Marcos Breuer.
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Gavagai: Could you tell us a bit about your academic career?
Marcos Breuer: I’m Argentinian and I studied philosophy at the University of Córdoba. We have “philosophy” as a single discipline; we don’t combine many subjects to get the degree, such as pedagogy, history and so on. We have just philosophy in its different subjects: history of philosophy, the different branches like ethics, logics, and then we have the specialization. At that time, we didn’t have the “bachelor-plus-master” system; it was one single degree, which encompassed four and a half years plus the final work. Afterwards, I did my PhD in Germany.
G: What branch of philosophy did you end up choosing?
MB: The first three years you have “general subjects”, like history of philosophy and so on; then you have to specialize. We have three main branches of specialization: logic and epistemology, practical philosophy, and metaphysics. I chose practical philosophy. At that time, I was very interested in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences; I was very excited about the idea of developing a general theory explaining the evolution of humankind.
It’s an idea that came with the grounding fathers of sociology, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, the idea that you can develop a whole system of thought, combining philosophical, anthropological, sociological and economic aspects into a model explaining the evolution of societies. That was my first and living interest at that time, and then I wrote my dissertation on the theory of Norbert Elias. He’s still not very popular in the social sciences, but he tried to develop a synthesis theory, drawing on Weber and Durkheim.
G: How would you classify this approach as far as the analytic / continental philosophy conflict is concerned?
MB: I experienced the conflict between analytic and continental philosophy – or Anglo-American and continental philosophy – from the beginning, because the philosophy school at the university of Córdoba changed with the recovery of the democracy in 1983. So both traditions coexisted in one department with different orientations. You went, for example, to one subject – let’s say the history of ancient philosophy – and the professor belonged to a continental, Heideggerian orientation. And then you had a break, you changed the room, had logic and the professor was a Carnapian.
So you had this rather “schizophrenic” mosaic with different orientations inside one single building. I was rather inclined to choose the analytic approach, even when I specialized in practical philosophy. We can speak a long time about the meaning of these words – analytic, continental – but in the sense of seeking clear concepts, offering arguments, trying to reach a conclusion out of the discussion – which is perhaps the key of the analytic approach –, well, I was always inclined to that type of philosophizing and not to the “poetry”, I mean, writing well but, in the end, not coming to a conclusion.
G: What is interesting is that even though you “chose” analytic philosophy, you are also very interested in literature and the in humanities in general.
MB: Exactly! But in a way, I think I have the same approach even when I write fiction. The first thing is to have a clear structure. By clear structure I mean: you have some question, or some problem, or some intuitions, and you want to solve that situation; you want to follow a path leading to your goal. I remember a piece of advice from a professor at that time at the university, he told us, “You guys have to distinguish two things – it’s like when you want to do a barbecue! First you need the grill. When you have a good grill then you can add as much meat or vegetables as you want, but the most important thing is to have the grill, isn’t it?” I still think that the best thing to do before you start writing – either fiction or non-fiction – is to have clear concepts and a clear idea of what you want to say. And then you can add metaphors, phrases, quotations… but that’s like the meat coming on a firm structure.
G: Let’s talk about your new book on euthanasia.
MB: The coming book can be read as the defense of a right: the right to choose your own way of dying. I always explain to my friends that I am not necessarily for euthanasia (voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide). I am in favor of the legalization of this practice. This is a big difference because everyone has to choose his or her life project and dying project. For that matter, I think it’s very important that we introduce a right to have this possibility of choosing.
Most of the countries in Latin America, with the exception of Colombia, prohibit the practice of voluntary euthanasia. But you have there, like in Europe, an aging population. The middle and upper classes have access to the best technological equipment in private hospitals, so we are extending the duration of our lives but sometimes to the point that you start asking about the quality of that last years, or months, or weeks. So the question of euthanasia is also a very significant one in Latin America, although we have also other problems which play a minor role in the European discussion – like extreme poverty, marginality, underdevelopment and so on.
G: This seems to be connected with a general social issue concerning inequality. You wrote a review for Piketty’s new book “Capital”, which was a commercial success, especially in Europe. How would you comment on Piketty’s take on the issue?
