Latin American Philosophy
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0242
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 November 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 July 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0242
Introduction
Like Asian philosophy or European philosophy, Latin American philosophy comprises a great number of philosophical works, a wide range of problems and arguments in the many areas of philosophy, and numerous past and present philosophers representing different philosophical perspectives. Thus, perforce, an annotated bibliographic article on the field requires difficult selections on each of these counts. The selection criteria at work in each of the following sections will be explained in due course, but a central consideration has been the need to take into account contributions made, not only by academic but also by “nonacademic” philosophy. This mirrors Risieri Frondizi’s distinction between what may be characterized as narrow and broad conceptions of philosophy, which he described respectively as philosophy as such or practiced for its own sake, and philosophy as a means of achieving other nonphilosophical interests—whether these be political, literary, educational, etc. (see Risieri Frondizi’s “Is There an Ibero-American Philosophy?” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 9.3 [Frondizi 1949], cited under Classic Works). It has often been pointed out that the corpus of original academic philosophy in Latin America is relatively recent and thin. Thus, to focus solely on it may foster a misleading skepticism about Latin American philosophy. On the other hand, nonacademic philosophy has been remarkably fruitful in Latin America, as can be seen in some of the works represented here. Making decisions about the scope of a bibliographic article on Latin American philosophy also raises the thorny question of origins. When did it begin? This should be broken down into two questions: one, about the origin of academic philosophy; the other, about the origin of nonacademic philosophy. Some academic philosophy, mostly connected with teaching, existed during the colonial period (roughly, from the beginning of the Iberian expansion to the Americas in 1492 to the first revolutions of independence in 1810). But, with a few exceptions, the philosophical production in this period lacks sufficient originality to merit citation—for the exceptions, bibliographical sources can be traced through general sources included here, such as Mauricio Beuchot’s History of Philosophy in Colonial Mexico (Beuchot 1998, cited under Narrow Approaches) and the Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (Nuccetelli, et al. 2009, cited under Edited Volumes). On the other hand, the issue of whether pre-Columbian cultures had anything that could be construed as philosophy in a narrow sense and the controversy over the rights of the Amerindians during the Iberian Conquest have indeed produced original philosophical literature, some of which is cited in this article.
General Sources
There are a great number of works eligible for classification as general works, for the interest in Latin American philosophy in Latin America itself and elsewhere is on the rise, especially since the beginning of the 21st century. But the need for reliable overviews of the field first began to be felt in the 1930s and 1940s, when the so-called fundadores (Founders) struggled to bring philosophy in Latin America into line with academic standards and practices then already common in European and North American philosophy. But, as can be seen in this article, collections of different kinds (anthologies, edited volumes, and reference works) vastly outnumber introductory articles and monographs. Be that as it may, to qualify for inclusion under this section, the works must be either classic in the literature or relatively current. In addition, if they are not general enough to provide a panorama of the field as a whole, they must offer an overview of a broad period or substantial issue of Latin American philosophy.
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- A Priori Knowledge
- Abduction and Explanatory Reasoning
- Ability
- Abortion
- Abstract Objects
- Action
- Addams, Jane
- Adorno, Theodor
- Aesthetic Hedonism
- Aesthetics, Analytic Approaches to
- Aesthetics, Continental
- Aesthetics, Environmental
- Aesthetics, History of
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- Alexander, Samuel
- Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
- Anarchism, Philosophical
- Animal Rights
- Anscombe, G. E. M.
- Anthropic Principle, The
- Applied Ethics
- Aquinas, Thomas
- Argument Mapping
- Art and Emotion
- Art and Knowledge
- Art and Morality
- Artifacts
- Assertion
- Astell, Mary
- Atheism
- Augustine
- Aurelius, Marcus
- Austin, J. L.
- Autonomy
- Bacon, Francis
- Bayesianism
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- Belief
- Bergson, Henri
- Berkeley, George
- Biology, Philosophy of
- Bolzano, Bernard
- Boredom, Philosophy of
- British Idealism
- Buber, Martin
- Buddhist Philosophy
- Burge, Tyler
- Business Ethics
- Camus, Albert
- Canterbury, Anselm of
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- Causation
- Cavendish, Margaret
- Certainty
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- Childhood, Philosophy of
- Chinese Philosophy
- Cognitive Ability
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of
- Coherentism
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- Comte, Auguste
- Concepts
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- Contemporary Hylomorphism
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- Cook Wilson, John
- Cosmology, Philosophy of
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- Davidson, Donald
- de Beauvoir, Simone
- de Montaigne, Michel
- Death
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- Deleuze, Gilles
- Democracy
- Depiction
- Derrida, Jacques
- Descartes, René
- Descartes, René: Sensory Representations
- Descriptions
- Dewey, John
- Dialetheism
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- Dispositions
- Doing and Allowing
- du Châtelet, Emilie
- Dummett, Michael
- Dutch Book Arguments
- Early Modern Philosophy, 1600-1750
- Eastern Orthodox Philosophical Thought
- Education, Philosophy of
- Emotion
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- Epicurus
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- Evidence
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- Evidential Support Relation In Epistemology, The
- Evil
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- Evolutionary Epistemology
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- Externalism and Internalism in the Philosophy of Mind
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- Feyerabend, Paul
- Fichte, Johann Gottlieb
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- Forgiveness
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- Gadamer, Hans-Georg
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- God and Possible Worlds
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- Grice, Paul
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Hart, H. L. A.
