Jorge J. E. Gracia

For many years I have maintained that I learned to philosophize by translating Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputation V from Latin into English. This surely is a claim that must sound extraordinary to the members of this audience or even to most twentieth century philosophers. Who reads Suárez these days? And what could I learn from a sixteenth century scholastic writer that would help me in the twentieth century? I would certainly be surprised if one were to find any references to some of Suárez’s works in any of the works of twentieth-century major philosophers. One of the reasons for my claim is the great difficulty I had in figuring out what Suárez’s text means and how to render it understandable to English readers. Translating the text forced me to think in ways that were quite different from those I was used to think in Spanish, my native tongue, or English, my adoptive tongue. In fact, the translation I produced after having completed many drafts continued, and still continues to this day, to appear to me unsatisfactory, and that dissatisfaction was the key to understanding things I had understood very differently before. I hope to make clear why in what follows. The thesis that I defend is that semantic equivalence between texts of philosophy in different languages is difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to achieve and, therefore, that it is a mistake to restrict doing analytic philosophy to English, as Gustavo Rodríguez-Pereyra argues we should do in a recent article (2013).

At the time of his death in 1982, at the age of forty-five, and after a short career of only fifteen years, Jan Pinborg had established himself as one of the most important historians of medieval philosophy of the past quarter of a century. His contributions, scattered in more than ninety publications, including books and articles, were primarily in the areas of logic, semantics, and linguistics. This volume is a fitting memorial to his achievements both because it reflects the areas where Pinborg made contributions to the history of medieval philosophy and because the ten articles it contains illustrate the various historiographical genres to which Pinborg contributed: translations, editions, comprehensive historical accounts of the development of certain issues and concepts, general expositions of the overall philosophical doctrine of a particular author, specific studies of the positions of individual authors on a given problem, and detailed analytical discussions of pointed philosophical problems or texts.

Philosophy and Literature in Latin America presents a unique and original view of the current state of development in Latin America of two disciplines that are at the core of the humanities. Divided into two parts, each section explores the contributions of distinguished American and Latin American experts and authors. The section on literature includes the literary activities of Latin Americans working in the United States, an area in which very little research has been demonstrated and, for that reason, will add an interesting new dimension to the field of Latin American studies.

The primary function of a book review is to articulate and present an understanding of the book's thesis and argument, and to make a judgment as to its value, so that readers will themselves understand and be guided by the understanding and judgment of the reviewer. Reviews are supposed to be interpretations created for the sake of a potential audience for a book. Unfortunately, most reviews fail to fulfill this function insofar as they merely paraphrase the text they are supposed to interpret, fail to provide an understanding of it, or are so critical that they miss the significance of the book. In short, they fail to provide the kind of interpretation that constitutes their proper hermeneutic task. Glover's ..

Despite predictions that Hispanics will soon outnumber all other minority groups combined in the United States, philosophy has remained indifferent to the growing Hispanic population. This paper offers several hypotheses why this is the case, arguing that Hispanics and Hispanic thought are perceived as unphilosophical (or only narrowly philosophical) and are thus perceived as ill-suited for academia and academic discussions in the United States. The author concludes by proposing strategies for overcoming this marginalization of Hispanics and Hispanic philosophy.

This paper investigates the problem of numerical continuity in thomistic metaphysics and attempts to point out the principle of identity in material substances. it has three parts: the first clarifies the issue and presents the possible alternatives; the second rejects various solutions which have been proposed by interpreters of thomas aquinas such as matter, form, accidents, and substance; and the third part argues that within thomistic metaphysics it is only existence ("esse") that may be considered as an acceptable candidate for this ontological role

__Forging People __explores the way in which Hispanic American thinkers in Latin America and Latino/a philosophers in the United States have posed and thought about questions of race, ethnicity, and nationality, and how they have interpreted the most significant racial and ethnic labels used in Hispanic America in connection with issues of rights, nationalism, power, and identity. Following the first introductory chapter, each of the essays addresses one or more influential thinkers, ranging from Bartolomé de Las Casas on race and the rights of Amerindians; to Simon Bolívar's struggle with questions of how to forge a nation from disparate populations; to modern and contemporary thinkers on issues of race, unity, assimilation, and diversity. Each essay carefully and clearly presents the views of key authors in their historical and philosophical context and provides brief biographical sketches and reading lists, as aids to students and other readers. “Latin American philosophy has a long history of engagement with issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality. To date, however, there has been no volume that focused on the contributions of the major figures in the Latin American tradition, to illustrate their connections, and to illuminate the context in which much of their work occurred. This volume fills that gap and takes an important step in remedying this shortcoming in the existing philosophical literature, and also in the literature of related fields such as Latin American studies, ethnic studies, and the cross-disciplinary work of race, ethnicity, and nationality.” —_Manuel Vargas, University of San Francisco _

My focus here is on two questions: Does philosophy have a place in contemporary American public life? and should philosophy have a place in American public life? Because my answer to the first question is negative, I also will discuss some of the reasons why I believe philosophy does not play a role in American public life. I suggest that philosophers have been excluded from the public conversation in part because the work of philosophy entails criticism and challenge—activities best accomplished from “outside” of the structures of power. This means that we have a role in public life, but it is an indirect role, as teachers and critics, not as advisers and active participants.

Este artículo trata sobre dos temas: cómo se establece el canon filosófico y las razones por las cuales la filosofía latinoamericana es generalmente excluida tanto del canon de la filosofía occidental como del canon de la filosofía a nivel mundial. El segundo tema permite ilustrar los problemas que surgen en el contexto del primero y proporciona una respuesta a ellos. El artículo sostiene que varias teorías que se proponen explicar la formación del canon y la exclusión de ciertos filósofos del canon occidental en particular, no hacen justicia a la situación porque ignoran el papel de la tradición en el proceso. Más específicamente, se ilustra cómo la tradición explica por qué la filosofía latinoamericana tiende a estar ausente tanto del canon filosófico occidental como del mundial. This article discusses two topics: how the philosophical canon is established and the reasons why Latin American philosophy is generally excluded both from the canon of western philosophy and the canon of world philosophy. The second topic illustrates the problems that come up in the context of the first and provides answers to them. The article argues that several theories that purport to explain the formation of the canon and the exclusion of certain philosophers from the western philosophical canon in particular, do not do justice to the situation because they ignore the role of tradition in the process. More specifically, the article shows how tradition explains why Latin American philosophy tends to be absent both from the canon of western philosophy and the world canon of philosophy