Profile

Dr. José Hernández Prado pursued his bachelor’s degree in Sociology at UAM, Azcapotzalco Campus, in different periods between 1975 and 2000. He later obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Since 2001, he was a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), where he was classified at Levels I and II. He was also part of the Faculty Development Program of the Ministry of Public Education for approximately 20 years.

At UAM, Azcapotzalco Campus, he was a founding member and, on several occasions, Head of the Research Area in Sociological Thought within the Department of Sociology. He also served as Editor and Director of the journal Sociológica (México) and participated at different times in the Editorial Councils of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities at UAM, Azcapotzalco Campus.

He took pride in introducing the work of the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710–1796) and the Mexican philosophers Antonio Caso (1883–1946) and José María Vigil (1829–1909) to the Mexican university environment. His familiarity with these authors led him to conduct and publish a series of research studies over decades on common sense and the biological, psychological, and sociocultural nature of human beings. These studies guided him toward a recognition of what is now known as the gene-culture coevolution of humanity and the societies it has shaped.

His master’s thesis in Philosophy on Antonio Caso’s philosophy of culture received the Norman Sverdlin Award in 1993, granted by the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at UNAM for the best undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral theses.

For more than 20 years, until 2018, he was a part-time professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City Campus, at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels. Since 2015, he also collaborated as a part-time professor at the graduate level with the National Defense College of the Ministry of Defense.

He introduced contemporary Mexico to a special focus on modern common sense philosophy, particularly that of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Thomas Reid (1710–1796). He also considered himself one of the scholars who drew attention to the importance and richness of the philosophy of Antonio Caso (1883–1946). Based on these research interests, he focused on the study of human nature, emphasizing two fundamental aspects: its ability to understand reality and its inherently social and political character.

One of the fields that occupied him the most in recent decades was liberal thought, particularly political liberalism, which upholds contemporary liberal democracy. In recent years, his interest centered on the genetic and cultural coevolution of human beings and their progress in recent centuries, thanks to the challenging and complex development of an open, democratic, and liberal society.