"It happened with the great postmodern fashion, which was adopted in its external forms by the culture of this country without having consummated and saturated its entry into modernity." The statement, which marks more distance against certain interpretations of postmodernism than against postmodern thinkers themselves, is by Eugenio Trías and appears in the volume of conversations that Jorge Alemán, a psychoanalyst, and the journalist Sergio Larriera had with him. The talks focus on the relationship of the Barcelona philosopher with psychoanalysis. But the work traces the philosophical motivations of Trías, in line with both his theoretical texts and his biography, embodied in The Tree of Life, a book that collects his vital and intellectual trajectory until he was 33 years old. The publication of these hitherto unpublished texts coincides with the reissue in Spanish and Catalan of La Cataluña Ciudad , a booklet published in 1984 and which today admits a more than current reading, as noted in the foreword by his brother, Miguel Trías.
Philosophers have always been interested in the natural world and the possibility of knowing it, but they have never forgotten "practical" philosophy: ethics and politics. Or, to put it with the expression of Richard Rorty, evoking Hegel, "philosophy consists in capturing one's own time with thought." After all, "the question is not to get humans to live in accordance with nature but to live with others with different notions," adds Rorty. Philosophy would therefore be a thought forged from the reflection made from an almost Marxist recommendation: to think from one's own practice.
Trías was not a Marxist, although more than once he expressed his indignation against those who, believing they were swimming with the current, “treated Marx like a dead dog”, an expression that is a paraphrase of the one Marx himself had used to defend Hegel. Nor was Richard Rorty a Marxist, rather the opposite (if some adjectives can have a clear opposite), of whom two volumes have just arrived in bookstores: a reissue ( Philosophy and future ) and a novelty in the form of an interview: Against the bosses, against the oligarchies . A series of conversations with Derek Nystrom and Kent Puckett in which they talk about philosophy, their situation and trends, as well as politics. The first of the titles cited also includes an interview, made in 1968 when Rorty accepted a position at Stanford, signed by Wolfgang Ullrich and Helmut Mayer, as well as a text entitled Wild Orchids and Trotsky , markedly autobiographical.
Rorty reflects on the “cultural battles” that are being fought in the United States between “postmodernists” who “believe that modern liberal society is plagued with irreparable defects” and who, like himself, believed that there is a possibility of “promoting equality rights and the reduction of suffering ”, because“ in a fully democratic society there would be no unnecessary suffering ”. Postmodernists, he emphatically defended, "are philosophically right, but politically they are ridiculous."
For Rorty, "philosophical reflections on moral issues have not contributed much to the elimination of slavery" and instead "some stories about the life of slaves" have, hence, he attributes a greater social impact to literature. and to journalism than to many philosophical discourses: “Engineers and scientists contribute to improving our material life; poets and novelists encourage us to become kinder and more tolerant (...) they broaden our language ”. This interest in fiction is due to the fact that stories can make visible those injustices that populate the present and that should be helped to eliminate. Instead, many academic intellectuals (“a Foucauldian left”, critical but lacking in proposals), seem more interested in controlling the departments of the faculties than in reaching the government.
Rorty marks distances from Marxism and from Foucault, but also, and with no small fury, from analytical philosophy: "That in Anglo-Saxon countries philosophy is almost exclusively analytical has caused a lot of damage," he maintains. And he assures that analysts behaved in the selection of university professors "in an authoritarian way, like bullies."
That Trías and Rorty liked dialogue as a form of expression is due to very different reasons. The first comes from Plato. Rorty, on the other hand, defends the conversation against what he calls presumed scientific rigor: “I hope that after another century has passed, the distinction between analytical and non-analytic philosophy lacks importance for historians of thought (…) and the model is abandoned. scientist (…) for a conversational model ”.
If Trías insists in his conversation with Alemán and Larriera on the influence of some images from his childhood in the elaboration of his thought, Rorty does the same and narrates the liberal environment (in the sense that the term is given in the United States) lived in home during his childhood and how those radical values remained in force throughout his life and in his work. Values that convinced him that tolerance is the main social virtue and flexibility, the main private virtue. Also that "the important thing about a representative government is that it gives the poor and weak the power of opposition that they can use against the rich and powerful." The role of "democratic institutions: press, university, justice ... that can detect the still undetected forms of cruelty and suffering". The University must, in addition, "train the consciences of the new generations", to be able to operationally confront "the fundamentalists and the unscrupulous demagogues who from time to time manage to get out of their cages and lead the masses into frenzy."
