International Phenomenological Society

Contemporary Argentine Philosophy

Author(s): Risieri Frondizi
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, Papers and Discussions of the
First Inter-American Conference of Philosophy (Dec., 1943), pp. 180-186
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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SESSION I: CONTEMPORARY LATIN-AMERICAN THOUGHT
CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE PHILOSOPHY

The development of philosophy in Argentina-as in the rest of the Latin-

American countries-can be divided in three main periods. The first-
called the Scholastic period-ends at the beginning of the last century and it
is followed by the predominance of postivism which covers roughly the
nineteenth century and constitutes the second period. The third one is
the result of the struggle against positivism at the beginning of this cen-
tury.
It is fair to notice that the reaction against Scholastic philosophy started
before positivism came upon the scene. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century there was in Argentina a strong movement for independence from
Spain that culminated in 1810 and that was inspired by French thought.
Since then, though the teaching of philosophy continued in the hands
of the priests they did not go to Scholasticism for inspiration but to the
French thinkers.
Father Juan Crisostomo Lafinur, for instance, taught philosophy in 1819
in the "Colegio de la Union del Sur" in Buenos Aires under the influence
of French ideology. He was tried and sent into exile, but French ideology
was already introduced in Argentina. Another Father, Juan Manuel
Fernandez de Agilero, who was the first to teach philosophy in the Univer-
sity of Buenos Aires in 1822, followed Lafinur and taught under the same
influence.
This influence was mainly political. For almost fifty years political
issues were the central point of discussion and preocupation. When
independence from Spain was secured, Argentina tried for a long time to
organize itself into a constitutional republic. While the French influence
was decaying, German romanticism came and inspired the whole period of
constitutional organization. Herder, Goethe, Schiller, were perhaps the
most widely read. The influence of the real German philosophers of that
period-Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel-was not strong by that
time. They came, it is interesting to notice, to support the fight against
positivism.
As it is very well known, the influence of the Catholic Church in the
development of culture in Latin-American countries was extraordinary. In
spite of French ideology and German romanticism, the Catholic "Weltan-
schauung" was predominant in Argentina around the year 1880. It was the
task of positivism to fight against this predominance. To understand the
influence of positivism one has to keep in mind two main points: (1) that
positivism was polemical in its origin and development; (2) that it covered
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 CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE PHILOSOPHY 181

not only the field of philosophy but also that of education, law, sociol-
ogy, etc.
The first characteristic explains why positivism was rather a negative
than a constructive theory. Argentine thinkers of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth century, were trying to
destroy the theological and metaphysical theories prevailing, and for that
purpose they used the arguments of Comte and Spencer against metaphy-
sics. This negative characteristic was kept even when Scholasticism was
defeated on philosophical grounds. The positivist agnosticism and its
contempt for metaphysical problems were later repudiated by the new
philosophical movement that substituted positivism.
The second characteristic explains the extraordinary influence of positiv-
ism. We have to remember that Argentina was, by that time, still fighting
against heavy economical and social problems. And it is a fact that when
man has insecurity in everyday life he is not much inclined to philosophical
speculations. Even now, when all the followers of Comte and Spencer
are gone, one can find a strong positivistic movement in educational theory
and practice, in sociology, and especially in criminal law.
It is unfair to judge the positivists' contribution to philosophy in terms
of their written work or in terms of the new ideas developed. Positivistic
theories arose as a protest against Scholasticism; their job was to free
philosophical issues from the monopoly of the Catholic church. And they
did it very well. Since positivism, a free examination of any philosophical
question is possible in Latin America, and even those who later on repud-
iated positivism took advantage of this definite and fundamental contribu-
tion of the positivists.
During the whole Scholastic period, philosophy was restricted to a
justification of the ideas of the Catholic church. On the other hand, when
positivism substituted Scholasticism, philosophy became a task for the
scientists who repudiated metaphysics altogether. But people got in-
terested in philosophical problems and the positivistic solution was far
from being a satisfactory answer to these problems. This explains why
Argentina turned to the anti-positivist movements in Europe, to Bergson,
to Neo-Hegelianism, especially Croce and Gentile, to Neo-Kantianism (the
Marburg School). I think that, on the whole, Bergson was the European
thinker who helped the Latin-American more to overcome the positivistic
stage.
Jose Ingenieros is the first outstanding figure of positivism in Argentina.
He and his disciples cover a period of about twenty years in the history of
Argentine culture. He had extraordinary prestige not only in academic
circles but also among the general public. He was a prolific writer and a

