The Virtues of Mestizaje: Lessons from Las Casas for an Inter-American Ethics

Anglo-American virtue ethics tends to overlook potentially invaluable contributions from Latin American philosophy for developing a satisfying intercultural conception of the virtues. Indeed, the assumptions that enabled Western imperialism in the Americas (assumptions about the superiority of European culture or American exceptionalism) seem also to influence Anglo-American conceptions of the virtues. Drawing on the decolonial-feminist epistemology of Linda Martín Alcoff, my paper argues that cultural-historical prejudices have obscured a more plausible and open-ended version, a helpfully intercultural and self-consciously ‘mestizo’ version, of a contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. It does so by highlighting some of the best insights from Bartolomé de Las Casas on the Conquest of the Americas, in order to argue that cultural mestizaje can enrich the best Anglo-American accounts of the virtues we have, both now and in future research on moral character.