The Problem of Being in Latin America: Approaching the Latin American Ontological sentipensar

In the following


Introduction
Philosophy in Latin America has been taking its own path, particularly since 1842 with Alberdi 1 and even with much greater strength since the middle of the twentieth century.
This philosophizing includes: the history of philosophical ideas, the philosophy of liberation (both in its ethical as in its political lines) 2 , Amerindian philosophies (philosophical indigenous thinking) 3 , intercultural philosophy 4 , philosophies of life (such as the cosmic vitalism) 5 , analogical hermeneutics 6 , logics of denial 7 , and the ontological sentipensar 8 , among other disciplines that have been arising from Latin America.
Among Latin American thinkers, we have been building an identity or, at least, a common agenda to such an extent that it is increasingly possible

2
The Question of Being The way the ancient Greek people used to think was wondering about the essence of things: What is this?What is that?they would always seek to know what is this or that.Classic Greek language accounts for this way of wondering, of understanding, of being.The Greek language evidences that the Greeks used to investigate the world in this direction, under this horizon.Probably that is why among the Greeks emerged those thinkers who wondered, again and again, about Being: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, among many others.
But, although the Greeks asked so explicitly about Being, it doesn't mean that they were the only peoples who ever had an essential asking.Perhaps the terms are not precisely the same.
The question of Being, however, occurs naturally in every human being due to the mere fact that everyone has to deal with things (being).There cannot be a society that, being there in the world, doesn't wonder about the foundations of reality, about that what animates everything that is, about the reason of being of every being.

The Research Method
Between facticity and transcendentality, whether the dialectical method, or the analytical method, or the phenomenological method, or the hermeneutic method (presented by Ramón Rodríguez in his anthology of Methods of Ontological Thinking) 10 , I prefer to be against any method If by "method" is meant the rule of objective (logical-scientific) rationality.
The path we have followed à la Latin American starts with corporal experience, with material experience, with the affective-sentimental attitude of feeling the feet on the ground.
To feel ourselves one with each other, palpating us naturally, affectionately, spiritually: brothers and sisters of the stone, the river, the tree, the air, the thunder, the huacas ii and the spirits, the mountains and the skies, starting from that natural interconnection of one with each other and everyone to everyone, under the horizon of sensing sensitivity which, as a starting point, is basic and fundamental, irreplaceable.
There is as well in this starting point some rational interpretation, which offers certain explanations also from some culturally imposed logic given beforehand.
This requires some deconstruction of the various rationalities that originate in our horizons of interpretation when we believe we know the world objectively.The proper use of reason, of course, is necessary but not in a naive way: we have to do an exercise of explication of the logical apparatus with which any possibility of understanding is manipulated, consciously or unconsciously, behind every rationality.
But without the stubbornness of those who do not want to hear ancestral wisdom, it is just as necessary to be attentive to the voice of the spirit, to the strength of the divine, which always comes to complement every personal effort when we approach the essence of things, the very Being of the total reality.No need to say That the spirit shows itself precisely ii A huaca is a sacred place/character, a material spirit who takes care of the place, an existential testimony of divinity (Translator's note).combining the various possibilities of reality: corporal, psycho-intellectual, mythical-mystical… corporal-emotional-spiritual.
To discover the path to follow, and thereby step in a path that does not close the various possibilities that reality itself offers to us, we have to sentipensar iii the fire: What a tautology!Is it possible to feel the fire and not to think about it at all?But there are those who are solely dedicated to think of it because they fear to be burned!To feel the whole reality: to do mambeo with her, to speak it by the hearth, to seduce it in words and verbalize it in emotions, shared, gifted, offered, embodied.
The ontological sentipensar, as a research method, requires the non-pretentious facticity of the encounter with others, listening next to the fire, learning with humility from the indigenous, the farmer, the taita, iv the grandfather, the popular wisdom, paying attention respectfully to their saying just as respectfully as we read a scientific paper, without despising, without that rude lust of he who believes he is the holder of the objective truth, of he who blindly believes that the whole truth is in the small scientific truth.
iii Sentipensar is a verb composed of the verbs "feel" (sentir) and "think" (pensar).It is both to think with feeling and feel with thinking (Translator's note). iv The traditional male authority in native indigenous peoples (Translator's note).
The practices of conversation with all their simplicity and jocularity, with all their wisdom and seriousness, evidence the starting point of a fraternal, humble, deep research method out of which a solid wisdom comes and distills true, vital, quotidian, necessary wisdom.That is how grandmothers and taitas weave, instead of knowledge, existential wisdom nourished by the essence of everything that is, by a warm and affectionate reason, which offers the possibility of meaning from the daily Being, enriching both the most specific chores and the most spiritual reflections…

