Mexicanist Thought in the 1920s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
In the historiography of the philosophy of Mexican history and culture one of the begging questions has been the genesis of Samuel Ramos' book El perfil del hombre y la cultura en México (1934). Did this work, which shifted Mexican problems from a physical base to a psychological plane (Villegas, 1960: 135-136), spring full-blown or was it a reflection of attitudes shared by other intellectuals who defined a movement in the history of ideas? Ramos is usually credited as the initiator of national self-analysis (Diccionario Porrúa, 1971, 1723), and indeed he helped perpetuate the myth of his seminal role in the philosophical and characterological study of the Mexican (Ramos, 1943: 153). Moreover, Ramos stated that his work was the first to treat the “psychology of the Mexican” (see Castro, 1951: 36), yet this very theme was anticipated by Antonio Caso in 1925 (1925a).