Jul 2, 2018 02:20 AM
https://aeon.co/classics/to-be-accidenta...exicanness
INTRODUCTION (before classic text): Today Mexican philosophy is enjoying something of a renaissance. Emerging from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, philosophers in Mexico grappled with questions concerning Mexican identity, including the identity of Mexican philosophy, and formed a distinct philosophical tradition known as la filosofía de lo mexicano, or the philosophy of Mexicanness. At its core, this golden age of Mexican philosophy (1910-60) aimed to uncover the essential characteristics of Mexican culture in order to reaffirm them in light of a history of conquest and colonialism. Thus, the philosophy of Mexicanness represents an effort to achieve liberation from the dominant paradigms of Western thought, as well as a genuine desire for self-knowledge – what the Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-88) referred to as ‘autognosis’.
On a relatively standard account, the philosophy of Mexicanness begins with Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1934) by Samuel Ramos, so it is not surprising that Uranga begins his ‘Essay on the Ontology of the Mexican’ (1951) by quoting Ramos at length. Uranga highlights the central thesis of the text: that the defining characteristic of the Mexican mind is that the Mexican suffers from an ‘inferiority complex’. Like Ramos and other intellectuals of this period, Uranga sought to comprehend the characteristics that define the Mexican people. Mexicans are sentimental, Uranga claims, and full of melancholy. They have a peculiar fascination with death and dying. Readers today need think only of Coco (2017), Pixar’s portrait of Mexican culture: even though it is a children’s movie, it is fundamentally about loss and the threat of being forgotten. However, unlike Ramos, Uranga proposes an ontological account of Mexican sentimentality, melancholy and inferiority, concluding that these are but symptoms of an ‘ontological insufficiency’ – of the fact that to be Mexican is to fundamentally lack that which would otherwise make one sufficient.
Born in Mexico City in 1921, Uranga was a founding member of el grupo Hiperión, a group of young Mexican philosophers influenced by German and French existential phenomenology. Considered the most capable member of the group and referred to as primus inter pares (first among equals), Uranga presents a novel interpretation of Mexican life in his essay on the ontology of the Mexican. ‘Mexicans are creatures of melancholy,’ he writes, making clear that he is not referring to a psychological disposition toward sadness, but to an ontological condition of being groundless and, more to the point, of being conscious of one’s lack of permanent foundation. ‘Ontologically speaking’ – a phrase Uranga repeats – the Mexican is an ‘accidental’ being.
At the centre of Uranga’s ‘ontology’ is the scholastic distinction between substance and accident. A substance is that which endures and survives change. It is what remains the same despite change – the thing itself, which is characterised by permanence. By contrast, an accident depends on a substance for its existence – x must be an accident of something – and is by definition impermanent. Applied to the human being – something that the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger does not do – this ontological difference manifests itself in the feeling of power, a sense of self-sufficiency and permanence on the one hand, and a fundamental sense of insecurity and impermanence on the other hand. In historical terms, it is the difference between the modern European’s belief in her power over nature and inferior human beings, and the various forms of Mexican dependence and self-denigration.
Like Ramos’s unflattering portrait of the Mexican in the Profile, the purpose of Uranga’s analysis of Mexican sentimentality is not simply to put the Mexican on trial. Instead, there is an underlying lesson about the human condition that the Anglo-European can learn from Mexican self-examination. To be accidental is not the tragic fate of Mexicans – the peculiar source of their misery or fascination with death. Instead, it is an essential feature of being human. In other words, if Uranga is right, the belief in the self-sufficiency or substantiality of human existence that defines modern European history – a belief that provided Europeans with a justification for a history of conquest, colonialism, exclusion and exploitation – is not just mistaken or false, it is inhuman....
MORE: https://aeon.co/classics/to-be-accidenta...exicanness
INTRODUCTION (before classic text): Today Mexican philosophy is enjoying something of a renaissance. Emerging from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, philosophers in Mexico grappled with questions concerning Mexican identity, including the identity of Mexican philosophy, and formed a distinct philosophical tradition known as la filosofía de lo mexicano, or the philosophy of Mexicanness. At its core, this golden age of Mexican philosophy (1910-60) aimed to uncover the essential characteristics of Mexican culture in order to reaffirm them in light of a history of conquest and colonialism. Thus, the philosophy of Mexicanness represents an effort to achieve liberation from the dominant paradigms of Western thought, as well as a genuine desire for self-knowledge – what the Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-88) referred to as ‘autognosis’.
On a relatively standard account, the philosophy of Mexicanness begins with Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1934) by Samuel Ramos, so it is not surprising that Uranga begins his ‘Essay on the Ontology of the Mexican’ (1951) by quoting Ramos at length. Uranga highlights the central thesis of the text: that the defining characteristic of the Mexican mind is that the Mexican suffers from an ‘inferiority complex’. Like Ramos and other intellectuals of this period, Uranga sought to comprehend the characteristics that define the Mexican people. Mexicans are sentimental, Uranga claims, and full of melancholy. They have a peculiar fascination with death and dying. Readers today need think only of Coco (2017), Pixar’s portrait of Mexican culture: even though it is a children’s movie, it is fundamentally about loss and the threat of being forgotten. However, unlike Ramos, Uranga proposes an ontological account of Mexican sentimentality, melancholy and inferiority, concluding that these are but symptoms of an ‘ontological insufficiency’ – of the fact that to be Mexican is to fundamentally lack that which would otherwise make one sufficient.
Born in Mexico City in 1921, Uranga was a founding member of el grupo Hiperión, a group of young Mexican philosophers influenced by German and French existential phenomenology. Considered the most capable member of the group and referred to as primus inter pares (first among equals), Uranga presents a novel interpretation of Mexican life in his essay on the ontology of the Mexican. ‘Mexicans are creatures of melancholy,’ he writes, making clear that he is not referring to a psychological disposition toward sadness, but to an ontological condition of being groundless and, more to the point, of being conscious of one’s lack of permanent foundation. ‘Ontologically speaking’ – a phrase Uranga repeats – the Mexican is an ‘accidental’ being.
At the centre of Uranga’s ‘ontology’ is the scholastic distinction between substance and accident. A substance is that which endures and survives change. It is what remains the same despite change – the thing itself, which is characterised by permanence. By contrast, an accident depends on a substance for its existence – x must be an accident of something – and is by definition impermanent. Applied to the human being – something that the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger does not do – this ontological difference manifests itself in the feeling of power, a sense of self-sufficiency and permanence on the one hand, and a fundamental sense of insecurity and impermanence on the other hand. In historical terms, it is the difference between the modern European’s belief in her power over nature and inferior human beings, and the various forms of Mexican dependence and self-denigration.
Like Ramos’s unflattering portrait of the Mexican in the Profile, the purpose of Uranga’s analysis of Mexican sentimentality is not simply to put the Mexican on trial. Instead, there is an underlying lesson about the human condition that the Anglo-European can learn from Mexican self-examination. To be accidental is not the tragic fate of Mexicans – the peculiar source of their misery or fascination with death. Instead, it is an essential feature of being human. In other words, if Uranga is right, the belief in the self-sufficiency or substantiality of human existence that defines modern European history – a belief that provided Europeans with a justification for a history of conquest, colonialism, exclusion and exploitation – is not just mistaken or false, it is inhuman....
MORE: https://aeon.co/classics/to-be-accidenta...exicanness