Education

• PhD., Philosophy, San José State University, 2006. (Iain Thomson, Chair)
• MA., Philosophy, San José State University, 2000.
• BS., Mass Communications (Advertising), San José State University, 1998.

Academic Posts

• Professor, 2015—Present San José State University
  ↳ San Jose State University’s President Scholar 2017-2018 (Awarded to University’s Top Faculty Scholar).
• Associate Professor, 2010—2015 San José State University
• Assistant Professor, 2006—2010 San José State University

Areas of research and Publication

Mexican Philosophy, Latinx Philosophy, Violence, Immigration, Phenomenology and Existentialism.

Books & Anthologies

Single Authored

2024: Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us toward the Good Life. Oxford University Press.

2023: Mexican Philosophy in the 21st Century: Relajo, Zozobra, and Other Frameworks for Understanding Our World. New York: Bloomsbury.

2021: Emilio Uranga’s Analysis of Mexican Being: Introduction and Translation. New York: Bloomsbury.

2020: A Sense of Brutality: Philosophy After Narco-Culture. Amherst College Press.

2016: Contingency and Commitment: Mexican Existentialism and the Place of Philosophy. State University of New York Press.

2012: The Suspension of Seriousness: On the Phenomenology of Jorge Portilla. State University of New York Press.

2010: From Epistemic Justification to Philosophical Authenticity: A Study in Husserl’s Phenomenological Epistemology. Lambert Academic Publishing.

Forthcoming/Single Authored

2023: A Blooming in the Ruins: Mexican philosophy as a guide to life. Oxford University Press.

Co-Authored

2020: with Francisco Gallegos. The Disintegration of Community: On Jorge Portilla’s Social and Political Philosophy, with Translations of Selected Essays. State University of New York Press.

2010: with Jules Simon. The Thought and Social Engagement in the Mexican-American Philosophy of John H. Haddox. Lewinston: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Anthologies

2017: with Robert E. Sanchez (Editors). Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century: Essential Readings. Oxford University Press.

Papers/Essays Published & Forthcoming (2008-Present)

1. Forthcoming (2023). “‘Apretados’: Jorge Portilla on Value Fanaticism,” The History and Philosophy of Fanaticism. Anthology. Routledge.
2. Forthcoming (2023). “Mexican Existentialism,” Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Existentialism.
3. Forthcoming (2023). “Mexican Philosophy and Phenomenology,” Encyclopedia of Phenomenology.
4. Forthcoming (2023). “Mexican Ontology,” The Philosopher, Magazine.
5. Forthcoming (2023). “The ‘Anchor Baby’ Antinomy,” Ethics of Birthright Citizenship, Anthology. Penn State Press.
6. (2022). “Sobre la ecologia moral y la narco cultura,” Mudo Hostil: Saberes de frontera sobre la violencia contemporanea, edited by Arturo Aguirre. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblo: pp. 30-29.
7. (2022). “Towards a Phenomenology of Undocumented Immigrant Reason,” Puncta. Journal of Critical Phenomenology. Vol. 5, No. 3: 60-71.
8. (2022). “Impoverishing Moral Ecologies: The Case of Mexican Narco-Culture,” Washington University review of Philosophy. Vol. 2: 95-102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/wurop202226
9. (2022). “The Value and Limits of the Socially Undocumented Interpretive Horizon,” APA Studies on Feminism and Philosophy. Vol. 21, No. 2.
10. (2021). “Symposium: Philosophy After Narco-Culture,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 24, No. 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev2021242113
11. (2020). “Emilio Uranga’s Analysis del ser del mexicano: De-Colonizing Pretentions, Re-Colonizing Critiques,” Southern Journal of Philosophy,” Vol. 51, No. 1: 63-89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12342.
12. (2020). “Otra vez a las tesis sobre Feuerbach: filosofía, circunstancia y práctica revolucionaria,” in La tradicion de la filosofia politica vista desde America Latina. Edited by Claudia Tamez and Fernando Huesca. Mexico: Ediciones del Lirio: 155-178.
13. (2019). “Sobre la brutalidad y la narco cultura,” in Tiempos sombríos: violencia en el México contemporáneo, Arturo Aguirre (Ed). Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblio: 175-190.
14. (2019). “Authenticity and the Right to Be: On Latin American Philosophy’s Great Debate.” Cambridge History of Philosophy: 1946-2010. Edited by Iain Thomson and Kelly Becker. Cambridge University Press.
15. (2019). “(M)existentialism,” The Philosopher’s Magazine (March 3, 2019). http://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/197-m-existentialism
16. (2018). With Robert Sanchez, “The Philosophy of Mexicanness: An Introduction and Translation,” AEON Magazine (June 25, 2018). https://aeon.co/classics/to-be-accidental-is-to-be-human-on-the-philosophy-of-mexicanness
17. (2018). “Narcocultura: Precis for a Philosophy of Brutality,” RPA Magazine (May 18, 2018). https://www.rpamag.org/2018/05/narcocultura
18. (2018). “The Gift of Mexican Historicism,” Continental Philosophy Review. Vol. 51, No. 3: 439-57.
19. (2017). “The Future is Now: Leopoldo Zea’s Hegelianism and the Liberation of the Mexican Past,” in Creolizing Hegel. Edited by Michael Monahan. Rowman & Littlefield.
20. (2016). “Serious Subjects: On Values, Time, and Death,” Spaziofilosofico. No. 18: 463-473.
21. (2016). “Cashing Out the Check: Jorge J.E. Gracia Responds to His Critics,” Journal of World Philosophies. Book Review.
22. (2016). “Reflexiones sobre el valor de la filosofia Mexicana para la vida Latina-Estadounidense,” Devenires, 17:33.
23. (2016). “Phenomenology at the Limits of Narco Culture,” Phenomenology and the Political. Edited by Geoff Pfiffer and S. West Gurley. Routledge.
24. (2016). “20th Century Mexican Philosophy: Features, Themes, Tasks,” Inter-American journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No 1.
25. (2015). “Kierkegaard and the Matter of Philosophy: A Fractured Dialectic,” Teaching Philosophy. Book Review.
26. (2014). “Latino Immigrants in the United States,” Bulletin of Latin American Research. Book Review.
27. (2014). “Illegal Immigrants: Law, Fantasy, and Guts,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Vol. 21, No. 1: 99-109.
28. (2014). “Clothing the Other in Dignity: Centotl, NAFTA, and the Primary of Tradition,” Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 2: 31-44.
29. (2013). “Death and the Colonial Difference: An Analysis of a Mexican Idea,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol. 3, No. 3: 168-189.
30. (2013). “On Heidegger’s Thin Eurocentrism and the Possibility of a Mexican Philosophy,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 16, No. 3: 763-780.
31. (2011). “Philosophy and the Post-Immigrant Fear,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Vol. 18, No. 1: 31-42.
32. (2011). “On Documents and Subjectivity: The Formation and De-Formation of the Immigrant Identity,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 14, No. 2: 197-205.
33. (2011). “Leopoldo Zea, Stanley Cavell, and the Seduction of an ‘American’ Philosophy,” in Pragmatism in the Americas, Edited by Gregory Fernando Pappas. New York: Fordham University Press: 185-195.
34. (2011). “Emilio Uranga and John Dewey on Contingency and Accident: In Search of an ‘American’ Essence,” Intuición: Revista de Filosofía, Vol. 2, No. 1: 1-13.
35. (2010) “Against Values: On Scheler and Portilla,” Newsletter for Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1: 1-9.
36. (2010) “Mexican Existentialism and its Relevance to Chicano Identity Politics,” The Thought and Social Engagement in the Mexican-American Thought of John H. Haddox. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press: 125-140.
37. (2010) “Epistemic Justification and Husserl’s ‘Phenomenology of Reason’ in Ideas I,” Epistemology, Archaeology, Ethics: Current Investigations of Husserl’s Corpus, edited by Sebastian Luft and Pol Vandevelde. Continuum Press: 7-20.
38. (2010) “Generosity: Variations on a Theme from Aristotle to Levinas,” The Heythrop Journal: A Review of Philosophy and Theology, Vol. 51, No., 3 (May): 442-453.
39. (2008) “Heidegger in Mexico: Emilio Uranga’s Ontological Hermeneutics,” Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2008): 441-460.
40. (2008) “The Philosophical Demands of a Mexican Philosophy of History,” Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism, volume 5 (2008): online at: http://www.dissidences.org/
41. (2008) “Cultural (In)Competence, Justice, and Expectations of Care,” Online Journal of Health Ethics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2008). Online: http://ethicsjournal.umc.edu

