José Vasconcelos
1882-1959 · Latin American · Little-known
Vasconcelos was a Mexican philosopher who served as education minister, ran a mass literacy campaign and handed the walls of public buildings to the muralists, launching the Mexican muralist movement. He also wrote The Cosmic Race, which read mestizaje, the mixing of peoples in Latin America, as the seed of a fifth race that would fold all the others into a higher civilization.
Signature
The position Vasconcelos is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- Unchanging – Changing
- Highest Good
- Beauty / Harmony
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly leans Unity (38 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Truth
- leans Objective (84 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- War
- leans Militarism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Vasconcelos refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Beauty / Harmony
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Spiral
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Developmentalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Language
- Expression
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law / Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Nation / The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?