Paper short abstract

This paper seeks to explore the ways in which twentieth-century Latin American intellectuals reformulated the region's identity by reappraising nature as an essential component of modernity.

Paper long abstract

The idea of the primitiveness of the American continent with respect to civilised Europe was fully established in the eighteenth century, as European scholars laid the ground for a theory of the inferiority of the natural world in the Americas. The philosophical peak of the debate was reached in the early nineteenth century, when G.W.F. Hegel gave his famous Lectures on the Philosophy of History placing Europe in the realm of 'history' and America in the realm of 'nature'. This paper seeks to explore the ways in which twentieth-century Latin American intellectuals reformulated the region's identity by reappraising nature as an essential component of modernity. Ultimately, this paper aims to shed new light on Latin America's original and often neglected contribution to ongoing debates about the nature/culture divide in the Western world.