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.

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. (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.
2. (2022). “Towards a Phenomenology of Undocumented Immigrant Reason,” Puncta. Journal of Critical Phenomenology. Vol. 5, No. 3: 60-71.
3. (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
4. (2022). “The Value and Limits of the Socially Undocumented Interpretive Horizon,” APA Studies on Feminism and Philosophy. Vol. 21, No. 2.
5. (2021). “Symposium: Philosophy After Narco-Culture,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 24, No. 2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/radphilrev2021242113
6. (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.
7. (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.
8. (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.
9. (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.
10. (2019). “(M)existentialism,” The Philosopher’s Magazine (March 3, 2019). http://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/197-m-existentialism
11. (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
12. (2018). “Narcocultura: Precis for a Philosophy of Brutality,” RPA Magazine (May 18, 2018). https://www.rpamag.org/2018/05/narcocultura
13. (2018). “The Gift of Mexican Historicism,” Continental Philosophy Review. Vol. 51, No. 3: 439-57.
14. (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.
15. (2016). “Serious Subjects: On Values, Time, and Death,” Spaziofilosofico. No. 18: 463-473.
16. (2016). “Cashing Out the Check: Jorge J.E. Gracia Responds to His Critics,” Journal of World Philosophies. Book Review.
17. (2016). “Reflexiones sobre el valor de la filosofia Mexicana para la vida Latina-Estadounidense,” Devenires, 17:33.
18. (2016). “Phenomenology at the Limits of Narco Culture,” Phenomenology and the Political. Edited by Geoff Pfiffer and S. West Gurley. Routledge.
19. (2016). “20th Century Mexican Philosophy: Features, Themes, Tasks,” Inter-American journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No 1.
20. (2015). “Kierkegaard and the Matter of Philosophy: A Fractured Dialectic,” Teaching Philosophy. Book Review.
21. (2014). “Latino Immigrants in the United States,” Bulletin of Latin American Research. Book Review.
22. (2014). “Illegal Immigrants: Law, Fantasy, and Guts,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Vol. 21, No. 1: 99-109.
23. (2014). “Clothing the Other in Dignity: Centotl, NAFTA, and the Primary of Tradition,” Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 2: 31-44.
24. (2013). “Death and the Colonial Difference: An Analysis of a Mexican Idea,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol. 3, No. 3: 168-189.
25. (2013). “On Heidegger’s Thin Eurocentrism and the Possibility of a Mexican Philosophy,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 16, No. 3: 763-780.
26. (2011). “Philosophy and the Post-Immigrant Fear,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Vol. 18, No. 1: 31-42.
27. (2011). “On Documents and Subjectivity: The Formation and De-Formation of the Immigrant Identity,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 14, No. 2: 197-205.
28. (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.
29. (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.
30. (2010) “Against Values: On Scheler and Portilla,” Newsletter for Hispanic/Latino Issues in Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1: 1-9.
31. (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.
32. (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.
33. (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.
34. (2008) “Heidegger in Mexico: Emilio Uranga’s Ontological Hermeneutics,” Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2008): 441-460.
35. (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/
36. (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)