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182 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

successful polemist. But he was more successful in fighting scholastic

ideas and in introducing positivism in Argentina than in defending positiv-
ists' concepts and his own against the attack of the new Argentine thinkers
supported by Bergson, Boutroux, Renouvier, and later by Croce and
Gentile.
Two men stand out in the anti-positivist movement: Alejandro Korn
and Coriolano Alberini. However, their minds, their personalities, and
their interests did not run in the same line. Korn was a real philosopher,
perhaps the only one we ever had in Argentina. He was very well trained
in biological sciences and got into philosophical problems because of his
profound insight, but he never gave up his scientific attitude. Kant, Hegel,
and Schopenhauer helped him to outgrow the positivistic stage of his envi-
ronment. Alberini, on the other hand, is a keen polemist with a political
mind, more inclined to attack his opponents' ideas than to defend his
own. He was very much influenced by Bergson, and his contribution to
philosophy has to do with the struggle against positivism. He has no
disciples or followers, and he has written only a few short articles.
Korn, on the contrary, has contributed negatively and positively to the
development of Latin-American philosophy. Negatively because he is very
much responsible for the rejection of the simple-minded attitude of the
Argentine positivists. And positively because he has new ideas that we
are soon to comment on, and because lie started a new movement to which
the great majority of the Argentine philosophers belong. It is a moral
rather than a theoretical movement and it had greatly helped the develop-
ment of Philosophy in Argentina.
Alejandro Korn was born in 1860 in San Vicente, State of Buenos Aires,
where his father, a German refugee, had settled down and worked as a
physician. He got his M.D. in 1882 in the University of Buenos Aires.
He specialized in neurology and psychiatry and in 1897 was appointed
Director of a hospital for the insane not far away from Buenos Aires. From
the early days he seemed to be interested in problems that were beyond
science, and little by little his interest increased and he came to know the
classics of philosophy very well, especially the Germans of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. In 1906 he was appointed assistant professor
of the history of philosophy in the Division of Philosophy of the University
of Buenos Aires. In 1909 he was promoted to full professor and he taught
there until 1930 when he retired. He died six years later in La Plata.
Though Korn wrote several magnificent works on the main philosophical
problems, it would be unfair to judge him only by his written contribution.
He was gifted with the privilege of exercising a strong influence on whoever
happened to listen to him. He never tried to convince anybody of his

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 CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE PHILOSOPHY 183

personal points of view; he only wanted everyone to seek truth by himself.

