Senses of Americanism

debates on Spengler and his contributions to think about America’s place in history

Abstract

The description of the West world in decline, typical of the first postwar period, is interpreted along with the perception of America as a new scenario in history. However, this means various things. Many of the diagnosis about the West world was based on Spengler’s paradigm, which arrived in Argentina through Ernesto Quesada. His reading of German, the dissemination of these ideas in courses, conferences, books and articles, and his signaling of America as a replacement for that world decline helped him to be recognized as a promoter of “Americanism”. However, those readings raised criticism on theoretically and politically controversial aspects. In the article we deal with these debates, reading the critics that appeared in the Revista de Filosofía since 1923. If many of Quesada’s articles were published there, several of the sharpest comments also appeared from the pen of its director and frequent authors. We go through the arguments, reading Quesada and his critics, to notice the conceptual axes through which the debate took place. The objective is to advance in the recognition of some pertinent distinctions when defining the “Americanism” of the 20th.