Latin American Philosophy and the Place of Alejandro Korn

Author(s): W. J. Kilgore
Source: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1960), pp. 77-82
Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami
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LATIN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY AND
THE PLACE OF ALEJANDRO KORN'
W. J. Kilgore

The development of philosophical ideas in Latin America has tend

to reflect the major philosophical thought in Europe. There probabl
been greater interest in philosophical ideas in Latin America th
the United States. In many instances, this interest has manifested i
not in the creative development of the content of philosophy but ra
in the support which philosophical positions could provide proponen
of the status quo or reformers with a basis for justification of soci
political, educational, economic or religious programs.
There has developed in many Latin American countries during th
century an increasing number of works which are concerned with
theoretical aspect of philosophy.2 Some of the more significant wri
have been Jose Varona in Cuba, Alejandro 0. Deuistua in Peru, Alejan
Kom in Argentina, Raimundo de Farias Brito in Barzil, Carlos Va
rreira in Uruguay, and Antonio Caso and Jose Vasconcelos in Me
The work of these men has been continued in the present gener
by such men as Francisco Romero and Risieri Frondizi in Argen
Medardo Vitier in Cuba, Arturo Ardao in Uruguay, Joao Cruz Costa
1This article is an adaptation of materials presented as a dissertation in
Department of Philosophy, University of Texas.
2The March, 1956, issue of Cursos y Conferencias, Vol. XLVIII, pp. 5-151
an excellent presentation of different philosophical movements in Mexico, Urug
Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Cuba. Other excellent sources include the
lowing articles. Risieri Frondizi, "Panorama de la filosofia latinoamericana
temporinea," Minerva, Vol. I, July-August, 1944, pp. 95-122; Luis Recasens S
"El pensamiento filos6fico, social, politico y juridico en Hispanoam6rica," Re
Mexicana de Sociologia, Vol. VI, No. 1, January-April, 1944, pp. 85-125; No
May-August, 1944, pp. 225-245; Francisco Romero, "Latin America's Twent
Century Sages," Americas, Vol. III, February, 1951, pp. 17-19, 46-47. The boo
English which develop phases of thought in Latin America are Anibal SAn
Reulet (ed.), Contemporary Latin American Philosophy, trans., Willard R. Tr
University of New Mexico (cb) Press, 1954; Patrick Romanell, The Making of
Mexican Mind, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1952; and William Rex
ford, A Century of Latin American Thought, Harvard University Press, Cambri
1944.

77

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78 JOURNAL OF INTER-AMERICAN STUDIES

Brazil and Samuel Ramos, Eduardo Garcia MAynez and Leopoldo Zea
in Mexico.
As a general rule, professors of philosophy in Latin America have
not received sufficient remuneration from their university work to sus-
tain themselves adequately.3 Consequently, most Latin American philos-
ophers have been active in other professional or political activities. Many
of them also have been elected or appointed to important political and
cultural positions. Varona was a newspaper writer, a leader in the Cuban
revolution against Spain, Secretary of Education, and Vice-President of
Cuba. Deuistua, who was more active in his teaching career than many
of the older generation of Latin American philosophers, was Director
of the National Library of Peru, Dean of the Faculty of Letters, and
Rector of the University of San Marcos. Korn was a physician, director
of a mental hospital, and an unsuccessful candidate for the Argentine
Senate. Farias Brito was a lawyer who held some responsible political
positions. Caso also was a lawyer and served as Ambassador of Mexico
to Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. He also was Director
of the National Preparatory School, President of the National Univer-
sity, and Director of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the same
university. Jose Vasconcelos received his degree in law and together
with Caso was active in opposing the regime of the dictator, Porfirio
Diaz. He served as Secretary of Public Education, President of the
National University, Director of the Library of Mexico, and was a can-
didate for the presidency of Mexico in 1929.
While recent philosophy in the United States has been directed more
toward the philosophy of science and such problems as epistemology,
semantics, logic, and methodology, philosophy in Latin America has
been oriented more toward the philosophy of culture and social, eco-
nomic, and political problems. Risieri Frondizi points out that the stereo-
type which Latin American philosophers have formed of the develop-
ment of philosophy in the United States is that North American philoso-
phers have substituted a concern for semantical and technical problems
for the treatment of "profound philosophical questions." On the other
hand, philosophers from the United States have formed a stereotype that
classifies much of Latin American philosophy as a use of verbal inge-
nuity in supporting "instinctive beliefs" through some form of rational
argument.4
While it is not possible to name arbitrarily the three major philoso-
phers in the history of Latin America, leading candidates would include

3See Francisco Romero, Sobre la filosofia en America, Editorial Raigal, Buenos

Aires, 1952, p. 18.
4"La filosofia americana," Cursos y Conferencias, Vol. XLIII, April-June, 1953,
p. 11. Cf. Edgar S. Brightman, jQu6 puede hacerse por el adelanto de la filosofia
en Latinoamerica" Minerva, Vol. I, September-October, 1944, pp. 284-286.

