К вопросу о модернизации. Уроки латиноамериканской истории

Abstract

This article examines projects for the reorganization of Latin America from the standpoint of historicism as interpreted by the leading Mexican philosopher and cultural historian Leopoldo Zea, author of the famous work The Philosophy of American History. That book is well known among researchers in the West and in Russia, but here in Kazakhstan it — and Zea’s work in general — has been little studied. Meanwhile, scholars of his oeuvre agree that he is the only thinker who created a distinct method for understanding Latin American history and culture. In essence, Zea offers a new understanding of Latin American history as a succession of projects. The very term “project” goes back to Ortega y Gasset’s theory of “perspectivism.” The methodological approach developed by Zea from the positions of the classical theories of Karl Marx, José Ortega y Gasset, and Arnold Toynbee — called the “synthetic” approach (Maslova, 2007) — formed the basis for his study of the projects he proposed to explain Latin American history. Zea is at once a philosopher of history and a historian — a factologist who acts as the conceptual interpreter of his own empirical investigations (Solomina, 1983). The Philosophy of American History is a philosophical-historical work.

The aim of the article is practical: to acquaint readers specifically with the factual material — the concrete historical projects for reorganizing Latin America — on the basis of Zea’s interpretation. Kazakhstan is currently searching for a development model that would allow it to increase its economic potential and successfully complete modernization. Therefore, in order to develop our own understanding of the prospects and specifics of the modernization taking place here, it is necessary to study the rich arsenal of ideas and facts that explain the logic of transformations of social systems and the character of their social dynamics. Zea’s book can play an important role in this regard.