MB: One of the merits of Piketty is focusing the attention on the global level. So, we have questions of justice inside each country – in Argentina, in Greece, even in rich countries like Germany and England – but we also have to concentrate on the inequality at the global level because the differences at the global level are even more significant than at the national level. The other thing is that if we don’t have a global strategy to tackle these issues, if we don’t develop a global policy to address these questions, we won’t be able to find a lasting solution. Because right now, like it or not , we live in a globalized world, so information can travel around the world, capitals can travel around the world. The only way to establishing a fair set of rules is acting globally. If not, capital will move from a more regulated country to a more open one. Also, the amount of empirical information that Piketty gathered is amazing. It is not just repeating something that everyone knows – we have very rich and very poor classes and in the last 30 or 40 years this gap has increased ; he clearly shows us how this process has been taking shape.
G: Since your primary interest is in the relation between philosophy and the social sciences, what do you think about the project of Analytical Marxism?
MB: I think that we have to reread and to rethink Marx. Now, that doesn’t mean necessarily that we have to consider Marx’s conception as a sort of Bible and keep analyzing it as an exegete. That’s not of course the project of Analytic Marxism. The key thing is that we have to pay attention to the conflict dimension underlying every social process. When we study social processes we don’t have to keep the naivety of the structural functional analysis or the naivety of some individualistic, atomistic approaches, when we are conceptualizing and explaining social phenomena and social processes. The lesson we have to remember from Marx is that there is a dialectic, that conflict triggers social processes. Now, I am more inclined to think that we have to enrich Marx’s approach with some of the new theoretical and empirical tools developed in the last century, like for example those of Norbert Elias. So, conflict and competition are always at the roots of social transformations, but the economic conflicts only to some extent. I would be more careful about trying to reduce the whole spectrum of social and cultural phenomena to economic conflicts – economicism was one of the limitations of Marxism.
G: Another project that seems to lie between philosophy and science, is that of experimental philosophy – you also wrote a quite critical review about Joshua Alexander’s book.
MB: For me the interesting thing about experimental philosophy – this very new branch in philosophy – is that we often speak too quickly about people’s intuitions and philosopher’s intuitions. We attribute to people and to philosophers different things and one of the key points of experimental philosophy is to show that our beliefs about other people’s beliefs are not always correct. So, we may develop an experimental approach to the study of our intuitions. That’s very important because when you start arguing in philosophy, and especially in analytic philosophy, you generally start by saying “people think that…”, “philosophers think that…” and that’s just taken for granted, but it’s not proven. The big issue of empirical philosophy is showing if those attributions are right or not; to what extent can we say, for example, that “people generally think that we have a free will”? In a nutshell, we have to be very careful about our belief attributions.
I’m afraid that experimental philosophy is a too ambitious program. Trying to figure out which the patterns are that govern the constitution of our beliefs and intuitions, is an interesting question. But I don’t think that experimental philosophy can offer us a way of dealing correctly and answering the “big questions of philosophy” such as: are we “free beings” independently of our intuitions?”, “is there an external world outside our perceptual schemes, no matter what our gut feelings make us believe?”, and so on.
G: Sometimes we perceive analytic philosophy as something scientific, rigid; as something “boring”. Is there a point after which philosophy has to be informed about science, whether that is, for example, neuroscience or cognitive science?
MB: I am absolutely in favor of a cooperation of philosophy and the different sciences – natural and social sciences. But I think that we have to keep clear in mind which the contribution of philosophy is in that project, and which the contribution of the sciences is. Philosophy can help a lot to clarify some concepts, to show if a way of reasoning is correct or not, if the conclusion reached is valid or not. Many philosophical problems become more interesting when you keep an eye on what’s happening in the related sciences. There are many interesting questions raised by scientific findings and that’s the point where philosophy and the sciences are called to cooperate.
Paraphrasing Kant, we can say that “science without philosophy is blind and philosophy without science, empty”. In a sense we need both aspects to develop an interesting subject. Of course, analytic philosophy shouldn’t be necessarily boring or dry. It depends, in some cases, on the author, if she writes in a more interesting or “funny” way or not.
G: You have organized courses in philosophy, as well as in literature, and you also have academic experience. Is non-academic philosophy more creative than academic philosophy?
