Latin American Thought

Philosophical Problems And Arguments

Susanna Nuccetelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429978968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Latin American Thought examines the relationship between philosophy and rationality in Latin American thought, the nature of justice, human rights, and cultural identity, and other questions that have concerned Latin American thinkers from the colonial period to the present day. From the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas to the present day, reveals the assembly of interesting philosophical arguments offered by Latin Americans. Nuccetelli traces Latin American thought through questions concerning rationality, gender discrimination, justice, human rights, reparation for historically dispossessed peoples, and relativism vs. universalism - all matters of continuing concern in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking parts of the world. Amongst issues of heated controversy from the early twentieth century to the present, also explores how Latin Americans and their descendants abroad think of their own cultural identity, of US mass-culture and philosophy, and of the vexing problem of which name, if any, to use when referring to this exceedingly diverse ethnic group.

Many of the philosophical questions raised by Latin American thinkers are problems that have concerned philosophers at different times and in different places throughout the Western tradition. But in fact the issues are not altogether the same - for they have been adapted to capture problems presented by new circumstances, and Latin Americans have sought resolutions in ways that are indeed novel. This book explains how well-established philosophical traditions gave rise in the "New World" to a distinctive manner of thinking. There was no clean sweep of the past and an attempt to start over: rather, Latin American thinkers mostly welcomed European ideas at whatever pace such traditions happened to arrive. It is then no surprise that, for instance, Scholasticism became the accepted view under Spanish rule, and began to lose its grip only when the rulers did.

But what does seem surprising is the radical way in which those traditions were transformed to account for problems that, though familiar, were now seen intake light of new circumstances. A distinctive Latin American way of thinking about such problems emerged from the project of "recycling" European philosophical traditions, some of which were already obsolete in Europe at the time their transplant took place. Thus theories commonly taken to be incompatible within Western traditions in philosophy were absorbed by Latin American thought-- and, in their newly acquired forms, such theories are even now at the basis of proposed solutions to many practical and philosophical problems.

The book explores that recycling process. Above all, it aims to determine whether the various cultures that met in the "New World" could now be said to have come to share a common identity. This is in fact an issue which has preoccupied Latin Americans since at least the beginning of the 19th century, when their countries won their independence. But, in connection with this, it is also important to ask how Latin Americans have thought about the relationship between philosophy and rationality, and about other issues belonging to the major areas of philosophy such as epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy, as well their application to vital social issues, including education and the emancipation of women. These are all taken up by the author, who pays special attention to questions of gender discrimination, justice, human rights, reparation for historically dispossessed peoples, and the role of education-- all matters of continuing concern in Latin American thought, from its earliest stirrings to the present day.

1
THE EPISTEMIC PRACTICES OF LATIN AMERICAN INDIANS: A PUZZLE FOR PHILOSOPHERS

During the time of Aquarius, bleeding is good only for him who needs it, and medicines should not be given; but it is a time that is good for bathing and swimming, and an appetite for eating is evident. Men born on the days ruled by this sign are small, always sad, very fond of women, and noted for using great quantities of small chiles with their meals. . . . Women will live fifty six years and will have two illnesses: the first at the age of thirty-four years, the second perhaps at thirty-seven.

The Codex Pérez and The Book of Chilam Balam of Maní, "Almanac"

When European explorers and conquistadores first established contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they found cultures with habits of thinking utterly alien to their own. This raised a philosophical problem for both groups: Who were these strange beings? And did they think as we did? This chapter explores whether one of the major traditional cultures of Latin America, the Mayans, developed intellectual skills, such as critical thinking and rational understanding of the natural world. We shall examine some original sources, but our interest will be predominantly philosophical rather than historical. In consequence, our answers to those questions could also apply mutatis mutandis to some other groups of indigenous peoples in Latin America, especially those whose thought, even today, bears relevant similarities to that of the Mayans.

It is of course well known that before and after the arrival of the Spaniards, the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas produced important documents revealing how they reasoned about a variety of matters, including their own welfare and history, the natural, and the supernatural. There is some evidence, available not only in buildings and stone monuments but also in several collections of alphabetic texts, that the Mayans set about their intellectual tasks in ways very different from what would be acceptable to us. If such differences were indeed radical, our whole philosophical enterprise would face a considerable obstacle, for it might then make little sense for us to attempt to determine whether any such radically different ways of thinking could count as rational according to our own criteria. Yet we shall show that this obstacle can be overcome, for a closer look at some practices common among the Mayans suggests that, when it comes to ways of thinking, cultural differences are less radical than they appear at the outset.