Close to Rorty, but less and less, is an author like Vattimo, who, as Ramoneda says in the prologue to his latest book, Surroundings of Being, reviews his own trajectory. When speaking of Rorty he assures: "Not only a great American thinker, but a very dear friend" to later use a sentence of his: "Take care of freedom and the truth will take care of itself." From there the differences begin. And it is that the issues that interest Vattimo most in the set of texts that are included in the volume are not only hermeneutics, although hermeneutics is at the base of his discourse, but politics. Its claim is to show a hypothetical continuity between the philosophy of Heideggerian roots and the "struggle of the peoples against international capitalism." For this, he maintains, a “philosophy of social transformation based on the affirmation of cultural identity as a weapon in the fight against the capitalist and imperialist order” is vital. The West lives, says Vattimo, times of confusion for those who seek a social transformation. Those projects, if they exist, should look better at Latin America. The transformations "have always been produced thanks to cosmic-historical individuals: Lenin, Mao, Castro, Chávez, Lula", characters who play a central historical role because "even in the case of an electoral victory, the figure of a charismatic leader is decisive ”as if it were the case that“ nihilism demands an Übermensch ”, a Nietzschean expression that has been translated as“ superman ”.
Against thinkers like Vattimo and others stands the work of Francisco Erice ( In defense of reason ). And it is that postmodernity is not only reached through affection (hermeneutic), one can also approach it from criticism. In this case, fierce. It is an honest book, surely destined to receive a lot of battles or, worse still, to be ignored. Francisco Erice writes from the Marxist tradition, assuming reflection on his own practice as the first imposition. The work reviews the trends in current historiography and the concepts and practices that underlie the various currents, focusing first on what he calls “postmodernism”, which encompasses much more than the authors who are recognized as postmodern. It begins with its origins: Nietzsche and Heidegger. Possibly the weakest chapter. The citations that are made of them are, in general, by interposed author and, in addition, critical of both. This is not the case with the rest of philosophers and historians, although the tendency to rely on critical views is maintained throughout the volume. Perhaps this tendency is justified by the conviction expressed from the beginning that postmodernists write in a dense and confused way, perhaps because they seek to hide that they have little to offer.
Erice analyzes Foucault but also some of the inspirers of what has been called “left-wing populism” such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe or Toni Negri, while continuing to settle accounts with Ricoeur, Vattimo and Derrida. The book has as one of its objectives "to question the dead and contradictory road to which some postmodern theories can drag" social movements based on history.
The author's work has been immense: he has traced his philias, and also his phobias, both in thinkers and in currents of current thought, with tenacity and constancy, hence the volume is, after all, a good state of the question about the validity of Marxism and the criticisms of that thought. It would even be said that Erice has grown fond of some of the postmodernists and, after criticism, is able to value their work, especially when they point out what he calls the "blind spots of Marxism."
Those who believe that in Spain cultural controversy is avoided, almost as a rule, have here proof to the contrary. Now it only remains for the other party to recognize themselves and pick up the glove.
What's New List
Against the bosses, against the oligarchies. Conversations with Derek NYstrom and Kent Puckett. Translation by Antonio Löpez. Indomitable Page. Barcelona, 2020. 152 pages. 17 euros.
Philosophy and future. Richard Rorty. Translation by Javier Calvo and Ángela Ackermann. Gedisa. Barcelona 2020. 188 pages. 21.90 euros.
The Catalonia city. Eugenio Trías. Foreword by Miguel Trías. Gutenberg Galaxy. Barcelona, 2020. 136 pages. 15.90 euros.
Border reason and subject of the unconscious. Conversations with Eugenio Trías. Jorge Alemán and Sergio Larriera. Ned edits. Barcelona, 2020. 1888 pages. 14.90 euros.
In defense of reason. Contribution to the critique of postmodernism. Francisco Erice. Editorial Siglo XXI. Madrid. 2020. 584 pages. xxx euros.
Surroundings of being. Gianni Vattimo. Foreword by Josep Ramoneda. Translation by Teresa Oñate. Gutenberg Galaxy. Barcelona 2020. 344 pages. 23.50 euros.