Existentialisms in the Hispanic and Latin American Worlds
Existentialisms in the Hispanic and Latin American Worlds
El Quixote and Its Existential Children
This chapter examines existentialisms in the Hispanic and Latin American worlds, with particular emphasis on Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote (El ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, or The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha). It first reviews some precursors of existentialist thought in the Spanish world before discussing some of the key themes in Don Quixote that have made it such a generative philosophical, existentialist, and novelistic text. It then turns to a group of key figures in the Hispanic and Latin American philosophical worlds such as Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Julián Marías, Carlos Astrada, Augusto Salazar Bondy, Samuel Ramos, Leopoldo Zea, and Luis Villoro. It shows that existentialism was articulated in Spain earlier than elsewhere and hence also was sooner integrated and superseded. As Latin American philosophy and literature came into its own, existential and phenomenological insights were fused to hermeneutics alongside such indigenous traditions as liberation philosophy and magical realism.
Keywords: existentialism, Latin America, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Miguel de Unamuno, Carlos Astrada, Luis Villoro, Spain, philosophy, magical realism
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