Hispanic Philosophy

El presente trabajo aborda el exilio franco-suizo de María Zambrano en su vertiente tanto vital como filosófica. Tomando como hipótesis de base una tesis de Ortega y Gasset, se comprueba cómo Zambrano salva su circunstancia, constituida aquí por el exilio, por medio de la razón poética. Así resulta en "La tumba de Antígona" y "Claros del bosque", obras escritas durante este periodo en el Jura. Se analizan algunos temas y procedimientos a través de los cuales este proceso es llevado a cabo en la escritura. La perspectiva adoptada es la de la idea de lugar, la cual permite dar cuenta de la articulación entre vida y pensamiento, esencial en la filósofa española.
Palabras clave: María Zambrano, razón poética, lugar, exilio. 


Places of the poetic reason: María Zambrano at the French-Swiss border

This work deals with the exile of María Zambrano between France and Switzerland, focusing on both its vital and philosophical aspects. Starting from a thesis of Ortega y Gasset as initial hypothesis, we show how Zambrano manages to rescue her circumstance (i.e. her exile) by the mean of the poetic reason. Such analysis is based on the evidences present in her works "La Tumba de Antígona" and "Claros del bosque", which were written during the time she spent in the Jura region. We analyze some of the topics and methods which allow her to perform this process by writing. By adopting the perspective of the idea of place, we manage to explain the essential articulation between life and thought in the Spanish philosopher.
Keywords: María Zambrano, poetic reason, place, exile.

In the light of a new “southern” style of thought (meridional or mediterranean philosophy), this essay deepens into the concept of a “problematic and narrative reason”, and leads the meditation about “poetical reason” to a more concrete, practical and vital perspective: the work of dramatic art. The aim of this essay is to bring “poetical reason” closer to the dimension of “dramatic reason” and to the criticism that it raises, which is open to a true way of knowing. Authors such as Gracián, Vico, Ortega, Santayana or Zambrano and recurrent; but also poets and dramatists, who show us the poetic, vital and, eventually, dramatic aspect of reason. Special attention is paid to the Spanish dramatist José Luis Alonso de Santos and his dramatic work "The Dark Heart of the Forest".
Keywords: Dramatic Reason, Poetical Reason, Dramatic Art, Philosophical Hermeneutics, Hispanic Philosophy.
[Text in Spanish language]

El título de esta sesión plenaria del Congreso Interamericano de Filosofía está preñado de sugerencias que no es fácil desenmarañar. Me propongo aclarar algunas que quizás sirvan para establecer ciertos hitos de análisis futuros sobre la filosofía de nuestra América.

The projection of Ortega in the philosophers of the Spanish exile of 1939 constitutes an excellent chapter of the philosophy in Spanish language later to that date, in the middle of which aptitudes and limitations of the vital and historical reason are clarified before the crisis of West. Two of their more emblematic pupils like José Gaos and María Zambrano assumed with originality and under diverse perspectives their main intuitions, taking up them for sidewalks that he saw without end of exploring them.

The title of this chapter should raise all sorts of red flags, attracting the attention of anyone interested in Latino/a philosophy and some of the controversies that have surrounded it. The very term 'Latino/a philosophy' is a pandora's box of philosophical questions and debate. Indeed, what is Latino/a philosophy and how is it different from " Latin American philosophy " and " Hispanic philosophy " ? But its use in connection with ethnicity and race makes it all the more controversial because these are in themselves controversial notions, giving rise to questions such as: What kind of impact do ethnicity or race have on this kind of philosophy and why ethnicity and race in particular? It would be impossible to explore all the avenues that open up when one considers these questions in the space at my disposal here, but we might be able to explore a couple of ideas nonetheless. One of these ideas is the notion that ethnicity affects Latino/a philosophy in two senses. The first is that Latino/a philosophy is the philosophy produced by an ethnic group, namely Latinos/as. The second is that the philosophy produced by Latinos/as is ethnic. These two senses are no doubt connected and require understanding and clarification. The other idea we might explore concerns the locus of development of a philosophy of race by Latinos/as. This again may be considered in two modalities: One in reference to how the philosophy of race occurs in Latin America and the other as it occurs in the United States. These two ideas should bring to the fore how ethnicity and race influence the philosophy produced by Latinos/as and serve to contrast it with the philosophy developed by other ethnic or racial groups. In short, they should help us answer the question of the existence and character of Latino/a philosophy. My main proposals here are two: (1) the solution to the long-standing problem of the existence and character of Latino/a philosophy is to be found in the notion of this philosophy as an ethnic philosophy produced by the Latino/a ethnos; and (2) this solution has implications for the practice of philosophy by Latino/a philosophers, the question of authenticity of Latino/a philosophy, and the place of this philosophy particularly in the US curriculum.

