Purlieu

A Philosophical Journal
Being in the University: The Legitimations of Analytic Philosophy or a Philosophical Education? Santiago Zabala ICREA / University of Barcelona
Being is challenged in the university today by the hegemony of analytic philosophy. The teaching of how to measure the quality of philosophical argumentation through formal logic is squeezing out ontological accounts of existential problems from the history of philosophy. An increasing number of departments all over the world are funded and rewarded only as long as they follow the secure path of modern science; in other words, if they adopt a problem-solving approach that assures objective results. In classrooms, the transmission of logical notions prevails over fruitful dialogues with the aim of educating students according to certain metaphysical assertions. While this transmission might be useful for being at the university, it denitely is not useful for Being in the universityan institution where it is possible to question the fundamental concepts of philosophy and also of oneself. Philosophical education does not take place as the problem of Being but rather through the problem of Being; it is through this fundamental problem that students will be demanded to learn or become what they are ethically, aesthetically, or democratically.ut since this process also involves the professor, whose main obligation is to let students learn and who therefore has still far more to learn than they, teaching and research must be harmoniously integrated. A university that does not support philosophical research that leads specically to the publication of productive books is similar to a philosophy department uninterested in student participation and contribution to its courses.

pp. 6 - 19 / 83 Volume 1. Issue 3. (Fall 2011 - Special Edition) Editors: Dennis Erwin, Matt Story purlieujournal.com info@purlieujournal.com p.o. box 2924 denton, texas 76201

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Dr. Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona. He is the author of The Remains of Being (2009), The Hermeneutical Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), coauthor, with Gianni Vattimo, of Hermeneutic Communism (2011), editor of Weakening Philosophy (2007), The Future of Religion (2005), Nihilism and Emancipation (2004), Arts Claim to Truth (2009), and coeditor with Jeff Malpas of Consequences of Hermeneutics (2010). His forthcoming book is Being Shaken co-edited with Michael Marder (2012).

A very healthy thing for philosophy would be to rethink its own historical origins. I think it has been much too unhistorical and has lost a lot of the insights of the past. Fruitful lines of thinking and development have been abandoned partly because of fashion and partly because of the availability of certain simple, reasonably wellunderstood problems where you can do technical work that will succeed and will even be rather classy in a way, and elegant. In a way I think philosophy always has to keep going back to its own sources and try to return to the central problems that every generation somehow rethought and reformulated. ~ Noam Chomsky, Language and Politics (2004)

Being is challenged in the university today by the hegemony of analytic philosophy. The teaching of how to measure the quality of philosophical argumentation through formal logic is squeezing out ontological accounts of existential problems from the history of philosophy. An increasing number of departments all

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over the world are funded and rewarded only as long as they follow the secure path of modern science; in other words, if they adopt a problem-solving approach that assures objective results. In classrooms, the transmission of logical notions prevails over fruitful dialogues with the aim of educating students according to certain metaphysical assertions. While this transmission might be useful for being at the university, it definitely is not useful for Being in the universityan institution where it is possible to question the fundamental concepts of philosophy and also of oneself. If, as Hans-Georg Gadamer explained, we understand only when we understand differently, then much more than the transmission of information happens during a lecture; there is also the possibility to disclose to students (and professors) their interpretations, differences, or even existence. Philosophy does not stand together with other disciplines, such as medicine or architecture, in legitimizing practices; rather, its practice is questions whose answers have never been legitimized or settled. Answers to the question of Being can only come from devotion to thought. Unlike economics or chemistry students, who are often motivated by the jobs their discipline guarantees, philosophy students are primarily motivated by the questions the discipline of philosophy will invite them to confront.1 Noam Chomskys critique in this papers epigraph is clearly directed against analytic philosophys ahistorical and technical method; that is, its subordination to science when philosophy is a theoretically selfsufficient discipline. Philosophy is not wisdom but rather love of wisdom, where truth is sought and questioned instead of analyzed and applied. Using the ontological difference to individuate the relationship between philosophy and the university might seem misleading at first, considering ontology is itself a branch of philosophy, but it is the necessary point of departure for those who consider philosophys ongoing subordination to science a misfortune. Such subordination is particularly evident in the prevailing role that analytic philosophers have in most U.S. departments and some European universities. Their alliance with the methods of science has compromised philosophys ontological nature, which distinguished it from all the other disciplines throughout history. The goal of this brief essay is to point out why Being in the university ought to be the main concern of a philosophical education now that analytic philosophy has subordinated philosophy to scientific, corporate methods of legitimation. This

