10 - Skepticism and Anti-Skepticism About Latin American Philosophy

Summary

Chapter 10 argues that Latin American philosophy, when broadly construed to include the philosophical thought of a number of academic and nonacademic philosophers, is a type of applied philosophy devoted to issues related to Latin America. Philosophical inquiry into its issues has resulted in the development of a number of ‘isms,’ as illustrated by the chapters in the present book. Some are homegrown ‘isms,’ others amount to novel twists on well-known doctrines of Western philosophy. Many concern matters of practical ethics and social and political philosophy, such as Lascasianism, Arielism, Bolivarism, modest and immodest feminism, republicanism, positivism, Marxism, and liberationism. There are also meta-philosophical ‘isms,’ such as originalism and perspectivism. Evidence from these ‘isms’ helps debunk a number of skeptical positions about Latin American philosophy that are reviewed in this chapter (by Frondizi, Cannabrava, Pereda, Hurtado, Rabossi, and Ezcurdia among others). But not all the anti-skeptics succeed in making a strong case for their view, as shown in the analysis of Zea’s perspectivism and Gracia’s ethnic-philosophy view. More plausible than any of these is the applied-philosophy view of the author – or so she argues here.