The Centrality of Nepantla in Conquest

The human existential condition is no exception to the foregoing metaphysical picture. Succinctly put, human beings are in nepantla as well as of nepantla (to adapt a common religious saying).

Human life takes place on tlalticpac, the earth's surface. The word “tlalticpac” literally means “on the point or summit of the earth,” and suggests a narrow, jagged, point-like place surrounded by constant dangers.33 The time-place circumstances of human existence are unstable and perilous. The Nahuatl proverb, Tlaalahui, tlapetzcahui in tlalticpac, “It is slippery, it is slick on the earth,” was said of a person who had lived a proper life but then lost her balance and fell into impropriety, as if slipping in slick mud.34 Humans lose their balance all too easily on tlalticpac and so suffer misfortune frequently. With this in mind, the huehuetlatolli (“words of the elders, words of the ancients”) recorded by Sahagún in Book VI of the Florentine Codex include the following speech from a mother to her daughter:

On earth we walk, we live, on the ridge of a mountain peak (sharp as a harpoon blade? chichiquilli). To one side is an abyss, to the other is another abyss. If you go here, or if you go there, you will fall, only through the middle can one go, or live.35

Human existence takes places in nepantla, i.e., in the middling, oscillating tension betwixt and between order and disorder, being and non-being, life and death, hot and cold, etc. Because of this, it is unstable, fragile, treacherous, and fraught with peril. The human existential condition thus takes place in the crossroads (as it were): it is defined by constant and inescapable liminality (making the requisite Nahua adjustments to this notion). It is one of ineliminable change, instability, motion, transaction, transition, becoming, and transformation. Human existence is consequently fleeting, evanescent, and shortlived.

Human existence is also of nepantla in the sense that the activity of living itself consists of nepantla-balancing the forces of order and disorder, life and death, etc. Simply put, living (life) is itself a nepantla-process involving constant change, transition, becoming, and transformation.

This characterization of human existence follows directly from the Nahua metaphysics, or more specifically, its monism, i.e. the thesis that there exists only one thing: teotl. Human beings are made-up of teotl, ultimately identical (one) with teotl, and hence in and of teotl. Since Nahua metaphysics conceives teotl as a nepantla-process, it follows that human beings and human existence are in and of nepantla as well.

The Nahuas looked to their metaphysics for guidance concerning how human beings ought to behave wisely, ethically, epistemologically and aesthetically in a cosmos characterized by nepantla.36 Given its central role in Nahua metaphysics, they thus turned to teotl, or more precisely, teotl-as-nepantla-process. They regarded teotl-as-nepantla-process as the ideal normative model for human behavior since they regarded teotl-as-nepantla-process as the ideal model of nepantla-behavior. Nahua tlamatini (“knowers of things,” “sages”) thus enjoined people to live their lives in a teotl-like, nepantla-middling manner, and based their prescriptive claims regarding how human beings ought to conduct their lives upon teotl’s example. Nepantla accordingly figures prominently in Nahua prescriptions concerning how humans ought to behave, think, feel, judge, speak, sing, eat, weave, etc. Nahua tlamatini apparently reasoned that since reality and the human existential condition are inescapably middling, human beings must therefore act and live middlingly.37 In a cosmos characterized by nepantla, one must live a life characterized by nepantla.

As we’ve seen, the Nahuas likened the human condition to walking down a narrow, jagged path along a mountain peak. After characterizing the human condition thusly, the mother quoted above advises her daughter, “zan tlanepantla in uiloa, in nemoa,” “only through the middle can one go, or live.” The mother invokes tlanepantla, “in (or through) the middle.” In this vein a Nahua adage recorded by Sahagún states, “Tlacoqualli in monequi,” “the middle good is necessary.”38 Molina provides two related entries, tlanepantla yeliztli and tlanepantla nemiliztli, which he glosses as mediano estado, o manera de vivir (Molina 1971: 128). Campbell glosses them as “ordinary way or state of living” (Campbell 1985: 212). In light of the above discussion, I suggest the two are better glossed as “living or being middlingly” or “middling way of being or living.” Those striving to walk in balance upon the slippery earth must pursue a middle footing, a middle way of living -- not an ordinary way of living (unless ordinary means middling).

Nahua wisdom accordingly aimed at teaching humans how, like skilled mountain climbers, to maintain their balance upon the narrow, jagged summit of the earth.39 It aimed at teaching humans how, like accomplished weavers, to weave together the various forces and tensions in the cosmos and in their lives into a well-balanced fabric. In order to live wisely, live well, live artfully, and live an authentically human life on tlalticpac – where these are conceptually equivalent -- one’s living must exemplify nepantla-middling or nepantla-balancing. One’s living must itself be a well-crafted nepantla-process. And from what better to learn how to do this than from teotl itself? In sum, wisely living consists of embracing and mastering nepantla -- not trying to avoid, minimize, or escape nepantla.