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subordination has reduced students to simple consumers of the information transmitted by the professor, has confined the role of professors to demonstrating the legitimacy of their competence through articles published in ranked journals, and has allowed new disciplines such as Business Ethics and Biomedical Ontology to become part of the mandatory academic program. While these features vary across departments and nations, as a rule they have ontologically changed the relations between the professor and student, the professor and his research, and philosophy and other disciplines. But where do the origins of philosophys subordination to science lie, and why has analytic philosophy managed to prevail in departments and academic programs across the globe? For most analytic philosophers, exploring the origin of their position is useless because, as a historical enterprise, it would not benefit their professional development, which requires results, solutions, and verifiable applications. This explains why the few responsible analytic philosophers who ventured into the history of their position have not achieved much recognition among their colleagues. Paradigmatic examples include Ernst Tugendhat, who in 1976 published Traditional and Analytical Philosophy (which reconstructed the history of proposing semantic solutions to the ontological question of Being),2 and Richard Rorty, who three years later released Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (in order to indicate the limitations of the semantic solutions his colleagues followed so consistently). While Rorty admired Tugendhats theoretical operation, particularly his use of Martin Heideggers philosophy, he went further than his German colleague and explained how the subordination of philosophy to science that I mention above is rooted is the essence of metaphysics, that is, in the obsession with revealing the truthful context of the subject matter. Following the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, and Heidegger, Rorty suggested that this truthful context is simply the determination of Being as presence, that is, descriptions of the present state of affairs that automatically privilege temporal, spatial, and unified presentness over their opposites: insofar as the pure relationship of the I-think-unity (basically a tautology) becomes the unconditioned relationship, the present that is present to itself becomes the measure for all beingness.3 Although these descriptions vary among the different branches of

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philosophy (aesthetics, ethics, and logic) most philosophers (at least until Friedrich Nietzsches, Heideggers, and Jacques Derridas deconstructions of metaphysics) considered Being as a motionless, nonhistorical, and arithmetic object that operated just like the European sciences, which Edmund Husserl declared in crisis in 1936.4 In sum, philosophyespecially since the Enlightenment, when the empirical sciences were given priority because of their total organization of all beings within a predictable structure of causes and effectsbecame a scientific enterprise and left aside the wider realms from which philosophic problems arise. During the past century, prominent analytic philosophers such as Gottlob Frege, Alfred Tarski, George E. Moore, Rudolf Carnap, and Wilfred V. O. Quine not only found that philosophy of science is philosophy enough5 and that it should be submitted to the secure path of science6 but also described how it could better serve by becoming a set of regional ontologies. These ontologies hold that the relation between subjects and beings is the only relation worthy of philosophical insight and leave aside the meaning of Being, that is, the ontological priority of understanding Being. This is why today there is a parallel between these regional ontologies and the sciences in their ongoing compartmentalization or specialization.7 Analytic philosophy has pursued these regional ontologies to extreme conclusions: first through Husserls early phenomenological project8 and most recently through the work of John Searle, for whom the conservation of the Western Rationalistic Tradition (limited to the standards of objectivity, truth, and rationality) constitutes the essential presuppositions of any sane philosophy.9 But what does such sanity refer to? Again, to the Western rationalistic tradition, which he circumscribes to the followers of Russell, Wittgenstein and Frege.10 Searle, against Tugendhat or Rorty, has not bothered to venture into the metaphysical origins of his own position because the task of the philosopher is to get the problem into a precise enough form, to state the problem carefully enough, so that it admits of a scientific resolution.11 As the completion of realism, analytic philosophy not only legitimizes scientific enterprises but also delegitimizes any different philosophical positions that do not submit to science. This is evident in Searles debate with the (continental)12 philosopher Derrida.13 In this debate, the American philosopher and his analytic followers acted as scientists instead of philosophers by considering the French

