Santiago Castro-Gómez
Santiago Castro-Gómez (born 1958, Bogotá, Colombia) is a Colombian philosopher, a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the director of the Pensar Institute in Bogotá. Career and Work. Castro-Gómez began studying philosophy at Santo Tomás University in Bogotá, Colombia with members of the "Bogotá Group." He received his M.A. in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and his Ph.D at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main in Germany. In addition to his academic positions in Colombia, he has served as visiting professor at Duke University, Pittsburgh University and the Goethe University of Frankfurt . Castro-Gómez is a public intellectual in Colombia whose work has been the subject of conferences and books, debates over Colombian identity, research on Latin American philosophy, as well as artistic installations. He is the author or co-editor of more than ten books, many of which have been reissued in new editions. As director of the Pensar Institute in Bogotá, he has led an initiative to engage the public, and specifically early public education, on the effects of racism and colonization in Colombian society. Alongside Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, Ramón Grosfoguel, Catherine Walsh, Arturo Escobar, Edgardo Lander  and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Castro-Gómez was part of the "Modernity/Coloniality" group, a circle of Latin American critical theorists formed at the beginning of the 21st century. Castro-Gómez's work develops alternatives to dominant approaches and figures in Latin American Philosophy, an intervention he makes explicit in "Critique of Latin American Reason" (1996). In addition to colleagues like Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo, his major influences include the Frankfurt School, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. The work of Castro-Gómez explores the "frontiers" between sociology, anthropology, literary studies and cultural studies, while also reflecting on methodological  and epistemological problems within the social sciences. In "Zero-Point Hubris", Castro-Gómez characterizes Rene Descartes' 1637 famous statement of "I think, therefore I am" as "the moment white Europeans installed themselves above God as the sole arbiters of knowledge and truth. With this turning point, they began to think of themselves as observers whose scientific methods, morals and ethics overrode those of other cultures."