MB: I get your point. One of the big problems that we face is that of the over-specialization of philosophy. And when you think of philosophy as something that’s getting boring it’s not because we’re using logical symbols. It’s because one has to concentrate on one single author or on one single theory, and then one spends 20-30 years of one’s professional life working on that. That’s very difficult to avoid because the university is part of a whole social system with an enormous complexity, the system of contemporary knowledge; and when a system becomes very complex the different parts – in order to survive and integrate – have to specialize. So, in a very complex system, the University of the 21st century, different professors, departments, schools, have to specialize. That’s one of the reasons why philosophy becomes “boring”.
On the other side, it gets away from people’s needs and from the desire to offer a comprehensive conception of nature and society. For me, the main hindrance of the university is that, in order to survive in the academic world, you have to specialize on a topic and work on that topic for many years, even if meanwhile you start thinking that the topic is not answering your basic intellectual needs any more. Of course, on the other side, to go outside the university has the risk of trivializing philosophy; it becomes something superficial. There is a general need for philosophy but philosophy can also become a part of the, let’s say, mass consumption and entertainment.
G: How do feel about philosophy public figures – as it’s very common in France for example. Do you think they have something to contribute to the philosophical community, or they’re not even philosophers at all, under your definition?
MB: Well, the thing is not if you’re going to show up on the TV every day or every week or not. It’s not the medium, but the content. The point is if you’re willing to question many things, if you’re going to offer alternatives to a given situation, to a given conflict. The thing is not that you can become too exposed to the media; that’s not the problem. The problem is to be serious about it. It’s always a personal decision but I think that we have, as with many aspects, two extremes. You can still find the philosopher working at the library, isolated from the external world, and some other philosophers who are so eager to be on the media that they don’t go anymore to the library! I think that both things are necessary. Philosophy is essentially reflecting, and for that reflection you need to study and to carefully read what other people have already said. On the other side, I wish many good philosophers, and intellectuals in general, and scientists, would more often take positions to key issues – for example, on global inequality or the introduction of some rights concerning voluntary death and so on. So we need the voices of engaged intellectuals that are doing, at the same time, this more difficult and “monotonous” part of reading, reflecting, criticizing, and that more exiting work of “showing up”.
G: Let’s go back to literature! Is there a clear distinction between philosophy and literature? It doesn’t feel right to classify Plato’s writing style as analytic philosophy, since many of his writings had some sort of literary element. Yet, no one doubts that he was a philosopher!
MB: I get your point. If you see the tradition of philosophy, starting with the Greeks until our days, you can say that many of the great thinkers were also good writers. The tradition of uniting an aesthetic sense of doing philosophy was also a part of philosophy; we don’t have to forget it. You mentioned Plato. Plato was not only a great thinker; he was a great writer at the same time. So, this distinction between philosophy, which has presumably to be something dry, or even abstruse, and literature, which has to be something very poetic and unstructured… is not right. Good philosophers should try to be good writers, why not, and good writers should pay attention to philosophy.
The other thing, which goes perhaps deeper, is that philosophy, or at least analytic philosophy, starts always with a question. You have a problem, an issue. The first thing you want to do is to clarify that question and then you look for an answer, using empirical findings and correct reasoning, up to the point where you come to a conclusion. That’s the essence of analytic philosophy; it’s not anymore something restricted to the analysis of the words we use. On the other side, you have this other dimension of our experience which is not necessarily one of “having a question” and not necessarily of “looking for an answer”, but just expressing our experience of living. For example, many of the Presocratics weren’t analytic philosophers. Socrates for me was the first great analytic philosopher; in the sense that I defined analytic philosophy. But the Presocratics were trying to express in a new language the experience of being, of existence, of moral conflict, of the passing of time, of nature. So you have these two faces of philosophy. Analytic philosophy and continental philosophy are not related to national traditions but to two different goals inside this same family called philosophy. You want to express your experience of existence, moral conflict, time, consciousness, and that’s why you are going to develop this sort of poetic language. You don’t need to argue, you need to express your feelings, your experience. And that’s where perhaps philosophy is so close to literature, to poetry. But on the other side, we are reasoning beings and that means that when we are confronted with questions – and we are all the time confronted with questions – the best thing we can do is to think about ways to answer that question, or ways to solve the problem. And that’s where the analytic tradition, the more rationalistic tradition, enters into play. I think we will always have these two kinds of philosophy because we are human beings and we have these two different needs; the need to express our emotions, feelings and experiences and the need to deal with problems of cognitive, ethical or political kind.
