 Philosophy within Latin America was, for many centuries, undertaken with a sense of its general continuity with European philosophy. However, by the second half of the nineteenth century a number of prominent thinkers in Latin America began to speak of the possibility or need of a distinctively Latin American philosophy (Magallón 1991: 212; Gracia 1995: 462). In his “Ideas for a Course in Philosophy” [“Ideas para un curso de filosofía contemporánea”] Argentinian Juan Alberdi (1812–1884) called for the creation of national philosophies in Latin America. The idea was that these philosophical theories were to be responses to local social and political circumstances, expressing “the most vital and highest needs of these countries” (1842 [1978: 14] translation by entry author). Similarly, Andrés Bello (1848) and Francisco Bilbao (1856) called for philosophical work to be responsive to national and broadly Latin American circumstances, and to separate itself from mere imitation of European thought.