Latin-American Philosophy

Ken Taylor
This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Today we’re coming to you from Oregon State University in Corvallis.

John Perry
Our thinking originates at Philosophers Corner at Stanford University.

Ken Taylor
Welcome, everyone, to Philosophy Talk.

Our topic today is Latin American philosophy.

John Perry
Latin America means all of the Spanish and Portuguese speaking parts of the Americas. We’ll just say American philosophy when we mean the US and Canada, and I’m going to apologize now in advance for the arrogance of that custom.

Ken Taylor
Now, John, some people no doubt will find talk of a distinctively Latin American philosophy a little puzzling. People like that will say the problems of philosophy are universal and timeless, the problems that confront all human beings everywhere, independently of their historical millio, or cultural context.

John Perry
And if that’s your guiding conception of philosophy, it is hard to see how there can be anything deeply distinctive about Latin American philosophy, or Canadian philosophy, or North American philosophy or British philosophy. You feel the problems of philosophy are timeless,. They might be formulated in slightly different terms and idioms and in different languages that might make some difference. But basically, at the bottom philosophy is philosophy, no matter where, when, or in what language you do it.

Ken Taylor
So you’ve just articulated a kind of Platonistic ideal of philosophy, John. That says, you know, philosophy is about timeless problems, addressed with timeless methods. That conception of philosophy probably is dominant in Anglo American circles, like the ones we hang out in.

John Perry
Yeah, but of course,  the circles we hang out in are pretty parochial. There are alternative conceptions of philosophy, which would make the idea of Latin American philosophy much more compelling and natural.

Ken Taylor
Right, think about a broadly pragmatist conception of philosophy, for example, the pragmatist say that if philosophy is to be more than just an idle wheel spinning, then both its questions, and its answers to those questions have to somehow arise out of and make contact with the lived experiences of culturally and historically situated human beings.

John Perry
Do pragmatists know how much fun it is to be a idly spinning wheel in a cloistered office in an ivory tower. But at any rate, if you are a pragmatist, you will really see how there could be a distinct Latin American philosophy, a philosophy essentially tied to the very interesting, peculiar, unique story of Latin American life, culture, history.

Ken Taylor
And so, okay, so let’s take a look when we look at Latin American philosophy on the ground as it’s actually done, John, well, what do we find something distinctively Latin American, or something that looks a lot like Anglo American philosophy or European philosophy?

John Perry
Well, actually, can you find both for willing is quite special. They’re contemporary echoes of indigenous philosophical ideas dating even from pre-Columbian times.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s certainly distinctively Latin America, no doubt about that.

John Perry
But then there’s also a Universalist strand, especially on metaphysics and epistemology. You could be in Latin America, you could be an Oxford you, maybe you could be in Athens 2000 years.

Ken Taylor
So you’re thinking about the Latin American philosophers who have basically imported and build upon European philosophical ideas for positivism and phenomenology right down to existentialism, and even our own favorite Anglo American analytic philosophy.

John Perry
Yes, but when you move to social and political philosophy, there is definitely a distinctive Latin American philosophy. It’s tied with a long struggle against European tyranny and American tyranny. And with the whole issue of Native rights.

Ken Taylor
So it’s no accident, you’re saying, that Latin America is the home both of liberation theology but also of liberation philosophy.

John Perry
Many of the themes of Latin American philosophy, social and political philosophy. Begin with a fellow I used to teach in my freshman course, Bartolomé de las Casas, who is a truly fascinating figure. Tell me more about him. Well done last Cassius summed with his family. In Hispaniola, just 10 years after Columbus’s first voyage, he grew up in in comiendo system. That means that farms and plantations were prospered based on enslaving the Native Americans. But as he grew older, he saw the injustice of this. He became a prolific writer, a priest, later a monk and then in the last part of his career, moved back to Spain trying to convince the Holy Roman Emperor and the papal legates to abolish slavery.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, but wait a minute—abolish native slavery. But wasn’t he a guy who advocated African slavery? I don’t think that’s so cool.

John Perry
Well, that’s it A bit of a bum rap. He was so moved by the plight of native, native Indian slavery, that at one time in an early essay, he said it would be better to move to African slavery, which was already thriving. So he didn’t start it. But he was very embarrassed by this and apologized for it in later years.

Ken Taylor
So, John, look, I suspect we’re nearing the limits of our own knowledge of Latin American philosophy, but our guest Joseph Orosoco, Professor of Philosophy from right here at OSU. He’ll help us continue the conversation and deepen our education.

John Perry
And we’ll want our live audience here in Corvallis to join in the conversation too.

Ken Taylor
But first, our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Caitlin Esch, talks to someone who takes Latin American philosophy out of the classroom and applies it in the real world. She files this report.

