DISCOURSES OF THE ELDERS

The first English translation of a key text of Aztec philosophy.

In the eyes of Mexico’s Spanish conquerors, the Aztec or Nahua people were idolaters. A friar named Andrés de Olmos (circa 1485-1571) was more sympathetic; renowned in his day for his mastery of the Nahuatl language, he took an interest in what these people actually thought. Purcell, a philosophy professor at SUNY–Cortland, works with Olmos’ text, begun in 1535, to produce a work that will remind some readers of the principal Confucian texts in their “virtue ethics”—though with an emphasis less on individual comportment than the instruction of the group to arrive at proper decisions. There is both an element of exoticism to the text and many important philosophical insights. As Purcell notes, “the Nahuas reason that all our actions are subject to an impressive degree of luck, so that whether those actions go well or poorly is often beyond our individual control.” Most of the pieces in this collection are instructions reminding well-bred (and probably well-born) young people of how to live with humility and in service to society. “Do not best people with your words and so cut off their speech,” reads one dictum. “Do not talk unkindly to people, do not make them forget or fail to conserve those words which are good.” Instructions to young women give them slightly less room to roam: “Take charge of the spindle, the weaving tablet….In that way you will deserve a bit of atole, a folded tortilla, some greens, some cactus.” Purcell does a good job teasing out the Christian elements that Olmos may have inserted in an earlier example of syncretism, and while his discussion of Nahuatl grammar in relation to these texts can be a touch daunting—e.g., when he describes the language as “maximally omnipredicative”—the book reads fluently.

A strong contribution to our understanding of an important tradition of Indigenous ethics.