Merging the narratives: A historical study of translated philosophy in Mexico (1940s-1950s)

This paper presents the history of philosophy and the history of translation as parallel narratives. It argues that these histories must be merged in order to investigate productively the functions of philosophical translation within a specific intellectual tradition. The paper discusses possible points of intersection between the narratives produced by historians of translation and philosophy, and then examines particular translations at the crossroads of the German and Hispanic traditions. It explores the emergence of philosophical nationalism as a result, in part, of the influence of German historicist traditions in the Spanish and Mexican cultural milieus of the 1940s and 1950s. Two translations of Dilthey's essay 'The Essence of Philosophy' are examined; these were published in Mexico and fulfilled different functions in that country's philosophical field. They are examined as a corpus of texts with distinct social functions and are considered as discursive sites where different intellectual trajectories converged to produce a historical narrative, to delimit a field of study, i.e. Mexican philosophy, and to legitimise a philosophical project.