Caitlin Esch
When he was 18 years old, Javier Lara left Mexico and immigrated to the United States. For seven years, he worked as a farmhand up and down the West Coast, harvesting asparagus, tomatoes and Christmas trees.

Javier Lara
The climate conditions were very heavy, you know, very a lot of heat, snow, and we were supposed to work, you know, under those conditions. We work long hours, and we ended up getting probably way way lower than the minimum wage a

Caitlin Esch
Lara says some days he would only make $14.

Javier Lara
It was a surprise to me to realize that the United States, you know, one of the most creative nations, you know, this was very common.

Caitlin Esch
After a while Lara reached a breaking point. He decided he had to change his life. So he studied English, took a few classes at a community college, and started learning about what it means to be a Mexican in the United States.

Javier Lara
And as I learned more about this, I realized, well, something deep is going on here. You know, it was not just the fact that I was exploited, you know, in the workforce, but it was something more.

Caitlin Esch
Lara put himself through college earning a bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies from Oregon State University. He took philosophy classes and started applying what he learned in the classroom to life.

Javier Lara
In peace studies. You know, we cover Gandhi, we cover Cesar Chavez, we cover Martin Luther King,

Martin Luther King, Jr.
We’ve got some difficulties ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top.

Javier Lara
So these people that, you know that we’re fighting against, literally the same force that I was exposed to, right.

Caitlin Esch
Now as a community organizer for PCUN, Oregon’s farm worker union, Lara helps laborers fight unsafe work conditions, wage theft, and harassment.

Javier Lara
A lot of workers, they don’t want to lose their job. So even though they’re exposed to humiliation, they’re supposed to work sometimes 16 hours a day, every day, and not getting paid, you know, for that time and just getting paid for errors. But at the same time, they been threatened like, you know, if you want to leave well, you can leave, you know, go home, there’s a hundred people behind you.

Caitlin Esch
Another woman came to him recently after she was threatened and blackmailed by her boss.

Javier Lara
She’s been having sexual harassment, you know, from her past, just directly asking her, you know, if you want a job you have to do what I asked you to di.

Caitlin Esch
Lara says it’s his responsibility as a college educated former farmhand to take what he’s learned in the classroom and fight for change in the real world. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Caitlin Esch.

John Perry
I’m John Perry, along with Ken Taylor, and you’re listening to Philosophy Talk coming to you from Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Ken Taylor
And we’re joined now by Joseph Orosco. He’s a professor of philosophy right here at OSU in Corvallis, where he’s also the director of the Peace Studies program. Joseph, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Joseph Orosco
It’s an honor to be here and welcome to Corvallis.

John Perry
Well, thank you. Joseph, tell us just a bit about your background and how you got interested in Latin American philosophy.

Joseph Orosco
Well, like many things, I blame my mother.

Ken Taylor
You were born a Latin American philosopher?

Joseph Orosco
Well, I wasn’t born a Latin American philosopher, but I was born in Latin America. I was born in Quito, Ecuador, my mother was an exchange student from New Mexico and studying there. And it was through her influence that I came to have an interest in the social and political movements of Latin America. The interesting thing about Latin American philosophy is that this has been a growing field that has not existed as an academic field of study for very long. In fact, I never have taken a class formally in Latin American philosophy. This was something that I had to sort of piece together by myself, study with professors by myself. And it’s only been within the past maybe five or 10 years that there has been a movement of academic programs across the country studying this.

John Perry
Now, one thing that’s going on in science and anthropology, generally is a reevaluation and discovering all sorts of new things about pre Columbian Americas. A lot more people perhaps than were thought a lot more sophisticated cultures. What about pre Columbian philosophy? Is there anything to be said? Is there any Anything known? Is there any interesting speculations?

Joseph Orosco
Well, the philosophy that I know best is the thought of the ancient Aztecs or as they refer to themselves as the machico, or the now people. And what’s interesting about their work is that it really challenges in some ways our conceptions of what philosophy is about or how we should understand philosophy. Because many of the works of the ancient Aztecs were destroyed by the Spanish confused, so there so we don’t have a lot of sources of their books. But they did something very interesting. They express their philosophical thought through what they called Flower poems, or in a bottle in so Chico, Inca Gatto. These were songs that were meant for ceremonies, but what we start to see is that there were philosopher kings amongst the Aztecs, who expressed philosophical thoughts in these flower poems, and I have an example if I can share with you. Sure, yeah. So the poem that I’m going to read to you was from a famous wise man by the name of nessa Popko Yato, which means Hungry Wolf. He was a true philosopher king, he was the the leader of the city of Texcoco, which was part of the Aztec empire and so he was a leader but also a philosopher. And so one of his poems begins this way. I nessa Walco Yato ask this, is it true when really lives on the earth? Not forever on Earth? Only a little while here, though it be Jade, it falls apart, though it be gold, it wears away, though it be Quetzal feathers, they are torn asunder? Not forever on this Earth. Only a little while here.

