Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion

by James Maffie

The indigenous peoples of what is now Mexico enjoy long and rich traditions of philosophical reflection dating back centuries before being characterized by their European “discoverers” as “barbarians” or “primitives” incapable of or unmotivated to think rationally, abstractly, or philosophically.

The indigenous peoples of what is now Mexico enjoy long and rich traditions of philosophical reflection dating back centuries before being characterized by their European “discoverers” as “barbarians” or “primitives” incapable of or unmotivated to think rationally, abstractly, or philosophically.1

Nahua metaphysics served as the backdrop of Nahua religious, theological, and philosophical thought (including moral, political, epistemological, and aesthetic thought) as well as Nahua ritual praxis.

Nahua metaphysics thus consists of the Nahuas’ understanding of the nature, structure, and constitution of reality.4

I approach Aztec metaphysics as a systematic, unified, and coherent corpus of thought, worthy of consideration in its own terms and for its own sake (quite apart from what contemporary Western readers may find instructive or valuable in it). I accordingly aim to understand the internal logic and structure of Aztec metaphysics – that is, how its claims, concepts, metaphors, and arguments fit together – rather than causally explain Aztec metaphysics in terms such as genes, memes, collective unconsciousness, dietary needs, social-political function, mode of production, or physical environment.

However, naturalistic explanations of philosophies advanced by anthropologists and sociologists of knowledge, neuroscientists, intellectual historians, and evolutionary psychologists remain a thoroughly Western scientific project. And by forcing Aztec and other non-Western philosophies upon the Procrustean bed of Western metaphysical and epistemological assumptions in this manner, such naturalistic explanations inevitably privilege Western metaphysical and epistemological assumptions to the detriment of non-Western philosophies. Yet such privileging of the Western is a priori unwarranted and question-begging.

According to Robert Bernasconi, “Western philosophy traps [non-Western philosophy] in a double bind: either [non-Western philosophy] is so similar to Western philosophy that it makes no distinctive contribution and effectively disappears; or it is so different that its credentials to be genuine philosophy will always be in doubt.”

1956 book, La filosofía náhuatl, Miguel León-Portilla

Why does this issue generate so much heat? Why does it matter who is, and who is not, deemed a philosopher? As countless scholars have argued, philosophy plays a vital role in the modern West’s conception of itself and of the non-Western Other.

Every culture has people who give themselves to reflecting upon the world in this manner. “These are their philosophers.”20 Granted, the Aztecs’ philosophical journey took a different form and took them to a different set of answers.21 Yet this is irrelevant. As John Dewey once noted, “I think it shows a remarkable deadness of imagination to suppose that philosophy [must] revolve within the scope of the problems and systems that two thousand years of European history have bequeathed to us.”22 Aztec and European philosophies represent two alternative philosophical orientations and trajectories rooted in two alternative forms of life or ways of being human in the world. Aztec philosophy need not ape European philosophy in order to count as “real” philosophy. There is no law of reason, thought, or culture requiring that all peoples think alike or follow the same path of philosophical development.

As students of Aztec metaphysics we must therefore recognize the necessity of having to theorize about the Aztecs’ theorizing on the basis of the available evidence. And what is our available evidence?

Reconstructing Aztec metaphysics therefore requires triangulating from a host of alternative sources. First, we have the ethnohistories and dictionaries of early Spanish and mestizo chroniclers such as Bernardino de Sahagún, Diego Durán, Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía), Alonso de Molina, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Gerónimo Mendieta, Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and Juan de Torquemada. Second, we have Aztec and other Conquest-era indigenous pictorial histories, ritual calendars, maps, and tribute records. Third, we have archaeological evidence such as architecture, statues, pottery, weaving tools, jewelry, tools, and human remains. Fourth, we have the correlations between ancient and modern astronomies culled by contemporary ethnoastronomers. And finally, we have ethnographies of contemporary Nahuatl-speaking and other non-Nahuatl-speaking indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica.31 I avail myself of all these in constructing my interpretation of Aztec metaphysics.

We should expect a scholarly interpretation of Aztec metaphysics to capture as much of the empirical data as possible; to preserve as much previously established scholarship as possible; to suggest new questions and avenues of research; to be consistent in the sense of maximizing the internal, logical consistency of Aztec metaphysical beliefs; to be simple in the sense of providing a unified, common treatment of different phenomena; and to be coherent in the sense of attributing to the Aztecs an intelligible metaphysics, that is, one that makes sense of itself in its own terms. Finally, we should expect an interpretation of Aztec metaphysics to offer us an explanation of Aztec behavior broadly construed, that is, their ritual, religious, cultural, social, and, yes, even their agricultural, military, and craft practices.

