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James Maffie

Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion Paperback – September 1, 2015

by James Maffie (Author)

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In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought.

Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology.

Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Print length

608 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University Press of Colorado
Publication date

September 1, 2015
Dimensions

6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

160732461X
ISBN-13

978-1607324614
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Stunning . . . a major breakthrough that will be a game-changer in Mesoamerican studies.”
―Alan Sandstrom, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne

"An elaborate, fascinating, and crucially important study of Aztec metaphysics . . . Maffie sets out to prove that the Aztecs not only had a philosophy, and a radically different one from the Greco-Christian West, but did philosophy as well. His account of this philosophy is fascinating and important, worthy of the best anthropology. Marshaling evidence from a number of sources (textual, graphic, archaeological) and necessarily disputing the claims of some of his scholarly predecessors, he describes a metaphysics so foreign to Western-Christian thinking that it should and must make us pause and consider the ground of Western philosophy and religion."
—David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

"In this comprehensive study, James Maffie offers much more than an introduction to Aztec philosophy. For the reader unfamiliar with the Náhuatl-speaking people of the Central Valley of Mexico, whose capital Tenochtitlan was conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521, Aztec Philosophy offers a close examination of Nahua life, thought, and culture; for the anthropologist and Mesoamericanist, it offers a philosophical lens through which to examine and evaluate standard interpretations of Aztec life and society; for the student of philosophy, it reconstructs a systematic and coherent worldview and provides enough material to pursue graduate level research; and for any reader, it is a model of how to bring multiple disciplines to bear on a topic that is beyond the scope of any one discipline."
—Robert Eli Sanchez, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"...the originality of this metaphysics shines through."
—L.M. Alcoff, CHOICE

"For scholars interested in indigenous heritage philosophy of the Americas, this text will delight with its metaphysical playfulness. It is, however, to be taken seriously. For if Maffie is correct in only some of his disagreements with traditionally received views, he has forever changed the weave of the rug! . . . I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about the heritage philosophies of our native soil. And all American philosophers should be familiar with the metaphysics of these philosophies if they hope to have any kind of understanding of their own philosophical influences since coming to the Americas!"
—Anne Schulherr Waters, APA Newsletter Indigenous Philosophy

“Aztec Philosophy not only provokes several debates within Aztec studies but also offers some excellent, new and innovative interpretations of Aztec cultural traditions such as ball games and the religious practice of sweeping. The book’s rich linguistic, pictographic, historical, anthropological, and archaeological analysis will also serve as a valuable source for scholars and students interested in ancient Mexican culture.”
—Jongsoo Lee, Journal of Anthropological Research

"I would recommend this book to anyone with a professional interest in Aztec culture, or Mesoamerican culture more broadly. It is worthwhile to a wide audience, including philosophers, historians, theologians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. . . . In reading this book, I feel as if I have not only increased my knowledge of Aztec culture. . . . I feel as if it has altered my own personal philosophy of how to Be in the world, or better, how to engage in an active process of Becoming."
—Anthropology News

"[A] comprehensive and beautifully argued account of Aztec (Mexica-Nahua) metaphysics. At 527 pages with over 1800 footnotes, it exercises a dazzling methodological and empirical precision and constitutes one of the most important treatises on Mesoamerican philosophy to date. It engages with and revises what have heretofore been the predominant interpretations of Nahua philosophy by the most important scholars in anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory and literature. . . . Maffie’s book is an exemplary exercise in interdisciplinary scholarship and will be invaluable to scholars from diverse fields. . . . The simultaneous clarity and poetic repetition make his argument not only convincing but stellar."
—Bulletin of Latin American Research

"A masterful exposition of a fascinating topic."
—Ethnohistory

“An excellent piece of scholarship. . . . Maffie’s book has given Aztec philosophy and culture a renewal of which both he and the Aztecs can be justly proud.”
—Philosophy in Review

About the Author

James Maffie is principal lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and affiliate of the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Maryland.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Colorado; 1st edition (September 1, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 608 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 160732461X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1607324614
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.83 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #149,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #158 in General Anthropology
- #206 in Modern Philosophy (Books)
- #6,254 in Social Sciences (Books)

