This year will be NASEP’s first visit to Mexico and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). UNAM has a rich history of engagement with phenomenology beginning in the 1930s with the work of Antonio Caso and José Gaos. Caso’s La filosofia de Husserl (1934), now available in our Reading Room, is the first commentary on Husserl’s phenomenology by a Mexican philosopher, and draws upon both the Prolegomena to Husserl’s Logical Investigations – which had been translated into Spanish by García Morente and Gaos in 1929 – and the French edition of the Cartesian Meditations, as well as Gaos’ Spanish translation of Theodor Celms’ Der Phaenomenologische Idealismus Husserls (1928). Gaos left Spain for Mexico in 1939 and at that time he had translated
Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Scheler’s Ressentiment, works by August Messer and Segei Hessen, and was working on a translation of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. Gaos was in possession of a draft of the Cartesian Meditations given to Ortega by Husserl, but it was lost during Gaos’ move to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War. As mentioned above, Gaos had also translated Celms’ famous critical work on Husserl. Selections from this translation, El Idealismo fenomenológico de Husserl (1931) are also now available on our site.
For more information on the history of phenomenology in Mexico, please see Antonio Zirion’s wonderful paper, “Phenomenology in Mexico: A historical profile,” Continental Philosophy Review 33: 75–92, 2000.