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masters assertions either false or trivial without engaging in a dialogic exchange.14 Against Derridas iterability argument,15 Searle saw not only an incomprehension of John Austins type/token distinction, but most of all a loss of control implied by the French philosophers arguments. The possibility that we could lose control of the meaning of the utterance implies for Searle that the whole system of distinctions, between sentence meaning and speaker meaning for example, is undermined or overthrown.16 But Derrida, as a other philosopher open to questioning the ontological foundation of his own arguments, pointed out that reality does not take place simply between sentence meaning and speaker meaning because iterability alters;17 that is, when texts are inserted into different contexts they will produce new meanings that are different from the ones we were accustomed to. This implies that every text, sign, or word is not possible without what makes its repetitions possible; its constituents are never simply or really fully present to themselves; they are often missing. Derrida named this infinite loss of constituents dissemination in order to indicate how communication, contrary to analytic philosophy, is never a unified realm because its horizons constantly flee the non-wholly-present elements of its constituents. Such questions or suggestions are unacceptable to analytic philosophers who have become self-declared advocates of communication against the slightest difficulty, the slightest complication, the slightest transformation of the rules.18 Analytic philosophers have used the objections of Derrida (and other continental philosophers, as the Sokal affair demonstrated)19 to take over philosophy departments in the name of truth, clarity, and objectivity. In this way they are not only serving science but also legitimating it in the name of philosophy. If prominent philosophers such as Jrgen Habermas, Gianni Vattimo, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, and Slavoj iek are not welcome in analytic departments, it isnt because they are less professional than Pascal Engel, Donald Davidson, Peter Strawson, Michael Dummett, or Daniel Dennett, but rather because they are less inclined to circumscribe philosophy to science. In sum, the reason for analytic philosophers success in dominating departments must be sought it their legitimation of scientific enterprises that are bound to governments, which in part also depend on such enterprises.20 After all, government funding agencies prefer objective results that can impose political systems and control alterations rather than possibilities for theoretical, ethical, or linguistic emancipations. As we can see, analytic philosophys imperialistic

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approach shows an interest in establishing a descriptive, obedient, and universal civilization where no theoretical work, no literary work, no philosophical work, can receive worldwide legitimation without crossing the [United] States, without being first legitimized in the States.21 If we agree, as Derrida pointed out, that linguistic hegemony cannot be dissociated from the hegemony of a type of philosophy,22 it shouldnt be a surprise that analytic philosophy has predominantly developed in the United States, where sciences latest developments occur and where philosophy has almost disappeared from the public debates. As Michael Marder recently pointed out in Telos, philosophy has become a discipline in crisis, a discipline literally split, in an exceptionally asymmetrical fashion, between two competing strands that go under the names analytic and Continental.23 This split has been particularly useful for analytic philosophers to unify their goals and dismiss as nonphilosophical all those working on the fundamental questions that have troubled philosophers for millennia: the meaning of life after death, the value of democracy, or the ethical consequence of science, all of which request deep historical research and ontological perspectives. Although Rorty proposed other terms to individuate the distinction (such as analytic philosophy and conversational philosophy, systematic philosophy and edifying discourse, ahistoricist and historicist philosophers), I believe we should start simply distinguishing between analytic philosophy and philosophy. The main difference of philosophy (that is, continental philosophy) from analytic philosophy is not its emphasis on the history of the discipline and the classical ontological questions that tormented Plato, Descartes, and other classic thinkers, but its reluctance to submit to science. Im not suggesting that those concerned with formal logics should be fired from philosophy departments, or that no one should study philosophical problems raised by science, but rather that the disciplines ontological status, which is what distinguishes it from all the other disciplines, remains its fundamental approach. There is nothing more disturbing for a genuine philosophical education than that undergraduate students are trained in problem-solving approaches, drilled in formal and symbolic logic, and, frequently, not given a chance to explore the history of philosophy in depth.24 All supporters of continental philosophy, Marder continues, are being relegated to the margins of the profession, whose unofficial rankings of

