Ramos’s “Toward a New Humanism and Related Writings”

Dear fellow Mexicanistas,

I just wanted to share the news that I finally sent off the book proposal for an original translation of Samuel Ramos’s Hacia un nuevo humanismo (1940), along with translations of related writings. As I will argue in the introduction to the text, Toward a New Humanism is something of a second part to Ramos’s much more influential Profile of Man and Culture, and reading the two texts together (as a pair) will challenge standard interpretations of the Profile and the development of existentialism in Mexico and of la filosofía de lo mexicano. (Regarding the Profile, the goal is to show what is philosophical about the Profile and what is Mexican about Humanismo, that is, to respond to two standard criticisms of the texts.)

In addition to a full-length translation of Humanismo, I am also including translations of a handful of related writings, including an early piece on Pirandello (1925), a chapter from Ramos’s first book Hipótesis on Max Scheler (1928), at least a few short pieces Ramos wrote in 1939 for the periodical Hoy, including “The Mechanization of Human Life,” “A New Humanism,” and “Ortega y Gasset in Spanish America.”

Depending on how much the publisher will let me get away with, I might include other ancillary material. For example, in a recent trip to CDMX, I found a letter that T. B. Irving (the guy who wrote the introduction to the English translation of the Profile) wrote in 1941 to W. W. Norton & Company, in which he shares the lament that Alfonso Reyes felt that there was “so little opportunity for Mexican thought to reach the United States.” What’s super interesting about this letter, which is essentially a book proposal for a translation of Humanismo, is that Irving tells us that when he and Reyes were considering the many candidates of Mexican thought to translate into English (e.g., Justo Sierra’s The Political Evolution of the Mexican People), Reyes felt that Ramos’s Humanismo would be a good place to start.

If there are any other texts that you believe ought to be included in the related materials, let me know. And soon: because the translation is done, I’m hoping the process will go quickly.