Leopoldo Zea (born Leopoldo Zea Aguilar, Mexico City, June 30, 1912 - June 8, 2004) was a Mexican philosopher.
One of the integral Latin Americanism thinkers in history, Zea became famous thanks to his master's thesis, El Positivismo en México (Positivism in Mexico - 1943), with which he applied and studied positivism in the context of his country and the world during the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries. With it he began the defense of the American Integration, first suggested by the Liberator and Statesman Simón Bolívar, giving it his own interpretation based in the context of neocolonialism during the separation of the American Empire and Mexico.
In his works, Zea demonstrates that historical facts aren't independent from ideas, and that they do not arise from what is considered unusual, but from simple reactions to certain situations of human life.
In his vision of a united Latin America, he defended his beliefs concerning the place of mankind in the region. Zea explained that the discovery of 1492 was nothing more than a concealment in cultural and known terms, a product of the ideological cross-breeding of the configuration of the Latin American identity, a matter which he revealed on the 5th centenary in 1992. Later, he studied the ontological analysis of Latin America in the cultural and geo-historical planes.
Being of poor origin, Zea worked in 1933 in the office of Telégrafos Nacionales to help afford the costs of his secondary and university education.
Zea was associated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) beginning with his training as a Professor and Philosopher in 1943. In 1947 he founded the Faculty of Philosophy and gave lectures on History of ideas in America. In 1954, he was appointed to a full-time position as a researcher at the Philosophical Studies Center of the University. In 1966 he became Director of the Faculty, holding this position until 1970. During his time as Director he founded the Latin American Studies College (in 1966) and later founded the Coordination and Propagation Center of the UNAM Latin American Studies (1978). He received multiple awards including the Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes in 1980, the Premio Interamericano de Cultura "Gabriela Mistral" (of the OAS) and the Medalla Belisario Domínguez (of the Senate of Mexico) in 2000. Three years later he was cataloged and honored by the UNAM as the oldest professor to work continually without interruptions until his death.
Zea was compared to many diverse political, revolutionary, and intellectual personalities, such as Germán Arciniegas (who was his friend), Che Guevara, José Gaos (his mentor), Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, Andrés Bello, Simón Bolívar, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and others.
His philosophy embodied his concept of a united Latin America, not in the terms of a utopia, but based in reality, and the renewal of the fight for a people in demand for said change. As a result, he opened up the discourse to other scholars of the subject in the future.
| Preceded by Carlos Fuentes |
Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor 2000 |
Succeeded by José Ezequiel Iturriaga |