Contingency and Commitment

Mexican Existentialism and the Place of Philosophy

Carlos Alberto Sánchez

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781438459462, 9781438459455
• eBook ISBN: 9781438459479
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Existentialism in Philosophy

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.

ONE

Existentialism as Pause and Occasion

The Appropriations of el Grupo Hiperión

The event of existentialism’s appearance in Mexico in the 1940s could be credited to a variety of sources: lectures by Spanish exiles and philosophers such as Juan David García Bacca (1901–1992) and José Gaos (1900–1969), who had fled Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War of 1937 (Gaos 1954); the worldwide popularity of the works of Jean-Paul Sartre or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and even of Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit; or Mexican intellectuals themselves who traveled to France and Germany and brought with them an unwavering enthusiasm for the new philosophical “trend” (Ruanova 1982; Zirión Quijano 2004; Hurtado 2006, 2007). But, arguably, what truly announced existentialism’s arrival in Mexico was a series of lectures on French existentialism given by members of El Grupo Hiperión (the Hyperion group) in the spring of 1948 at El Instituto Francés de América Latina (IFAL, French Institute of Latin America), together with the publication, of the lectures and related essays, in 1948 and 1949 in the journal Filosofía y Letras (fall 1948, spring and fall 1949). These texts, by philosophers Emilio Uranga, Jorge Portilla, Joaquín Sánchez Macgrégor, Luis Villoro, and Ricardo Guerra, will be the subject of the present chapter.1

With one exception, Jorge Portilla, I will not touch on the philosopher’s life or contributions beyond the IFAL conferences. I will leave that for another time or to other, more capable, narrators. My focus here will be on those conferences and on whatever interpretive strategy was at play in their readings of the French existentialists. With that said, while philosophical historians might consider these lectures mere attempts to abbreviate and introduce French existentialism to a Mexican audience, I argue that it is imperative to approach each essay as a unique reading motivated by a certain purpose and aim of vital significance, that is, as an appropriation. As Emilio Uranga puts it in his own reading of Merleau-Ponty, “In these lectures on French existentialism we will offer a series of perspectives [enfoques] regarding existentialism, guided toward … the realization of a concrete analysis of the manner of being of the Mexican” (Uranga 1948, 224, emphasis mine).2 In other words, French existentialism serves as a point of departure, an occasion, for reflection into an intersubjective complex or circumstance that demands its own thinking, its own situated and organic enfoques—perspectives, approaches, conceptual matrices, intentions, and so on—that, while occasioned by a reading of and into the existentialist texts, emerge from and are tied to that intersubjective complex or circumstance and are guided toward its own transformative analysis.

Those who participated in the IFAL conferences shared similar presuppositions about the value of existentialism for Mexican life, even if they did not share a defined and determinate enfoque. Their philosophical aspirations were representative of an “interpretive community,” to use a notion employed by Stanley Fish. As such, they read the existentialist texts through “interpretive strategies” that, while not explicitly laid out in advance, nonetheless filtered or determined their interventions (Fish 1980). Portilla, for instance, recognizes the pull of his interpretive community and confesses the difficulty of reading purely, or objectively. Fourteen years after the IFAL conferences, and while lecturing on another existentialist, albeit a German one, Thomas Mann, he says: “While aspiring to absolute objectivity, any lecturer on [Mann’s] work would likewise make a focused selection of themes in which it would be extremely difficult to separate objective from subjective motivations” (Portilla [1966] 1984, 184). Hence, what we get from the readings here discussed, or those that come later, is not a simple summary or repetition of ideas but an interested appropriation (in the sense discussed in the introduction), or an attempt to, as we say, “make one’s own.”

Why French existentialism? Elsewhere, in a moment of reflection, Uranga explains that in the early 1940s, when the Spanish exile José Gaos first began lecturing on Heidegger, “being an existentialist meant being a Heideggerian” (2013a, 173). However, the appearance of Sartrean existentialism drove the younger generation, thirsty for novelty, to reevaluate their allegiances. Against the protests of their teacher, Gaos, members of Hyperion gravitated toward Sartre and French existentialism because, as Uranga recalls, Sartre offers a “theory of social relations, a pedagogy, a theory of history, an ethics, and an idea of man … while Heideggerians break up the matter [parten el cabello] in eight parts, to see in which of those is the human person [el hombre] going to remain as ‘the guardian of the nothing’ or the ‘shepherd of being’” (2013a, 175). Clearly, the well-publicized awkwardness and elusiveness of Heidegger’s writings had something to do with choosing Sartre, or French existentialism (as Sartre will not be the only French philosopher to be considered) over Heidegger. But it also had to do with which of these two ways of thinking was more suitable for “saving” or “liberating” the Mexican circumstance, or that concrete situation familiar to all Mexicans. In a column for a Mexico City daily, México en la Cultura, Uranga is surprisingly blunt: the reason for appealing to Sartre over Heidegger is that the latter’s style is “esoteric,” “hermetic,” “only for the initiated,” and unable to be applied (1949b, 3). On the other hand, Sartre offers a theory of responsibility that can be appropriated for the sake of present crises, and so the choice is made in the latter’s favor. In another column for the same daily, titled “Dos existencialismos” (Two existentialisms), Uranga reiterates the commitment to Sartre’s vision of this philosophy: “[Sartre’s] words, far from disaffecting us, consolidated, as few testimonies had, our path. From then on we knew, not without joy, that the responsibility for a particular task had been recognized. I am not afraid to declare that the word most loved by our generation is precisely responsibility. To assume a responsibility almost sounds like a generation theme, a theme that also defines the generation itself” (1949a, 3).

