Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (CSA)

Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1994 [1955]) is one of the milestones of Mexican literature and it holds an important place in the global canon of the twentieth century. Despite the wide spectrum of interpretative possibilities it offers, there are almost no studies of this important novel from the perspective of embodied cognition. This article draws on the vocabulary of contemporary philosophy to address this critical gap, deconstructing the full range of traditional binary oppositions articulated by Rulfo, which includes: body and mind, cognitive and moral, imaginative and perceptual, mystical and lived, freedom and responsibility, individual and social. However, to establish the relevancy of our chosen conceptual apparatus, we return to Aristotle to offer a novel interpretation which also allows us to situate and correlate both the universal (human) and particular (mestizo) projects laid out by the author of Páramo. We demonstrate both the usefulness of Aristotle’s universal descriptions of the human being and the shortcomings of their rationalism and optimism in the context of the postcolonial world. To modify and extend this adaptation we reflect further on the specific ‘movements’ of the mestizo soul, which privilege embodied moments of cognition and transgression as the proper care for the soul, a soul that embraces both individual and socio-cultural aspects. This finally allows us to address the question of how the post-logocentric enaction and mediation of mestizo identity is possible.

The article analyzes and compares the philosophical theology of Kierkegaard and Tillich. They are usually represented as exponents of the same (existentialist- Protestant) tradition, but a different perception of the main questions and possibilities for philosophical theology to answer them guides these philosophers to radically different conclusions regarding the philosophy of religion. A closer look at how they understand faith (pistis) unlocks new possibilities to interpret the ideas of Kierkegaard and Tillich rather than to accept “chrestomathic” analyses. Tillich’s implicit loyalty to Platonic and Hegelian ideas subordinates the existential aspects of his system to answers, which can be described as a “gnostic” understanding of faith and knowledge. This violates the limits for theoretical knowledge set by Kierkegaard. Such a Tillichian ontological loyalty explains that an ontological search is implicated in every religious experience. This basic presupposition of interaction with the sacred for Tillich lets us view Kierkegaard’s famous interpretation of biblical myths critically, and to argue that these stories do not mean that the only possible faith is “blind” faith. This opens a path for Tillich to rationalize every aspect of Christianity and to talk about “true God,” God beyond the gods of actual religions.