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The History of Ideas: Substantive and Methodological Aspects of the Thought of Leopoldo Zea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Charles A. Hale
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Extract

One of the most striking developments in Mexican historiography during the last twenty-five years is the burgeoning of the genre known as the ‘history of ideas’. The origins of the movement date back to 1925, when German historicist and existentialist philosophy made its entry into Mexico through the ideas of José Ortega y Gasset. More recently the impetus came from the seminar in the History of Ideas initiated at El Colegio de México and at the National University by the Spanish philosopher, José Gaos. So great has been the influence of Gaos that it is fair to say that until very recently die history of ideas or intellectual history in Mexico has been dominated by his students—men such as Luis Villoro, Francisco López Cámara, and Leopoldo Zea. Edmundo O'Gorman, while not a student of Gaos, shares his views and has come to be considered as a natural member of the history of ideas group.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , May 1971 , pp. 59 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 This statement does not include some students of specifically political ideas, such as Jesús Reyes Heroles. I am indebted to Josefina Vázquez de Knauth and Andrés Lira González for helpful comments and criticism and to Leopoldo Zea for encouraging publication.

2 For an excellent survey of recent Latin American thought which touches upon this theme, see Stabb, Martin S., In Quest of Identity. Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas, 1890–1960 (Chapel Hill, 1967)Google Scholar. Another useful treatment is Davis, Harold E., ‘The History of Ideas in Latin America’, Latin American Research Review, 3 (1968), 23–44.Google Scholar

3 Hirschman, A. O., ‘Ideologies of Economic Development in Latin America’, Latin American Issues: Essays and Comments (New York, 1951), p. 35.Google Scholar

4 Felde, Alberto Zum, Indice crítico de la literatura hispanoamericana, 1 (Mexico, 1954), 292.Google Scholar

5 Ramos, Samuel, Profile of Mon and Culture in Mexico (Austin, 1962), p. 93Google Scholar. I have been told that Rodó is still required reading for students at the National Preparatory School in Mexico.

6 Dore, R. P., ‘Some Comparisons of Latin American and Asian Studies with Special Reference to Research on Japan’, Social Science Research Council Items, 37 (06 1963), 19.Google Scholar

7 Zea, , El Positivismo en México (Mexico, 1943)Google Scholar; Apogeo y decadencia del positivismo en México (Mexico, 1944). Both works have been recently republished in a single volume (Mexico, 1968).

8 Zea, , Positivismo (1968), p. 38.Google Scholar

9 Zea, , ‘Prologo’, Positivismo (1953 ed.), p. 10Google Scholar. Unfortunately, this interesting and revealing statement was omitted from thc 1968 edition.

10 Zea, , Positivismo (1968), pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

11 Zea, , The Latin American Mind (Norman, 1963), pp. 217–18.Google Scholar

12 Zea, , El Occidente y la conciencia de Mexico (Mexico, 1953), p. 72.Google Scholar

13 Zea, , Positivismo (1953), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

14 Zea, , América en la historia (Mexico, 1957), p. 91Google Scholar; see also Filosofía como compromiso (Mexico, 1952), p. 36; Occidente, pp. 42–4. Zea develops the idea of vertical class struggle and horizontal struggle between colonial peoples and imperialist powers. He makes explicit reference to Toynbee's concept of internal and external proletariat.

15 Ibid., p. 15.

16 Zea, , Conciencia y posibilidad del mexicano (Mexico, 1952), p. 85.Google Scholar

17 This general argument is presented in Conciencia, pp. 100–104

18 Zea, , ‘Notas a un libro: México y sus problemas’, in Problemas agrícolas y industriales de México, 3, No. 4, 183–7.Google Scholar

19 Zea, , Occidente, p. 71.Google Scholar

20 Quoted in Romanell, Patrick, Making of the Mexican Mind (Lincoln, 1952), p. 142.Google Scholar

21 Zea, , América en la historia, p. 17.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 9, 17, 236. This view was pointed to in Occidente, p. 21.

23 See Castro, , The Structure of Spanish History (Princeton, 1954), pp. 5, 31Google Scholar. For Zea's reliance on Castro, see América en la historia, pp. 226 ff.

24 Ibid., pp. 242, 245, 253.

25 Ibid., p. 152.

26 Ibid., pp. 33, 154, 267. Zea also seems less sympathetic to the nineteenth-century Spanish liberals than to those of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.

27 See Villegas, Abelardo, La Filosofía de lo mexicano (Mexico, 1960), p. 163.Google Scholar

28 See Zea, , ‘The Interpenetration of the Ibero-American and North American Cultures’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 9 (1948–1949), 538–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Norteamerica en la conciencia latinoamericana’, in Filosofía como compromiso, pp. 82–3 (a talk delivered in 1947 on the centennial of the 1847 war). The dedication is in Dos Etapas del pensamiento en Hispanoamérica (Mexico, 1949).

29 But, adds Zea, Europe (presumably like the Hispanic world) has now begun to defend its heritage: it ‘declares itself Classic and Christian’ in the face of North American bourgeois capitalism. América en la historia, pp. 160–1.

30 See, for example, ibid., p. 169. Zea's most recent writings have emphasized Latin America's relationship to the Third World. See ‘Identidad en América Latina’, Latino América, No. 1 (1968), pp. 9–23 and La Filosofía americana como filosofía sin mas (Mexico, 1969).

31 Zea, , América en la historia, p. 275.Google Scholar

32 See Zea, , Positivismo (1968), pp. 22–3Google Scholar; Gasset, Ortega y, Concord and Liberty (New York, 1946), p. 128.Google Scholar

33 There are convenient short statements of this position by Villoro, and O'Gorman, in Lewis, A. R. and McGann, T. F. (eds.), The New World Looks at its History (Austin, 1963), pp. 173–82, 200–204.Google Scholar

34 ‘La Historia intelectual en Hispanoamérica’, Memoria del primer congreso de historiadores de México y los Estados Unidos (Mexico, 1950), p. 315. For a lucid discussion of the assumptions of the existennalist school of historiography, see Phelan, John L., ‘Mexico y lo mexicano’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 36 (1956), 309–18Google Scholar. Another interesting statement is William Raat, D., ‘Ideas and History in Mexico; An Essay on Methodology’, unpublished paper given at the Third Conference of Historians of the United States and Mexico, Oaxtepec, Mexico, 1968.Google Scholar

35 See Zea, , Latin American Mind, pp. 3–11Google Scholar; ‘Historia intelectual’, pp. 316–17.

36 See my Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, 1821–1853 (New Haven and London, 1968), especially ch. 4.

37 Barager, , ‘Historiography of the Rio de la Plata Area Since 1830’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 39 (1959), 591n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 For a detailed critique of Zea's study of positivism see Raat, William D., ‘Leopoldo Zea and Mexican Positivism: A Reappraisal’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 47 (1968), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 My assertion here is prompted by the remarks of Morse, Richard M. in ‘The Strange Career of “Latin American Studies”’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 356 (1964), 109–10.Google Scholar

40 It is interesting to note that Luis Villoro bas recently urged his colleagues to pay more attention to the social and institutional context of ideas: ‘Historia de las ideas’, Historia Mexicana, 15 (1965–1966), 165–6.

41 Tannenbaum, , The Mexican Agrarian Revolution (Washington, 1929), pp. 179–80Google Scholar. Tannenbaum cites particularly a 1922 statement by Andrés Molina Enríquez.

42 I would hold to the significance of this topic despite implications to the contrary in Womack, John Jr, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

43 Romanell, , Making of the Mexican Mind, p. 146.Google Scholar