Ken Taylor
Wow, that’s interesting. Well, let me ask you a question about that. So that’s pre Columbian, did pre Columbian culture. Does it have any echoes? Does it does it reverberate at all through contemporary Latin American culture? Was this taken up? Or was it just a culture that this Keystone is destroyed? And, and and was gone?

Joseph Orosco
No, I think that it exists still today, in many indigenous communities throughout Latin America, and including the indigenous communities that exist here in the United States of people who have come up from places like well, Hawk are Chiapas. And these are perspectives about how to live with one another, and how to live with the earth. And these were perspectives that the Aztecs were very concerned with. In this poem, you hear them trying to understand what is our purpose here on life? And is any of this really real? What is the truth of our existence? And the emphasis that they give over and over and over in their poems is this kind of the precariousness of life? How we should never really be settled and understand that things are very dangerous, that conception of the world for the ancient aspects was living on a jagged edge.

Ken Taylor
But it isn’t just an ancient conception. It’s a conception that still lives in some communities that are historically connected.

Joseph Orosco
Yeah, if you talk to indigenous people today, they’ll talk about the precariousness of their lives and how things are built around suffering and pain and trying to deal with it.

Ken Taylor
This is a special edition of Philosophy Talk, coming to you from Oregon State University in Corvallis. We’re discussing Latin American philosophy with Joseph Orosco from OSU.

John Perry
How is Latin America different from the United States? And how is Latin American philosophy different from American philosophy? What are the most important trends in Latin American philosophy?

Ken Taylor
Social activism and Latin American philosophy—along with questions from our live audience, when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
Welcome back to Philosophy Talk. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. And we’re discussing Latin American philosophy with Joseph Orosco in front of a live audience at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

John Perry
Join the discussion by stepping up to the microphones on either side of the stage. Has Jose Ortega Y Gasset or Jorge Luis Borges, or liberation philosophy or liberation theology, or pre Columbian ideas shaped your way of thinkingW hat have you gotten from Latin America philosophy in your life?

Ken Taylor
Joseph, I want to, I want to go back to the issue we raised in the opening framing section. So some philosophers think of philosophy as this universal thing. Timeless problems approach with timeless methods. You know, that idiom might be a little different, but the problems are essentially the same. Some people think pragmatists tend to think, no, no, there aren’t any universal problems. They’re the problems that are tied to a particular culture and epic and philosophy has to make contact with the concrete lived experience of real people living their lives. So in Latin American philosophy, which is it, is it Universalist? Is it more like the pragmatist more local and culturally specific, which is dominant?

Joseph Orosco
Well, there’s both of those but I think that they dominant trend in Latin American philosophy is to say that Latin America is a unique and distinct place from Europe and North America. And that the attempt of Latin American philosophers is to try to define and explain what is the unique worldview that comes from Latin America that can be an alternative to what comes out of the United States in Latin America and Europe that is,

Ken Taylor
So Latin America as a distinct place, What’s distinctive about Latin America that would give rise to a distinctive philosophy? What’s the distinctive situation, that philosophy would glom on to and and say something distinctive about life and going forward and all that?

Joseph Orosco
Well, the Latin American philosophers that I know about most say that what we need to pay attention to? First off and foremost, is the relationship of Latin America to the United States that the relationship has always been one of subordination, and that the attempt of Latin American philosophy is to try to figure out how is Latin American life different than the culture in the United States? How do we live life differently? And in what sense? Can we say that maybe we provide that, as in Latin America, an alternative to the kind of ways of life in the United States that many find materialistic, dedicated to a wealth above all, and also dedicated to imperial power around the world? So how can we define an ideal for humanity that would be different.

John Perry
Often, when I talk to Latin American philosophers and Latin American intellectuals, generally, I get the sense that they feel that America has actually done a poor job of carrying on the finer parts of European civilization, and that at least in certain parts of Latin America, like maybe Buenos Aires, the kind of the, the finer parts of the intellectual tradition, continue in a way that they don’t in North America, is that just my being defensive? Or is that element really there?

Joseph Orosco
No, there was a philosopher in 1900, by the name of Jose Enrique Roald Dahl, who claimed, he wrote a book that was comparing Latin America to the United States, and he says, of the United States, while I admire the United States, I do not love her. And the emphasis there was he felt that what was there, what was to admire about the United States was its Puritan work ethic, its enthusiasm for liberty, its willpower. But there was a dark side to this, which was a vulgarity a multi materialistic spirit, spiritually empty individualism. And in his view, that is that although the idea of Latin America should stand for preserving the best of western heritage, talking about the the emphasis of the Greeks, truth, beauty and goodness, these kinds of values, he felt were not preserved very well in the United States, I was dedicated to the dollar.