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LATI AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 79

Andr6s Bello of Venezuela and Chile, Antonio Caso of Mexico, and

Alejandro Korn of Argentina. Each attained a level of philosophical
criticism that has merited for them a significant place among the phi-
losophers of the Americas. Caso and Korn were both highly-capable
critics of the history of philosophy. Each was significantly influenced
by Bergson and each helped to undermine positivism in his respective
country. Caso was probably more imaginative in his writing and em-
ployed a more classical style of expression than Korn. On the other hand,
Korn was probably superior in his critical views and is more cautious
in what he attempts to affirm.
It is to be recognized that there have been a number of highly-
capable Thomistic philosophers among the clergy in Latin America. This
movement has tended to reflect the major emphases which are found in
the Thomistic philosophy of Europe and the Roman Catholic Church.
One of the major leading contemporary Latin-American Thomists is
Octavio Nicolas Derisi of Argentina.5
Alejandro Kom is acknowledged as being the first Argentine philoso-
pher who achieved a superior degree of theoretical competence in this
field. He is also regarded as the person most responsible for the reno-
vation of genuine philosophical interest in that country.6
Korn's father left Germany after the revolution of 1848 after serving
as an officer in the Prussian army. He was a physician by profession and
a man of liberal and democratic beliefs. Alejandro Korn was born in
1860 in San Vicente in the Province of Buenos Aires. He received his
doctorate in medicine at the age of 22. In his practice of medicine he
developed an interest in psychiatry and in 1897 became director of the
mental hospital, Melchor Romero, a position which he held at La Plata
until his retirement in 1916. He began teaching philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Buenos Aires in 1906 and in 1914 also began teaching at the
University of La Plata. He participated actively in the University Reform
movements in both universities in the early twenties. Korn's writings in
the field of philosophy, ethical socialism, and on university reform were
published in various journals, magazines, and books from 1912 until after
his death in 1936. His Obras completas were compiled and arranged by
Luis Aznar and Guillermo Korn and presented by Francisco Romero in
1949.

In an appraisal of his work as a philosopher it is desirable to remember

that Korn did not begin to teach classes in philosophy until he was
forty-six years old. He was forty-nine when he became a regular pro-

5Sapientia, Vol. XI, No. 39-40, La Plata, pp. 9-35 has a Curriculum Vitae of
Derisi which includes a list of 313 articles, works, and reviews which he has published.
6See Eugenio Puciarelli, "Alejandro Korn, maestro de saber y de virtud," Cursos
y Conferencias, Vol. X, December 1937, p. 1086. Francisco Romero, Alejandro Korn,
fil6sofo de la libertad, Editorial Reconstruir, Buenos Aires, 1956, pp. 21, 25, 52.

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80 JOURNAL OF INTER-AMERICAN STUDIES

fessor and he did not give full time to teaching until after he retired
from his medical and psychiatric practice at the age of fifty-six.
His excellent knowledge of German and Latin and his reading knowl-
edge of French and Italian made possible his reading many of the pri-
mary historical and contemporary sources in philosophy. In addition to
his excellent work on philosophical influences in the development of
Argentine culture, he wrote with penetrating insight of some of the
major philosophical movements. He formulated his own philosophical
position in opposition to the positivism and scientism represented by
such men as Jose Ingenieros. He was highly critical of all deterministic
views of human behavior, particularly such views as developed in the
writings of positivists and of physiological and experimental psycholo-
gists. His whole philosophical position was oriented toward a view
which he called "creative freedom."
In the development of his own philosophical position, Korn acknowl-
edges his indebtedness to Kant, Schopenhauer, Bergson, Dilthey, and to
certain writers in historical materialism. He was highly critical of the
philosophies of Comte and Spencer which served as primary sources for
the ideas of many Argentine positivists. According to Korn, all knowledge
is limited to consciousness which can be divided for analytic purposes
into subjective and objective poles. The awareness of the subjective pole
is made possible by the opposition to it of the objective pole. The dual-
ism between the subjective order and the objective order of conscious-
ness is made in the knowing process and there is no warrantable
justification for making this epistemologically-created dualism into an
ontological dualism. Metaphysics is poetry rather than philosophy. The
investigations of science are concerned with the measurable and they
are limited to the objective and determined order of consciousness. Phi-
losophy itslf is concerned with evaluations and with the subjective order
of consciousness. The polarities of coercion and freedom are within the
subjective order. Coercion is an initially given fact and freedom is an
achievement. Economic freedom is concerned with man's attainment
of a greater control over the oppressive features of his environment
which functions to limit his freedom. Through ethical freedom, man
expresses his personal autonomy over the coercive features of the sub-
jective order. Man constructs his culture through the development of his
creative freedom.
Man is characterized not simply as a being who wills to live but as
a being who wills to live freely. This creative freedom is expressed ulti-
mately through action. Skepticism which tends to be a consequence of
analysis and contemplation is resolved only in action. Doubt, which is
our "intellectual patrimony," is cut short because of the necessity of man
to act. It is in his creative action in the social, economic, educational
and political world that man solves in a practical way the problems

