Juan de Dios Salazar’s El nuevo mundo filosófico: The First Philosophical Work of Republican Peru

Estremadoyro R.C. · Letras (Peru) (2022) · DOI: 10.30920/letras.93.137.5

Resumen

A few years after the Declaration of Independence of Peru, the first works of philosophy were publi-shed in the presses of the new Republic. In addition to the symbolism related to the first cultural mani-festations of a nation, the importance of these texts consists in the fact that they allow us to appreciate the continuities or ruptures that take place in the order of ideas after such a radical change at the political level. Through an archival work, we can conclude that the first philosophical work in inde-pendent Peru is El nuevo mundo filosófico (1823) by the physician and mathematician from Arequi-pa, Juan de Dios Salazar. The analysis of this wri-ting reveals a sensualist gnoseology intermingled with medical physiology elements. Our research seeks to shed light on a little-studied period in the Peruvian history of ideas and medicine and aims to provide the reader with a first approach to philosophical or medical schools such as sensualism, ideology, or medical vitalism. Although Salazar is hardly confrontational with scholasticism, the do-minant school of thought in the colonial period, the ideas defended by him can be considered as a break with the old regime of ideas.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Tecnológica de Lima Sur