John Perry
Now is this perspective, aligned with a class distinction is this the kind of view that philosophers who have horses and play golf and and so forth and so on are likely to have, as opposed to a much different philosophy that’s percolates up from the people that are working in the fields and so forth?

Joseph Orosco
Yeah, I think that’s very true. Although it was an upper class intellectual. There’s another philosopher that’s very interesting, by the name of Jose Marti who said that what we need to do as Latin Americans is define who we are by going back to our roots. And one of the things he said was that we really need to study the history of America, he said, from the Incas, to the present, details and letters and everything. So that if it means that we overlook the Greeks, that’s okay. He says, quote, Our grease must take priority over the grease, which is not ours. And so that means trying to understand that pre Columbian idea.

John Perry
Well, there might be some possibilities there, because just the poem you gave us was, I think about as much as we have a very cleitus and there’s been probably 10,000 articles written on this.

Ken Taylor
So but I want to, I want to think a little bit deeper about so America as a problem that gives rise to distinctively Latin American philosophizing, right? I mean, American philosophers. I mean, I don’t think there’s an epic. And is there a time in the history of American philosophy, where America’s placed in a global order is what prompted philosophers to think what they think I mean, American philosophy is driven by all kinds of things. There’s all this history of connection to European philosophy, but then the rise of science and, you know, there’s not much thinking in distinctively American philosophy, thinking about class struggle or anything like that. That all comes from European struggles. I mean, so America as a problem, it sounds like you’re saying that for lots of Latin American philosophers, the impetus for philosophizing, is this big hedge Amman to the north, who’s culturally imperialistic and militarily and economically. And the question is, what should we be in opposition to that kind of?

Joseph Orosco
Absolutely. And actually, this has resonance with American philosophers. I mean, if you think about William James and some of his work, some of his work was was motivated to be thinking about how do we understand the American character? How do we understand the experience of America? And one of the things that really bothered James was the question of American imperialism in the Philippines. And so this has resonance with Latin American philosophers who want to try to understand how can we Have an authentic and unique voice in the philosophical world stage by getting out from underneath the influence of Europe and North America.

Ken Taylor
So tell me a little bit about what that authentic, unique voice, what some range of philosophers have said about the authentic and unique voice of Latin America and Latin Americans. I mean, how would you characterize that void?

Joseph Orosco
I think that the figures to turn to here is a figure in Mexico right now by the name of Enrique Dussel, who says that, what we need to understand is to try to recuperate the values of the pre Columbian thinkers as a way of critiquing North American or European globalization. How do we talk about development, trying to satisfy the needs of a population, but without assuming that the way to do this is by copying the United States in terms of its development, moving away from that kind of ideas of materialism of consumption? How can we create different kinds of democratic communities that touch base in alternative theories of democracy that don’t necessarily come from Greece, and there’s emphasis in that in inkan, and in Mayan and Aztec thinking.

John Perry
When I when I read delis, casas, he seems like a very sensible guy. I mean, I’m not really big on religious philosophy. But you know, given his background and his deep Catholicism, he had very good insensible instincts. And he was a good writer and a clear writer. When I go up to the 1600s and early 1700s. And look at the philosophers in North America, you get real nutcases like Jonathan Edwards, and Cotton Mather, and people that are really on this Puritan angle of things that that it just strikes me as really pathological. So it seems to me at that point, say 1615 1675 70 100, Latin America had a big head start on reducing reasonable philosophy, is there still a difference between a Catholic centered point of view and a Puritan centered point of view that comes out?

Joseph Orosco
Well, this is something to really pay attention to, right? We tend to think of the United States as a center of intellectual life and Harvard as a place that was started by the Puritans as an intellectual home, what we need to realize is that some of the oldest centers of higher learning in the Americas are not in the United States, but in Mexico. And so there was large traditions of philosophical thinking going on way before there was anyone in North America. And so there is a sense of development of philosophical thinking that goes through many, many different traditions. And one of them is Catholic scholastic thinking that was very, very prominent in Latin America at the time that you’re talking about. So there was very sophisticated thinking going on in Latin America, not just amongst the Native Americans.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re coming to you from the Oregon State University in Corvallis. We’re in front of a live audience here, and we’ve got members of that live audience love to join this conversation. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Tell us your name and those where you’re from, And then give us your comment or question.

Ramsey
Hi, there. I’m Dr. Ramsey Tracy at Western Oregon University. I studied at Tulane, I’m a Mexicanist, and also do Caribbean cultural studies. I was just curious, what the panel would have to say about describing Latin America as a single entity versus a multiple entity.