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Tom Lane

Finally an Indigenous Metaphysics of Nahua

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2019

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This is the first book that ever attempted to understand Nahua ( Aztec used for general purposes) Metaphysics from an Indigenous Mesoamericans standpoint. Almost everything written by Spanish or Europeans about the Toltecs or Aztecs is IMPORTED into Western or Asian Philosophy or Religion which was no help in understanding the Metaphysics of Indigenous “ New World People of the Americas “ . I suggest you watch James Maggie Aztec Philosophy on YouTube to get a basic understanding of Nahua or Aztec Philosophy And Metaphysics . This book is incredible but you have to realize that there is NO COMPARISON IN EGYPTIAN GREEK ROMAN HINDU BUDDHIST JUDEO CHRISTIAN GODS OR RELIGION OR PHILOSOPHY TO THE TEOTL. Only the Tao has a little bit of the Teotl as a part of its metaphysics’s . The New Age Plastic Woo Wooisms that tries to fit Teotl into Plastic Dressup Shamism is unbelievably off track . After ten years of reading about The Indigenous Mesoamericans I finally found an Author ( Maffie ) who finally doesn’t use Western or Asian Philosophy or Metaphysics or Religions as a way of understanding Mesoamericans.

20 people found this helpful

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greenejm

"A Landmark Contribution"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 14, 2014

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Here's an excellent, thorough review of Jim Maffie's Aztec Philosophy by philosopher Robert Sanchez, published in the journal Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: "In this comprehensive study, James Maffie offers much more than an introduction to Aztec philosophy. For the reader unfamiliar with the Náhuatl-speaking people of the Central Valley of Mexico, whose capital Tenochtitlan was conquered by Hernán Cortés in 1521, Aztec Philosophy offers a close examination of Nahua life, thought, and culture; for the anthropologist and Mesoamericanist, it offers a philosophical lens through which to examine and evaluate standard interpretations of Aztec life and society; for the student of philosophy, it reconstructs a systematic and coherent worldview and provides enough material to pursue graduate level research; and for any reader, it is a model of how to bring multiple disciplines to bear on a topic that is beyond the scope of any one discipline." And the review concludes: "...Maffie has done us all a great service. His book is not only a landmark contribution to comparative philosophy, which cuts across multiple disciplines and multiple philosophies -- there are more than 1800 footnotes, a massive number for a philosophy text -- but I suspect that it is also a landmark contribution to philosophy, insofar as it provides us with a necessary resource to start questioning whether there is a difference between philosophy and comparative philosophy."

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/53017-aztec-philosophy-understanding-a-world-in-motion/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

11 people found this helpful

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Ixtaca Yaotl

like new

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

got the book in, looks like a brand new book with no marks on the book as far as i can see. I will be writing a more detailed review once I read the book.

2 people found this helpful

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Juan Schwartzman

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Well-developed and cogent points make for fascinating reading.

2 people found this helpful

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NightOwl

Legitimacy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

I was on the verge of learning true Aztec Philosophy and this book assured my thoughts and ideas.

2 people found this helpful

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Peter Trutmann

Excellent and insightful.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent and insightful for anyone interested in the minds and cosmovision of the Aztecs!

4 people found this helpful

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Nican Tlaca

The most important book on “Aztec” philosophy. Period.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 1, 2014

The bar has been raised by James Maffie's 512-page tour of “Aztec” (i.e. Nahua/Mexica) philosophy. This book is a clear and enlightening look into one of the world's most profound – and profoundly misunderstood – systems of thought. A philosopher trained in the Western canon, Maffie deliberately uses Western philosophical methods to approach and explain the complex philosophy of the Mexica (a.k.a. the Aztecs) in terms that we can understand. What Linda Schele did for Maya epigraphy, James Maffie now does for Aztec philosophy.

The result is a work that clears away the New Age fantasies and Christian-colonial distortions of modern culture, revealing an Indigenous perspective that explained reality in terms of motion-processes (“ceaseless becomings and transformations”). This contrasts with Western philosophy's focus on fixed states.

Whereas Western philosophy rests upon the foundation of Plato's unchanging Forms as the ultimate reality, Mexica-Aztec philosophy embraced ambiguity, transformation, and the “objectively sacred” reality of everyday life (as opposed to the “degenerate” everyday world of Plato and Christianity).

