In hermeneutical fashion, understanding Nahua philosophy as a whole depends upon understanding each division, while understanding each division depends upon understanding the other divisions as well as the whole. Approaching Nahua philosophy in these terms is not without hazard. Although mainstays in European philosophy, they demarcate categories for which there are no precise, noncontroversial synonyms in Nahuatl. Rather, they conceived metaphysics, epistemology, theory of value, and aesthetics in conceptually overlapping if not equivalent terms.
Why then employ them?
I believe doing so offers Western readers an intuitive first step into Nahua philosophy since they are deeply entrenched in Western thought. Their heuristic utility notwithstanding, employing them must not mislead us into thinking that Nahua philosophers conceived philosophy in precisely these terms.
Successfully understanding Nahua philosophy requires in the final analysis that we reconceive these divisions as a single, seamless conceptual whole. For discussion of the pitfalls involved in using Western concepts to understand non-Western thought, see Asad ; Hall and Ames ; Maffie ; Wiredu I attribute the following views to the Nahuas generally, although it is more accurate to attribute them to the upper elite of priests, scholars, and educated nobility.
Afterall, views differed between: priests, merchants, and farmers; men and women; dominant and subordinate city-states; and various regional and ethnic subgroups. I attribute the views to the period of the Mesoamerican-European contact, realizing full well that philosophies are living works in progress.
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At the heart of Nahua philosophy stands the thesis that there exists a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force: what the Nahuas called teotl see Boone ; Burkhart ; Klor de Alva ; Monaghan ; H. Nicholson ; Read ; Townsend Nicholson f. Teotl continually generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes the cosmos as part of its endless process of self-generation-and—regeneration. That which humans commonly understand as nature — e. Yet teotl is more than the unified totality of things; teotl is identical with everything and everything is identical with teotl.
Since identical with teotl , they cosmos and its contents ultimately transcend such dichotomies as personal vs. As the single, all-encompassing life force of the universe, teotl vivifies the cosmos and its contents. Lastly, teotl is both metaphysically immanent and transcendent. It is immanent in that it penetrates deeply into every detail of the universe and exists within the myriad of created things; it is transcendent in that it is not exhausted by any single, existing thing.
Nahua metaphysics is processive. Process, movement, becoming and transmutation are essential attributes of teotl. Teotl is properly understood as ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion — not as a discrete, static entity. Although essentially processive and devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity: one provided by and constituted by teotl.
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Dialectical polar monism holds that: 1 the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl ; and 2 teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually complementary polarities which divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe.
These include: being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive. Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary aspects of one and the same process. Life contains the seed of death; death, the fertile, energizing seed of life. The artists of Tlatilco and Oaxaca, for example, presented this duality artistically by fashioning a split-faced mask, one-half alive, one-half skull-like see Markman and Markman The masks are intentionally ambiguous.
Skulls simultaneously symbolize death and life, since life springs from the bones of the dead. Flesh simultaneously symbolizes life and death, since death arises from the flesh of the living. The faces are thus neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once.
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The latter claim: 1 order goodness, life, light and disorder evil, death, darkness are mutually exclusive forces; and 2 order life, etc. Acording to Nahua duality, order and disorder, life and death, etc. It neither conceives death as inherently evil and life as inherently good nor advocates the conquest of death or the search for eternal life see Caso ; Burkhart ; Carmack, et al. The created cosmos consists of the unending, cyclical tug-of-war or dialectical oscillation of these polarities — all of which are the manifold manifestations of teotl.
Because of this, the created cosmos is characterized as unstable, transitory, and devoid of any lasting being, order or structure. Yet teotl is nevertheless characterized by enduring pattern or regularity. How is this so? Because essentially processive and dynamic, teotl is properly characterized neither by being nor not-being but by becoming. Being and not-being are simply two dialectically interrelated presentations or facets of teotl , and as such inapplicable to teotl itself. Similarly, teotl is properly understood as neither ordered law-governed nor disordered anarchic but as un ordered.
Teotl captures a tertium quid transcending these dichotomies by being simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead, simultaneously neither-orderly-nor-disorderly-yet-both-orderly-and-disorderly, etc. In the end, teotl is essentially an unstructured and unordered, seamless totality. Differentiation, regularity, order, etc. In Western philosophical terminology, one perhaps best characterizes the radical ontological indeterminacy of Nahua metaphysics as an extreme nominalist anti-realism, and teotl , as a Kantian-like noumenon.