Joseph Orosco
That’s a very good point. There are many philosophers in Latin America amongst the tradition who say that we can’t really talk about Latin American philosophy, because it’s such a diverse place. However, there are others who say that, you know, there are significant experiences that unite the continent together, and primarily the influence of Western imperialism on that bring certain kinds of experiences that can unite all of these people together, at least in sort of an understanding that we need to create something differently than what we see in the United States and in Europe.

John Perry
But my angle would be it’s probably a gross oversimplification that distorts. But compared to the whole idea of talking about Asian philosophy and Asian thought, it’s not a big problem.

Ken Taylor
But is there but but I don’t know a lot about Latin American culture in detail. Is there a pan Latinus kind of movement? Like there’s a pan Africanist movement, right? And many people resist that? Because they think Africa is a multiplicity? And other people take? No, that’s the way forward? I mean, is there any dynamic like that in Latin American?

Joseph Orosco
Yeah, there is some there was a philosopher in Mexico, they may say, Vasconcellos, who believe that what United Latin America was its racial differences, that what was valued in Latin America was the mixing and the mess, the socket, the mixing of different races, that made it a very unique place different from North America, different from Europe, which tended to be places of white supremacy, and so that the future of humanity could be seen in nascent form in Latin America, through the kinds of mixing of indigenous European and African peoples.

Ken Taylor
So that’s, that raises another kind of question that I wanted to ask you about. So one of the things you were talking earlier sort of at the level of, you know, Latin America as a place as a big complicated place. But what about ideas of a self and what a self is and how a self relates to a collectivity? Because what you said to me just now to us just now suggests to me that maybe there are different ideas of autonomy, another enlightenment gave us this idea of autonomy of man as such devoid of local particularity. I wonder, does that idea does that enlightenment ideal have a deep hold in Latin American thinking or not a deep hold or what?

Joseph Orosco
I think there’s a lot of suspicion about that idea of a severe kind of individualism or severe individual autonomy, there want, there seems to be an emphasis of trying to figure out how we are in community with others. And this goes back to indigenous thinking an emphasis on community, and living together and trying to figure out how we can do that, not by thinking of ourselves as atomistic individuals who have to come together in terms of a social contract, but how we assume that there are already ways of life that we’re embedded in, and how do we give our philosophical perspective that recognizes those ties of community, and that includes community with nature, a big emphasis in Latin American thought, going back to the indigenous ways of life is thinking about nature as an agent or as a player in our community. And that’s something that is not necessarily quite as prominent in Europeans.

Ken Taylor
We got more questions, on this side of the room.

Jon
Jon Dorbolo here at Oregon State. Luís Borges is a great writer of the 20th century, who expressed a strong philosophical ideas in many of his stories and essays. And, in those stories, many of the stories that resonate the most for people, there’s a circularity that happens, I think of the sucking stones or labyrinths and those kinds of stories. And that idea has taken root, even now in critiques of consciousness. And he seems to be one of the origins of that idea. The poem that you read the the flower poem from the philosopher king, seemed to me to have that same sense of recursiveness. At its core, is that right? Or is this resonating? Or did I imagine that?

Ken Taylor
Well, first, explain what he means by recursiveness to our vast listening audience who might not get that idea?

Joseph Orosco
Well, I think that let me say this, I think the idea that the view would be sort of that we’re caught in various kinds of loops of consciousness that repeat various forms and ideas, rather than sort of originating and moving in linear time. Is that the idea, John? Yeah, I think that is part of the at least the indigenous worldview of the now while the Aztec that the world that we inhabit is one that is, as they say, is a mask of reality. We perceive the world in a certain way, but it’s not necessarily the way the world is. And the world moves between, right different kinds of oscillations of reality. So there’s a term that the Aztecs use, called Nippon law, we are in between realities. And part of the precariousness of life is thinking that the world is always going to be this way. And it never changes. And it’s never going to be different than the way it is. The Aztec worldview suggests is that we don’t really know how the world is. But we have to understand that there’s a danger and also possibility given that these changes are going to happen in our own self. Right, but also in the way that the world presents itself to us.

Ken Taylor
I want to take a question from this side of the room. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Julian
Okay. My name is Julian. And I was wondering who was the most famous Latin American philosopher?

Ken Taylor
That’s a good question. How old are you, Julian?

Julian
I’m 10.

Ken Taylor
You’re the youngest person ever to ask a question on Philosophy Talk.

Joseph Orosco
I don’t know if there’s a most famous one, there are some that are definitely much more influential than others. And by that, usually, that means people who have read him in English. So there are various figures that have gotten noticed by people as philosophers, but this is part of one of the problems that Latin Americans have is that, well, no one’s reading us. No one pays attention to us. Everyone’s reading the Europeans or thinking that everything happens either at Stanford or Harvard. But what about what’s going on in the National University of Mexico, what’s going on in the universities of Buenos itis. And so this is one of the worries that Latin Americans have is that you guys seem to not want to pay attention to us, but we have something interesting to say. So maybe you should get off your high horses and think about the rest of the world.