In this manner, I suggest nepantla-balance functioned more specifically as the normative model and evaluative criterion for (what we call) ethically, epistemologically and aesthetically good (cualli) or appropriate behavior. Good behavior not only springs from nepantla-balancing but also promotes nepantla-balancing in human lives and in the cosmos at large.40

In conclusion, let’s return to Fray Durán’s informant’s remark that the post-conquest Nahuas were in nepantla. This is commonly interpreted as characterizing the exceptional circumstances of post-conquest Nahua life. The Nahuas were betwixt and between the old and new orders. This interpretation, however, both misunderstands nepantla by assimilating it to the non-autochthonous notion of liminality and mistakenly presupposes that nepantla did not characterize ordinary Nahua life before the conquest. I thus propose that when queried about the condition of the Nahuas by Durán, the informant spoke generally about the human condition as such. It was not his intention to contrast pre- and post- conquest life. After all, nepantla was not unique to post-conquest Nahua life. It defined all of existence and reality.41

The Centrality of Nepantla in Conquest-Era Nahua Philosophy

by James Maffie

Part I: Nepantla examined

Part II: Nepantla as a fundamental descriptive category of Nahua metaphysics

Part III: Nepantla as descriptive of the human condition

33 Translation by Michael Launey, quoted in Burkhart (1989, p.58).

34 Sahagun (1953-82: VI, p.228) translated by Burkhart (1989).

35 Sahagún (1953-1982: VI, p.101), parenthetical remark and translation by Gingerich (1988: 522). In another huehuetlatolli, a father advises his son:

... on earth we travel, we live along a mountain peak. Over here there is an abyss, over there there is an abyss. Wherever thou art to deviate, wherever thou art to go astray, there will thou fall, there wilt thou plunge into the deep. That is to say, it is necessary that thou always act with discretion in that which is done, which is said, which is seen, which is heard, which is thought, etc. (Sahagun 1953-82: VI, p.125, trans. by Dibble and Anderson).

36 I believe Nahua philosophy makes no distinction between the sagely, ethical, epistemological and aesthetic dimensions of human behavior, institutions, and relationships. These are our distinctions, not the Nahuas’. In what follows, I thus treat these as a seamless conceptual unity. In this respect, Nahua philosophy differs from most Western philosophies beginning with Plato and Aristotle but resembles East Asian philosophies such as classical Doaism and Confucianism. For further discussion, see: Maffie (2003, 2005), and "'Like a Painting We Will be Erased, Like a Flower, We Will Dry Up Here on Earth': Ultimate Reality and Meaning according to Nahua Thought in the Era of the Conquest," Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding 23 (2000), pp. 295-318; and David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (Buffalo: SUNY Press, 1998).

37 In this way, the Nahuas sought to behave “cosmogonically” as Norman Girardot puts it when discussing the Daoist aim to model human behavior upon the Dao (Norman Girardot, “Behaving Cosmogonically in Early Taoism,” in Robin W. Lovin and Frank E. Reynolds (eds.), Cosmogony and Ethical Order: New Studies in Comparative Ethics [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985], pp. 67-69). For related discussion, see Robin Lovin and Frank Reynolds, “In the Beginning,” in Lovin and Reynolds (eds.) op. cit., pp. 1-35. Several scholars have defended the relevance of Nahua metaphysics to Nahua ethics, including Burkhart (1988), Elzey (1976, 2001), Read (1998) and “The Fleeting Moment: Cosmogony, Eschatology, and Ethics in Aztec Religion and Society,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 14 (1986), pp. 113-138. The quest to ground one’s normative philosophy upon one’s metaphysics is not confined to religions. In Western philosophy it dates as far back as ancient Greece.

38 Sahagún (1952-1983: VI, p.231) translation by Burkhart (1989: 134). Citing Karttunen (1983: 59, 260), Burkhart observes that tlacoqualli derives from two words, tlaco, meaning "middle, center, half," and cualli, meaning "something good" (Burkhart 1989: 210, note #6).

39 For related discussion, see Burkhart (1988), Gingerich (1988), and Maffie (2005).

40 I expand upon this claim in Maffie (2000, 2003, 2005).

41 Many thanks to Willard Gingerich for bringing this point to my attention. By reinterpreting this remark in terms of nepantla rather than in terms of Turner-style liminality, this essay hopes to contribute to the decolonization of our understanding of Nahua thought. For related discussion of decolonizing philosophy and religion, see Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion,” http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v1/4/3.htm. Finally, while it seems undeniable that post-conquest Nahuas were suffering from “cultural woundedness,” it appears to be a mistake to equate this condition with nepantla per se (contra Lisbeth Haas 1995: 43).