Excerpt from The Outward Path: Wisdom of the Aztecs. Copyright © 2025 by Sebastian Purcell. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón was born in the twilight of the Aztec empire, in 1579. Of noble lineage and living three generations after Montezuma and Cortés, Domingo grew up immersed in the stories of his people. From a young age, he was captivated by the legends and history of his family, whose ancestry stretched back nine generations to the 1200s, when they first settled the great city of Chalco. A gifted child, Domingo was sent to Mexico City at the age of eleven to be educated by the Dominicans, where he honed his Spanish and learned Latin. By the time he was sixteen, he had been appointed the general manager of a new church on the outskirts of old Tenochtitlán—taking on the responsibilities of a man, though still a boy. This position not only provided him with a livelihood but also gave him access to books on European history and philosophy that would have otherwise been out of reach.
Years later, in 1608, after a series of devastating epidemics, floods, civil unrest, and the publication of a history of “New Spain” that largely ignored the legacy of his people, Domingo grew concerned. He feared that the wisdom, history, and achievements of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples would soon vanish from the historical record. Determined to preserve their legacy, he set out to write a comprehensive history in Nahuatl—not just for his home city of Chalco, but for all the great Nahuatl-speaking cities.
Domingo must have realized early on that he was uniquely positioned to take on this monumental task. He possessed the rare combination of skills: fluency in multiple languages, an education that equipped him for historical scholarship, connections with both Indigenous and Spanish authorities, and access to the necessary resources. To reclaim his family’s history and assert his cultural identity, he signed his work with his full name, Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón, and added two further names to reclaim his ancestry: Chimalpahin (Chimal-PAH-in / Ran with a Shield) and Cuauhtlehuanitzin (Cuaw-tle-wan-EE-tzin / Rises Like an Eagle).
It might be tempting to view Chimalpahin’s self-designation as audacious, but I see it as his way of planting roots within his community while preserving its memory for future generations. In terms of Aztec thought, he was achieving “rootedness”—and in doing so, supporting others. Rootedness, for the Aztecs, was not just a metaphor for personal growth; it encapsulated a shared wisdom about how to live well. Yet, because this idea is so deeply intertwined with the community and is different from many “Western” approaches, we must take care not to impose our own interpretations on it. To explain such wisdom more carefully, we need to explore three key images the Aztecs used when they talked about the concept of rootedness, starting with the literal trees and their roots.
The Aztecs identified two sorts of trees that metaphorically represented ideal human beings. The first was the ahuehuete tree, or as it is also called, the Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum). It is unsurprising that the Montezuma cypress is Mexico’s national tree. If you’ve ever been in the presence of a great ahuehuete, or any similarly large tree, then you will have experienced the sense of calm and awe that surrounds them. Their size, sometimes that of a full city block, is arresting. Their thick trunks exemplify what it means to be sturdy, to stand firmly rooted in the earth. And while children play in the shade the tree provides, adults often use that same shade to take a moment of repose.
The second tree is the great silk cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra), also called the great ceiba. The great ceiba tree, though somewhat smaller in size than its more towering counterparts, remains a striking presence, standing tall above the forest canopy. Its massive root structure is visibly anchored to the earth, giving it both stability and prominence. Among the Maya, who shared a broader Mesoamerican culture with the Aztecs, the ceiba symbolized the mythical world tree—connecting the heavens above, the underworld below, and our own world in between.
To grasp how the Aztecs viewed the ethical significance of trees like the ceiba, we can turn to the wisdom shared by elders with younger generations. One example comes from the sixth volume of the Florentine Codex, where a newly appointed king, after being instructed by the elders, addresses his people. In his speech, he teaches them how to live well. About halfway through his address, the king begins to describe the ideal types of men and women, resembling what “Western” philosophers might call the “great-souled” or magnanimous individual. The king says:
And he is esteemed. In truth, he is known as a defender, sustainer. He becomes the ceiba, the ahuehuete, next to and beside which one takes refuge.
In Discourses of the Elders there is a similar description, wherein one nobleman admonishes another.
And now, strengthen your heart, your body. To whom, in truth will you leave the mandate [of your office]? Whom, truly, will you observe? For you are already mother and father of the people; you already educate the people, you instruct them. You are he who has the charge, who has the shields. Great is that which you bear; great is your responsibility, because you are the ceiba, the ahuehuete.
