Carlos Alberto Sanchez

The debate between Antonio Caso and Vicente Lombardo Toledano was political, philosophical, and public. To decide whether to reform public education, particularly undergraduate education, Caso and Lombardo Toledano argued over whether “[t]‌he courses that constitute the study plan for the Bachelor degree will obey the principle of essential identity in regards to the different phenomena of the Universe and will culminate with the teaching of philosophy based on nature.” Caso argued that despite violating the autonomy of the University and academic freedom, protected under the Constitution, the education reform proposed by the Second Commission was based on a false philosophical thesis: historical materialism. Since Caso and Lombardo Toledano agree that University is defined as a “cultural community,” much of the debate is focused on the nature of community, culture, history, and ethics.

Offers the first comprehensive survey of Mexican existentialism to appear in English. This book examines the emergence of existentialism in Mexico in the 1940s and the quest for a genuine Mexican philosophy that followed it. It focuses on the pivotal moments and key figures of the Hyperion group, including Emilio Uranga, Luis Villoro, Leopoldo Zea, and Jorge Portilla, who explored questions of interpretation, marginality, identity, and the role of philosophy. Carlos Alberto Sánchez was the first to introduce and emphasize the philosophical significance of the Hyperion group to readers of English in The Suspension of Seriousness, and in the present volume he examines its legacy and relevancy for the twenty-first century. Sánchez argues that there are lessons to be learned from Hyperion’s project not only for Latino/a life in the United States but also for the lives of those on the fringes of contemporary, postmodern or postcolonial, economic, political, and cultural power.

This paper considers the nature of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism in regard to philosophy. Focusing primarily on “A Dialogue on Language,” I argue, first, that Heidegger recognizes the limits of the Eurocentric idea of philosophy and proposes its overcoming. Secondly, I suggest that the proposal to overcome philosophy is made in an attempt to protect philosophy from the encroachment of an otherness that challenges its very identity. This leads me to the view, thirdly, that Heidegger’s Eurocentrism about philosophy is compromising insofar as he is willing, to a certain degree, to let go of philosophy’s European origin. This “thinning” out of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism, finally, opens the door to a consideration of the possibility for a non-Western, namely, a Latin American, or Mexican “philosophy.”

_In this symposium, Roberto A. Carleo III, Gregory Doukas and Imogen M. Sullivan think alongside Carlos Alberto Sánchez about the contingency of human existence as it is understood in Mexican existentialism. They ask: Should the notion of a metaphysical substance be discarded altogether due to its misuse in the history of European philosophy? Or are there philosophical reasons to avoid ontological uncertainty by, for example, postulating the notion of a non-discrete substance? And if attempts to define human substantiality merely seek to defy this accidentality, should scholars with deviant identities deliberately engage in a wandering beyond dominant frameworks to evade the material and hermeneutical hostility of these frameworks? How should they work alongside others to best take up their responsibility? In his reply, Sánchez considers what the project of accidentalization would imply for each of these carefully-crafted interventions._.

En 1941, deux ans après la fin de la guerre civile, le gouvernement espagnol a signé un accord avec le St-Siège par lequel le Chef de l’État, le Général Francisco Franco, intervenait directement dans la nomination des évêques et des archevêques diocésains. L’accord a été inclus dans le Concordat de 1953, qui a scellé les relations de coopération entre les deux États. Après le Concile Vatican II, le pape Paul VI a personnellement demandé au Général de renoncer à ce privilège, mais Franco refusa, subordonnant son renoncement à une révision totale du Concordat. Le Roi Juan Carlos Ier a renoncé à ce privilège quelques mois après son couronnement ; ainsi les relations Église-État, compliquées pendant les dernières années du franquisme, se sont normalisées.In 1941, two years after the end of the civil war, the Spanish government signed an accord with the Holy See under which the Head of State, General Francisco Franco, intervened directly in the nomination of diocesan Bishops and Archbishops. The accord was included in the Concordat of 1953, which cemented cooperative relations between the two States. After Vatican Council II, Pope Paul VI personally asked the General to renounce the privilege, but Franco refused, linking his renouncement to a total revision of the Concordat. King Juan Carlos I renounced the privilege a few months after his coronation, thus normalizing Church-State relations, complicated during the last years of Francoism.1941, zwei Jahre nach dem Ende des Bürgerkrieges, unterzeichnete die spanische Regierung ein Abkommen mit dem Heiligen Stuhl, durch das der Staatschef, General Francisco Franco, direkt an der Ernennung der Diözesanbischöfe und -erzbischöfe beteiligt wurde. Die Übereinkunft wurde in das Konkordat von 1953 eingefügt, das die Kooperationsbeziehungen zwischen den beiden Staaten besiegelte. Nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil hat Papst Paul VI. den General persönlich gebeten, auf dieses Privileg zu verzichten, doch Franco lehnte ab und ordnete seinen Verzicht einer umfassenden Revision des Konkordats unter. König Juan Carlos I. hat schon wenige Monate nach seiner Krönung auf dieses Privileg verzichtet, so dass sich die in den letzten Jahren des Francoregimes schwierig gewordenen Beziehungen zwischen Kirche und Staat normalisierten