The historiographical perspective about the past, despite of being a neccesary one, does not seem to be enough since it does not include tose practical imperatives derived from the silence of very concrete episodes of injustice. That is the case of spanish republican’s exile of 1939, whose memory leads us to question the limits of historicism, the processes of political transition, as well the conventional understanding of hispanism. Those limitations help to discover references for a critique to Modernity based on the processes of memory, and made in the light of the toughts of some spanish’s voices from exile such as Eugenio Ímaz, María Zambrano or Joaquín Xirau.

In the light of a new “southern” style of thought (meridional or “mediterranean” philosophy) from the perspective of a “problematic and narrative reason”, this essay proposes a “meditation” about a vital and poetic “dramatic reason”. Such a perspective is in sharp contrast with the abstract, theoretical and contemplative one in which that same “poetical reason” is usually embedded. The goal of this essay is to show that, from a philosophical point of view, “dramatic reason” is the way “vital reason” (Ortega) exists inside “poetic reason” (Zambrano).
Key words: Dramatic reason, vital reason, hispanic philosophy, Cervantes, Vico, Gracián, Ortega y Gasset, Zambrano, “Poetic Logic”, dramatic art, philosophical hermeutics, poetic thought.

Ramón Xirau fue un filósofo de su tiempo. Como tal, recibió la influencia de Heidegger. Pero a la visión angustiosa del Ser que ofrecía el alemán —nos dice Humberto Beck en este ensayo— opuso la de la presencia; es decir, la del Estar. La distinción entre ser y estar —típica del español y el catalán— le da a esta filosofía un “giro hispánico”, pero también poético, lo que Xirau aprovecha para explorar un terreno que Heidegger no pisó: el de la teología.

RÉSUMÉ
L’être ibérique et latino-américain, en quête d’intimité collective, est-il en mesure aujourd’hui de développer les outils lui permettant de surmonter ses propres obstacles circonstanciels et générationnels pour accéder enfin, non à une nouvelle et aléatoire utopie, mais à une resignification valable et acceptable de son être en devenir et en dialogue avec l’altérité ? Aborder cette question à travers le double prisme de la mondialisation et de la crise, c’est interroger le présent et l’histoire, le temps et l’espace, la vie, les sens et l’intellect, les représentations et le langage, les sciences, l’éthique et les savoirs. Les crises actuelles de la modernité avancée peuvent être envisagées, à bien des égards, comme le résultat d’une impasse épistémologique, celle de la construction d’une raison universelle occidentalisée oublieuse de la pluralité des mondes. C’est pourquoi le dépassement des contradictions apparentes n’est peut-être possible qu’en renonçant à l’univoque occidental au profit d’un équivoque fructueux dont la condition même serait la prise en compte du pluriel et de l’incompatible.

ABSTRACT:
Is the Iberian and Latinoamerican being, which is searching for collective intimacy, able to develop today the tools that could allow him to overcome his own generational and incidental obstacles in order to accede at last, not to a new and uncertain utopia but to an acceptable and valid re-meaning of his in the making being and discussing with alterity? Broaching this questioning through the double prism of globalization and crisis is questioning present and history, time and space, life, senses and intellect, representation and language, sciences, ethic and knowledge. Current crises of advanced modernity can be considered, in many respects, as the result of an epistemological impasse, that one of the construction of an universal western reason oblivious of the plurality of the worlds. This is why the transcendence of the apparent contradictions is maybe possible only renouncing to the western unequivocal in favor of a profitable equivocal of which condition itself would be the the consideration of plural and incompatible.