in mind that beauty is, for Vasconcelos, the highest form of truth.
The reading of the chapter on Vasconcelos?which is well
done in many respects?leaves one with the impression that the
author exaggerates the originality of this Mexican thinker and, as
a result, does not distinguish with sufficient clarity a mind which
is original from one which is eccentric. Philosophical originality
is or should be a creative or constructive affair; it cannot consist
of merely piecing together a few ideas and deriving a heap of
fantastic conclusions from them. At any rate, many pages of
Vasconcelos 's "philosophical work" will go down as an example of
what an uncontrolled imagination will do when it invades the
field of philosophy. Very little benefit for future philosophizing
can be derived from a "philosophical system" which is not based
on facts or rational principles but on its own metaphors. One
should not be deceived by high-sounding phrases. In short, more
originality and intellectual honesty can be found in Caso's modest
work than in Vasconcelos's arrogant writing, much of which
seems to be done pour ?pater le bourgeois.
The fifth and final chapter of the book deals with "Per
spectivism and Existentialism in Mexico." Here the author suc
cinctly expounds the philosophy of Jos? Ortega y Gasset and skill
fully brings to the fore both the direct influence of the Spanish
thinker in Mexico as well as the indirect impact of his Germano
phile activities on the process of "Germanization" evident in con
temporary Mexican thought. Though the author points out that

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A STUDY IN RECENT MEXICAN THOUGHT 115

there are three main currents in present-day Mexican philosophy

(the neo-Orteguian, the neo-Kantian, and the neo-Scholastic), he
studies at some length only the first. As to the neo-Orteguian
current itself, what he does is to summarize briefly the major
writings of the following neo-Orteguians (existentialists) in
Mexico: Samuel Ramos, Leopoldo Zea, Edmundo o'Gorman and
Justino Fern?ndez. Incidentally, in studying this aspect of con
temporary Mexican thought, the author does not emphasize
sufficiently the influence of Jos? Gaos on the philosophical forma
tion of the last three men (the only reference to the influence of
Gaos appears in the discussion on o'Gorman).
In the last pages of his work Mr. Romanell returns to
his initial thesis that "the tragic sense of life" is "charac
teristic of the Latin-American soul"?which stands in contrast to
the Anglo-American soul, with its characteristic "epic sense of
life." Even though this distinction throws some light on the
differences of attitude within the two Americas, it should not be
taken ? la lettre. For the fact remains that the tragic sense of life
which is attributed to Latin America as a whole has been derived
by the author from Mexico, where he sees it symbolized in the bull
fight and in Orozco's painting. Generalizations are always danger
ous, especially when one is dealing with cultures that overlap. A
Mexican is, at the same time, a Latin American, and it is not easy
to separate one from the other. Nevertheless, the author seems
to attribute to Ibero-America what is peculiar to Mexico. Do
Uruguayans and Argentinians have, to mention only two cases,
a tragic sense of life ? In the region of the R?o de la Plata one can
hardly find such an attitude of life, and even the symbols
mentioned by Romanell are lacking there. A similar objection
can be made to the author's statement, which is only partly true,
regarding "the cultural mestizaje of Latin America."
These critical remarks should not be taken to mean that the
present work is not a valuable contribution to the understanding
of contemporary Mexican philosophy. Rather, it is to be hoped
that Mr. Romanell will some day undertake a similar study of
other Hispano-American countries which have now reached
philosophic maturity, and that he will perform his task, as he has
done in this one, with direct knowledge of the source materials

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 116 RISIERI FRONDIZI

and with deep and sympathetic understanding of our ways of life

and culture?qualities which can be possessed only by a person
who, like him, has lived for many years in Latin-American lands.

University of Puerto Rico.

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