In both passages, the charge of rulership is likened to the ceiba and the Montezuma cypress. The ideal ruler is one who is rooted firmly in the earth so that he or she can act as a shelter for others, and to weather the storm of disasters that are likely to assail during the leader’s tenure.
A person who can learn to take root as the ceiba and the Montezuma cypress will lead a life successfully on the slippery earth. This person will also, in another metaphor, learn “to stand on their feet.” In another discourse, a father speaks to his son the following:
It is virtuous that you take care of earthly matters. Work, labor, gather wood, till the earth, plant nopals, plant magueys. It is from that which you will drink, eat, dress. With that it is enough for you to stand [tihcaz], for you to live.
The term tihcaz is from ihcac (IH-kak), which means to stand upright. Its context here clearly aligns the activity of standing upright, or standing on your feet, to the sorts of activities you need to do to live well on the earth. While rootedness is not explicitly at work here, the idea is that you need to be able to take a stand, perhaps as the Montezuma cypress does, by doing the appropriate work.
In another metaphor, the Aztecs spoke of leading a “true” life. A piece of philosophical poetry that was composed and recited before a meeting of philosophers and court officials in Huexotzinco (Wey-shot-ZIN-ko), where Nezahualcoyotl had sought refuge a generation earlier, makes the point. The central question at stake in the poem is how to achieve some kind of permanence on earth. Lord Ayocuan (AYO-kwan), who is addressed in the poem, is said to be acquainted with teotl in his form as the Life Giver. The solution he proposes is that by creating philosophical poetry you can achieve a sort of permanence on earth.
So this is how the exalted lord [Ayocuan] comes, creating them [i.e., the poems].
With these precious bracelet beads [i.e., the poetry] he goes on pleasing the Only Being.
Is that what pleases the Life Giver?
Is that the only truth [nelli] on earth [tlalticpac]?
By writing philosophical poetry, the kind that addresses the basic problems of our human existence, one is able to find “truth” on the (slippery) earth. The Aztec answer for how to live is to live truthfully. Since the passages likening the idea of nobles and rulers to the ceiba and ahuehuete trees used the language of truth repeatedly, that’s not entirely surprising.
But there is another dimension to this proposal. I’ve translated the Nahuatl phrase “aço tle nelli in tlalticpac” as the question: “Is that the only truth on earth?” But big abstract concepts, like “truth,” are generally metaphors taken from homier contexts. The linguistics expert George Lakoff and his philosophical collaborator Mark Johnson call these contexts “primary metaphors.” To recall their points from Lesson 3, we think of “time” as a kind of motion in expressions, like “time flies.” We think of “happiness” as going up, such as in the expression “I’m feeling up today.” And we think of affection in terms of warmth, such as when we say, “they greeted me warmly.”
The Nahuatl word for “truth” that the Aztecs used works similarly. The term nelli (NEL-lee) has nel as its stem. And that stem can be found in other terms that might be linguistically related, which mean a “principle, foundation, base, or root.” A primary metaphor behind the Nahuatl word for “truth” might thus turn on the idea of finding a firm foundation, a firm place to stand, or take root. And this is exactly what is being asked in the poem: Is there a way to find rootedness on our slippery earth?
An abstract noun for nelli is neltiliztli (nel-tee-LEEZ-tlee), so that you could say that the best life is the life of truthed-ness. Yet, the word resides in a constellation of metaphors that turn on standing on one’s own, not slipping, and embodying the positive characteristics of greatly rooted trees. This is why I think that the simplest shorthand in English to designate this goal is to call it rootedness.
Those metaphors are nice, you might now be thinking, but how exactly is one supposed to find rootedness? Are we to believe that everyone should be a philosopher or maybe plant nopals (edible cactus plants)? Should we all till the field by day, and dance and sing philosophical poems by night?
While the Aztec philosophers do seem to have held that creating, dancing, and singing philosophical poems were uniquely good activities, they also recognized that such a path was not suitable to everyone. That proposal, moreover, is an incomplete description of the good life, even for philosophers. So let’s turn to the question of how to live a rooted life, which happens by way of shared agency.
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Shared agency is at once intuitive and slippery. To explain, consider the following case.
Case 1. Montezuma’s Headdress. In preparation to receive the strange Castilian visitors to his palace, Montezuma has his servants adorn him appropriately, including a headdress of quetzal plumes. The two servants take the delicate headdress, lift it together, and arrange it on their king’s head.
