Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez

Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (September 17, 1915 – July 8, 2011) was a Spanish-born Mexican philosopher, writer and professor born in Algeciras, Andalucia.

Biography

After studying philosophy at the University of Madrid, Vázquez emigrated to Mexico in 1939 with thousands of other intellectuals, scientists and artists following the defeat of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, in which he participated as editor of the central publication of the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU) “Ahora”. Sánchez was appointed a full-time professor of philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1959, becoming a professor emeritus of the university in 1985.[3] Sánchez also held honorary doctoral degrees from the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the University of Cádiz (Spain). 

He embraced Marxism, although an open, renovating, critical and non-dogmatic version of it. His fresh interpretation of Marxism ran parallel to that of the Frankfurt School. In fact, The Philosophy of Praxis was published at around the same time as Herbert Marcuse was writing his One Dimensional Man]]. In regard to ethics, he opposed normativism.

Philosophical works

The Aesthetic Ideas of Marx (1965)

The Philosophy of Praxis (1967)

Rousseau in Mexico (The Philosophy of Rousseau and the Ideology of Independence) (1969)

Aesthetics and Marxism (1970)

Anthology. Texts of Aesthetics and Theory of Art (1972)

Art and Society: Essays in Marxist Aesthetics (1973)

From Scientific Socialism to Utopian Socialism (1975).

Miscellaneous

Memoirs

Recollections and Reflections of an Exile (1997)

Critical Marxism in Mexico Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez and Bolívar Echeverría

"Βetween the years of 1973 and 1981, Sánchez Vázquez was editor of the teoría y praxis [theory and praxis] book series of the Mexican publisher Grijalbo. In that post, he made emancipatory European thinkers – for example, Rossana Rossanda, Henri Lefebvre, Karel Kosík, Adam Schaff, Louis Althusser, Jindrich Zelený, and Bertolt Brecht – more widely known in Mexico and Latin America. Furthermore, he published contemporary contributions to local discussions of social theory and philosophy, such as those by Rosa Krauze, Enrique Dussel, María Rosa Palazón, and Leopoldo Zea"

"Finally others, like Kosík, maintain that without praxis, or the creation of a socio-human reality, knowledge of reality is itself impossible".