A First Notion
In the shagra, v each seed emerges from the depths of the soil with a certain strength that makes it germinate.There couldn't be another way.
In the burner, the fire remains upright with a certain strength that prevails with its light and heat.
It has been always that way.
In the storm, the thunder does not only come with physical strength and gets right into the midst of us leaving no chance to flee neither from the thunder, nor from the lightning.
When we put pressure on a tree, or a stone, v Shagra is a traditional indigenous or rural garden that serves as familiar source of food and whose caregivers are not only the farmers but also gods and spirits (Translator's note).
or when we hear a truth, or feel a true feeling, they are all imposed on us by a strength that makes them undoubted.
There can be no doubt.
Everything that is is made up of strength.And not merely physical strength.

Our first glimpse of the Being is found in its strength.
There is strength in the river And there is strength in the sea.
There is strength in the ceiba and there is strength in the orchid.
There is strength in the jaguar and there is strength in the condor.There is strength in the hummingbird and there is strength in the human being.
There is strength in the thought and there is strength in the speech.
There is strength in the myth and there is strength in the miracle.
There is strength in the life and there is strength in the spirit.
Strength is everything that is: Being is strength, mere effort, that is it!
The Latin American ontology gives its first step, then, with certain aesthetics of effort, an aesthetics of strength, says Carlos A. Moreno 11 .The poet Porfirio Barba Jacob had already sensed it in its judgment: "to live is to strive" 12 .
An effort to listen to everything that is, attentive and respectfully, according to ancestral practices of the various indigenous peoples.An effort to be present, steadfast, such as the descendants of African peoples, brought to our lands forcibly and contemptibly.An effort to bury the plough and urge on the oxen, to know how to sow the seed and care for the harvest, and to be patient to wait for the fruit, whose example the farmers teach us, year after year.And also a daily and humble effort by the women who, in the neighborhood, wash clothes, clean floors, by the sweat of their brow, of their life, to have means to feed their children.
This may be a populist effort (according to the academics who sitting in mighty desktops know how to argue their ideas and practices), but it is a real, existential effort, truly embodied, it is not mere abstractions rationally developed to be written in publishable texts, and nothing else!Our first notion is a sensing notion that beats, that hurts, that knows our history and the truth of our existence.
Just as birth: no pain, no birth.

The Melody of the Concept
Every word has its music.Every statement has its melody.
But what is said does not have a rhythm of its own just because of being a word, a statement, but because it expresses the reality that produces that melody.
One must be able to listen, to make silence, in order to chat with the things and understand their own rhythm, their musicality.
Every word has its music, which is the music of the verbalized.

Music of truth.
True music.
When asking for the Being a smart effort is needed to capture the pace of every single thing, of the total reality, of everything that is.When asking for the Being and attending to it with simplicity, you start to perceive its melody: The total Being is a symphony formed by the pace that the stone keeps in its heart, by the pace that the river croons in its flow, by the pace that the tree cracks in its soul, by the own pace of all animals, by all those paces invented by all human beings, and the pace of angels, deities and gods, which at every step walk with us and watch over our actions, but also by all the paces of each and every one of the chemical elements, and each and every one of the planets, and stars, and constellations, of all the possible universes, and the sky's as well as the earth's paces, and, yes, also, including the silences all of them, without losing any, including the pace of nothing.The essence of the concepts is not in the mere logic of its argumentation personified in Chiminigagua, the primary deity which creates from the heart everything that is.
That is why the nature of sentipensar requires a connection from the heart with nature as a whole; understanding the cosmos with all its meanings and senses implies not a pure and simple reasoning -only reasoning-But a reasoning-with (with-everything-that-is and with-the-heart), that is to say: to co-reason: corazonar vi .
To understand is corazonar.
To learn is to sharpen the ear until you hear clearly the heart of the cosmos.To know is to sink into the heartbeat of nature.
You only understand while you are being.
To understand is to be one with the other, one with others.We are brothers and sisters with the river and the sea, with the ceiba and the orchid, with the jaguar and the condor, with the hummingbird and the spirit.
The whole life connected with everything that is.
The whole being vitally understood.This is the first wisdom discerned by Latin American philosophy, a philosophy which knows how to listen to ancestral wisdom and which talks to the people, feeding thereby not only on cultured and pure traditions but-also-on the stench of geo-culture typical of the simple, the small, and the humble ones, habitually collected by word of mouth for centuries.
vi It is a play on words trying to resemble "co-reason" with the Spanish word for "heart": corazón.It is also related to the word corazonada (in English "hunch") (Translator's note).