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programs in philosophy deliberately leave out those departments that boast particular strengths in the already marginalized fields of study.25 Marginalizing these classical questions in favor of a scientific training in problem-solving approaches in formal and symbolic logic not only reduces students interest in philosophy but also allows the value of the discipline to be determined by universities instead of by the philosophers who teach in them. Strong promoters of analytic philosophy, such as Brian Leiter, confirm how in the U.S., all the Ivy League universities [Harvard, Yale, Princeton], all the leading state research universities, all the University of California campuses, most of the top liberal arts colleges, most of the flagship campuses of the second-tier state research universities boast philosophy departments that overwhelmingly self-identify as analytic.26 Following this corporate ranking approach, students interested in German idealism, Donald Davidson, or pragmatism should not study with a specialist like Terry Pinkard, Jeff Malpas, or Richard Bernstein because they dont teach in these top-ranked universities.27 How can students become disciples of philosophers (as Aristotle was of Plato, Thomas Aquinas of Albertus Magnus, Kant of Martin Knutzen, Hannah Arendt of Heidegger, or Robert Brandom of Richard Rorty) if the relation is limited by university ranking? In sum, among the most alarming consequences of analytic philosophys instructive method is the transformation of the student into a simple consumer of information transmitted by a ranked university. If philosophy is submitted to sciences established methods, where traditional questions and authors are dismissed, students have to learn to simply accept and apply these same paradigms. Instead of becoming autonomous disciples (Beings) who confront fundamental problems from the history of philosophy, they turn into controllable students (beings) who follow the indications dictated by legitimized academics. The same problem affects the professors, who, instead of being asked to engage in research to publish books (as most philosophers have done throughout the history of philosophy), are now requested to expose their results in articles (similar to scientists).28 While it makes sense for scientists to publish their research in journals given the space required to expose the results, philosophers research constitutes their only result; much more space than allowed to an article is needed to elucidate, for example, the Hegelian origins of Stanley Cavells aesthetic investigations. As far as new disciplines as biomedical ontology or business ethics are concerned, the problem is not whether they are added to the

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philosophy program but whether they are given the same priority as History of Greek Philosophy or Introduction to Sartre. The relation that is established between the student and teacher, the academic research obligations, and the disciplines are disenchanting philosophys genuine concern for wisdom into an imposition of intelligence. But what are the hopes for redirecting academic programs into philosophys historical origins in order to propose new and fruitful lines of thinking? While it is obvious there should not be a philosophy department that does not systematically teach every epoch of the history of philosophy so that students can choose to specialize in a particular theme, classic, or issue that she finds interesting, it is less clear what the purpose of such program should be. Whom can a philosophy department trainstudents, disciples, or geniuses? The answer to this question again depends on whether we decide beforehand to submit philosophy to science. According to Leiter, geniuses such as Nietzsche, one may hope, will find its way in the world without the benefit of rankings. But for those who want to pursue a scholarly career in philosophy, one cannot do better than to pursue training in analytic philosophyeven if one plans to work, in the end, on Hegel or Marx or Nietzsche.29 As we can see, Leiter, like an ecclesiastical fundamentalist who submits to a clerics interpretation of sacred texts, is convinced that only analytic philosophy can correctly read these classics. It is probably this legitimized culture that led a student to tell Gadamer, when he was teaching at Boston College, Oh, Professor Gadamer, I see that you are teaching Plato this semester! What a pity, because I have already done Plato!30 Against these legitimations that impede students pursuit of questions previously studied, philosophy must educate them to become who they are because of the kind of Being which is constituted by the existentiale of projection, Dasein is constantly more than it factually is, supposing that one might want to make an inventory of it as something objectively present and list the contents of its Being, and supposing that one were able to do so. But Dasein is never more than it factically is, for to its facticity its potentiality-for-Being belongs essentially. Yet as Beingpossible, moreover, Dasein is never anything less; that is to say, it is existentially that which, in its potentiality-for-Being, it is not yet. Only because the Being of the there receives