How is one to describe the actions of the servants? Did they think of themselves as part of a group, so that, if they thought anything at all, it would be: “We are going to lift the headdress”? Or did they each think of themselves more individualistically, thinking something along the lines of “I have in mind that you have in mind that I intend to lift the headdress”? That’s more complex, but it’s possible that it’s related to the first one as atoms are to molecules.
A technical field of philosophy called action theory centers on solving problems like this one, and my favored view holds that in cases like this, you are thinking of yourself in the plural—as a “we.” If you were lifting the headdress and you had anything cross your mind, it would be something along the lines of “we’re lifting now.” This is different from acting as an individual where you think of yourself and your actions as an “I.”
This difference, between “we” thinking and “I” thinking, grounds the difference between shared and individual agency. To elaborate, consider the following case.
Case 2. Walking with Someone. Socrates and Phaedrus meet outside the city of Athens and decide to walk together while discussing Lysis’s argument on lovers. They cross the Ilissos River and eventually find a tall plane tree where they can rest and address the topic more thoroughly.
Case 3. The Royal Court Crowns Montezuma. After being nominated to occupy the role of Great King, Montezuma awakes early in the morning and performs the appropriate rituals. The last of these is a ceremony in which he receives the crown. He then goes to the royal court where the nobles both praise and admonish him. Some even chastise him. He listens attentively and replies to each admonition. He then addresses the people of his city in a grand speech and celebrations follow.
Case 2, walking with someone as Socrates and Phaedrus do, is another example of the Montezuma headdress case. It takes longer and is a more complex activity but is structurally similar. Taking a stroll with someone can be distinguished from merely walking alongside another person, as one might do in walking down Broadway in Manhattan. If you’re walking alongside another person on a busy sidewalk, the two of you are doing two different activities. But if you’re taking a stroll like Socrates and Phaedrus did, then you both are engaged in a single activity—you are thinking of yourself as a “we” as in the headdress case—though it’s again worth noting that the stroll lasts longer and constitutes a more complex activity.
Walking with someone also differs from the group-based activity that you find in the royal crowning example (Case 3), where a political (or corporate) body engages in an official activity. While walking alongside someone may involve hierarchies, as a parent might walk with his toddler holding her by the hand as she makes uncertain steps forward, such actions do not (i) exceed the duration of the activity, and (ii) cannot exist if members of the group are replaced.
Let me explain. Suppose that Phaedrus and Socrates take a walk back into the city after a lengthy dialogue. Well, they’d be strolling together again, but that wouldn’t obviously be the same stroll as the previous one. But if Montezuma and his court stopped to eat lunch and then resumed, it would be the same coronation. Similarly, it matters if one of the members is substituted for another. If Socrates were to walk back with Phaedrus’s brother, Polemarchos, then the shared walking would be a different activity than if he walked again with Phaedrus. But if Montezuma replaced a noble, or even were replaced himself, the royal court would still exist. The tlatoani’s (king’s) role continues despite the passing of an old king. To distinguish these groups’ actions, let’s call strolling-type actions (Case 2) those of a plural group, and royal court crowning-type actions (Case 3) those of a corporate group.
Even with these qualifications, you might ask: Are cases of walking with someone just more complex versions of two people walking side by side? I don’t think so, but fortunately, you and I don’t need to answer that question. We’re doing ethics here, not action theory. The only thing we need to show is that the ethical evaluation is different.
To explore the ethical dimensions of “we” actions, consider the exercise of practical wisdom in plural group (Case 2–type) deliberation. It has some historical basis in the aftermath of the Spaniards’ arrival at Tenochtitlán. Cacama (Ka-KA-ma) was the young and controversially appointed king of Tezcoco, the great city that Nezahualcoyotl ruled in generations past, and his rival, Ixtlilxochitl (Esh-tleel-SHO-cheet), hoped to storm the city and take what he perceived to be his birthright with blood and fire. At some point, Cacama appears to have deliberated with some of his advisors—we do not know which exactly, so I shall take some poetic license here to focus on the philosophical point.
Case 4. Cacama’s Deliberations. After Montezuma received the strange visitors in Tenochtitlán, Cacama worries about his war of succession with Ixtlilxochitl, specifically that matters were left unresolved. Cacama meets with trusted friends, and they decide that the best course of action is to return to Tezcoco across the lake, and to prepare in advance of Ixtlilxochitl’s next move.
