Latin American philosophy covers primarily the philosophy produced in the parts of the Americas that belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese empires after 1492. The Maya, Toltec, Aztec, and Inca civilizations engaged in some philosophical speculation in the form of religious myths and cosmological accounts prior to the arrival of the Europeans, but most of the records of these efforts were destroyed during the conquest. As happened with almost everything else in the wake of colonization, Iberians took control over the development of philosophy and scholastic philosophy became the most influential philosophical trend in the New World.

The encounter posed new challenges to European thought and initiated new developments in both Europe and Latin America. In Iberia, new issues, primarily concerned with the rights of conquered peoples and just war, took center stage, and the greatest Iberian philosophers of the times, Francisco de Vitoria (c...