G: How do the audience respond to your seminars? Is there a difference between an “academic” and a “non-academic” audience?
MB: To begin with, I have the impression that the public don’t work with fixed categories – “this” is science, “this” is philosophy, “this” is literature. We are trained through our studies to distinguish clearly between philosophy, theology, the different kinds of sciences and so on. The reaction of people in general is encouraging. Intellectuals tend to isolate and to work inside their clusters, not communicating with people in general People are eager to learn new things, to hear new things, and are more open to many discussions that we think. That’s positive. But the challenge is not to bring philosophy to the level of the public but, on the contrary, to bring the public to the level of the philosophical discussion. The thing is in an accessible way to present some of the questions with which we deal everyday in our intellectual research.
G: Thank you for the interview!
MB: I thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you, I’m very happy about your initiative as students, it’s a great thing to open philosophy to a broader public.
Marcos Breuer: I’m Argentinian and I studied philosophy at the University of Córdoba. We have “philosophy” as a single discipline; we don’t combine many subjects to get the degree, such as pedagogy, history and so on. We have just philosophy in its different subjects: history of philosophy, the different branches like ethics, logics, and then we have the specialization. At that time, we didn’t have the “bachelor-plus-master” system; it was one single degree, which encompassed four and a half years plus the final work. Afterwards, I did my PhD in Germany.
G: What branch of philosophy did you end up choosing?
MB: The first three years you have “general subjects”, like history of philosophy and so on; then you have to specialize. We have three main branches of specialization: logic and epistemology, practical philosophy, and metaphysics. I chose practical philosophy. At that time, I was very interested in the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences; I was very excited about the idea of developing a general theory explaining the evolution of humankind.
It’s an idea that came with the grounding fathers of sociology, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, the idea that you can develop a whole system of thought, combining philosophical, anthropological, sociological and economic aspects into a model explaining the evolution of societies. That was my first and living interest at that time, and then I wrote my dissertation on the theory of Norbert Elias. He’s still not very popular in the social sciences, but he tried to develop a synthesis theory, drawing on Weber and Durkheim.
G: How would you classify this approach as far as the analytic / continental philosophy conflict is concerned?
MB: I experienced the conflict between analytic and continental philosophy – or Anglo-American and continental philosophy – from the beginning, because the philosophy school at the university of Córdoba changed with the recovery of the democracy in 1983. So both traditions coexisted in one department with different orientations. You went, for example, to one subject – let’s say the history of ancient philosophy – and the professor belonged to a continental, Heideggerian orientation. And then you had a break, you changed the room, had logic and the professor was a Carnapian.
So you had this rather “schizophrenic” mosaic with different orientations inside one single building. I was rather inclined to choose the analytic approach, even when I specialized in practical philosophy. We can speak a long time about the meaning of these words – analytic, continental – but in the sense of seeking clear concepts, offering arguments, trying to reach a conclusion out of the discussion – which is perhaps the key of the analytic approach –, well, I was always inclined to that type of philosophizing and not to the “poetry”, I mean, writing well but, in the end, not coming to a conclusion.
G: What is interesting is that even though you “chose” analytic philosophy, you are also very interested in literature and the in humanities in general.
MB: Exactly! But in a way, I think I have the same approach even when I write fiction. The first thing is to have a clear structure. By clear structure I mean: you have some question, or some problem, or some intuitions, and you want to solve that situation; you want to follow a path leading to your goal. I remember a piece of advice from a professor at that time at the university, he told us, “You guys have to distinguish two things – it’s like when you want to do a barbecue! First you need the grill. When you have a good grill then you can add as much meat or vegetables as you want, but the most important thing is to have the grill, isn’t it?” I still think that the best thing to do before you start writing – either fiction or non-fiction – is to have clear concepts and a clear idea of what you want to say. And then you can add metaphors, phrases, quotations… but that’s like the meat coming on a firm structure.
G: Let’s talk about your new book on euthanasia.
MB: The coming book can be read as the defense of a right: the right to choose your own way of dying. I always explain to my friends that I am not necessarily for euthanasia (voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide). I am in favor of the legalization of this practice. This is a big difference because everyone has to choose his or her life project and dying project. For that matter, I think it’s very important that we introduce a right to have this possibility of choosing.
