Abstract
The paper offers a critical review of Roberto Farneti’s paper “a minor philosophy. The state of the art of philosophical scholarship in Italy”, recently published in Philosophia. It is argued that overall the status and interest of philosophy as practiced nowadays in Italy is less disappointing than Farneti makes out. It is also maintained that submitting papers to peer-refereed international journals can help cure the moral and sociological disease that besets the Italian academia, but that, as such, it is less likely to improve the scientific quality of contributions in philosophy than Farneti claims. In passing, a few recommendations both to the philosophical community at large and to the Italian Government are put forward.
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Notes
This myth started with Gianbattista Vico’s De antiquissima Italorum sapientia (1710–1713). It was then developed along different lines by Vincenzo Cuoco in his Platone in Italia (1806) and greatly exploited during Fascism. For a discussion of this idea, see Albarani (2008).
A volume of The library of living philosophers in honor of Negri is scheduled to appear shortly http://www.opencourtbooks.com/forthcoming_body_n.htm.
See my Preface to the Italian edition of Boghossian (2006).
In fact I don’t wish to discuss anyone in particular. I take Vattimo as an example of an Italian philosopher whose work is available in different languages and yet may not be considered in certain circles.
Basically, Vattimo’s preoccupations about the captivating power of metaphysics are not, at least at present, part of the agenda of mainstream analytic philosophy.
So I don’t entirely agree with Farneti’s judgment that “the global forum is curious of new intellectual perspectives and eager to cultivate comparative practices in which one can confront the work of others across major linguistic and cultural boundaries”.
And understandably so, at least for the following two reasons: partly because one can’t converse with all possible interlocutors and to chose one’s own is a legitimate option. Partly because very rarely do members of non analytic philosophical traditions seriously engage with it, often preferring scornfully to mock at it.
All factors which are deeply valued by the European Research Council, for instance.
Author of I promessi sposi (1823/1842) in which he famously wrote that courage is something that either one has or nobody else could bestow it on one.
As should be clear, I am not claiming them for my papers. This is obviously for others to decide.
I will here pass over one important—I would think, fatal—shortcoming that the Sokal affaire helped bring to the forefront of global attention. Namely that at least in certain areas of the Humanities publication in peer-reviewed journals isn’t a guarantee of scientific quality whatsoever. I will not consider this issue here because Sokal made a case against journals in cultural studies and not in philosophy and because this would take us to the problem of whether postmodernist ideas are any good. I will discuss some of the philosophical bases of postmodernism in section “The Philosophical Rationale Behind the Refusal to Comply”.
I think it really is a tradition which has its forefathers in several philosophers who belong to Western philosophy since its origins—Protagoras, Montaigne, Nietzsche, just to mention some prominent examples.
But aren’t we—Italians and continental Europeans at least—familiar with a certain gauche which keeps repeating that scientific merit is just the voice of capitalist power and that when it comes to research funding and positions, they too should be equally distributed? That is to say, on their view, distributed on the basis of no scientific criteria whatever, or, as we Italians say, “a pioggia” (which can be translated with “randomly” although with some loss of the original meaning or pragmatic resonance of the Italian expression, which is “distributed to all power-groups no matter what”).
It is perhaps not by chance that some of the philosophers mentioned by Farneti have in fact turned to politics and, to my mind, have done well while engaging in it. Nor is it by chance, I think, that Richard Rorty abandoned philosophy and turned to literary criticism. Nor, again, is it by chance that many famous Italian philosophers among the ones criticized by Farneti, have more recognition, within the English-speaking academic community, in Departments of (cross-) cultural and literary studies.
A good example of the complex attitude I am recommending is in fact Wittgenstein. Contrary to the Neopositivist mockery of his ideas on the mystical in the Tractatus, he actually thought that the most important things in life where those untouched by philosophy, and in fact unsayable. Yet, he never stopped doing philosophy, by classical standards—that is, by exercising reason—, while also later criticizing the deeply metaphysical conception of reality that philosophers tend to put forward. However, to rank his later philosophy together with certain postmodernist claims is, arguably, a gross misunderstanding of his views. Cf. Coliva, A. “Was Wittgenstein an epistemic relativist?”, op. cit.
Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) was a historian and political philosopher who stressed this aspect of Italian political life in several of his works.
I suspect that the fact that we have almost always been aware of it makes it even worse that we never tried collectively to eradicate it. But, I must stress, it also bears testimony to the fact that Italians—perhaps contrary to other people—are not in denial with respect to it.
It can often be witnessed that both in the UK and specially in the US one’s academic pedigree—that is the institution attended and the letters of reference—are deemed more important than one’s publications (in international peer-reviewed journals and books).
I personally think that it should also be passed the bill that no one could have their first job in the same institution from which they received their first and doctoral degrees. Moreover, I think there should be regular assessments of Departments (as opposed to Universities) and that funding distributions should reflect the outcome of that evaluation. Finally, I think any effort should be made in order for funding so distributed to be used to attract young and promising researchers, also from abroad, if they were ostensibly better than Italian candidates.
Indeed this is the mission of the newly-created research center in philosophy COGITO, founded by Paolo Leonardi, Elisabetta Lalumera, Sebastiano Moruzzi and myself in Bologna.
References
Albarani, G. (2008). Il mito del primato italiano nella storiografia risorgimentale. Unicopli: Milano.
Benso, S., & Schroeder, B. (Eds.) (2007). Contemporary Italian philosophy: Crossing the borders of ethics, politics, and religion. SUNY press: New York.
Boghossian, P. (2006). Fear of knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Italian transl. Paura di conoscere. Saggio contro il relativismo e il costruttivismo, Roma, Carocci, 2006.
Coliva, A. (2009a). I modi del relativismo. Roma: Laterza.
Coliva, A. (2009) “Was Wittgenstein an epistemic relativist?”, Philosophical Investigations (In press).
Coliva, A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives: Is there a (Wittgensteinian) third way? In A. Coliva (Ed.), Meaning, knowledge and mind: Themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Elisabetta Lalumera, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Marco Panza and Eva Picardi for their comments on previous versions of this paper.
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Coliva, A. Notes on Italian Philosophy, Peer-Reviews and “la corruttela”. Philosophia 38, 29–39 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9197-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-009-9197-1