•  1201
    Seriousness, Irony, and Cultural Politics: A Defense of Jorge Portilla
    American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy 13 (1): 11-18. 2013.
    This essay discusses Jorge Portilla’s phenomenological analysis of values and freedom in his essay, “The Phenomenology of Relajo.” Portilla argues that genuine freedom requires seriousness and sincerity; it requires wholehearted participation in cultural practices that one finds truly valuable. To support his argument, Portilla examines the ways that values and freedom are undermined when cultural practices are disrupted and break down as a result of the antics of the so-called "relajiento," a k…Read more
  •  940
    Being in a mood—such as an anxious, irritable, depressed, tranquil, or cheerful mood—tends to alter the way we react emotionally to the particular objects we encounter. But how, exactly, do moods alter the way we experience particular objects? Perceptualism, a popular approach to understanding affective experiences, holds that moods function like "colored lenses," altering the way we perceive the evaluative properties of the objects we encounter. In this essay, I offer a phenomenological analysi…Read more
  •  753
    Some of the central questions that have been explored by Latin American and Latinx philosophers are questions of metaphilosophy. "Metaphilosophy" refers to philosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy itself. For example, we might ask: What is the purpose of doing philosophy? How does philosophy compare and contrast with other disciplines, such as science, theology, or literature? And what is the best way of categorizing the different kinds and traditions of philosophy? These are philos…Read more
  •  678
    Affective injustice and fundamental affective goods
    Journal of Social Philosophy 53 (2): 185-201. 2021.
    Although previous treatments of affective injustice have identified some particular types of affective injustice, the general concept of affective injustice remains unclear. This article proposes a novel articulation of this general concept, according to which affective injustice is defined as a state in which individuals or groups are deprived of “affective goods” which are owed to them. On this basis, I sketch an approach to the philosophical investigation of affective injustice that begins by…Read more
  •  343
    It has been said that all philosophy begins with a set of concerns and a set of intuitions. With this idea in mind, we ask: Would it be helpful to understand Mexican-American philosophy as a kind of philosophy that begins with the concerns and intuitions of the Mexican-American community? On this view, what distinguishes Mexican-American philosophy is the orientation from which the philosophical investigation proceeds. Such an orientation is shaped by the experiences and relationships that are c…Read more
  •  230
    Surviving Social Disintegration: Jorge Portilla on the phenomenology of zozobra
    APA Newsletter on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy 2 (17): 3-6. 2018.
    ​In the wake of the extremely divisive 2016 presidential election, many US Americans are feeling deeply unsettled by the sense that the basic norms that govern life in our society are in a state of flux. How might we best describe and analyze the experience of living in a society that is so divided, a society whose very normative structure seems to be disintegrating? What problematic behaviors might arise in this situation? And how might we continue to work for positive social change without fur…Read more
  •  56
    What are Emotions For? From Affective Epistemology to Affective Ethics
    Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 1 (1): 123-134. 2019.
    What would it mean for an emotion to successfully “recognize” something about an object toward which it is directed? Although the notion of "emotional recognition" is central to Rick Furtak’s _Knowing Emotions_, the text does not provide an account of this concept that enables us to assess the extent to which a given emotional response is recognitive. This article draws from the text to articulate a novel account of emotional recognition. According to this account, emotional recognition can be a…Read more
  •  35
    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? Und…Read more
  •  34
    Moods and situations
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Do moods have intentional objects? If so, what kinds of intentional objects might they have? Some theorists hold that moods are objectless affective states, not ‘about’ anything. Others argue that moods are directed toward a maximally general object like ‘the world’, and so they are about everything, in some sense. In this article, I advance a new theoretical account of the intentional object of moods. According to what I call the ‘present-situation view’, moods are directed toward, or about, th…Read more
  •  25
    Emotional Depth, Ambivalence, and Affective Propulsion
    Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 3 (2): 35-43. 2022.
    Unpleasant emotions can be strongly “propulsive,” spurring us to make changes to our situation, perspective, values, and commitments. These changes are often positive, even crucial to our pursuit of the good life. But under what conditions are unpleasant emotions strongly propulsive? I argue that the source of affective propulsion should not be located in the mere unpleasantness of a given emotion, but, rather, in the emotional context in which the emotion arises. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s c…Read more
  •  10
    This chapter discusses some contributions that Mexican and Latinx phenomenologists have made to the critical phenomenology of home, i.e., the experience of “being at home in the world”—an experience that has always been both deeply cherished and bitterly contested. Tracing a line of thought that runs from the work of two Mexican phenomenologists in the 1940s and 1950s (Jorge Portilla and Emilio Uranga) to the work of two contemporary Latinx phenomenologists in the U.S. (Gloria Anzaldúa and Maria…Read more