Gabino Barreda and Contemporary Ideas (September 12, 1910)

José Vasconcelos criticizes the view that knowledge is based only on what can be observed and that the world appears to us as a series of phenomena that move from the simple to the complex and from the particular to the general. In general, Vasconcelos is opposed to reducing psychology to biology, as well as reducing ethics to solidarity, altruism, and legacy (the three fundamental ideas of ethics that Barreda borrowed from Comte). Instead, and leaning heavily on the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Arthur Schopenhauer, and artists such as Richard Wagner, Vasconcelos faults the Mexican positivist for not being able to see beyond his immediate world, and for failing to appreciate the potential of life or the spirit or the ideal, which cannot be reduced to the material.