Most of the countries in Latin America, with the exception of Colombia, prohibit the practice of voluntary euthanasia. But you have there, like in Europe, an aging population. The middle and upper classes have access to the best technological equipment in private hospitals, so we are extending the duration of our lives but sometimes to the point that you start asking about the quality of that last years, or months, or weeks. So the question of euthanasia is also a very significant one in Latin America, although we have also other problems which play a minor role in the European discussion – like extreme poverty, marginality, underdevelopment and so on.
G: This seems to be connected with a general social issue concerning inequality. You wrote a review for Piketty’s new book “Capital”, which was a commercial success, especially in Europe. How would you comment on Piketty’s take on the issue?
MB: One of the merits of Piketty is focusing the attention on the global level. So, we have questions of justice inside each country – in Argentina, in Greece, even in rich countries like Germany and England – but we also have to concentrate on the inequality at the global level because the differences at the global level are even more significant than at the national level. The other thing is that if we don’t have a global strategy to tackle these issues, if we don’t develop a global policy to address these questions, we won’t be able to find a lasting solution. Because right now, like it or not , we live in a globalized world, so information can travel around the world, capitals can travel around the world. The only way to establishing a fair set of rules is acting globally. If not, capital will move from a more regulated country to a more open one. Also, the amount of empirical information that Piketty gathered is amazing. It is not just repeating something that everyone knows – we have very rich and very poor classes and in the last 30 or 40 years this gap has increased ; he clearly shows us how this process has been taking shape.
G: Since your primary interest is in the relation between philosophy and the social sciences, what do you think about the project of Analytical Marxism?
MB: I think that we have to reread and to rethink Marx. Now, that doesn’t mean necessarily that we have to consider Marx’s conception as a sort of Bible and keep analyzing it as an exegete. That’s not of course the project of Analytic Marxism. The key thing is that we have to pay attention to the conflict dimension underlying every social process. When we study social processes we don’t have to keep the naivety of the structural functional analysis or the naivety of some individualistic, atomistic approaches, when we are conceptualizing and explaining social phenomena and social processes. The lesson we have to remember from Marx is that there is a dialectic, that conflict triggers social processes. Now, I am more inclined to think that we have to enrich Marx’s approach with some of the new theoretical and empirical tools developed in the last century, like for example those of Norbert Elias. So, conflict and competition are always at the roots of social transformations, but the economic conflicts only to some extent. I would be more careful about trying to reduce the whole spectrum of social and cultural phenomena to economic conflicts – economicism was one of the limitations of Marxism.
G: Another project that seems to lie between philosophy and science, is that of experimental philosophy – you also wrote a quite critical review about Joshua Alexander’s book.
MB: For me the interesting thing about experimental philosophy – this very new branch in philosophy – is that we often speak too quickly about people’s intuitions and philosopher’s intuitions. We attribute to people and to philosophers different things and one of the key points of experimental philosophy is to show that our beliefs about other people’s beliefs are not always correct. So, we may develop an experimental approach to the study of our intuitions. That’s very important because when you start arguing in philosophy, and especially in analytic philosophy, you generally start by saying “people think that…”, “philosophers think that…” and that’s just taken for granted, but it’s not proven. The big issue of empirical philosophy is showing if those attributions are right or not; to what extent can we say, for example, that “people generally think that we have a free will”? In a nutshell, we have to be very careful about our belief attributions.
I’m afraid that experimental philosophy is a too ambitious program. Trying to figure out which the patterns are that govern the constitution of our beliefs and intuitions, is an interesting question. But I don’t think that experimental philosophy can offer us a way of dealing correctly and answering the “big questions of philosophy” such as: are we “free beings” independently of our intuitions?”, “is there an external world outside our perceptual schemes, no matter what our gut feelings make us believe?”, and so on.
G: Sometimes we perceive analytic philosophy as something scientific, rigid; as something “boring”. Is there a point after which philosophy has to be informed about science, whether that is, for example, neuroscience or cognitive science?
MB: I am absolutely in favor of a cooperation of philosophy and the different sciences – natural and social sciences. But I think that we have to keep clear in mind which the contribution of philosophy is in that project, and which the contribution of the sciences is. Philosophy can help a lot to clarify some concepts, to show if a way of reasoning is correct or not, if the conclusion reached is valid or not. Many philosophical problems become more interesting when you keep an eye on what’s happening in the related sciences. There are many interesting questions raised by scientific findings and that’s the point where philosophy and the sciences are called to cooperate.
