The Gestation of the Concept of Humanism in the First Decade of the 20th Century in Mexico

Abstract

As it is conceived nowadays, the concept of humanism appears for the first time in Mexican intellectual circles in the speech delivered by Pedro Henríquez Ureña at the beginning of classes in 1914, at Escuela de Altos Estudios. Proceeding from this fact, the article seeks to explore under what conditions its emergence takes place, from understanding what is there, in 1900, in the place of humanism. Is it a void? Is it something designated by another name and then called 'humanism'? To this end, the correspondence between Alfonso Reyes and Pedro Henríquez Ureña is reviewed, as well as the discourses surrounding the process of creation of the Universidad Nacional, to show how, in the face of political regime change due to the fall of the Porfiriato, the university project fails to define the nature of the university student, a void that Henríquez Ureña’s humanism, formed from the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon tradition, will occupy.