Why Should We Care About Native Cultures?

Before we even begin to examine those differences, we must first consider why we should care at all about whether any of the major indigenous cultures of Latin America have had "intellectual skills," such as critical thinking and rational understanding of the natural world. Most books on Latin American thought have completely ignored this issue, but I believe that such neglect is regrettable for several reasons. First, in many Latin American countries, the ways of life of indigenous peoples have always been crucial to the cultural and social profiles of those countries. Furthermore, they are a dis

tinctive component of the collective identity of the region as a whole. Yet Latin American thinkers have often neglected important philosophical problems related to these peoples, probably because they have also commonly ignored most questions about the realities of Latin American life that lie close at hand. There is a notorious tendency among many of these thinkers to emulate the methods of Western philosophy and to focus entirely on its subject matters (particularly that of the so-called continental tradition, although certain topics from analytic philosophy have attracted attention, too).

It is difficult, however, to fit into a borrowed dress. Not surprisingly, Latin American professional philosophers have mostly failed to make substantial contributions to the philosophical discussion of their favored topics. The attitude of such thinkers is open to criticism not because of their interest in general philosophical questions that have preoccupied philosophers at different times and places throughout history, but because an interest in those questions can be made compatible with concern for how such general issues may bear upon everyday reality. Even a cursory look at the development of philosophy in the last part of the twentieth century suggests that this objection is well supported. The increasing growth of applied areas in the discipline clearly shows that paying attention to issues arising in the thinker's own physical and cultural context can introduce novel perspectives in many of the most traditional problems of philosophy and also be intellectually stimulating in its own right. The issue that we are about to explore is a case in point, for the attempt to determine whether any group of indigenous peoples of Latin America have had certain intellectual skills will lead us to reconsider some general philosophical questions about critical thinking and rational evaluation.

Rational Prediction in the West

At different times and places, people of many cultures have made rational efforts to know about the course of future events in the natural world. Westerners, for instance, have attempted to gain such knowledge from antiquity to the present, as shown by the systematic study of the required means carried out by scholars in philosophy of science, logic, and methodology. Attempting to know, however, falls short of actually knowing: Western philosophers often emphasize that it is still a matter of dispute how accurate assertions about the future could be. Given that they rest on induction, which is a form of reasoning that cannot guarantee the truth of conclusions drawn from true premises, such assertions could amount only to hypotheses. Nonetheless, the general consensus among philosophers now is that predictions based on sound inductions (i.e., those whose conclusions are the most likely to be true among other competing hypotheses) are conducive to valuable epistemic goals (such as knowledge)—but that predictions resting on, for example, magical cause/effect connections are not.

Imagine a hypothesis about some future event that is grounded on a statistical generalization from a premise supported by what has been observed to hold in 99 percent of the relevant cases, and compare that prediction with one reached by either gazing at a crystal ball, reading tea leaves, or interpreting an astrological chart. Would it be capricious if we trust only the former? Certainly not, given that, when properly applied, the inductive method (of which the former may be considered just one variety) has a good track record of producing reliable conclusions. Even in everyday life, when we wonder which predictions can be taken seriously, our reasoning, if inductively sound, will follow certain rules that guarantee the rationality of any conclusion reached in this way. There is nothing magical about our confidence in inductive predictions because we have learned through our own personal experience and the testimony of experts that inductively based predictions are generally conducive to the achievement of valuable epistemic ends, such as satisfying our intellectual curiosity about the future, testing our empirical theories, and solving some puzzles about future events.¹

Prediction Among the Mayans

Of course, predicting is not an exclusively Western practice. The ancient Mayans developed great subtlety in prediction, as their books of Chilam Balam conclusively show. The name here is taken to mean literally "jaguar priest" because in the Mayan language, Yucatec, a Chilam is a prophet or priest, and Balam stands for jaguar. Most of these books were destroyed by Spanish conquerors and priests, but among those preserved, the manuscripts from the towns of Chumayel, Tizimfn, and Maní are especially important. These consist of various alphabetic texts, written in the vernacular with Spanish scripts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and typically used by Mayan priests during local ceremonies. Scholars have noticed spurious European materials in these books, probably accidentally incorporated because they seem to have been the result of transcriptions from memory of older hieroglyphic manuscripts. In spite of such exogenous elements, however, the books of Chilam Balam are still an important source for the study of Mayan thought and culture.