Contemporary popular culture is riddled with references to Mexican drug cartels, narcos, and drug trafficking. In the United States, documentary filmmakers, journalists, academics, and politicians have taken note of the increasing threats to our security coming from a subculture that appears to feed on murder and brutality while being fed by a romanticism about power and capital. Carlos Alberto Sánchez uses Mexican narco-culture as a point of departure for thinking about the nature and limits of violence, culture, and personhood. A Sense of Brutality argues that violent cultural modalities, of which narco-culture is but one, call into question our understanding of “violence” as a concept. The reality of narco-violence suggests that “violence” itself is insufficient to capture it, that we need to redeploy and reconceptualize “brutality” as a concept that better captures this reality. Brutality is more than violence, other to cruelty, and distinct from horror and terror—all concepts that are normally used interchangeably with brutality, but which, as the analysis suggests, ought not to be. In narco-culture, the normalization of brutality into everyday life is a condition upon which the absolute erasure or derealization of people is made possible.

In this paper I consider the notion of “moral ecology” in relation to the social/cultural construction known as “narco-culture.” My claim is that the moral ecology of narco-culture is one that is both destructive and prohibitive of human flourishing. The general idea of a “moral ecology” is that the moral space of human conviviality is not unlike an ecological, or environmental, space—both are constituted by various interdependent relations which, when working harmoniously and in optimal capacity, maintain the overall well-being of its inhabitants (i.e., human agents or the flora and fauna). Within non-human ecosystems, the quality or health of rivers, trees, earth, air, predator-prey relationships, etc., define what Allen Hertzke calls the system’s “carrying capacity.” The carrying capacity refers to what the system can handle while staying balanced and healthy and also indicates the point beyond which the system, if overburdened or degraded, begins to fall apart. In a social setting, the ecology is constituted by moral rules and behaviors, the degradation of which can cause the degradation of the entire system.

I offer a phenomenological description of undocumented immigrant reason, provisionally understood as a sort of historical reason grounded on undocumented immigrant life. That is, the categories of undocumented immigrant reason are resources for undocumented immigrant existence and are inscribed in the historical memory of immigration (they are shared and communal), accessed by immigrants in stories, anecdotes, and interpersonal trauma. Abstracting from personal experience, testimony, popular culture, and elsewhere, I propose a fragmentary list of these categories of undocumented immigrant reason, a list that includes journeying, crossing/nepantla, uncertainty/zozobra, nostalgia, and return. These categories, which structure undocumented immigrant reason, are reflected in beliefs and attitudes about migration, belonging, the contingency of life, the centrality of memory, and the meaning of death. Constitutive of immigrant rationality are beliefs and ways of being that lend meaning to immigrant life, including those beliefs and ways of being that place immigrants in closer proximity to fundamental human truths.

The Disintegration of Community analyzes the social and cultural writings of Jorge Portilla (1919−1963) and demonstrates the continued relevance of his thought to contemporary debates on the politics of social and cultural identity, the nature of community, and the political role of affect and moods. Sánchez and Gallegos address questions as timely today as they were for Portilla: What drives the impulse toward political nationalism? What sustains the myths that organize our political lives? Under what conditions do communities disintegrate? An appendix offers original English translations of three of Portilla's fascinating and hitherto untranslated essays, including Portilla's 1952 essay, "The Spiritual Crisis of the United States."

