Condillac and the idéologie in Argentina

SILVIA MANZO

Lyon

Simposio; Condillac et ses réceptions/Condillac and its Reception; 2022

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon

One of the first and most influential narratives of the history of Argentinian philosophy ?written in the first decades of the twentieth century by José Ingenieros (1877-1925)?has emphasized the role played by Condillac in the early post-colonial period. Condillac is portrayed as the main representative of the ?philosophical liberalism? that influenced the renewal of the philosophical teaching during the first half of the nineteenth century. Such a narrative, strongly biased by Ingenieros?s sympathy for positivism, has however some failures and deserves a reappraisal. This paper will explore the reception of Condillac in the teaching of philosophy in Buenos Aires between 1819 and 1842. During these years, known by scholarly literature as the period of the idéologues in Argentina, Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur (1797-1824), Juan Manuel Fernández de Agüero (1822-1827), Luis José de la Peña (1827) and Diego Alcorta (1827-1842) were highly inspired by French trends. The presence of Condillac in their lessons and writings was intermediated by the interpretations of other authors, who exerted a more direct influence on them: Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), Pierre Jean Cabanis (1757-1808) and Pierre Laromiguière (1756-1837). This paper will examine how the ideas and the role of Condillac?s philosophy were conditioned by this intermediation. Finally, it will point out how Ingenieros?s narrative of the nineteenth-century reception of Condillac was, in turn, conditioned by the historical, ideological, and philosophical background of the early twentieth century.