Presumably, each Mayan town had its own group of books of this sort. But could most of the predictions in these books be considered the outcome of a rational attempt to predict future events? To answer this, we will now have a closer look at those from the town of Maní and Chumayel.² With astronomical phenomena, the Mayans did well. They accurately predicted certain eclipses and the position of some planets. Here, there is no doubt that these people not only made an effort to find out as best they could what was going to happen but actually implemented rational means. Historians of science have often praised the Mayans' ingenuity in constructing various systems of measurement, including their famous calendar that allowed them to predict some astronomical events about which they appear to have felt great intellectual curiosity.

The Case of Mayan Astrology

Clear evidence that the Mayans did attempt to know the course of future events in the natural world by rational means can indeed be found in the books of Chilam Balam. But at the same time, these collections also contain other materials that seem to show these people as quite irrational when it came to understanding future events that affected their own lives. They also made a considerable number of astrological and prophetic predictions entirely on the basis of some easily testable, though false, cause/effect claims. So obviously false were such claims that they could hardly have escaped inspection by even a minimally rational human mind.

Mayan documents such as those from the books of Chumayel and Mam contain unquestionable evidence pointing to both the rationality and the irrationality in the ways these peoples went about predicting future events. Furthermore, such books are not alone in displaying highly rational calculations of future events together with astrological and prophetic predictions, for these disparate features are also frequently found in similar texts that have been preserved in other Mayan towns. This contradictory evidence, then, generates a puzzle about Mayan thought. From our perspective, these books are puzzling because we simply do not know what to make of the evidence that they provide about the Mayans' methods of understanding nature.

The possibility that they never reached a fully rational (or even logical) understanding of future events seems supported by evidence offered in a salient part of their major documents. Consider, for example, the astrological predictions presented in the "Almanac" of the Books of Maní This is a self-contained text organized according to the usual European conception of the zodiac except each sign is supposed to govern a certain month of the year. Months have individual entries that contain lengthy descriptions of some effects allegedly caused by the zodiac sign reigning during that period. The style of the narrative also resembles Western astrology because each zodiac sign determines particular events in the lives of individuals and their practical affairs. Some advice on health, cultivation of crops, and other ordinary affairs generally follows these predictions.

The reader familiar with Western astrology would find the "Almanac" original in other respects. First, this text focuses on specific subjects of great importance to the Mayans. Some involve questions about health, such as when blood should be drawn from a man's or a woman's body, given that the person was born under a certain zodiac sign. There are also directives concerning the Mayans' own welfare, often about which particular crops would allegedly grow better under the reign of such and such sign. Needless to say, at the time these books were written, the Mayan people depended upon the success of their crops in order to survive and to pay the heavy burden of tribute in goods required by the Spaniards. Nonetheless, as in the much-discussed case of the Azande,³ the Mayans seem to have neglected the use of rational tools in their attempts to make accurate predictions about questions that ought to have been of crucial importance to them. Surely, from the Western perspective, that appears quite irrational.

Yet what is the evidence for our contention that many Mayan astrological and prophetic predictions were made entirely on the basis of some easily testable, albeit false, cause/effect claims? And if they were indeed false, why think that the falsity of such claims could not escape the inspection of even a minimally rational human being? To answer the first question, let us examine one of the numerous astrological predictions made in the Books of Mani. Solely on the basis of some alleged cause/effect connections between month of birth and sign of the zodiac reigning during it, the writers of the "Almanac" claim that men born in March would live for exactly seventy-five years, but then add the qualification, "unless they shorten their lives with carnal pleasures during the conjunction of the moon. . . ."⁴

Let us assume that this qualification refers to some identifiable astronomical phenomenon involving the moon (e.g., an eclipse). The prediction now is clearly testable, for it involves only empirical claims about phenomena of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Epistemic Practices of Latin American Indians: A Puzzle for Philosophers
• 2 Could the Mayans Think? And What About Us?
• 3 Native Folk Cosmologies Versus Western Philosophy and Science
• 4 The Legacy of 1492: Pluralism, Relativism, and the Clash of Cultures
• 5 Thomistic Philosophy and the Conquest: Human Rights in the New World
• 6 Iberian Scholasticism and Its Critics: From Colonial Rule to Independence
• 7 Latin Americans, North Americans, and the Rest of the World
• 8 Latin American Identity: Ethnicity, Name, and Thought
• Author Index
• Subject Index