Jorge Montiel

This paper contrasts two contemporary approaches to Nahua metaphysics by focusing on the stance of the Nahua tlamatinime (philosophers) regarding the nature of reality. Miguel León-Portilla and James Maffie offer the two most comprehensive interpretations of Nahua philosophy. Although León-Portilla and Maffie agree on their interpretation of teotl as the evanescent principle of Nahua metaphysics, their interpretations regarding the tlamatinime metaphysical stances diverge. Maffie argues that León-Portilla attributes to the tlamatinime a metaphysics of being according to which being means permanence and stability and thus, since earthly things are continuously changing, being cannot be predicated of them, hence earthly things are not real. I present textual support to show that León-Portilla does not read Nahua metaphysics through the lens of a metaphysics of being and thus that León-Portilla does not interpret the tlamatinime as denying the reality of earthly things. I then provide ...

This paper contrasts two contemporary approaches to Nahua metaphysics by focusing on the stance of the Nahua tlamatinime (philosophers) regarding the nature of reality. Miguel León-Portilla and James Maffie offer the two most comprehensive interpretations of Nahua philosophy. Although León-Portilla and Maffie agree on their interpretation of teotl as the evanescent principle of Nahua metaphysics, their interpretations regarding the tlamatinime metaphysical stances diverge. Maffie argues that León-Portilla attributes to the tlamatinime a metaphysics of being according to which being means permanence and stability and thus, since earthly things are continuously changing, being cannot be predicated of them, hence earthly things are not real. I present textual support to show that León-Portilla does not read Nahua metaphysics through the lens of a metaphysics of being and thus that León-Portilla does not interpret the tlamatinime as denying the reality of earthly things. I then provide an exegetical analysis of León-Portilla's texts to show that, in his interpretation, metaphysical concerns are intimately linked to existential questions regarding the meaning of human life. Ultimately, I argue that, in León-Portilla's interpretation, the tlamatinime conception of art functions as poiesis, that is, as the process of aesthetic creation that gives meaning to human life.

This paper frames Edmund Husserl's  notion of "motivation" as an account of personal identity. Husserl offers an extensive analysis of "motivation" in Ideas II (1989 [1952]), where he distinguishes "causality" and "motivation" as explanatory principles that apply to different domains of reality. That is, while causality explains relations between extended objects, motivation explains relations between experiences. More precisely, motivation is a cumulative relation where the sense of our previous experiences informs the sense of our future experiences. As such, I argue that motivation accounts for the way in which the individual subject not only has a history, but she is her history. For this, I situate Husserl's account of motivation along Paul Ricoeur's account of personal identity in OneSelf as Another (1992 [1990]) and David Carr's analysis of "cumulative experience" from Experience and History (2014). I argue that Husserl's notion of motivation accounts for the "concordance-discordance" structure that Ricoeur attributes to narratives and for the "cumulative" sense of experience that Carr derives from Hegel and Hume. I then offer an analysis of motivation as a relation of sense between experiences. Lastly, I show that motivation accounts for the temporal life of the individual subject as the accumulation of her meaningful experiences, which inform her future experiences.

This paper discusses Enrique Dussel's notion of rationality within his "analectic" method and his project of "transmodernity," particularly in regards to what rationality might entail for South-to-South dialogue. While Dussel argues against modern European universalized rationality, which arose from and served to justify colonization, he also argues against postmodern critiques of modernity because they are Eurocentric at core. This means that both modern and postmodern philosophies fail to take into consideration how geography is constitutive of modernity. Dussel thus situates his project of "transmodernity" beyond the poles of modernity and postmodernity by shifting the locus of reason from the European center to the side of the victims of the modern project. Yet, Dussel's philosophical enterprise maintains the main value of modern rationality, namely, a claim to universality. This claim to universality has been historically problematic because, as Dussel himself argues, it justified colonization. I argue that Dussel's project of transmodernity requires a pluriversal rather than a universal notion of rationality that can accommodate both diversity and allow for dialogue. I further argue that in his most recent work, Dussel has become aware of the issues that a universal claim to rationality entails and has thus leaned towards a notion of pluriversal rationality by taking into account particular histories while allowing for meaningful dialogue. The aim of this paper is to consider what pluriversality entails for transmodernity and how it accommodates diversity while allowing for meaningful and respectful South-to-South dialogue.

In this paper, I review Carlos Alberto Sánchez's and Francisco Gallegos' "The Disintegration of Community: On Jorge Portilla's Social and Political Philosophy" (2021). I argue that Gallegos' interpretation of Portilla as offering a "phenomenological nationalism" is problematic because it assumes that entire national populations share in what Gallegos calls "emotional dispositions." I propose that Portilla analyzes nationalism, innocence, and the cult of death as moral attitudes we might adopt towards values. Particularly, these cases involve a “fetishistic” moral attitude towards values which, as Sánchez argues, lead to exclusionary politics like anti-immigrat policies in the U.S. and the violence in Mexico during the war against drugs.