Philosophy and americanism in Francisco Romero and Rodolfo Kusch

Abstract

The essayistic works and the intellectual and political trajectories of Francisco Romero and Rodolfo Kusch represented opposing
forms in the construction of Americanism in Argentinian philosophy. In the context of the first Peronism - characterised by strong ruptures and rearrangements in the intellectual field - the post-war crisis and the renewed search for a national and continental identity, the essays La filosofía en América by Romero (1952) and La seducción de barbarie. Análisis herético de un continente mestizo by Kusch (1953) appear as paradigmatic in disputes within the philosophical field. In the present paper I address these essays in the articulation of the academic itineraries of the authors and their political and discursive options within the disputes about the function of philosophy in the Americas.