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

Abstract

A few years after the Declaration of Independence of Peru, the first works of philosophy were published in the presses of the new Republic. In addition to the symbolism related to the first cultural manifestations 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 independent Peru is El nuevo mundo filosófico (1823) by the physician and mathematician from Arequipa, Juan de Dios Salazar. The analysis of this writing 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 dominant school of thought in the colonial period, the ideas defended by him can be considered as a break with the old regime of ideas.