Aztec metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists at bottom just one thing: dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Aztecs referred to this power as teotl.

Process, movement, change, and transformation define teotl. That which is real is that which becomes, changes, and moves. Reality is characterized by becoming – not by being or “is-ness.” To exist – to be real – is to become, to move, to change. Teotl and hence reality, cosmos, and all existing things are defined in terms of becoming.

Aztec philosophy thus embraces what Western philosophers call a process metaphysics. Process metaphysics holds that processes rather than perduring objects, entities, or substances are ontologically fundamental.

Teotl’s ceaseless becoming and self-transforming are characterized by what I call agonistic inamic unity. Chapter 3 explores this notion. An inamic is a power, force, or influence that is by definition matched or paired with a second power, force, or influence. Each is conceived as the complementary polar opposite of the other. Each is the inamic of the other.

In keeping with Aztec philosophy’s ontological and constitutional monism, inamic partners represent dual aspects of teotl – not two metaphysically distinct substances.

Inamic partners struggle against one another and unite with one another in three principal ways: olin, malinalli, and nepantla.

These represent three different patterns of motion and change or what I call motion-change (seeing as how Aztec metaphysics regards qualitative change ...

Olin is curving, swaying, oscillating, pulsating, and centering motion-change.

Malinalli is twisting, spinning, gyrating, coiling, whirling, and spiraling motion-change.

Nepantla is middling, intermixing, and mutually reciprocating motion-change.

Nepantla holds the key to understanding Aztec metaphysics.

Chapter 7 argues that Aztec metaphysics conceives time and space as a single, seamless unity: what I call time-place. Time-place is a pattern in the modus operandi of teotl’s continual becoming, processing, and moving-changing. Time-place is a matter of how teotl moves and is therefore relational, not substantive.

Teotl is the weaver, the weaving, and the woven.

At the heart of Aztec metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists just one thing: continually dynamic, vivifying, self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Aztecs referred to this energy as teotl. Teotl is identical with reality per se and hence identical with everything that exists. What’s more, teotl is the basic stuff of reality. That which is real, in other words, is both identical with teotl and consists of teotl. Aztec metaphysics thus holds that there exists numerically only one thing – energy – as well as only one kind of thing – energy.

Aztec metaphysics is therefore monistic in two distinct senses. First, it claims that there exists only one numerically countable thing: teotl. I call this claim ontological monism. Aztec metaphysics thus rejects ontological pluralism or the view that there exists more than one numerically countable thing. Second, it claims that this single existing thing – teotl – consists of just one kind of stuff, to wit, force, energy or power. Teotl is metaphysically uniform and homogenous. I call this view constitutional monism.

Together, ontological and constitutional monism entail that the apparent plurality of existing things (e.g., sun, mountains, trees, stones, and humans) as well as plurality of different kinds of stuff (e.g., spiritual vs. material) are both derivable from and hence explainable in terms of one existent and one kind of stuff:

teotl.

Teotl is nonpersonal, nonminded, nonagentive, and nonintentional. It is not a deity, person, or subject possessing emotions, cognitions, grand intentions, or goals. It is not an all-powerful benevolent or malevolent god.5 It is neither a legislative agent characterized by free will nor an omniscient intellect. Teotl is thoroughly amoral, that is, it is wholly lacking in moral qualities such as good and evil. Like the changing of the seasons, teotl’s constant changing lacks moral properties.6

Teotl is essentially power: continually active, actualized, and actualizing energy-in-motion. It is essentially dynamic: ever-moving, ever-circulating, and ever-becoming. As ever-actualizing power, teotl consists of creating, doing, making, changing, effecting, and destroying. Generating, degenerating, and regenerating are what teotl does and therefore what teotl is. Yet teotl no more chooses to do this than electricity chooses to flow or the seasons choose to change. This is simply teotl’s nature. The power by which teotl generates and regenerates itself and the cosmos is teotl’s essence. Similarly, the power by which teotl and all things exist is also its essence.7 In the final analysis, then, the existence and nature of all things are functions of and ultimately explainable in terms of the generative and regenerative power of teotl.

Creative energy and destructive energy are not two different kinds of energy but two aspects of one and the same teotlizing energy.

The same holds for Aztec metaphysics. The cosmos does not begin from chaos or nothingness; it burgeons forth from an always already existing teotl.

There are no absolute beginnings – or absolute endings, for that matter – in Aztec metaphysics. There are only continuings. Death, for example, is not an ending but a change of status, as that which dies flows into and feeds that which lives. All things are involved in a single, never-ending process of recycling and transformation.