Nahuas philosophers also conceived teotl pantheistically: a everything that exists constitutes an all-inclusive and interrelated unity; b this unity is sacred; c everything that exists is substantively identical and hence one with the sacred; d the sacred is teotl. See Levine for discussion of pantheism. Hunt and I. Nicholson offer closely similar interpretations of pre-Hispanic metaphysics.
Eva Hunt writes:. Separate beings and objects do not exist—that is an illusion peculiar to human beings. In daily life we divide up our environment into discrete units so that we can talk about it and manipulate it for our benefit. But it is an error to assume that the diversity we create in our lives is the way reality is actually structured … everything is connected at a deeper level, part of the same basic substratum of being… The universe is a deified, seamless totality Sandstrom The Nahuas understood this process in two closely interrelated ways.
First, they conceived it artistically. Teotl is a sacred artist who endlessly fashions and refashions itself into and as the cosmos. Furst ; Gingerich ; H. Nicholson ; Ortiz de Montellano Teotl artistically-cum-shamanically presents and masks itself to humans in a variety of ways: 1 the apparent thingness of existents, i. This is illusory since there is only one thing: teotl ; and 3 the apparent exclusivity, independence, and irreconcilable oppositionality of dualities such as order and disorder, life and death, etc.
This is illusory since they are interrelated, complementary facets of teotl. As we shall see shortly below, wisdom enables humans to discern the sacred presence of teotl in its myriad disguises.
Many of the preceding claims were expressed mythologically and polytheistically in state-sanctioned, popular Aztec religion. Although the priests, nobility, and sages embraced its monistic aspect, the uneducated masses tended to embrace the polytheistic aspects of Nahua metaphysics see Caso ; Leon-Portilla Ch II; H. Nicholson ; I. Nicholson Nahua tlamatinime standardly characterized earthly existence as consisting of pictures, images, and symbols painted-written by teotl on its sacred amoxtli Mesoamerican papyrus-like paper.
The tlamatini Aquiauhtzin ca. The renowned tlamatini and ruler of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl , sung:. With flowers You paint, O Giver of Life! With songs You give color, with songs you give life on the earth.
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Later you will destroy eagles and tigers: we live only in your painting here, on the earth. With black ink you will blot out all that was friendship, brotherhood, nobility. You give shading to those who will live on the earth… we live only in Your book of paintings, here on the earth. Romances de los senores de Nueva Espana, fol.
Once again, Nezahualcoyotl sung:. Is it nelli [rooted, true, authentic] one really lives on the earth? Not forever on earth, only a little while here. Though it be jade it falls apart, though it be gold it wears away, though it be quetzal plumage it is torn asunder. Not forever on this earth, only a little while here. Cantares mexicanos, fol 17r. Nahua tlamatinime conceived the dreamlikeness or illusoriness of earthly existence in epistemological — not ontological — terms pace Leon-Portilla Illusion was not an ontological category as it was, say, for Plato.
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In the Republic Book VI Plato employed the notion of illusion: to characterize an inferior or lower grade of reality or existence; to distinguish this inferior grade of reality from a superior, higher one the Forms ; and to deny that earthy existence is fully real. This conception of illusion commits one to an ontological dualism that divides the universe into two fundamentally different kinds of existents: illusion and reality. Earthly existence provides the occasion for human misperception, misjudgment, and misunderstanding.
A further consequence of Nahua monism is the metaphysical impossibility of human beings perceiving de re anything other than teotl , for teotl is the only thing to be perceived de re! But then how can Nahua tlamatinime claim that humans normally misperceive and misunderstand teotl?
Humans normally perceive and conceive teotl de dicto or under a description, e. The only way humans experience teotl knowingly is to experience teotl sans description. Humans experience teotl knowingly via a process of mystical-style union between their hearts and teotl that enables them to experience teotl directly i. One comes to know teotl through teotl. Note however that although metaphysically immanent within human hearts in keeping with Nahua metaphysical monism , teotl is nevertheless epistemologically transcendent in the sense that humans are not guaranteed knowledge of teotl.
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A fundamental metaphysical difference thus divides the underlying problematics of Nahua and Cartesian-style Western epistemology. And masks in Mesoamerican epistemology have different properties than veils. The mask does not symbolize, represent, or point to something deeper, something hiding behind itself, for the simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead figure rests right upon the surface of the figure. The simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead figure does not lurk behind the mask; nor is our access to it obstructed by a veil or representation.
It is fully present de re yet hidden de dicto by our unknowing, i. Nahua metaphysics conceives time and its various patterns as the dynamic unfolding of teotl. Time and space form an indistinguisable time-space continuum. The four cardinal directions, for example, are simultaneously directions of space and time. Weeks, months, seasons, years, and year-clusters all had spatial directions.