Pragmatism and spiritualism: Pedro Zulen’s political thought

This article examines how the Peruvian philosopher Pedro Zulen (1889–1925) integrated pragmatism at an early stage, linking it to a form of spiritualism rooted in the political and social reality of Latin America. Zulen was a Peruvian philosopher, librarian, and activist whose pragmatist outlook had a significant impact on Latin American thought, particularly in Peru. In 1916 and 1920 he travelled to Harvard University for graduate studies, where he deepened his engagement with the work of Peirce, James, and Royce. This article explores how pragmatism was concretized in Latin American philosophy in the early twentieth century. Rather than remaining dependent on European intellectual traditions (such as positivism and Bergsonian spiritualism), it became grounded in a specific territorial context. Drawing on the concepts of tychism, synechism, and fallibilism, the study reconstructs how Zulen displaces Peircean pragmatism from a strictly academic framework toward a philosophy of political action tied to educational reform, spirituality, and the defense of Indigenous peoples.