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LATIN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 81

which are raised in a theoretical way by his intelligence, but which his
intelligence apart from his action is unable to solve in a satisfactory way.
As Korn has stated:
Our mission is not to adapt ourselves to the physical and social medium
as the Spencerian formula proposes, but on the contrary our mission is
to adapt the environment to our desires of justice and beauty. We are
not slaves; rather we are the masters of nature.7

Korn's treatment of the problem of freedom can be criticized for his

failure to justify adequately his view of freedom of action in a world
of personal relations and in man's control over the forces of nature
through the manner in which he attempts to justify theoretically freedom
as some kind of spontaneous activity in the subjective order of conscious-
ness. Korn does not analyze some of the traditional questions of the free
will problem since he regards such discussions as sterile. He proposes
that the individual can have an immediate awareness of freedom; how-
ever, he can be charged with assuming the very point for which evidence
needs to be provided in this controversy. There are other features of
Korn's point of view that have considerable merit and can be sustained
critically. He emphasizes the necessary relationship between freedom
and moral responsibility. He recognizes that conditions necessary to the
healthy growth of democratic institutions are to be found in freedom of
inquiry and scientific investigation, freedom of belief and the expres-
sion of beliefs, and freedom of criticism in academic and professional life.
Korn was a major figure in Argentine academic circles in opposing
a combination of scientism and positivism derived from the systems of
Comte and Spencer. He stated that such a combination of scientism
and positivism subordinated philosophy to science and limited its func-
tion to harmonizing the conclusions of the various branches of the
sciences. He criticized its conclusions as proposing absolutes where none
could be found. He objected to its application of its form of the scientific
method to problems of aesthetic and moral values in such a manner that
these values lost their distinctive properties. Through its reduction of
qualities to quantitative measurements and its application of the principle
of determinism to all phases of human behavior, human personality be-
came lost in automation with no place for a free act. Korn believed that
the movement had always been unbalanced, that it had exhausted its
possible contributions to the national life, and that it had become an
obstruction to intellectual and cultural growth. In opposition to such
positivism, Korn proposed to "rehabilitate the human personality, to save
its intrinsic dignity and to accord to the volition a spontaneous action."8
What was needed was not a formula which would have man adapt him-
self to his physical and social world, but rather an approach which
7Alejandro Korn, "Incipit vita nova," Obras completas, Editorial Claridad,
Buenos Aires, 1949, p. 212.
sAlejandro Korn, "Del mundo de las ideas," 1923, Obras completas, p. 508.

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82 JOURNAL OF INTER-AMERICAN STUDIES

stressed the adaptation of man's environment to the goals of justice and

beauty. Rather than man's being a puppet of nature as proposed by
positivism, he was to be her master.
The function which Korn was fulfilling in the Argentine culture was
analogous to the contributions which William James was making in the
United States and Bergson in France. Korn was keenly interested in pro-
moting the development of the sciences and of incorporating into phi-
losophy those insights which the latest scientific investigations might
provide. He also insisted that there were aspects of human experience
which were explained inadequately in the deterministic approach of his
day.
While Korn did not establish a philosophical movement, he stimulated
an interest in philosophy for its own sake in Argentine universities. He
was the recognized leader of the Kantian Society of Buenos Aires. Many
of the participants in this society subsequently held teaching positions
in the University of Buenos Aires and the University of La Plata. Many
of the members of this group later opposed the infringements of the Per6n
regime upon civil liberties and academic freedom. Korn helped to es-
tablish the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores in Buenos Aires.
The philosophy of Korn is a major contribution to the development of
philosophy in South America. He helped create an interest in philosophy
itself in Argentina and in Latin America. Through his emphasis upon
freedom, Korn contributed to one of the major interests manifest in
the development of philosophical ideas in Latin America. Freedom for
Korn was not simply an academic idea. He was concerned with the
achievement of greater freedom in the social and cultural life of his.
country and the American republics.

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