- Heaven and Hell
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Aesthetics
- Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Metaphysics
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- Heidegger, Martin: Early Works
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- History, Philosophy of
- Hobbes, Thomas
- Horkheimer, Max
- Human Rights
- Hume, David: Aesthetics
- Hume, David: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Husserl, Edmund
- Idealizations in Science
- Identity in Physics
- Images
- Imagination
- Imagination and Belief
- Impossible Worlds
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- Indispensability of Mathematics
- Inductive Reasoning
- Infinitism
- Instruments in Science
- Intellectual Humility
- Intentionality, Collective
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- James, William
- Japanese Philosophy
- Kant and the Laws of Nature
- Kant, Immanuel: Aesthetics and Teleology
- Kant, Immanuel: Ethics
- Kant, Immanuel: Theoretical Philosophy
- Kierkegaard, Søren
- Knowledge
- Knowledge-first Epistemology
- Knowledge-How
- Kuhn, Thomas S.
- Lacan, Jacques
- Lakatos, Imre
- Langer, Susanne
- Language of Thought
- Language, Philosophy of
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- Laws of Nature
- Legal Epistemology
- Legal Philosophy
- Legal Positivism
- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
- Levinas, Emmanuel
- Lewis, C. I.
- Liberty
- Literature, Philosophy of
- Locke, John
- Locke, John: Identity, Persons, and Personal Identity
- Logic
- Lottery and Preface Paradoxes, The
- Lucretius
- Machiavelli, Niccolò
- Martin Heidegger: Later Works
- Martin Heidegger: Middle Works
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- Material Constitution
- Mathematical Explanation
- Mathematical Pluralism
- Mathematical Structuralism
- Mathematics, Ontology of
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- Mathematics, Visual Thinking in
- McDowell, John
- McTaggart, John
- Meaning of Life, The
- Mechanisms in Science
- Medically Assisted Dying
- Medicine, Contemporary Philosophy of
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- Medieval Philosophy
- Memory
- Mental Causation
- Mereology
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
- Meta-epistemological Skepticism
- Metaepistemology
- Metaethics
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- Modality
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- Modularity
- Montesquieu
- Moore, G. E.
- Moral Contractualism
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- Music, Analytic Philosophy of
- Nationalism
- Natural Kinds
- Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
- Naïve Realism
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neuroscience, Philosophy of
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Nonexistent Objects
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- Normative Foundations, Philosophy of Law:
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- Objectivity
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- Olfaction
- Ontological Dependence
- Ontology of Art
- Ordinary Objects
- Other Minds
- Pacifism
- Pain
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- Particularism in Ethics
- Pascal, Blaise
- Paternalism
- Patriotism
- Peirce, Charles Sanders
- Perception, Cognition, Action
- Perception, The Problem of
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- Persistence
- Personal Identity
- Phenomenal Concepts
- Phenomenal Conservatism
- Phenomenology
- Philosophy for Children
- Photography, Analytic Philosophy of
- Physicalism
- Physicalism and Metaphysical Naturalism
- Physics, Experiments in
- Plato
- Plotinus
- Political Epistemology
- Political Obligation
- Political Philosophy
- Popper, Karl
- Pornography and Objectification, Analytic Approaches to
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- Practical Reason
- Pragmatics
- Pragmatism
- Probabilistic Representations of Belief
- Probability, Interpretations of
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- Problem of Evil, The
- Propositions
- Psychology, Philosophy of
- Punishment
- Pyrrhonism
- Qualia
- Quietism
- Quine, W. V. O.
- Race
- Racist Jokes
- Rationalism
- Rationality
- Rawls, John: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Realism and Anti-Realism
- Realization
- Reasons in Epistemology
- Reductionism in Biology
- Reference, Theory of
- Reid, Thomas
- Relativism
- Reliabilism
- Religion, Philosophy of
- Religious Belief, Epistemology of
- Religious Experience
- Religious Pluralism
- Ricoeur, Paul
- Rights
- Risk, Philosophy of
- Rorty, Richard
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
- Rule-Following
- Russell, Bertrand
- Ryle, Gilbert
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Schopenhauer, Arthur
- Science and Religion
- Science, Theoretical Virtues in
- Scientific Explanation
- Scientific Progress
- Scientific Realism
- Scientific Representation
- Scientific Revolutions
- Scotus, Duns
- Self-Knowledge
- Sellars, Wilfrid
- Semantic Externalism
- Semantic Minimalism
- Semiotics
- Seneca
- Senses, The
- Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology
- Singular Thought
- Situated Cognition
- Situationism and Virtue Theory
- Skepticism, Contemporary
- Skepticism, History of
- Slurs, Pejoratives, and Hate Speech
- Smith, Adam: Moral and Political Philosophy
- Social Aspects of Scientific Knowledge
- Social Epistemology
- Social Identity
- Sounds and Auditory Perception
- Space and Time
- Speech Acts
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Stebbing, Susan
- Strawson, P. F.
- Structural Realism
- Suicide
- Supererogation
- Supervenience
- Tarski, Alfred
- Technology, Philosophy of
- Testimony, Epistemology of
- Theoretical Terms in Science
- Thomas Aquinas' Philosophy of Religion
- Thought Experiments
- Time and Tense
- Time Travel
- Toleration
- Torture
- Transcendental Arguments
- Tropes
- Trust
- Truth
- Truth and the Aim of Belief
- Truthmaking
- Turing Test
- Two-Dimensional Semantics
- Understanding
- Uniqueness and Permissiveness in Epistemology
- Utilitarianism
- Vagueness
- Value of Knowledge
- Vienna Circle
- Virtue Epistemology
- Virtue Ethics
- Virtues, Epistemic
- Virtues, Intellectual
- War
- Weakness of Will
- Weil, Simone
- Well-Being
- William of Ockham
- Williams, Bernard
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