Concept of the baroque ethos of Bolivar Echeverria

The article examines Bolivar Echeverraa’s concept of baroque ethos, its origins and prerequisites in the context of Latin American baroque theories and the search for continental identity. The concept of baroque ethos is not only a development of the ‘classical’ concepts of J. Lezama Lima and A. Carpentier or of S. Sarduy’s ideas about neo-Baroque. This quite independent theory covers practically all spheres of culture. The role of an ideological base for Echeverria's concept, which has genetic links with the philosophy of existentialism and neo-Marxism, was played by the German philosopher B. Abner's doctrine of ethos, which the Ecuadorian-Mexican philosopher combined with his ideas about different models of society, labelling each of the four models under consideration by the name of one of the historical styles in art. As a result, a system of ethos emerged: ‘realistic’ (associated with modern consumer society and based on Protestant ethics), “romantic” (based on the belief in human capabilities, embodied in the cult of the strong personality, and a particular view of statehood), “classical” (with predetermined social roles and functions), and “baroque”, which, from Echeverraa's point of view, is opposed to all the previous ones and is the specific ethos of Latin America. Echeverraa combines the features of the Baroque style, largely based on the interpretation of W. Benjamin (theatricality, internal contradiction, diversity) with the experience of creating Latin American baroque concepts and derives from this a special Latin American philosophy of life.