We have been reading philosophers from the West and Asia for centuries in search of the secret of happiness. Turns out the Aztecs had it

Each course Lynn Sebastian Purcell, philosophy professor, repeat the same experiment. After reviewing the passage from the ‘Odyssey’ in which Ulysses renounces an eternal life of pleasures with the nymph Calypso to search for his wife and son, the teacher presents a dilemma to his students: How many would do the same as the king of Ithaca? “How many of you would reject immortality and a pleasant existence on the condition that you never see your family and loved ones again?” defiant spear Purcell to the classroom. The answer is always the same: nobody.

The ‘Odyssey’ is an epic poem that connects with the Greco-Latin tradition, but in reality that particular passage about Ulysses summarizes well the vital philosophy of a civilization that lived thousands of kilometers from the Ionian Sea: the aztec.

Goal: happiness. I don’t know exactly who you are, but it’s quite likely that you, me and the more than 8 billion Of people who share this world, we agree that it is desirable to have a happy life. Logical, right? Happiness is one of those golden nuggets that philosophy has been searching for for centuries.

I did it in times of Epicurus and he does it in our days. In fact one of the most famous treatises of Bertrand Russella famous philosopher of the 20th century, is titled with a phrase that is quite a proclamation: “The conquest of happiness”.

The lesson of Ulysses. However, it is one thing to aspire to happiness and another to decide how to achieve it or even what exactly happiness is. This is where the passage from the ‘Odyssey’ of the nymph Calypso. If it’s just about seeking happiness, Ulysses already had it, right? If we agree that the goal is to be happy (just like that), isn’t it a good idea to spend an eternal life, free of illness and deprivation, living with a goddess on a distant paradise island? Why does Ulysses decide to return to the sea… and his hardships?

“Let it be worth it”. Ulysses’ attitude (like that of Purcell’s students) connects fully with a philosophical ethic that for decades has gone unnoticed in the West: that of the pre-Columbian Aztecs. For them, remember the teacherwhat humanity really seeks is not so much a life full of happiness and pleasures as “an existence that is worthwhile.” That’s the goal.

The texts that are preserved and tell us about how the Aztecs saw the world show that for them humanity faced “an existential problem,” In Purcell’s words: a brief, fickle existence, during which it is impossible to control everything just as it is not to skate in a quagmire.

“Slippery is the land”. “What they wanted to say is that, despite our best intentions, our life is prone to error, failure in our objectives and, therefore, to ‘fall’, as if we were going to end up in the mud. Furthermore, this earth is a place where joy comes mixed with pain and setbacks,” explains the professor in an article published by the Philosophy Association (APA). In it he remembers that this entire conception of the world can be summarized in a popular saying: “Slippery, slick is the earth”“slippery, slippery is the earth.”

Wait, Aztec philosophy? Exact. It has not been easy to survive and in the West we may not have paid enough attention to it, but that does not mean that the pre-Columbian Aztecs created a valuable philosophical corpus, with different currents and treatises. “We have many volumes of his texts recorded in his native language, Nahuatl,” claims Purcell at the BBC.

“While few of the pre-colonial hieroglyphic-type books survived the Spanish burnings, our main sources of knowledge derive from the records made by Catholic priests until the early 17th century.”

A different vision. Thanks to them we preserve codices with sayings, exhortations, poems, dialogues… different manifestations that essentially tell us about the same thing: how the Aztecs who lived between the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th approached existence. Good example is the ‘Florentine Codex’a bilingual work by friar Bernardino de Sahagún on pre-Columbian knowledge.

His legacy is not only interesting because of what he tells us, it is also interesting, Purcell claimsbecause it opens our eyes to “another pre-modern culture with an ethics of virtues”, one different from the legacy of Aristotle or even Confucius.

“Place of joy with fatigue”. At this point the question is obvious… If the Aztecs believed that what humans really want are lives “worthwhile”, even more than joyful and pleasant existences, how to achieve it? How to face the passage through this world, “a place of joy with fatigue and pain”, as an Aztec passage says? The key is in a recipe with four ingredients, four “levels” that allow us to enjoy a rooted life, “neltiliztli”. Continuing with the metaphor of existence as a swampy terrain, full of mud, the idea is to take root to gain a foothold.

And how to achieve it? To begin by ‘rooting’ in one’s own body. As Purcell explains, the figurines and descriptions we preserve of the Aztecs show us that they liked to exercise their bodies. In fact, they had a regimen of activities aimed at stretching and strengthening the body that is partly reminiscent of yoga. Rooted in the body, it had to be done at another level: the “psyche”, seeking a balance between the heart and the head, desires and judgment. “Only in the middle can you go, only in the middle can you live”, advises one of his works.

Social creatures… and of the earth. In an article Published years ago in Aeon, the scholar of Latin American philosophy points out two more levels at which those who want to achieve a rooted life must work, “neltiliztli”, a term that is also used as “truth” and “goodness.” The first level is “rootedness in the community.” We live surrounded by people, in societies in which we play a role that connects us with others and activates the community.

The second level is the most abstract of all: the Aztecs advocated a “rootedness in he teotlthe divine and unique being of existence.” “They believed that ‘god’ was simply nature, an entity of both genders with a presence that manifested itself in different forms,” ​​comments the professor. “The roots in the teotl It was achieved mainly indirectly, through the three previous levels. But activities like philosophical poetry offered a more direct connection.”

Rooted, better than happy. The objective was therefore to achieve “rooted” lives, well established in a slippery world. As the pre-Columbian Aztecs (and Ulysses) remind us, that state that extends to the physical, mental, social and existential level is the goal to be achieved, not the idle happiness that the king of Ithaca renounced to continue his journey. “If the study of ethics aims to live better, perhaps the Aztec approach could also help us recognize the framework for generating such reflections in our lives,” concludes Purcell.

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