In this chapter, my focus will be on the lectures given by Uranga, Villoro, and Portilla. However, I will begin with a brief summary of Macgrégor’s and Guerra’s lectures in an effort to set a tone. The tone, or mood, in which I approach my reading of the Mexican existentialists will structure and dictate my focus, or enfoque. As a reader of Mexican philosophy, who finds in their readings models to emulate for the sake of saving my own circumstance as a contemporary Latino/a in the United States, a literal, nonviolent reading holds no value. Thus I spend more time reflecting on those texts that offer more in terms of orientation. Following Stanley Cavell’s reading of Ralph Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, I read el Grupo Hiperión, and particularly Uranga, Portilla, Villoro, and Leopoldo Zea, as “philosophers of direction, orienters, tirelessly prompting us to be on our way, endlessly asking us where we stand, what it is we face” (Cavell 2003, 20).

SETTING A TONE: JOAQUÍN SÁNCHEZ MACGRÉGOR AND RICARDO GUERRA

Unproblematic Readings

The lecture delivered by Ricardo Guerra (1927–2007) at the French Institute is not without its merits. My reasons from omitting that lecture from a fuller account of what I like to think of as the inauguration of existentialism in Mexico has to do with what this lecture lacks, namely, a particular enfoque or perspective. Sure, philosophy, as traditionally conceived and laid out by its long history and by its advocates, cares little about enfoque, so that biography, situation, circumstance, or historical milieu purportedly plays an insignificant role, if any, on its nature and scope. However, I insist that this enfoque is unavoidable, that we are always already entangled in ideologies and prejudices, crises and emergencies, ways of life and epistemological orientations that necessarily structure our interests and color our ideas. To try to go beyond that, to transcend that which is most immediate, seems, to me, an exercise is intellectual arrogance—a stubborn wish to keep philosophy “pure” and “universal,” even if universality and purity is a Western invention that, in philosophy at least, seems hard to cash out (more on this in chapter 3).

Guerra’s essay is structured as a glossary of Sartrean terms from Being and Nothingness. He does an admirable job of defining and textually supporting his definitions. Ironically, the finest moments in the essay treat the significance of the “situation” for a proper articulation of our existential condition. Paraphrasing Sartre, Guerra says, “all of my projects, my choices, can be understood from the point of view of an overall project. … This project is free, global … fundamental … [and] must be continuously reaffirmed” (1948, 307). This project is necessarily embedded in a situation that includes, according to Sartre, “my place, my body, my past, my position … that is, my fundamental relation to another” (309). This suggests, of course, that the reading of Sartre will likewise be conditioned and affected by all of these elements. I am not suggesting that we, in fact, filter our readings of all philosophy in this way—say, of Immanuel Kant or G. E. Moore—but existential philosophy, especially of the Sartrean variety, invites such readings, filterings, and appropriations.

Macgrégor on Existential Ethics

Joaquín Sánchez Macgrégor’s (1925–2008) contribution aims to answer the question posed in his chosen title, “¿Hay una moral existencialista?” (Is there an existentialist morality?). The urgency to locate an existentialist morality somewhere in the existentialist literature is due in large part to the common opinion that, taken to the extreme, existentialism would ultimately lead to rampant irresponsibility. If Mexican thinkers are going to offer existentialism as a conceptual matrix for the reinterpretation of their reality and, on this basis, prescribe transformative action for the sake of its future, then the assumption of responsibility for self and circumstance must be a cornerstone of that offering.

As expected, Macgrégor locates the sought after moral program in Sartre’s brand of existentialism. While both Sartre and Heidegger “oblige us to live philosophy in a radical and complete manner” and “animate thinking, turning it into the great business of our lives,” it is Sartre that offers a “practical existential philosophy” (1948, 267–268). This practical existential philosophy is a necessary addendum to an existential description that finds us all in a state of absolute freedom and solitude without God, or lacking a determinate anchor in anything stable and certain. “Every person [hombre],” writes Macgrégor, “in arriving at this valley of tears, can make of himself what he likes; no one else is responsible for him [sic]” (274). Alone, thrown into a miserable existence, the person can very well chose to avoid responsibility. Thus, an existentialist ethics boils down to this: every person is responsible for herself. Macgrégor, with a poet’s pen, paraphrases the Sartrean insight: “If the person is abandoned to her own will, it is best that she aims to rise up and care for her health. She must assume responsibility, and an authentic being-in-the-world will reveal itself to her in an instant. Recognizing her latent will power, she will begin a new ‘existence’ whose capabilities will be seen emerging in the very instant of self-choosing” (278). We see here a faith in an existentialist description of human life. The revelation of throwness and facticity carries with it a promise of liberation, as those idols (ideologies, institutions, self-perceptions) that control and oppress us are seen for what they are, post facto constructions superimposed on our facticity. Recognizing our “latent will,” we begin to dismantle these idols and reimagine a world for ourselves more conducive to our own human flourishing—to our “health.” And this is the ethical program that Macgrégor finds in his reading of Sartre.

