Reddit reviews Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition
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> For the Aztec, in addition to professional philosophers, called tlamatini, who formed intellectual circles and questioned the nature of the world, morality and ethics etc would often teach at schools for the children of nobility
Unfortunately this whole “Aztec Philosophy” section—and the post it links to—is heavily based on León-Portilla's work, which is highly problematic because of his disingenuous (read: fabricated?) translations and propagandistic approach to history. He's definitely a sacred cow so it'll take a while to rid ourselves of his stench.
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One redditor considers it “gauche” to critique León-Portilla, but fuck it. He died this year, so a good disinfecting pushback is called for.
The original attack against León-Portilla's invention of the god Ometeotl out of thin-air is found in Richard Haly's famous 1992 paper: Bare Bones: Re-Thinking Mesoamerican Divinity.
John Bierhorst did his own translations of Cantares Mexicanos—the text from which León-Portilla & Garibay sourced much of what we think about Aztec “literature”—and found significant interpretive departures in their translations.
The work of Gertrudis Payás identifies “deeply political elements” in León-Portilla's output, criticizing his “whole defensive apparatus” (“Neo-Colonists” was a slur he used against critics) and his “need to construct a memory of a common past, a grandiose past, comparable to the greatest pasts on earth: the Mediterranean, the Orient.”
If you know spanish, this is another essay written by Edmundo O'Gorman, current president of the National Academy of History: La falacia histórica de Miguel León Portilla-sobre el encuentro del Viejo y Nuevo Mundos—trans: “Miguel León-Portilla's fallacious history about the encounter between the old and new worlds.”
Amos Segala attacks Portilla in: La Literatura Náhuatl ¿Un Coto Privado?. In this paper, Segala paints the anthropologist's translations of náhuatl sources as too freewheeling; too eager to occidentalize the material—forcing the Aztec writings into traditionally european academic disciplines such as “literature” and “philosophy”.
Mexican philosopher, Roger Bartra (who coined the concept of a post-Mexican condition, see: Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition), identifies León-Portilla's work as a byproduct of a “hegemonic culture” in search of a national identity that would be politically useful to the ruling class at the time.
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The fact is, so much of what has been written on Reddit regarding Aztec “philosophy” (even calling it that is highly problematic!) stems from questionable interpretations of scant sources and plenty of just-so stories. OP also refers to James Maffie who builds on León-Portilla's work but ultimately admits the truth:
> “there is no direct empirical evidence of our interpretative claims about Aztec metaphysics.”
At least he's honest.