Talks

• February 2022: Lecture, London SOAS, “Mexistentialism”
• November 2021: Lecture, Boston University’s Philosophy Department, “On Mexican Philosophy”
• April 2019: Lecture, Wilson Institute of International Studies, Brown University. “Reflections after Mexican Existentialism: Innocence, Zozobra, and Latinx Disquiet.”
• November 2017: Keynote, 4ta Conferencia Sobre La Violencia, Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico. “On Brutality and Narco-Culture.”
• April 2017: Keynote, 2nd Annual Latino Philosophy Conference, Rutgers University. “Latino Philosophy Today.”
• May 2017: Keynote, Society for Mexican American Philosophy Annual Conference, Texas A&M University, “What is Mexican American Philosophy?”
• November 2016: Keynote, Samuel P. Capen Chair Lecture, University of Buffalo “Mexican Philosophy and the Trope of Authenticity”
• April 2016: Plenary Address, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, “Twentieth Century Mexican Philosophy for a 21st Century Inter-American Philosophy”
• April 2014: Special Visiting Professor Lecture Series, Universidad Michoacana de Miguel Hidalgo, Morelia, Mexico. Five lectures on “Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century”
• November 2013: University Scholar’s Series Lecture, “The History of Latin American Philosophy”

Service to Department/University (selected)

• Co-Director, Center for Comparative Philosophy (2022-Present)
• Director of the Graduate Program (2006-Present)
• Mentor, Ronald E. McNair Pre-Doctoral Research Program (2010-Present)
• Mentor, Stanford/SJSU Preparing Future Professor Program (2013-2018)

External Dissertation Committees

• Mitchell T. Hernandez, University of Minnesota (2022-Present)
• Jorge Montiel, Marquette University (2021-Present)
• Andrew Soto, Texas A&M University (defended 2018)
• Tanzeen Doha, UC Davis (defended 2017)

Service to the Profession (selected)

• Chair, APA’s Committee on Hispanics/Latinxs (2020-Present)
• Chair, Inter-American Relations, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (2016-Present)

Editorial Positions

• Founder and Executive Editor, Journal of Mexican Philosophy (2022-Present)
• Special Issue Editor, Genealogy, Vol 4, No. 1. “Special Issue: New Directions in Latinx/Latin American Philosophy” https://www.mdpi.com/si/24281
• Associate Editor, Journal of World Philosophies (2020-Present)
• Section Editor (Latin America), Philosophy Compass (2018-Present)
• Editor, APA Studies on Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy (2010-2020)