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its Constitution through understanding and through the character of understanding as projection, only because it is what it becomes (or alternatively, does not become), can it say to itself Become what you are, and say this with understanding.31 Being in the university today must educate students to become who they are, that is, to fulfill as much as possible the projections that constitute their own Being. This is probably why Heidegger, in the introduction to his lecture course of 1928, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, points out to the students that having devoted your current Dasein to academic studies is a form of existence in the university.32 But if students, through the fundamental questions that constitute the history of philosophy, must be educated to develop their initial devotion to thought, it is not simply to keep the discipline alive but because it is a living discipline. This is why dialogue is so important in a lecture.33 For the relation between the teacher and student to be genuine there should never be a place in it for the authority of the know-it-all or the authoritative sway of the official.34 Being in the university is only living, in the moment of self-understanding, and that means in ones own free, productive grasp of the task harbored in philosophy.35 After all, Kant himself believed a student would not learn philosophy [in the university, but] learn to philosophize.36 As Iain Thomson suggested, we should focus on an ontological education not simply for the sake of understanding what is, but of investigating the ontological presuppositions implicitly guiding all the various fields of knowledge.37 Thus, if philosophical disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, or politics disclose the essence of morality, beauty, or democracy it is not because they are more scientific or objective or in possession of better analytic, logical, or linguistic tools, but rather because their questions are posed from the essential position of the existence (Dasein) that questions them. While for analytic philosophys legitimations, this position (Dasein) is simply something that must be fulfilled with correct information; for philosophical education it must be encouraged to disclose itself. If teaching becomes more difficult than learning it is not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready, but rather because the

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real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by learning we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information. The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than theyhe has to learn to let them learn. The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than his apprentices. The teacher is far less assured of his ground than those who learn are of theirs.38 Philosophical education does not take place as the problem of Being but rather through the problem of Being; it is through this fundamental problem that students will be demanded to learn or become what they are ethically, aesthetically, or democratically. This is also the meaning of Derridas dissemination argument against Searle: texts inserted in different contexts will produce new meanings that are different from the ones we were accustomed to: different, not truer, in other words, disclosing new horizons for productive dialogues between students and professors. It is through these dialogues that academic programs may focus on Being in the university, that is, on educating students to become what they are instead of what they are supposed to be. But since this process also involves the professor, whose main obligation is to let students learn and who therefore has still far more to learn than they, teaching and research must be harmoniously integrated. A university that does not support philosophical research that leads specifically to the publication of productive books is similar to a philosophy department uninterested in student participation and contribution to its courses. We can overcome the analytic philosophy culture of legitimation as long as we allow both students and professors become who they are in lectures and through their publications. Perhaps the efforts of (continental) philosophy against the culture of legitimation might also help other disciplines dissatisfied with the recent Bologna Process (for the unification of European higher education, which basically follows the U.S. educational system), which evaluates students on the basis of credits that measures hours studied. The subordination of higher education to social control and regulation is a clear example, as Miquel Caminal said, of directing teaching at whatever is more profitable in market terms, more attractive to business, both for the person buying the knowledge and for the person selling. In universities in the liberal

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democracies, knowledge is imposed through the capacity to purchase it.39 In this context, such analytic disciplines as biomedical ontology or business ethics will not only become profitable in market terms but also measure the amount of hours a student studied. Philosophy students and professors must unite in the ontological education this discipline provides through the direct reading of classic texts in order to overcome any analytic, scientific, or political subordination.

To comment or respond to Santiago Zabalas essay, please send an email to : editors@purlieujournal.com Responses will be sent to the author, with some published online and/or in the Spring 2012 issue of Purlieu.