Yet teotl is more than the unified, kaleidoscopic totality of these aspects. It is identical with everything and everything is identical with it.

Teotl’s processing is a nonagentive process such as the changing of the seasons, the coming and going of the tides, and fluctuations in a magnetic field.

Everything that teotl creates out of itself – from cosmos and sun to all earth’s inhabitants – is processive, unstable, evanescent, and doomed to degeneration and destruction.

David Cooper proposes that we understand the term, God, in the mystical teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah as a verb rather than as a noun.

In short, Aztec metaphysics embraces a metaphysics of Becoming.

The Aztecs’ metaphysics of Becoming stands in dramatic contrast with the metaphysics of Being that characterizes the lion’s share of Western metaphysics since Plato and Aristotle. The latter defines reality in terms of being or is-ness. On this view to be real is to be permanent, immutable, static, eternal, and at rest. (E.g., real love, as popular sentiment would have it, is eternal, immutable, and undying love.) That which becomes, changes, perishes, or moves is not real – or at least not wholly or fully so. Mutability, evanescence, and expiry are criteria of non- or partial reality, whereas immutability, permanence, and eternality are criteria of reality.

Perishable and mutable things occupy his famous Cave where they suffer from semireality and semiexistence. This is the realm of Appearances. Eternally unchanging things occupy his famous the realm of the Forms, where they enjoy complete reality and is-ness. This is the realm of the Real.13

Western philosophers call a process metaphysics.17 Process metaphysics views processes rather than perduring objects, things, or substances as ontologically basic. What seem to be perduring things are really nothing more than stability patterns in processes. As the products of processes, entities are derivative. Process metaphysics treats dynamic notions such as becoming, power, activity, change, flux, fluidity, unfolding, creation, destruction, transformation, novelty, interactive interrelatedness, evanescence, and emergence as central to understanding reality and how everything hangs together. What’s more, processes are what processes do. Essence follows function. This intuition, like others we’ve seen, contradicts the dominant view in the history of Western philosophy since Plato and Aristotle, namely, substance metaphysics. Substance metaphysics views perduring things or substances as ontologically basic and processes as ontologically derivative.

As such, it is simultaneously creative and destructive. Transformational processes involve the destruction of something prior in the course of creating something posterior.

Fifth, Aztec metaphysics views reality in holistic terms. Holism claims reality consists of a special kind of unity or whole: namely, one in which all individual components are essentially interrelated, interdependent, correlational, interactive, and thus defined in terms of one another.19 Holists commonly cite biological organisms and ecological systems as examples of the kind of unity they have in mind, and accordingly liken reality to a grand biological organism or ecosystem. They claim wholes are ontologically primary and individuals are ontologically secondary, and that individuals are defined in terms of the wholes in which they participate. Houses, trees, and humans, for example, do not enjoy independent existence apart from the wholes of which they are essentially parts and in which they essentially participate. By contrast, atomism views reality as the summative product of its individual parts. Individuals, not wholes, are basic. Atomists commonly cite sets or collections of things such as the coins in one’s pocket as paradigmatic examples of atomistic unities.

For holists, individuals cannot be properly understood apart from how they function in the constellation of interrelated and intercorrelated processes that define the whole and in which they essentially participate. Individuals’ relationships with one another are intrinsic to them and exhaustively define them. What’s more, an individual’s relations extend throughout the entire cosmos. In the preceding I claimed the fundamental concepts for understanding reality are dynamic ones such as becoming, power, transformation, and emergence. I want now to add to this list holistic concepts such as interdependence, mutual arising, covariance, interconnectedness, interdependence, complementarity, and correlationalism.

In sum, Aztec metaphysics advances a nonteleological ecological holism. If the foregoing is correct, it follows that teotl is metaphysically immanent in several significant senses.22 First, teotl does not exist apart from or independently of the cosmos. Teotl is fully copresent and coextensional with the cosmos. Second, teotl is not correctly understood as supernatural or otherworldly. Teotl is identical with and hence fully coextensional with creation: hence no part of teotl exists apart from creation. Teotl does not exist outside of space and time. It is as concrete and immediate as the water we drink, air we breathe, and food we eat. Teotl is neither abstract nor transcendent.

Third, teotl is metaphysically homogeneous, consisting of just one kind of stuff: always actual, actualized, and actualizing energy-in-motion.

Teotl is identical with creation since teotl is identical with itself. There do not therefore exist two metaphysically distinct things: teotl and its creation. There is only one thing: teotl.

Fifth, although teotl is sacred, it is not transcendent in the sense of being metaphysically divorced from a profane, immanent world. Aztec metaphysics does not embrace a dichotomy of sacred versus profane.