180037 SE Mesoamerican? Philosophy? (2025S)

The word φιλοσοφία ‘affection for wisdom’ is the name the Greeks gave to a certain kind of care for a certain kind of knowledge. We find allusions to such a desire for knowledge in pre-Socratic thinkers (e.g., in Heraclitus, Fr. 35), but it was primarily Plato and Aristotle who defined philosophy in the terms we know. This is not to say that other civilizations have not in some way attempted to acquire knowledge comparable to σοφία ‘skill, cleverness, wisdom’. Philosophy clearly arose in the Islamic world, whose intellectuals were deeply influenced by Platonism and Aristotelianism, and it would be absurd to deny that the Far East, for example, produced systems of thought comparable to philosophy. However, other cultures are less associated with this type of thought because they did not enter into a substantive dialogue with the West, or because they did not have the opportunity to demonstrate whether they had something like philosophy. This is the case with Mesoamerica.

The initial contact between Mesoamerica and Europe was abrupt, and European practices and institutions were quickly imposed or superimposed on Mesoamerican ones. This prevented Mesoamerican thought systems from being properly exposed, received, and disseminated. In general, access to Mesoamerican thought is provided through material culture and documents that can by no means be considered free of Western influence, in part because many of them date from a time after the conquest of the Americas (e.g., Codex Mendoza) or because they have been glossed using Western categories. Consider, for example, the Popol Vuh, a book that contains Mayan mythology and lore but was actually transcribed by a Spanish Dominican who may have been more than a mere transcriber or interpreter.

In the wake of the current decolonization movement, Mesoamerican thought has begun to receive attention in spaces where it was previously absent. In the twentieth century, scholars directly connected to the indigenous communities of Mexico and Central America, as well as to the history and anthropological studies of Mesoamerica, such as Miguel León Portilla, tried to present the Mesoamerican counterpart of philosophy. Today, however, we see scholars not necessarily immersed in Mesoamerican studies attempting to unravel the Mesoamerican vision of meaning and truth, time and identity, nature and spirit, ethics and morality. This seminar will critically engage with their efforts.

The seminar will not take a particular position, but will try to answer very concrete questions such as: (1) What do those who present Mesoamerican philosophy call ‘philosophy’? (2) Do they distinguish between worldview and philosophy? (3) In what sources do they find Mesoamerican philosophy? (4) To what extent are these sources truly Mesoamerican? (5) To what extent do these sources convey philosophical content (i.e., concepts, philosophemes, arguments, theories, explanatory systems)? For this purpose, we will study the book “An Introduction to Mesoamerican Philosophy” by Alexus McLeod (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and consult additional bibliography according to each of the topics covered.

The program of the seminar will be as follows:

Session 1: Mesoamerica
Session 2: Mesoamerican chronology and peoples
Session 3: Philosophy vs worldview. The sources: transcription, translation, interpretation, invention, appropriation
Session 4: A philosophy of language?
Session 5: A philosophy of time?
Session 6: A philosophical anthropology? A philosophy of the self?
Session 7: A philosophical approach to the world and divinity?
Session 8: A philosophical study of reality?
Session 9: A philosophical theory of knowledge?
Session 10: A philosophical approach to moral issues?
Session 11: Critical recapitulation