ABSTRACT
This article studies the historical narrative in some works by Francisco Xavier Clavijero and Pedro José Márquez and its link with the emergence of aesthetics as a space for reflection in the eighteenth century. From this point on, material productions and personal experiences were considered as a form of inclusion of subjectivities in the plane of enlightened reason. The objective is to demonstrate that the vindication of these Jesuits of the “ancient Mexicans”, as a civilized and rational people, shared with the European philosophers a universalist vision of history by which a model of “people” was configured, in the plane of ideas, objects and monuments. In both authors, it is possible to identify common features of a philosophy of history typical of the eighteenth century, but to which both contributed a particular material accent.
KEYWORDS:
Enlightenment; American antiquity; Aesthetics; Materiality