Ken Taylor
So look, we’re going to do our part to give more attention to Latin American philosophy. Just after a break. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing Latin American philosophy with Joseph Orosco Director of the Peace Studies program here at Oregon State University.

John Perry
Where is Latin American philosophy going? Is it being influenced by or having an influence on the post Castro’s social and political trends in Latin America? We’ll tackle these issues, maybe, in our next segment.

Ken Taylor
We’re coming to you from OSU in Corvallis. We’ll take more questions from our live audience when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
Welcome back to the program. I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re discussing Latin American philosophy with Joseph Orosco from Oregon State University and we’ve got a whole lineup of questioners in our live audience and I’ll go from this side of the room to that time and start over there. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, sir.

Michael
Greetings. Michael Fortune, Corvallis. I wonder what our guest and our two hosts have to say about the very different reaction of Latin American peoples and North American people to the war in the Malvinas in the 1980s. For some of the audience, you may understand that as the Falklands, but there was a war in which Argentina seized the Malvinas islands and Britain went to war and retook them after two months. It seems that there was a very different concept of due process, which is deeply rooted in American thinking. And it’s largely not present in Latin American thinking, among other differences. Would you comment?

Joseph Orosco
Well, I think first of all, it’s just very interesting to see this sort of power dynamic in the way in which that conflict is referred to. Right. If you are in Anglo speaking territories, it’s usually called the Falklands War, which is how it tends to be referred to in the United States. But I was in Argentina last year teaching and I was told, first off, don’t ever bring up this war. Right. You’ll get into a bar fight. And the other thing is, don’t call it the Falklands War. Right? Call it Malvinas, right. And so there, I think that sort of shows this kind of dual perspective ism that exists, that if you come from Latin America, you have a different understanding of how power works in the region. And that influences I think this understanding of the philosophy of liberation in Latin America is that the the philosophers of liberation in Latin America, say we are trying to articulate or try to get out there a sense of how we can express how we see the world. And most frequently, the way that the world has been seen is through the eyes of the British or the Americans.

Ken Taylor
But I want to ask you more about how we see the world what’s that week, because one of the things about Latin America, I was an exchange student in the 70s, in Brazil, and they’re fabulously wealthy people in those days in Brazil, but there were also desperately poor people. And in that time, my Brazilian host family, they were a sort of progressive kind of people, but they were way less progressive than I was. Right? They were they were indifferent to all this poverty around them, you know, they were living it up. I mean, who’s we in Latin America, when when countries are sometimes so divided when the poor are so very poor, and the wealthy are so very wealthy? I gather, there’s a growing middle class throughout Latin America. But, you know, it hasn’t always been so. So liberation from the United States. I think liberation from the Latin American elites is one of the things that’s demanded.

Joseph Orosco
Absolutely. And I think that for liberation philosophy, that is an awareness is that awareness of how power is a hierarchy lies in various different kinds of societies. And to recognize, I think that the elites that are in control of Latin America, are most frequently aligned with the powers of the global elite.

Ken Taylor
So But here’s a question for you then, mean to look, there are all kinds of cool enlightened men philosophies, Locke, Rousseau, all those guys who talked about the essential humanity of as all the shared humanity, the equal standing of why not important those ideas, those alien ideas, I mean, those seems like they might be fruitful ideas for people at the barricades.

Joseph Orosco
I think that there is an emphasis on trying to make sure that we understand the importance of things like human rights, how we inhabit the world and a shared kind of conception. But the Latin American perspective, and at least in liberation philosophy is to understand that that’s also very abstract, right. And the kinds of problems of oppression and poverty that are experienced, for instance, in the United States are not the same kinds of poverty that are experienced in Latin America. And so that we need to have a fine tooth context dependent understanding of what it means to be a human being.

John Perry
I just want to go go back to the issue of the MEL Venus Zen, which I probably would have called him Falklands. I remember my attitude was deep ambivalence. Because if you look at a map and you look at where the Falklands are, you say to those blonde Argentina, and you say, well, through some fluke of history, somebody else owns them. Guess who same people that own Gibraltar and Hong Kong. So I wasn’t very sympathetic with the British, but then when push came to shove wasn’t too similar with Argentine either because my conception of Argentina is is a very rich group of people who take time out to put on shows like a Vita, and many of whom are ex Nazis. That’s probably naive.

Ken Taylor
And that regime was not and that regime was not a very progressive. Absolutely no. So we got more questions from our live audience. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, sir.

John
Hi, thank you. My name is John Knight. I’m from Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And my question is somewhat of a two parter. First of all, the new wave of consumer movement in the latter half of the 20th century, seem to have flavors of traditional modern as well as indigenous points of view. And I’m curious how that reflects the philosophical movements of the same time period. But also, how did that movement and the philosophical movements I guess, or thought processes of that same time period reflect an emergence or lack of emergence of female participation and philosophy?

Joseph Orosco
Well, nueva canción, which means new song was a folk music movement that was started in the late 60s, early 70s. That was located in grassroots, popular class struggles against military dictatorships and against wealthy oligarchs. And the attempt was to try to combine pre Columbian rhythms with contemporary folk instruments, and to give voice to a new emerging youth movement that would try to tap into the growing youth movements that are going on in Europe and and in Latin America. So this was all around the time of the Berkeley movements as well. So it was a it was an attempt by Latin American youth to have a distinct musical form. And part of it was this conception of trying to blend the modern with the indigenous. And so a payments group is entirely money, who tries to combine important indigenous instruments with contemporary music. And there were important female artists in that movement. Veal at the bar is a very important figure in all of that. But in Latin American philosophy, and this is true, there have not been a lot of women recognized as important philosophers. And this has partly to do, or I think, largely to do actually with the patriarchal nature of Latin American society.

Ken Taylor
So I wanna ask you a question about this look, that’s true of many information, stuff, philosophy, there haven’t been a lot of women historically involved as the major players in philosophy, although they’re growing numbers. But when I was a young guy struggling with what I’m going to do with my life, and I got this philosophy book, one thing I worried about was whether black reflective guy can authentically be a philosopher, since it was dominated by white male, European types. I mean, if philosophy is this white, male, Anglo dominated thing, what really is in it for us dispossessed people?

Joseph Orosco
I think that’s precisely the question that Latin Americans tried to deal with is, there is this view that philosophy is universal, that human beings all share certain important characteristics, and we need to emphasize that perspective. But the Latin American perspective, at least from philosophy of liberation is to say, Well, it’s true that we share certain commonalities certain notions of rationality, and imagination, and hope. But we live these characteristics in very particular modes, we experienced them in very important philosophical contexts that maybe different given our aspects and Latin American philosophers have always talked about the importance of focusing on geography, for instance, or of weather patterns, right. Simon Bolivar, who was the liberator of Latin America from the Spanish was also a philosopher, and he said, Look, what we need to think about when we’re building new societies new, new democratic Republic’s in Latin America, is we need to think about whether or not democracy is supported by the weather in Latin America. And so there’s a long tradition in Latin America about thinking about things like geography, about the climate, that we need to pay attention to these kinds of things when we’re deciding about how to live our lives and what kind of social political systems we can create.

John Perry
I’m a little skeptical about that, because for years, I’ve been told by our philosophical brethren in Boston in New York, that you’ve got to have a lot of rain to do philosophy, you’ve got to be hopelessly cooped up in your study. It’s just inconsistent with the climate of California and I don’t buy that for a medicine.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got another question on this side of the room.

Lena
I’m Lena Roth, I’m from Corvallis. You said that Latin American philosophy was born out of the experience of suffering and the view of life as precarious and I was wondering how people relate to that suffering. Do they see it as a penance or do they accept it as okay? Or see it as even righteous?

Joseph Orosco
Well, at least for the ancient Aztecs, that was just the way it was and you had to sort of deal with it. You had to recognize that the world is a precarious place. And there are these texts, about their parental advice to parents about how you should raise your young. And over and over the messages is you need to tell your kids that life is full of suffering and pain and the best things in life are good food community and being able to go to bed and forget about your problems. So there’s all this advice about trying to deal with the suffering that we have, recognizing that the the pleasure and the the, the good things are momentary and fleeting. And we can’t always bank on that. So it’s a question of how to deal with living in between life and death, pleasure and pain, being nimble in terms of dealing with suffering and recognizing that suffering is an important part of our lives. And this is, of course, that the basis of great religions, like Buddhism is how to deal with suffering, it’s a reality of our life and how we deal with that is one of the eternal question of existence.

Ken Taylor
Let’s take a final question on this. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Julian’s grandmother
I’m Julian’s grandmother. I am a Latin American. And I always said Who am I, and you’re trying to tell me and many times I said, I cannot be Latin America and fit a pattern because we, we are so different, so many things. But now that I’m 68, I’m thinking that we have something in common, or was in Latin America. And I think we are culturally mixed when we may not be racially mixed. They’re different races. But I think we’re adaptable. And we all carry a little bit of the cultures of all the people who have influences us, the richest, most arrogant person in La Paz, Bolivia, who has this cocktail parties and plays golf, and it’s the upper class inside. Remember, his nanny was a Native American. inside him, there’s a lot of Inca culture. And I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez talks to us in those circles of who we are. And that was just a comment. Thank you.

Ken Taylor
Thank you. You want to make a closing remark about that? I’ll let you comment on that, or whatever you want to as before.

