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José Vasconcelos

1882–1959

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

For Vasconcelos, beauty and feeling, not cold science, unite the world, and he hoped the mixing of all peoples would create a new universal humanity – a vision criticised for still ranking “races”.

Placement

Latin American & Caribbean Philosophy · Latin America & Caribbean · Aesthetics, Society & History, Metaphysics

Mexican philosopher and minister of education: against positivism he proposed an aesthetic monism and the vision of a “cosmic race” arising from the mixing of peoples – later criticised for its racial thinking.

Key ideas

  • The cosmic race
  • Aesthetic monism
  • Critique of positivism

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Influence

Influenced by 4

  • Pythagoras

    influenced by

    Vasconcelos took Pythagoras’ doctrine of number and harmony as the model for a theory of rhythm uniting the cosmos, art and soul (Pitágoras: una teoría del ritmo, 1916). J. Vasconcelos, Pitágoras: Una teoría del ritmo (1916); El monismo estético (1918)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Pythagoras › traditionally c. 570–495 BCE

  • Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

    influenced by

    Vasconcelos’s Hindustani Studies (1920) presented Brahmanic thought, the Buddha and Buddhism, and yoga to Spanish-speaking readers as part of his search for a spiritual alternative to positivism. J. Vasconcelos, Estudios indostánicos (Madrid, 1920)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) › c. 480–400 BCE · conventionally dated 563–483 BCE

  • Arthur Schopenhauer

    influenced by

    Vasconcelos took from Schopenhauer the redemptive power of aesthetic contemplation, making art the highest form of knowledge in his aesthetic monism (El monismo estético, 1918). J. Vasconcelos, El monismo estético (1918); Estética (1936)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Arthur Schopenhauer › 1788–1860

  • Henri Bergson

    influenced by

    Vasconcelos drew on Bergson’s creative evolution and intuition for an aesthetic monism in which history rises towards a spiritual, aesthetic stage (La raza cósmica, 1925). J. Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (1925); El monismo estético (1918)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Henri Bergson › 1859–1941

Influenced 1

  • Gloria Anzaldúa

    influenced

    Anzaldúa began ‘La conciencia de la mestiza’ with Vasconcelos’s cosmic race, rereading it as a vision of inclusion rather than purity (Borderlands/La Frontera, 1987). G. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987); J. Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica (1925)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Gloria Anzaldúa › 1942–2004

Criticism

Criticizes 1

  • Auguste Comte

    criticised

    Vasconcelos and the Ateneo de la Juventud rejected the Comtean positivism of Porfirian Mexico for a philosophy of emotion and beauty (lecture on Gabino Barreda, 1910). J. Vasconcelos, “Don Gabino Barreda y las ideas contemporáneas”, lecture at the Ateneo de la Juventud (1910); La raza cósmica (1925)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Auguste Comte › 1798–1857

Works

  • 1925The Cosmic Race

    Latin America’s mixing of peoples heralds a fifth, “cosmic” race and an aesthetic age of humanity – a vision of mixing that still ranks races and has been criticised for erasing Black and Indigenous peoples.

Position

Vasconcelos opposed positivism with a philosophy of emotion, rhythm and beauty. In his “aesthetic monism” reality is one energy rising from the physical through the living to the spiritual, fulfilled in aesthetic experience; Pythagoras, Schopenhauer and Bergson were key sources. The Cosmic Race predicted that the mixing of white, Indigenous, Black and Asian peoples in Latin America would produce a fifth, universal race and an aesthetic age. Critics have shown that the essay retains racial hierarchies, imagines a kind of aesthetic eugenics and helped make mestizaje a state ideology that obscured Indigenous and Black peoples. Around 1940 he openly sympathised with fascism. Anzaldúa reworked his idea in Borderlands.

Life & context

José Vasconcelos was born in Oaxaca in 1882 and studied law in Mexico City. In 1909 he co-founded the Ateneo de la Juventud, a circle opposed to the official positivism, and joined the revolution. As rector of the National University (1920) and minister of education (1921–24) he led literacy campaigns and commissioned the muralists. After losing the disputed presidential election of 1929 he went into exile; he died in 1959.

Further main works

  • Pythagoras: A Theory of Rhythm (Pitágoras: una teoría del ritmo, 1916)
  • Aesthetic Monism (El monismo estético, 1918)
  • A Mexican Ulysses (Ulises criollo, autobiography, 1935)

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

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