Let us assume that the questions they addressed roughly concerned: How can we best protect the city? Should we return to Tezcoco without Montezuma’s military support since he is preoccupied? How soon will our allies’ reinforcements arrive since this will largely determine whether there is any need for preparation?
In such circumstances, how is the ethical force of the group decision not reducible to the ethical force of the individual agent’s decision? Especially in this case, since Cacama is the king of Tezcoco, how is this deliberation not the same thing (for ethical evaluation) as Cacama simply making up his mind?
Remember from the discussion on embodiment in Lesson 3 that reasonable expressions of value bear the ethical burden for evaluation. This means that if my actions can be reasonably connected to my values, they are an expression of my agency. That makes them candidates for ethical evaluation. Suppose that four thieves are trying to hide the evidence of a job by disposing of the getaway car. They are trying to push the car off a cliff, but the car only requires the pushing strength of three of the four men. Are they all responsible for pushing the car over the cliff even though they are not all causally needed for the pushing? How do you attribute responsibility to this group action, which is a kind of shared agency?
Four logical possibilities exist for any such scenario, and to simplify the explanation let’s assume that a goal is a kind of value. First, an action could be consistent with the values of an agent. One of the thieves could want to push the car and does so. He is responsible for this action. Second, an action could be inconsistent with the values of an agent. One of the thieves could trip and push the car because he fell on it, not because he had the desire to do so. He would be considered responsible for the action, in this case, though perhaps less blameworthy. Third, an action could be both consistent and inconsistent with the values of an agent. A thief could trip and be unable to push the car though he genuinely wished to do so. In this case he would be responsible, but perhaps less blameworthy. Finally, an action could have nothing to do with any of an agent’s values—whether those values are well thought out or only implicitly held. For example, while deliberating what to do, one of the thieves might stroke his chin in a habitual way. He would not be considered ethically responsible for this chin-stroking. When tying responsibility to the values of individual actors this way we can attribute responsibility to members of group actions. On this view, all the thieves pushing the car are ethically responsible if they want to push the car, even though they are not all causally necessary for the activity. The upshot of this analysis is that it is the reasons for an action that make it an ethical or an unethical one.
To show that cases of Cacama’s individual deliberation are different from cases of his involvement in group deliberation, we need to identify how the reconstructed reasons at work in group deliberation are different from those an individual agent has or could have.
Let’s start with an illustration that oversimplifies the process of group deliberation but nevertheless proves useful. Suppose that Cacama determines that he and his emissaries ought to return to Tezcoco if reinforcements are unlikely to arrive soon. His co-deliberators have the following information:
Case 5. Collective Deliberation.
A. Cacama knows that their sworn enemies, the Tlaxcalans (Tlash-CA-lans), have forces just to the east of the city.
B. Xochicoatl (Sho-chee-CO-at) knows that reinforcements come from the east but does not know of the Tlaxcalans.
C. Tezozomoc (Te-zo-ZO-moc) knows that another group of reinforcements are coming from the north.
D. Cuauhtemoc (Cu-aw-TE-moc), having led battles to the north, knows that the terrain is rough going and so has a different mental model for troop movements in that area, but he does not know the locations of any possible reinforcements.
While no individual possesses the complete set of knowledge to make the inference, the deliberating group can combine A and B to infer that the reinforcements from the east will be impeded by the Tlaxcalans, and so be delayed in their arrival. The case is different with respect to C and D. Tezozomoc possesses the relevant knowledge about forces coming from the north, but he lacks the appropriate mental model to know that travel in that area is difficult. Only by deliberating with Cuauhtemoc, thus combining points C and D, can the group make the inference that reinforcements from the north will be delayed. As a whole, then, the group is able to infer that reinforcements are unlikely to arrive soon, and that the best course of action for fulling their obligations as political leaders of that city-state is to return to Tezcoco.
What Case 5 shows is that the appropriate inference can be made only by joining the knowledge and mental models, that is, the reasons, of the individual members. As a result, the reasoning of the group is different from the reasoning of any individual within the group. If those reasons carry ethical force, as might be thought to follow from the obligations Cacama has to ensure the safety of his city as its tlatoani (king), then the ethical evaluation of the group decision must be different from any evaluation of its individual members. QED.
We now have something important: a new philosophical idea. In addition to actions by individual agents, we have actions by plural groups. They have ethically different features, since the reasons that express the values at work are different in these cases. Now we’ve got to do an obvious thing and bring this distinction to bear on the performance of a good life, what the Aztecs called virtuous action.