One of the book's major achievements is in its examination and explanation of the concept of “teotl”, a Mexica-Aztec metaphysical idea that explained the ultimate nature of reality. Using a variety of historical sources, Maffie demonstrates how teotl represents the “sacred energy” that literally constitutes the “Time-Place” of reality and ceaselessly transforms the universe (and all things within it).

--Note #1: When Maffie speaks of teotl as “energy”, he means it in the same way that physicists do: a physical, empirically-based force (as opposed to the imaginary “energy” of New Age pseudoscience).
--Note #2: When Maffie speaks of teotl as “sacred”, he states it is “Objectively Sacred”: its physical power is essential to our everyday life, undeniable, and an endless source of awe and terror.

There are no actual “Aztec gods” then. Instead, there are what Maffie describes as naming conventions for objective processes and process-clusters. Maffie argues that the Mexica-Aztecs were not polytheistic, but pantheistic and that their philosophy was animistic (viewing the universe as alive with objectively-sacred power). This false idea of “Aztec gods” is a distortion invented by early Spanish missionaries who misinterpreted the Mexica-Aztec world through the lens of the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods. This notion of European-style “gods” is in reality a kaleidoscope view of a single Teotl-reality, as perceived through the limitations of human understanding. What Europeans took to be “Aztec gods” were really just another form of philosophical notation, incomprehensible to the Western mind (this incomprehension continues to this very day).

Teotl, then, is the the creative/destructive energy-in-motion (hence, the sub-title of the book) which at once comprises the universe, as well as transforms it through distinct patterns. Teotl's dynamic power manifests through what Maffie calls “agonistic inamics”, or the endless complement-tensions between primordial dualities (e.g. Life and Death, Male and Female, Order and Chaos, etc.) Maffie compares this to the Chinese concept of Qi, the Zen concept of Tao, and the Polynesian idea of “Mana”.

The metaphysical patterns of this dualistic-dynamism (teotl) are classified by Maffie in a threefold “taxonomy” (the second major achievement of this book): Olin (bouncing/pulsing movement); Malinalli (“twisting energy”); and Nepantla (“weaving-the-universe”). These three metaphysical patterns “define the dynamics of reality and of the Aztec cosmos”, according to Maffie. They are represented across Mexica-Aztec culture as ordering principles of teotl (and thus, reality). Maffie does an excellent job of relating these patterns to Mexica-Aztec astronomy and what he calls the “Sun-Earth-Ordering” of the universe (his explanation of the so-called “Aztec Calendar” is fascinating).

Specifically, Olin describes the oscillations of solar time-movement, and Malinalli describes the “twistings” of physical energy transferences between major Life/Death cycles and “layers” of the universe.

The third pattern, Nepantla (“weaving”), literally creates the “Time-Place” fabric of the universe. The Nepantla as weaving-the-universe metaphor was so important that it literally elevated the value of cloth, cloaks, and sacred bundles across “Mesoamerica”. This Nepantla-weaving process cannot be understated in its importance and forms a major theme throughout Maffie's book. “The cosmos is a grand weaving-in-progress”, and “Teotl is the weaver”. This profoundly determined everything to the Mexica-Aztec philosophical mind.

In summary, the author shows the Mexica-Aztecs to be orderly thinkers of a world-class caliber who described the universe as processes-in-motion (in contrast to the Western tendency of focusing on fixed and ideal states). Whereas Western philosophy considers the unchanging to be “real”, Mexica-Aztec philosophy sees reality as something that is never really fixed, but always in motion, always becoming. Maffie peels away the Eurocentric distortions of the Spanish conquistadors (and New Age pseudoscience of modern culture) to reveal a rational, orderly philosophy that challenges our modern worldview to its core.

This book builds and improves upon previous works by Miguel Leon-Portilla, Barbara and Dennis Tedlock, Roberta and Peter Markman, and – in my opinion – “Native American Studies” scholar Jack D. Forbes. Students of Comparative World Philosophy will find this to be a must-have addition to their collections. The author has made a significant contribution to the field with this work, sure to affect the future of “Mesoamerican Studies (if not Andean Studies as well). As one scholarly review put it, “This book is a game-changer.”

I challenge you to find a more logical and better-researched book on this subject.

37 people found this helpful

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