Notes
1. As Heidegger explained in his course of 1928 (now available as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic): You do not get to philosophy by reading many and multifarious philosophical books, nor by torturing yourself with solving the riddles of the universe, but solely and surely by not evading what is essential in what you encounter in your current Dasein devoted to academic studies. Nonevasion is crucial, since philosophy remains latent in every human existence and need not be first added to it from somewhere else (M. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. M. Heim [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984], 18. 2. Most of the favorable reviews of Tugendhats books have been written by continental philosophers such as Richard Rorty, Robert Pippin, and Manfred Frank while the few hostile ones came from Barry Smith, Kevin Mulligan, and other defenders of logical analysis. For a reconstruction of Tugendhats philosophy and its reception, see S. Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 3. M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (1989), trans. P. Emad and K. Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 140. 4. E. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, (1936/1954), trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970). 5. W. V. O. Quine, Mr. Strawson on Logical Theory (1953), in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 151. 6. R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 384.

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Santiago Zabala | Being in the University 7. A confirmation of this compartmentalization can be found in S. Psillos and M. Curd, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science (London: Routledge, 2008), where the editors state in the introduction how the philosophies of the individual sciences have acquired an unprecedented maturity and independence over the past few decades (ix). 8. We are here referring to the Munich phenomenology group, that is, A. Reinach, J. Daubert, A. Pfnder, and M. Geiger. For a complete account of all the phenomenological movements, see E. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction (Berlin: Springer, 2007). 9. J. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), iii. 10. Searle, Conversations with John Searle, ed. G. Faigenbaum (Montevideo: Libros En Red, 2001), 169. 11. J. Searle, Freedom and Neurobiology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 32. 12. While the difference between analytic and continental philosophers is evident, I will explain later why Im reluctant to use the term continental and prefer simply philosophy. 13. The debate comprises these texts: J. Derrida, Signature, Event, Context (1971), in Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1982), 320; J. Searle, Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, Glyph 1 (1977): 198-208; J. Derrida, Limited Inc., supplement to Glyph 2 (1977): 162-254, reprint, in J. Derrida, Limited Inc., ed. G. Graff (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 29-110. For a complete history of the development and essence of the debate, see Raoul Moati, Derrida/Searle: Dconstruction et langage ordinaire (Paris: PUF, 2009); J. Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (1982; Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 110-34; and Ian Maclean, Un dialogue de sourds? Some Implications of the Austin-Searle-Derrida Debate (1985), in Jacques Derrida: Critical Thought, ed. I. Maclachlan (London: Ashgate, 2004), 49-66. 14. In 1992, a group of analytic philosophers lead by a known supporter of Searle, Barry Smith, attempted (without success) to convince Cambridge University to avoid honoring Derrida. In their letter, published by the Times, Smith and the others declared that the French masters assertions are either false or trivial and that his originality does not lend credence to the idea that he is a suitable candidate for an honorary degree (B. Smith et al., Derrida Degree: A Question of Honour, Times [London], May 9, 1992). 15. Iterability is the capacity of signs, texts, or words to be repeated in new situations, hence, grafted onto new contexts. A context is never saturated because, as Derrida argued, every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring (Derrida, Signature, Event, Context, 320). As we can see, iterability alters; that is, when texts are inserted into new contexts they continually produce new meanings that are both different from and similar to previous understandings.

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Purlieu: A Philosophical Journal 16. Searle, Conversations with John Searle, 166. 17. Derrida, Limited Inc., 62. 18. Derrida, Limited Inc., 158.

