Los liberalismos de José María Vigil y Antonio Caso y el realismo directo

Abstract

Jose Maria Vigil (1829-1909) and Antonio Caso (1883-1946) were two defenders of liberal democracy and of the possibility of a limited but effective conscious management of public and social affairs, within the adverse contexts of Mexico during the administration of Porfirio Diaz as well as the post-revolutionary period. Both authors based their positions on a critique concerning positivism and social-historical determinism, which would aim at a way of thinking quite distant from subjectivist thought, although very close to an epistemological "direct realism" that establishes that the world is not actually a subjective or inter-subjective construction, that may be interpreted in the same subjective or inter-subjective way. However, it is not either something that might be known through a mental or conceptual copy or representation of its entities and processes. Perhaps, the most evocative defender of direct realism in history has been the 18* Century Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a great "common-sensist", explicitly recovered by Vigil and vindicated in a tacit manner by Antonio Caso.

Keywords

• José María Vigil
• Antonio Caso
• Thomas Reid
• realismo directo
• liberalismo
• México
• política
• filosofía.