Very few of his disciples would subscribe now to his philosophical doctrines,
but practically all of them follow Korn's approach to philosophy and his
attitude towards life. More than a teacher he was a leader. He had
something of an apostle and he stands now as a symbol not only of Argen-
tine but also of Latin-American culture.
His whole philosophy is a struggle of two opposite elements that were very
difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, he was too critical and too much
inclined toward facts to admit the possibility of a knowledge of ultimate
reality. On this line he sounded like Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason.
On the other hand, he had a metaphysical eagerness and he was gifted with
a profound insight that explains why he could not be satisfied with what
science offered him.
Perhaps in his youth Korn was a positivist; we have to remember that he
was mainly trained in biological science. Very soon, though, he realized
that positivism did not do justice to the whole reality and particularly to
the human spirit. Thus, when he writes one of his most important works,
"Creative Freedom," he starts from a point of view beyond positivism and
naive realism. He holds that there is a fact we cannot ignore, namely, that
the whole reality is given in consciousness. Consciousness, then, has to be
the starting-point of philosophy. The analysis of consciousness would re-
veal to us that space, time, and causality, which organize the world we
experience, do not belong to reality but are elements of consciousness. His
idealism stops here, though; he does not identify consciousness with being.
He rejects realism not only on epistemological and metaphysical grounds,
but mainly for ethical reasons. He holds that realism implies materialism
which entails determinism. And his whole philosophy is fundamentally a
complete and definite rejection of determinism-it is a philosophy of free-
dom. The physical world is subject to necessary laws; the moral world is
also subject to laws, but they are not imposed by anybody, they are laws
imposed by ourselves. Here lies our freedom-we are free to choose our
own moral laws and we are free to break them. From this freedom spring
values which are the subject studied by philosophy. Philosophy, there-
fore, is the theory of value; he has devoted a whole book to it called
"Axiology. "
Apart from philosophy stands metaphysics which seeks knowledge of the
ultimate reality. Korn opposes metaphysics to science. Science for him
is equivalent to the mathematical interpretation of empirical reality;
therefore, there could be science only of what is spatial. But spatiality is
only one aspect of reality though a very important one. Man wants to
have a knowledge of reality as a whole and, therefore, gets into metaphysical

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184 PHILOSOPHY RESEARCH
AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

questions. As I have pointed out at the beginning, he seems to hesitate

about the possibility of having any knowledge of the ultimate reality; he
has even maintained the impossibility of knowledge in some of his writings
and at the same time one can read beautiful pages that are the expression
of a profound metaphysical insight.
I am quite aware that this is a poor picture of Korn's philosophy and
personality. But it is very difficult to do justice to a man gifted with the
privilege of a writer and the insight of a philosopher. And even more, to do
justice to his whole personality, which extends beyond his written con-
tribution.
When in 1930 Korn retired as a professor of the University of Buenos
Aires, he was succeeded by an old friend of his, Francisco Romero. When
later on Korn passed away, Romero took his place as the outstanding Ar-
gentine philosopher and the leader of the movement that Korn had started.
Here again we shall have a very poor picture of Romero's personality and
his philosophical abilities if we only refer to his written work. As a matter
of fact, he has not written any systematic book. He has only published
short articles, notes, introductions to new translations, criticisms, etc., that
are scattered in journals and books published in Argentina and in several
other Latin-American countries. They are suggestions for future work,
hints; it is the work of a pioneer and he feels the responsibility of it. His
contribution does not seem to fall within any systematic plan but all of it is
connected through an original attitude towards philosophy and also by a
preference for certain topics. He hasn't a theoretical or academic attitude
towards philosophy. He looks at philosophy as a help to solve problems
that were in his mind long before he started philosophizing. That is why
he is interested in the problems about man and what man does, in philo-
sophical anthropology, in philosophy of culture and of history. He is
mainly influenced by Dilthey, Husserl, Nicolai Hartmann, and Max
Scheler. In a recent paper, Professor Brightman suggests a relation be-
tween Romero, and Whitehead, and James Ward. If there is any kind of
similarity it is merely accidental since Romero's standpoint is quite different
from Whitehead's or Ward's. Besides, these two philosophers have been
practically unknown in Argentina.
Though Romero has contributed to philosophical literature without
interruption for the last twenty years, his first systematic approach goes
back to 1940 when he wrote an article called "Program of a Philosophy."
In this article he maintains a structured conception of reality opposed to the
Humean atomistic conception. In this respect he shows the influence of
the gestalt psychology. Apart from "structure" he emphasizes the concept
of "transcendence" to the extent of identifying it with being. Unfortu-

