El concepto de a priori antropológico como fundamento de la filosofía latinoamericana de Arturo Roig

Abstract

This thesis is a critical analysis of Arturo Andres Roig’s (Mendoza, 1922-2012), philosophical thinking; the process of constituting the concept of anthropological a priori is followed for this purpose, as are also the implications that it has in its theoretical proposal. Roig develops a Latin American philosophy that shows modern philosophy’s traits, namely: criticality, rationality, normativity. When facing the twentieth century debate that existed in the sixties and the seventies concerning whether an American philosophy exists, Roig postulates the construction of a theory of Latin American thinking. Following Hegel (Lessons of the Philosophy of History), Roig considers that Philosophy does not have a beginning in fact but in law and that it is rooted on anthropological a priori, on every man’s possibility of becoming the conscious subject of his own value and of the dignity of thinking of himself as such. In order to formulate the concept of anthropological a priori, Roig starts a dialogue and a debate with modern Western philosophy, especially with Kant´s and Hegel´s; in his judgement, they already formulated the concept, but not in a way that is acceptable to Roig, because both start from consciousness and not from reality or empiricity; in other words, they start from the independent world of consciousness. Anthropological a priori is the foundation of the history of ideas; in other words, it is the foundation of the historical fact that is registered in terms of that discipline. For that reason, Roig’s Latin American philosophy is a criticism of the historical reasoning on which the historical fact is based. The present research, therefore, will examine both the constitution of the concept of Roig’s anthropological a priori and its articulation with a plural self-conscious subject (we) with historicity, empiricity and freedom.