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The New World, 1492-1992 An Endless Debate?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Miguel León-Portilla
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Extract

On our planet only the American continent has had the privilege, or the unhappiness perhaps, of being subjected to a sort of accounting of “anniversaries” or, let us say, “centennials.” But this does not mean, for all that, that these anniversaries serve to commemorate its birth. Geologists tell us the continents were formed hundreds of millions of years ago, making the commemoration of the American continent relatively recent. Moreover, the origins of this custom are foreign to it and are imbued, it must be said, with perspectives that are by all evidence “Eurocentric.” Curiously, no one took any notice of the first or the second centennial of the American continent.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 40 , Issue 157 , March 1992 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. For a more complete analysis, see Bartolomé and Lucille Bennassar, 1492, Un monde nouveau? (Paris: Perrin, 1991), pp. 50-55.

2. Antonello Gerbi, La disputa del Nuevo Mundo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960). We owe to the same author another book, very well documented, describing and analyzing the diversity of opinions put forward at the end of the fif teenth and during the sixteenth centuries about nature and human beings in the New World: La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas: De Cristobal Colón a Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1978).

3. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 14.

4. Emmanuel Kant, Menschenkunde oder philosophische Anthropologie nach hand schriftlichen Vorlesungen, ed. Friedrich Ch. Stark, (Leipzig, 1831), p. 353.

5. G. W. F. Hegel, "Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte," Sämtliche Werke, Vol. II (Stuttgart, 1961), p. 129.

6. Waldseemüller made this attribution in his Cosmographiae Introductio cum quibusdam geometriae ac astronomiae … insuper Americi Vespuci navigationes …, pub lished in Saint-Dié in 1507. This work was followed that same year by the Cosmographiae secundum Ptolomaei Traditionem …, with which was published the famous world map on which the name "America" appeared for the first time.

7. Among the numerous reproductions of this map, see that included in the fac simile edition of Claudius Ptolomeus Geographia, Strasbourg 1513, with an introduc tion by R. A. Skelton (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1966).

8. Servet wrote this in his introduction to Ptolomaei Alexandrini Geographicae Enarationis libri octo (Lugduni: Ex officina Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum, MDXXVI).

9. Paolo Emilio Taviani, Cristobal Colón, Genesis del gran descubrimiento, 2 vols. (Novara-Barcelona: Instituto Geográfico de Agostini y Editorial Teide, 1988; French translation, Christophe Colomb: Genèse de la grande Découverte [Paris: Atlas, 1980]) and Los viajes de Colón, el gran descubrimiento, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Planeta-Agostini, 1989).

10. Pietro Martire de Anghiera, Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, with an introduction by Ramón Alba (Madrid, 1989), p. 38.

11. Ibid., p. 12.

12. Bartolomé de Las Casas, Apologia, ed. Angel Losada; vol. 9 of the Complete Works of B. de Las Casas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), p. 107.

13. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, III, 6 (Paris: Club français du livre, 1962; follow ing the edition of 1558).

14. Edmundo O'Gorman, La Invencíón de América (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984), p. 49.

15. Ibid., p. 153.

16. Ibid., p. 156.

17. Ibid., p. 157.

18. Ibid., pp. 155-156.

19. Ibid., p. 157.

20. See the native testimony gathered in L'Envers de la Conquête, ed. Miguel Léon-Portilla, (Lyon: Editions Fédérop, 1977).

21. Claude Lévi-Strauss, "Characters," a program on Antenne 2, October 11, 1991.