This paper explores and expands upon Jorge Gracia's reasons for the apparent lack of Hispanics in US philosophy. The point is to explain the underrepresentation of Hispanics in philosophy, with a focus on a specific subgroup of Hispanics, namely, "homegrown" US Hispanics. This group wasentirely missing from the "established" ranks in Gracia's census. I propose a phenomenological explanation for this lack, rooted in my experience as ahomegrown US Hispanic. This experience gives rise to a sense of identity described as "post-immigrant." Those of us in the American philosophical establishment who share this identity, or who feel its pull, desire but hesitate to fully and authentically engage philosophy and the philosophical life, where thisrequires an uncompromising insertion of our cultural and historical identity into what we write and teach. The reason for the absence of homegrown Hispanicphilosophers who are willing to engage issues related to their circumstance as Hispanics is what I call, "the post-immigrant fear."

The focus of this paper is Mexican historicism. It has three objectives: first, to introduce English-speaking readers to the nature and history of Mexican historicism; second, to defend Mexican historicism against the charges of relativism usually raised against historicism in general and “Mexican” philosophy in particular; and third, to argue for what I call the transcendental, or alternatively, “liberatory,” nature of Mexican historicism—a nature with philosophical and political consequences. The hope is that by making the clarifications and determinations made here, the tradition of Mexican philosophy, of which Mexican historicism is a key moment, may find its place in the increasingly pluralistic US philosophical landscape.

This paper considers the nature of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism in regard to philosophy. Focusing primarily on “A Dialogue on Language,” I argue, first, that Heidegger recognizes the limits of the Eurocentric idea of philosophy and proposes its overcoming. Secondly, I suggest that the proposal to overcome philosophy is made in an attempt to protect philosophy from the encroachment of an otherness that challenges its very identity. This leads me to the view, thirdly, that Heidegger’s Eurocentrism about philosophy is compromising insofar as he is willing, to a certain degree, to let go of philosophy’s European origin. This “thinning” out of Heidegger’s Eurocentrism, finally, opens the door to a consideration of the possibility for a non-Western, namely, a Latin American, or Mexican “philosophy.”

Jorge Gracia’s foundational role in the history of Latino philosophy is unquestionable. The present collection, 'Debating Race, Ethnicity, Nationality', excellently coordinated by Iván Jaksić, reaffirms Gracia’s status by treating readers to some of those contributions to the field that have elicited the most fervor, the most criticism, and the most philosophy. The collection offers Gracia the opportunity to respond to his critics, and in the process, becomes more than a defense of his position, but an opportunity for clarification as well as an invitation for further thinking.

The present paper attempts to accomplish the following: (1) to clarify and critically discuss the phenomenology of “belief” as we find it in Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (1913) (henceforward, Ideas I); (2) to clarify and critically discuss the manner in which the phenomenological method treats beliefs; (3) to clarify and critically discuss the manner of belief justification as described by the phenomenological method; and (4) to argue that, just as the phenomenological method can be used to validate scientific hypotheses, it can likewise be practised in our everyday worldly comportment to justify our everyday, commonsense beliefs. The paper proceeds from the idea that the phenomenological method is not the static descriptive method some make it out to be, but, rather, a living method at the service of life. The author begins with some preliminary remarks about Husserl’s concerns with unfounded or presupposed beliefs and their necessary “suspension” as dictated by the phenomenological reduction and epoche (“the method”). He then engages the text of Ideas I, especially sections 101 to 106, where Husserl presents a phenomenological conception of the character of belief. The paper concludes by treating the nature of belief justification, or “rational positing”, and puts forward the view that the phenomenological method in everyday practice can aid us in the realization of responsible epistemic conduct and, ultimately, lead toward responsible conduct towards ourselves and, hence, authentic being. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007

This paper exammes the construction and de-construction of the "illegal" immigrant in media spectacle and public discourse. I examme the manner in which hnmigrants are rendered "illegal" and then processed through a mechanism of dehumanization where they are simultaneously located in and outside the space of law. In this process, the "illegal" immigrant is stripped of rights, humanity, and intention. The "illegal" immigrant, seen merely as a body or text, becomes a thing—more precisely, a type of equipment, that as equipment, as Martin Heidegger observed, eventually becomes "obtrusive" and thus a target of nativist violence.