What is a Minor Philosophy? A Conversation on Thinking from the Periphery in a Global World

Abstract

This is the text of a conversation that follows up on Roberto Farneti’s article “A Minor Philosophy: The State of the Art of Philosophical Scholarship in Italy” published in Philosophia 38 (1) 2009: 1–28. After a brief introductory note that details the reception of the article in Italy, Ferrara and Farneti engage in a conversation on the notion of “minor philosophy” and on the meaning and future of philosophizing “from the periphery” in a globalized world. The text is followed by a short Appendix, a reply to Annalisa Coliva’s commentary on Farneti’s article.

Appendix: Reply to Coliva

Roberto Farneti

Annalisa Coliva responded to my paper on Italian philosophy in the same issue of Philosophia (Coliva 2009). According to Coliva I indulge in a kind of “nationalistic ideology” that leads me to believe that Italian philosophers (qua Italian) can produce original ideas. Furthermore I seem to maintain that an “original” contribution to philosophy is “synonymous with ‘national’.” I am also said to encourage Italian philosophers to draw “on a rather unspecified repository of ideas and wisdom that Italians possess.” As to my analysis of peer-review, I seem to attribute to this system some inherent good-making qualities or virtues, whereas my critic contends that “either a paper has [such qualities or virtues], or peer-reviews can’t bestow them on it.” In other words, I seem to support the idea that by sending a paper to a peer-reviewed international journal “one would thereby become a better philosopher.”

• 1. “Nationalistic Ideology”

  I am aware of the distinction between the kind of academic philosophy practiced in Italy by Italian philosophers and something like an “Italian philosophy,” as my opening sentence made clear. In my essay I addressed a possible argument from my critics, stating that “detractors of what might be taken to be a proposal for a final dismissal of a pristine and much denigrated ‘Italian philosophy’ would be appalled…”. It was indeed my proposal that supporters of a pristine “Italian philosophy” might want to discard, for the simple reason that it advocates a global philosophical conversation regardless of national, or nationalistic, boundaries. My point there was that there is no such a thing as “a pristine and much denigrated ‘Italian philosophy’.”

  The scholarly community is sensitive and receptive to ideas and “claims” made by Italian philosophers, so Coliva contends, “no matter how much of an Italian pedigree these claims may have.” I am wondering where in the paper am I arguing the opposite, supporting ethnic identity as a marker of notable philosophical wisdom. Coliva hopes “that Italian philosophers—that is philosophers working in Italy—would have that kind of recognition simply because of the interest and strength of their ideas.” But this is less a contention than a quick review of my argument. She praises my recommendation (in her words) “to found research centers where people work side by side and can thus more easily have the opportunity to make their ideas known in international forums.” But then she adds “if, however, the aim of those centers were to develop something like an ‘Italian’ school, I would, for the reasons just stated, feel very distant from it.” As would I, for the kind of ethnocentrism targeted by Coliva is precisely the opposite of my case in favour of the further globalization of national philosophical cultures.

  At the end Coliva reiterates that “the idea that there should be something distinctively Italian, other than the fact of being produced by people working in this country, for our philosophy to be original, seems to me a nationalistic left-over of the past.” I agree, and essentially said as much in my essay:

  the golden age of European plurilinguism is by now over and philosophers should prepare to face the challenge of globalization, and to communicate with their peers from other countries in observance of shared criteria of truthfulness, publicity, and intellectual accountability.

  It is one thing to expect an eponymous Italian philosophy to break into the global forum of philosophical discussions with its own ‘landmark’ perspective; but it is quite another to encourage, more liberally, and less ethnocentrically, “a more sustained participation of Italian scholars in the global forum.”

• 2. Peer-review and “philosophical quality”

  Coliva argues that “given the present sociology of the discipline” scholars have to accept the peer-review. This test, though, is not universally valid, in the sense that a paper could be good even if it fails the test. I argued that “judgments of philosophical excellence, when it comes to ideas and theories that circulate in the philosophical forum boil down to issues of scholarly validity.” In putting my case so bluntly I had in mind some frequent appeals to the authority of the solitary genius, or the minor philosopher wrestling against a contemptuous intellectual establishment. These appeals, to be sure, serve to shun shared criteria of publicity and intellectual accountability. True, peer-review is not universal. However, criteria of scholarly validity are universal. And it is hard to grasp the philosophical worth of ideas outside the (material) bounds of the means and technologies by which ideas were handed over to us. Coliva contends that

  Descartes didn’t send his Meditations to any publisher adopting a policy of peer-review, nor did any of the great mighty dead—at least to the best of my knowledge. All the same, their contribution to philosophy was greater than any present day analytic philosopher could sensibly claim.

  This may be true, but the fact of the matter is that the system of peer-review is not that new. In 1665 Henry Oldenburg introduced the practice of having manuscripts proposed for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society read by external readers.⁶ Before then, scholars, scientists, and literati had their own methods of control and validation of their theories and scholarly pursuits; they were sensitive to such issues as canon-formation and canon-maintenance, and were versed in the normative languages by which they attributed philosophical worth to some texts and not to others.

