The Humanistic Origins of Mexican Philosophy

FAIN: FT-286267-22

Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr
Occidental College (Los Angeles, CA 90041-3314)

Writing and editing leading to a book that includes analysis and English translation of a text by a central figure of 20th-century Mexico philosophy.

The aim of the proposed project is to enrich our understanding of the history of Mexican philosophy by translating Samuel Ramos’s Toward a New Humanism (1940) from Spanish to English and writing an introduction, commentary, and analysis of this 105-page text in the form of a monograph. I will include my translation as an appendix to the monograph and discuss its contemporary relevance to philosophy and the other humanities in the concluding chapters. The overarching thesis of the monograph is that Ramos’s more famous and provocative text, Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1934), which was enormously influential in Mexican letters—as well as Latin American, Chicanx, Latinx, and ethnic studies – has not been fully understood because scholars do not read it as the first installment of a much larger project, which I refer to as Mexican humanism. I also argue that 20th century Mexican philosophy, as a tradition, ought to be understood as the development of Mexican humanism.