Mexico City (Mexico), 1912 – 2004

By Verónica R. López Nájera

Leopoldo Zea was born in 1912, during the height of the Mexican Revolution. His childhood and adolescence unfolded amidst the country’s battles and the consolidation and institutionalization of the revolutionary project. He began working at a very young age and won a scholarship to pursue his primary education. In 1933, he secured a job at National Telegraphs. He worked at night and studied philosophy and law during the day at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

His academic training coincided with the arrival of exiles from the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, during a class taught by the Spanish philosopher José Gaos, he presented a paper that caught the professor’s attention. Gaos offered him a scholarship on behalf of the Casa de España in Mexico (later, the prestigious Colegio de México), on the condition that he abandon his law degree and dedicate himself exclusively to philosophy. Zea immediately accepted the proposal.

In 1942, he began one of the most productive and intense periods of his academic and personal life. That same year, he published “Acerca de una filosofía americana”, a work in which the germ of his philosophical, historical, and Ibero-American vision is already present. In 1943, he obtained the title of Professor of Philosophy at UNAM with his thesis “Positivism in Mexico”, which was published by the Colegio de México that same year. His doctoral thesis – supervised by José Gaos, presented in 1944, and published shortly thereafter – forms the second part of his work interpreting Mexican culture: “The Rise and Decline of Positivism in Mexico”. That same year, he assumed the chair of the Philosophy of History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters.

With a Rockefeller Foundation grant, between 1945 and 1946, Zea spent six months in the United States and a year traveling through Latin America. During that journey, he came into contact with Latin American intellectuals, with whom he established a constant dialogue. Thus emerged a generation of thinkers concerned with American identity: Arturo Ardao, from Uruguay; João Cruz Costa and Darcy Ribeiro, from Brazil; Francisco Miró Quesada, from Peru; José Luis Romero, from Argentina; Guillermo Francovich, from Bolivia; Ernesto Mays Ballenilla, from Venezuela; José Antonio Portuondo and Roberto Fernández Retamar, from Cuba, among many others.

The Real America

The exchange of this generation resulted in national histories of thought – published by Editorial Losada and the Economic Culture Fund – and also in a debate on the existence or not of an Ibero-American culture and the possibility of an Ibero-American philosophy. The recognition of an American identity generated a new debate in the 1960s about the existence of a Latin American philosophy.

“Acerca de una filosofía americana” arose at a time of European cultural crisis, in the context of World War II. In this work, Zea discusses the essence of being American, present, in his view, in both the roots of Western culture and Indo-American roots. At that time, he argued that European America kept real America hidden and that it was necessary to confront the former in order to assimilate and surpass it. Only through the path of deconstructing the West – and, therefore, that America which Europe constructed in the imaginary – could the American reality, ignored since the conquest, be affirmed.

For Zea, this recognition was fundamental, as it would allow us to assume our Ibero-American being, no longer lived as a disgrace for not being European, but as equality in difference. Contact with various cultural manifestations during his trip through Latin America showed him similarities and constants that allowed him to establish his ideas about an American consciousness. “Two Stages of Hispanic-American Thought” (1949) and “America with Consciousness” (1953) are works that continue the idea of an American consciousness without remorse or feelings of inferiority in relation to the West. At the same time, his conception of the philosophy of history, centered on the circumstances surrounding man, matured. Philosophy can only be the product of a being, a social entity living in a particular context. The American man, in pretending to be European, does not find the true expression of his Ibero-American being, as he has lived an estrangement from his own circumstances.

Latin American Philosophy of Liberation

His second period of great importance for Latin American philosophy occurred between the 1960s and 1970s, in the context of national liberation struggles in the Third World and theories of underdevelopment and dependency. Zea advocated a philosophy of liberation as a path to the emancipation of our peoples. This could only be achieved by recognizing Ibero-America’s difference from Europe and other world cultures.

During this period, Zea held several public positions. In 1960, he was appointed Director-General of Cultural Relations for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico. In 1961, he became involved in establishing ties with newly liberated African nations. In 1965, he published “Latin American Thought”. The following year, he assumed the directorship of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UNAM. In this context, he promoted the creation of the College of Latin American Studies, and between 1968 and 1969, he debated with Salazar Bondy on the existence of a Latin American philosophy in his work “American Philosophy as Philosophy and Nothing More”. Between 1982 and 1995, he directed the Center for the Coordination and Dissemination of Latin American Studies. He also coordinated the International Federation of Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean (FIEALC) and the Latin American Society of Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean (SOLAR). In 1986, he directed the journal “Cuadernos Americanos”.

The third period of his philosophical thought, closer to an anthropological approach and a multicultural perspective, focused on defending equality in difference (“Discourse on Exclusion and Barbarism”, 1988) and on the manifestation of a thought in which the themes of the 21st century would be focused on the globalization of human problems.

In this phase, the Mexican philosopher received decorations from various governments and honorary doctorates from universities around the world, from Russia to Uruguay. His country’s government also awarded him the Belisario Domínguez medal for his intellectual concern with two issues of the time: the indigenous question and the defense of UNAM.

A humanist in the broadest sense of the term, Leopoldo Zea developed a struggle against theoretical dependency and sought to consolidate Ibero-American and Latin American thought as an instrument for transforming reality and a vehicle for the liberation of our peoples.

Content updated on 19/05/2017 18:38.