  I see that my defense of peer-review underplayed the flaws and inconveniences of this perfectible system. I stated that the system is “far from being the panacea for all the evils befalling the philosophical community. Yet,” I added, “I cannot think of a better instrument to begin to reform the state of Italian scholarship and academia.” Peer-review, in other words, is nothing more than a practical tool, in the sense that it has practical, not ontological, advantages. It has costs, but it can help introduce stricter criteria for determining the quality of philosophical work.

  My argument in favor of peer-review has to do with another normative notion, the notion of trust. If I publish a paper that is highly likely to be accepted by a peer-refereed venue in a non-refereed volume, the scholarly community is hardly likely to take notice of it. It is sad but true. I have Akeel Bilgrami’s book Self-Knowledge and Resentment on my desk. Skimming through the bibliography it is clear that all items are either published by top publishers or peer-refereed journals, or collected in volumes by top publishers and edited by recognizably trustworthy scholars. This kind of recognition of authority is, to be sure, a distinctively normative practice. Here the implicit deal is this: if you have something valuable to say, please say it in a peer-refereed venue; this will spare me a lot of time searching endlessly for undiscovered genius. Submit your work to such venues and you will find a sufficiently enlightened readership to appreciate your philosophical endeavors. And I will trust the good work of the editors, who supervised more or less efficiently the reviewing process. Sure, even if your work is inherently excellent, you may not find a sympathetic readership, for your anonymous peers may prefer, in Coliva’s words, “simply written, if not simplistic papers, just because, given the limited amount of time and energy they can devote to refereeing, they make for easier reads.” Unfortunately it is also true that, Coliva dixit, “especially ground-breaking papers can often be less clear and simple to follow than articles which go over a well-known territory and make just minor points.” So what? It is not easy to settle this straight, but I think that there must be a way around, which is, as more experienced practitioners would suggest, to try first, at the beginning of one’s scholarly career, to write with an eye towards the idiosyncrasies and endoxa of each discipline, and show your readers that you can write thoughtful and legible papers. Once you have established a reputation as a good philosopher, you may want to venture into lesser-known territories and experiment new perspectives. It is a bit perverse, I admit, but a moderate degree of perversion is better than the totally perverted system in which one fabricates a judgment of philosophical excellence in order to get one’s pupil a job.

  So the point is, how do we determine quality in Italy? Not by publishing in journals, I am afraid, for, as I stated in my paper, Italian journals “serve nothing but to stage mere exercises in academic counterpoint, or to declare one’s professional allegiance.” The only means that matters in terms of one’s eventual employment in an academic department of philosophy has been so far the “valutazione comparativa,” a very practical exercise in deceit by which academic philosophers have perpetuated the kind of patronage system described in footnote 10 of my paper. My proposal is to ground such evaluations on more solid premises, on a normative platform that may help scholars to discriminate between good and bad philosophies (and philosophers). This is why I stated in my essay that “excellence is, ultimately, a normative concept, involving feed-back and recognition from a community of peers.” What I fail to do is use the term “excellence” in the way suggested by Coliva, that is, as a sort of inherent quality, which may or may not be ascertained by the (fallible) tool of peer-review. But using the rhetoric of an inherently ascertainable excellence against the scholarly validity of a paper has been the classical tactic of academic baronies.

  Coliva, on a different note, finds it “weird that so much prominence be given, the impressive bibliography notwithstanding, either to the opinions of newspaper columnists or to the interviews or articles of Italian philosophers published in national newspapers. For the scholarly status of a discipline isn’t usually fathomed by this kind of evidence.” As to assessing the “scholarly status” of philosophy, I do it always in the “scholarly traditional way” with only one exception, when I cite a newspaper article by Emanuele Severino in footnote 28. In footnote 38 I cite a newspaper article by Vittorio Mathieu on Severino. In the paean of former pupils and devotees, Mathieu’s article is, in my view, the most clever critique of Severino’s philosophical system.

  In my article I cite “the opinions of newspaper columnists” to stress something unique to Italy, namely, the fact that newspapers and other public media are privileged fora for a number of leading philosopher to exercise what I take to be their attitude to denial. This attitude emerges particularly in the relationship that Italian philosophers entertain with their public, a relationship thinly concealed, variously, in tones of haughty elitism, mystic or prophetic rhetoric, obfuscatory prose, or conjured apocalyptic scenarios. This parade of minor vanities has had, and continues to have, remarkable success, judging by the media following many of these philosophers enjoy. Such visibility notwithstanding, they display a basic contempt for democratic dialogue and the principle of intellectual responsibility. With the exception I referred to above, I believe that all of my references to journals and mass media served to demonstrate this attitude, and did not express a scientific judgment on the philosophers (for which, I agree with Coliva, there are appropriate scientific venues).

  I found some of Coliva’s insights useful, and I wish to thank her for giving me the opportunity to reiterate, perhaps more clearly and pertinently, some of the issues I raised in my article on Italian philosophy. Coliva’s comments shall hopefully provide scholars who have taken interest in my critique with an interesting, albeit different, perspective.