Morality, and with it the political project of saving the circumstance, of empowering the intersubjective complex that history and violence have defined, comes with the assumption of responsibility: “Wanting to be free, but free to realize his liberty in the midst of a concrete situation, always caring for the freedom of the other, man negates his constitutive negation and brings it to bear on a tireless process of liberation that, if he wishes it to be effective, must be for life, since he is the bankrupt debtor of himself” (Macgrégor 1948, 278). In this way, the Mexican existentialists address their generation. If there is a future to be had, it must begin with taking on a vital responsibility for oneself and the care for others. The solemn picture of humans alone in the “valley of tears” is a caricature; the value of existentialism lies in the revelation that one is responsible for one’s future and that one’s future is tied, inescapably, to the future of others, that assuming this responsibility is an act of freedom and a vital necessity. As I will show below, Emilio Uranga, Luis Villoro, and Jorge Portilla focus their readings (their enfoque) on this insight. Against critics who charge that existentialism can only lead to radical individualism and nihilism, the Mexican existentialists find an orientation toward a vital project worth having, an insight that can still hold true today as we travel with philosophy farther and faster, more violently yet more sympathetically, into an age of suspicion and terror.

EMILIO URANGA AND MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY

A Purposeful Reading

It is Emilio Uranga (1921–1988) who inaugurates the 1948 lecture series, and in the process provides a prolegomena to any future analysis of the being of Mexican being (it is, presumably, the first lecture of the series to be delivered at IFAL). His lecture on Merleau-Ponty, far from being exegesis, is truly an appropriation. His reading is motivated, in the fullest sense of the word. As he puts it toward the end of the lecture:

In approaching a study of existentialism we have not done so in order to be followers of a trend [dóciles a una moda]. Another motive has guided us. Better yet, an effort or a project: the project to utilize, in the future, which we hope would be immanent, its tools or its conceptual repertoire so as to give a description of the Mexican person. More specifically, the value of existentialism to give a foundation to a systematic description of human existence, but not of human existence in the abstract, but of a situated human existence, in a situation, of a human existence framed in a determinate geographical habitat, in a social and cultural frame likewise determined and with a precise historical legacy. (1948, 240)

Straightforwardly, the preoccupation with existentialism will not be without consequence. At this time, in 1948, Uranga foresees a “project” to be realized. This project will be both phenomenological and existential: phenomenological in the sense that it will produce a description of the mode of being of Mexicans, and existential in the sense that it will be in the spirit of existentialism, locating the being to be described, that is, “a situated human existence,” in its cultural, geographical, and historical “habitat.” This existentially motivated phenomenological description of Mexican subjectivity and intersubjectivity will appropriate tools and concepts from the repertoire of existentialism and phenomenology, beginning, as does the lecture series, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

In the lecture, and subsequent published essay, Uranga restricts his comments to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (a work whose translation into Spanish Uranga would publish nine years later, in 1957). He begins by justifying the turn to French existentialism. Uranga then cites the historical influence of France on Mexican mind and culture, suggesting that while the Mexican spirit has, in the past, been enticed to adopt foreign ideas without question, the experiences of the last century (presumably, the failure of positivism, the 1910 Revolution, etc.) have served to engender within it a critical resolve, capable of resisting the urge to succumb to the temptations of the past. “We want to go to France to study her,” Uranga writes, “not so that she may teach us, but as a motive for reflection and consideration” (1948, 220). In other words, reading French philosophy gives us an opportunity to read ourselves while we read it; this reading orients and sharpens our enfoque. According to Uranga, reading French existentialism is an occasion for thinking, just like reading Mexican philosophy is, for this reader, such an occasion. Uranga stresses this point by invoking Sartre: “Sartre reads Heidegger, and extracts from him a series of theses, and he also reads Husserl and Jaspers, and reacts and contributes” (220, emphasis mine). “Why,” Uranga asks, “can’t that manner of thinking” ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: From Prejudice to Violence
• 1. Existentialism as Pause and Occasion: The Appropriations of el Grupo Hiperión
• 2. Denying the Postmodern: Jorge Portilla on Reason, Unreason, and the Freedom of Limits
• 3. The Passion Dialectic: On Rootedness, Fervors, and Appropriations
• 4. The Mexican/American Challenge to Philosophy: Uranga and Dewey
• 5. Philosophy sin más?: Notes on the Value of Mexican Philosophy for Latino/a Life
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover