Samuel Ramos

Some Latin American thinkers were very critical of their own culture or philosophy. For example, Samuel Ramos, a Mexican philosopher, believed that his own Mexican culture wasn’t unique and needed to be reformed. In terms of philosophy, Leopoldo Zea wrote “Identity: A Latin American Philosophical Problem” to raise the idea of forming a philosophy that can answer the problems that the Latin Americans faced with identity that general philosophy couldn’t solve. In the following essay, I will discuss the ways in which Samuel Ramos critiques Mexican culture and how he approaches to fix it. Also, I will discuss the problems Leopoldo Zea had with establishing a new type of philosophy dedicated to answering questions about identity. From a selection

To fix this problem, Ramos tries to “draw the profile of a culture that can conceivably exist in Mexico given certain organic circumstances of society and man as the results of a particular history” (281). In short, this organic culture will need to consist of a blending of historical reality, spiritual needs, and the life of the Mexican. In the past, Mexico felt a “resentment against things foreign… typical in those suffering from an inferiority complex” (282. Due to this inferiority complex, “Mexicans have not lived naturally; their history has always lacked candor” (282), or honest expression of oneself. Which is why Mexico needs to be honest now more than ever to create a model for Mexican cultures to follow and call their own. Ramos describes this as a “figurative return to our own land” (282). In doing this, the people must be more passionate in discovering themselves before they conquer any other devotions they wish moving on as a country. This “passion for truth” (283) will ensure a clear and objective view for the Mexican’s interior world. However, since they adopted their culture and thinking from Europe they must also create a new way of thinking, a “Mexican science” (283). Here, Ramos addresses another problem with the identity of the Mexican, which is this false concept of science that is unoriginal to

The problem he addresses here is that there is no philosophy that raises issues about identity, “philosophy only raises problems considered universal, and because they are universal and abstract, they are beyond what is every day to man, his world, and his society” (370). Zea studies Latin American philosophy which is bias towards the Latin American identity and only seems parochial and limited to what can be truly universal. This question of identity as a Latin American goes beyond what has ever been asked by philosophy before. Zea even explains that “only god has eyes that see all, ears that hear all, and a reason that knows all” (370) which means only a god can truly express what the Latin American identity is. However, the philosopher can still try to answer the problem in an unbiased way. Which leads one into the first question raised by philosophy “the question of being” (371). This question of being is an “ontological question asked by the concrete man in relation to himself” (372). He tries to “take a position, to define himself within nature and in relation to his peers” (372), not to be natures expression. In the past, there has been an inferiority complex that Zea and Ramos bring up in their text. Zea explains that man tries to manipulate other men, not