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 CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE PHILOSOPHY 185

nately, the article is too schematic and one is not sure what Romero means
means by transcendence. He seems to suggest a kind of emergent evolution
since he holds that there is a hierarchy in reality; physical objects, life,
psyche, and spirit. Each stage is constantly transcending itself. He has
recently published another article, "Transcendence and Value," in which he
explains his theory of spirit in reference to these two concepts.
Korn and Romero are, undoubtedly, the two outstanding personalities
in Argentina. Besides them there are a number of minor figures, some of
which are promising ones.
Angel Vassallo, author of the "New Prolegomena to Metaphysics," has
started from a position rather sympathetic to Bergson but has quickly
moved toward a mystical philosophy under the influence of Maurice Blondel
and Gabriel Marcel. Though he is a Catholic, his philosophy does not show
any trace of Thomistic influence.
Alberto Rouges of Tucuman goes along the same line. Unfortunately,
he has kept away from academic circles and he has published a fesNshort
articles. He was influenced by Plotinus and Bergson, and the University
of Tucuman has announced his first book-The Hierarchy of Being-in
which a theory of the Bergsonian type can be found.
Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's existential philosophy has been
enthusiastically propounded by Carlos Astrada, who studied under Heideg-
ger for several years. He is now professor of ethics in the University of
La Plata and he has already published several books about or under the
influence of phenomenology.
Though Argentina, as the rest of the Latin American countries, is essen-
tially Catholic, it is surprising not to find any original Neo-Thomistic
scholar. It is true that Neo-Thomism, especially under the influence of
Jacques Maritain and Garigou-Lagrange is pretty well extended but it was
m6re a political than a philosophical movement. Very recently there was
a revival of the study of Thomas Aquinas and his followers. There have
been published several translations of his works and many articles and
books about or inspired by the medieval thinker. There is a Catholic
School of Philosophy and Theology in San Miguel, not far away from
Buenos Aires, which publishes a journal called "Stromata" and there has
been started a philosophical library that will include works of or about
Thomas Aquinas. The outstanding adherents of Neo-Thomism in Argen-
tina are Fathers Arturo Derisi, Juan Sepich, R. Castegliani, Dr. Casares,
professor of medieval philosophy in the University of Buenos Aires, and
Emile Gouiran, professor of Metaphysics in the University of Cordoba.
Although Argentine philosophers have centered their attention in social
and political philosophy there is no one in Argentina who has really contrib-

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186 RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

uted to the development of these disciplines with the exception of Carlos

Cossio from the University of La Plata, who is propounding a philosophy of
rights under the influence of Hans Kelsen.
Apart from these already mentioned there are a number of personalities
that can be grouped in two different sections. One would include the
professors of Philosophy of the different Universities that because of lack of
time or interest do nothing but teach the ordinary courses. In the other,
we may group the young professors and graduate students of philosophy
who work eagerly but have not yet reached a quite mature position. I
think much can be expected from the latter group.*
RISIERI FRONDIZI.
UNIVERSIDADNACIONAL DE TUCUMAN, ARGENTINA.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY

IN BRAZIL

One cannot speak of a Brazilian philosophy or of Brazilian philosophers

as distinguished from thinkers. We have neither. We have not even a
philosophical mind. Our creative capacity expresses itself in poetry and
music, both of them having been elevated in our country to the highest level
of greatness.
Philosophy has been, in Brazil, a matter of curiosity. Our essayists,
critics, and scholars have dedicated themselves always to the speculation
of philosophical problems. Under this form one may state that philosophy
has been and is constantly present in our intellectual life and has always
been an object and motif of permanent debate, amongst the other problems
of social philosophy, ethics, psychology, esthetics, etc. Generally speaking,
however, philosophy seldom has been treated with a systematic orientation.
As regards philosophical independence, we never have had any. We
have always been in the great currents of universal philosophy. We never
could have a movement or a school of philosophy which has been in any real
sense original.
How could it be different? The creation of a Brazilian philosophy de-
pends on our total behaviour and culture, which depend, in turn, on the
general condition of our civilization. With a colonial status of civilization
we can have only a colonial mentality, which is not the ideal mentality for
building a creative philosophy. And I cannot imagine how we could have
any other mentality without having complete independence-economic,
* This paper is a part of a larger paper, given later but published earlier in In-
ter American Intellectual Interchange, University of Texas, 1943, pp. 35-48.

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