A identidade da América Latina: o projeto intelectual de Leopoldo Zea

Abstract

The Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea Aguilar (1912–2004), an author unfortunately still very little known in Brazilian intellectual circles — whose intellectual project of an identity for Latin America is the object of this instigating book by Luciano dos Santos — was the founder and main leader of the so-called Latin American History of Ideas movement. I consider that an extremely fertile way of approaching and understanding the bases of Leopoldo Zea's thought and ideas — which we propose to follow here — is that which takes him in his articulation and insertion in the context of the Latin American intellectual movement of History of Ideas, of which he himself was the main expression. An intellectual movement that emerged between the 1940s and 1950s, starting in Mexico and Argentina — but which would soon spread throughout the entire American continent —, whose basic characteristic was reflection on the history and characteristics of Latin American thought in the post-independence period, with a view to establishing and implementing a certain program to guide Latin American studies in the field of ideas.