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19. The Sokal affair (Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science, New York: Picador, 1999) is probably a better example than the Searle/Derrida debate because it highlighted the deep separation between philosophy and science, which, for the benefit of both, should be kept separated. 20. For a development of this point see the first chapter of G. Vattimo and S. Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, in press). 21. J. Derrida, Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, ed. P. Pericles Trifonas (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 29. This imperialistic nature of analytic philosophy was also stated by Searle in an interview with the Harvard Journal of Philosophy, where he expressed his desire to write a book on the ontology of civilization (Z. Sachs-Arellano, Interview with Searle, Harvard Review of Philosophy 12 [2004]: 132-33). 22. Derrida, Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, 29. 23. M. Marder, A Discipline in Crisis: The View from Within, available in http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=407. It must be mentioned that these philosophical divisions interact with cultural and political disputes especially in relation to the major continental philosopher: Heidegger. Many analytic philosophers still dismiss continental philosophers simply because of the collaboration of the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century with National Socialism (for eleven months as the president of the University of Freiburg before quitting because the Nazis would not allow books by Jews in the library). Analytic philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and others who left Germany after the rise of Hitler superimposed democratic disputes on philosophical debates, discrediting all of Heidegger works. While Heidegger made a mistake for eleven months of his life, his work (and that of all his disciples) should still be studied as carefully as that of David Hume, who considered negroes naturally inferior to whites, or Frege, who openly declared his anti-Semitism, something Heidegger never did. 24. M. Marder, A Discipline in Crisis: The View from Within. 25. M. Marder, A Discipline in Crisis: The View from Within. 26. B. Leiter, Analytic and Continental http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp. Philosophy, available in

27. Professor Pinkard teaches at Georgetown University (which although is ranked in Leiter list, its not in the top 30 University according to his measures); professor Malpas teaches at Tasmania University; and Professor Bernstein teaches at the New School University in New York. 28. It should be pointed out how T. Adorno, who was very critical of the scientific consequences of the enlightenment, after the second world war become very alarmed that music had 13

Santiago Zabala | Being in the University to be cut in order to fit the temporal limits of industrial LP. See T. Adorno, Essays on Music, edited by R. Leppert (Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University of California Press, 2002). It seems today we are also force to cut books into articles to fit the requirements of the ranked journal industry. 29. B. Leiter, Analytic and Continental Philosophy. 30. D. Misgeld and G. Nicholson, eds., H-G. Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, trans. L. Schmidt and M. Reuss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 5. 31. M. Heidegger, Being and Time (1927), trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and Collins Publishers, 1962, 2008): 185-186 [146]. I have modified the translation. 32. M. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 7-8. I have modified the translation. 33. I have specified the meaning of dialogue in Being Is Conversation, in Consequences of Hermeneutics, ed. J. Malpas and S. Zabala (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 161-176. 34. Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? (1954), trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harpers & Row, 1968), 15-16. 35. M. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 8. 36. I. Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770, ed. David Walford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 292. 37. I. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 101. Dermot Moran also makes interesting points on philosophical education today: The Analytic and Continental Divide: Teaching Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism, in Teaching Philosophy on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, ed. D. Evans and I. Kuuradi (Ankara: International Federation of Philosophical Societies, 1998), 119-154. 38. M. Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking?, 15. 39. Miquel Caminal, The University Under Debate, Metropolis (AutumnWinter 20082009). Also available on http://www.barcelonametropolis.cat/en/page.asp?id=23&ui=138&prevNode=33&tagId =101. As I. Thompson points out, the tasks of philosophy and the university in general have not always been the same: Recall that on the medieval model of the university, the task of higher education was to transmit a relatively fixed body of knowledge. The French preserved something of this view; universities taught the supposedly established doctrines, while research took place outside the university in non-teaching academies. The French model was appropriated by the German universities which preceded Kant, in which the statesponsored higher faculties of law, medicine, and theology were separated from the more independent lower faculty of philosophy. Kant personally experienced The Conflict of the Faculties of philosophy and theology (after publishing Religion within the

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Purlieu: A Philosophical Journal

Fall 2011 | SPECIAL EDITION

Limits of Reason Alone), and his subsequent argument that it is in the best long-term interests of the state for the philosophy faculty to be conceived as free and subject only to laws given by reason helped inspire Fichtes philosophical elaboration of a German alternative to the French model. At the heart of Fichtes idea for the new University of Berlin, which Humboldt institutionalized in 1809, was the scientific view of research as a dynamic, open-ended endeavour, research and teaching would now be combined into a single institution of higher learning, with philosophy at the centre of a new proliferation of academic pursuits (I. Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education, 100). As this passage demonstrates, it is important to allow philosophers to become involved in the political decisions that will determine the disciplines role and place within the university because of the different philosophical cultures that constitute each epoch.

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