Zea argued that authentic Latin American philosophy must begin from an explicit "assumption" of the region's own historical circumstance - its colonial past and search for postcolonial identity - rather than treating European philosophy as a neutral universal model to be imitated. Responding to the question "Is there a Latin American philosophy?," he developed a historicist philosophy of Latin American history that treated the colonial encounter itself as the central problem for the region's thought.
Intellectual setting
Zea wrote as Latin American philosophy sought institutional and intellectual independence in the mid-twentieth century, engaging directly with Spanish exile philosophers like Gaos who had fled to Mexico after the Spanish Civil War, and his historicist approach helped lay groundwork for the subsequent Philosophy of Liberation movement associated with Dussel.
Key ideas
Assumption of historical circumstance
Drawing on Ortega y Gasset's philosophy of circumstance, Zea argued that Latin American philosophers must consciously assume their own concrete historical situation, shaped by conquest and colonization, as the starting point for authentic philosophizing, rather than adopting European thought as a neutral universal framework.
Philosophy of Latin American history
Zea treated the search for Latin American identity after colonization as itself a central philosophical problem, developing a historicist account of the region's intellectual development that helped establish Latin American philosophy as a self-aware field.
Legacy
Zea is regarded as a leading figure in establishing Latin American philosophy as a recognized, self-reflective field of academic inquiry, and his historicist approach to identity and circumstance directly influenced the later Philosophy of Liberation movement.