ABSTRACT
In many instances, the textbooks used have included an appendix that introduces the reader to the philosophical history of the particular country itself, so that the student understands that philosophy is not confined to Europe but is practiced in the Americas as well. On the university level, philosophy has been closely linked to the human and cultural sciences. If philosophy has had a close relationship with the sciences in Latin America, it has been even more closely linked to the literary arts: poetry, the novel, theatre, and especially the essay form. The profound interrelationship between ideas and institutions, or philosophy and culture, can be studied more easily, perhaps, in the case of societies that are classified as being culturally and intellectually dependent. A fundamental problem in the writing of any history is that of periodization, a determination of the meaningful temporal units that permit an adequate comprehension of the development of that which is being studied.