Joseph Orosco
Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors. And I think that sometimes the the genre that it creates of magical realism strikes people kind of odd, right? And but it’s quite common for even in Latinos in the United States to talk about the reality of living with spirits of living with things that sort of seem supernatural and out of the ordinary. And thinking that this is just part of our lives, we understand that our existence is oscillating once again, between reality and unreality. And Garcia Marquez tries to capture that understanding that history changes, and that the past really sometimes isn’t the past, it’s right here in front of us, and that sometimes spirits do sit at the table with us and that this is part of the Latin American experience of understanding that, you know, what we see in front of us isn’t always the whole story of our existence.

Ken Taylor
Well, on that intriguing note, I’m going to thank you for joining us. It’s been a very interesting conversation. I know we’ve just scratched the surface. But thank you for joining us.

Joseph Orosco
Thank you very much.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Joseph Orosco. He’s a professor of philosophy right here at OSU in Corvallis, where he’s also the director of the Peace Studies program.

John Perry
We also want to thank everyone in our live audience for participating in the program. Give yourselves a round of applause.

Ken Taylor
So John, that was a quite a tour. I mean, there’s lots more we could have talked about. But where’s your thinking now?

John Perry
Well, my thinking is that I want to do something about these good bits, big gaps in my knowledge, between you know, delis cases, and, you know, bore haste and a couple of other things. There’s so much interesting that’s going on, and particularly a whole what intrigues me is the whole story of those years, when, when Mexico and Latin America was culturally way in advance of the you know, the Puritan witch and burners of America, and how you know, what happened there was, you know, that was a thing.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, but that was a period of Catholic scholasticism. And I think Catholics lesson, even though I went to a great Catholic University, and then but a lot of that stuff, but like you said, we just barely scratched the surface, but the conversation will continue, as it always does. On our blog, the blog at philosophytalk.org where our motto is Cogito ergo Blago, I think, therefore I blog and you can also find out more by visiting our very active Facebook page.

John Perry
And you can sign up to get free weekly podcasts of Philosophy Talk at our website, philosophytalk.org. For the final word we speed read our way through Latin America with Ian Scholes, The 62nd philosopher,

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. It’s kind of a trope in Latin American literature to not write books. As a writer. I admire that Jorge. So rather than writing an entire book would choose instead to pretend that the book already existed and write a review of it. Roberto belanja, the Chilean writer did the same thing with his book Nazi literature in the Americas. He made up a whole roster of fascist writers with bibliographies summaries of their works and full Wikipedia type entries about them. And here in the US, if you wanted to write a fascist novel, by golly, we’d sit down at the word processor and not get up until the darn thing was done. But really, why go to all the trouble? The end of the day, all you have to show for your effort is an 800 Page tome they want to be read by white supremacist, and then only for the first 20 pages or so I’m much better just review the non existent book, then lay down and take a nap. We could take a page from Latin American literature on all walks of life, why spend the millions of dollars to make another Transformers movie for instance? Why not just get all the nation’s critics to review the imaginary movie, reveal spoilers and make everybody think they’ve already seen it? This could be a big help in the ongoing budget crisis, rather than spending money we don’t have. Why don’t we just pretend that we do have it? If everybody agrees that we have the money it’s the same thing, isn’t it? That’s not to say that we need to spend it instead of buying the next iteration of big screen TVs, smartphones, computers and automobiles all we have to do is tell others Oh yeah, I got that. What are they going to do call you a liar? After all, they’re pretending they have one to come to think of it well, already pretty good at this. The Tea Party is pretending really hard that the US is actually the same as it was back in the 1950s. And its adherents are busily chipping away everything that does not enforce that delusion. Who knows it just might work. Unfiltered cigarettes cocktail hours, drive in movies, poodle skirts, hula hoops, TV westerns, variety shows the Rat Pack thick thin Cadillacs, our old friend the Cold War, for all we know they may already be back among us. We are affected every day by things that don’t exist. Zombies vampires, psychics, reliable economic forecasts. The free lunch cheap gasoline straight male hairdressers, brass tacks quick fixes easy answers liberals, Eisenhower Republicans weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I tell you, I could write a book, but I probably won’t pretend I did. I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manilla productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2011.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest. And we’d like to express thanks to Bill Uzgallis, Lois Robertson, John Greydanus, James Dominic, Jon Dorbolo, Eric Gleske, Abby Underwood, Jessica Coronado, the OSU Philosophy Department, the Associated Students of Oregon State, and the staff of the LaSells Stewart Center.

John Perry
Thanks also to Mark Davis, Joel Groves, Merle Kessler, Caitlin Esch, Dave Millar and Cory Goldman. And a very special thanks to Vice Provost Larry Roper and Professor Courtney Campbell.

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, the Friends of Philosophy Talk…

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org.

John Perry
I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
And thank you for thinking.