Paraphrasing Kant, we can say that “science without philosophy is blind and philosophy without science, empty”. In a sense we need both aspects to develop an interesting subject. Of course, analytic philosophy shouldn’t be necessarily boring or dry. It depends, in some cases, on the author, if she writes in a more interesting or “funny” way or not.
G: You have organized courses in philosophy, as well as in literature, and you also have academic experience. Is non-academic philosophy more creative than academic philosophy?
MB: I get your point. One of the big problems that we face is that of the over-specialization of philosophy. And when you think of philosophy as something that’s getting boring it’s not because we’re using logical symbols. It’s because one has to concentrate on one single author or on one single theory, and then one spends 20-30 years of one’s professional life working on that. That’s very difficult to avoid because the university is part of a whole social system with an enormous complexity, the system of contemporary knowledge; and when a system becomes very complex the different parts – in order to survive and integrate – have to specialize. So, in a very complex system, the University of the 21st century, different professors, departments, schools, have to specialize. That’s one of the reasons why philosophy becomes “boring”.
On the other side, it gets away from people’s needs and from the desire to offer a comprehensive conception of nature and society. For me, the main hindrance of the university is that, in order to survive in the academic world, you have to specialize on a topic and work on that topic for many years, even if meanwhile you start thinking that the topic is not answering your basic intellectual needs any more. Of course, on the other side, to go outside the university has the risk of trivializing philosophy; it becomes something superficial. There is a general need for philosophy but philosophy can also become a part of the, let’s say, mass consumption and entertainment.
G: How do feel about philosophy public figures – as it’s very common in France for example. Do you think they have something to contribute to the philosophical community, or they’re not even philosophers at all, under your definition?
MB: Well, the thing is not if you’re going to show up on the TV every day or every week or not. It’s not the medium, but the content. The point is if you’re willing to question many things, if you’re going to offer alternatives to a given situation, to a given conflict. The thing is not that you can become too exposed to the media; that’s not the problem. The problem is to be serious about it. It’s always a personal decision but I think that we have, as with many aspects, two extremes. You can still find the philosopher working at the library, isolated from the external world, and some other philosophers who are so eager to be on the media that they don’t go anymore to the library! I think that both things are necessary. Philosophy is essentially reflecting, and for that reflection you need to study and to carefully read what other people have already said. On the other side, I wish many good philosophers, and intellectuals in general, and scientists, would more often take positions to key issues – for example, on global inequality or the introduction of some rights concerning voluntary death and so on. So we need the voices of engaged intellectuals that are doing, at the same time, this more difficult and “monotonous” part of reading, reflecting, criticizing, and that more exiting work of “showing up”.
G: Let’s go back to literature! Is there a clear distinction between philosophy and literature? It doesn’t feel right to classify Plato’s writing style as analytic philosophy, since many of his writings had some sort of literary element. Yet, no one doubts that he was a philosopher!
MB: I get your point. If you see the tradition of philosophy, starting with the Greeks until our days, you can say that many of the great thinkers were also good writers. The tradition of uniting an aesthetic sense of doing philosophy was also a part of philosophy; we don’t have to forget it. You mentioned Plato. Plato was not only a great thinker; he was a great writer at the same time. So, this distinction between philosophy, which has presumably to be something dry, or even abstruse, and literature, which has to be something very poetic and unstructured… is not right. Good philosophers should try to be good writers, why not, and good writers should pay attention to philosophy.
The other thing, which goes perhaps deeper, is that philosophy, or at least analytic philosophy, starts always with a question. You have a problem, an issue. The first thing you want to do is to clarify that question and then you look for an answer, using empirical findings and correct reasoning, up to the point where you come to a conclusion. That’s the essence of analytic philosophy; it’s not anymore something restricted to the analysis of the words we use. On the other side, you have this other dimension of our experience which is not necessarily one of “having a question” and not necessarily of “looking for an answer”, but just expressing our experience of living. For example, many of the Presocratics weren’t analytic philosophers. Socrates for me was the first great analytic philosopher; in the sense that I defined analytic philosophy. But the Presocratics were trying to express in a new language the experience of being, of existence, of moral conflict, of the passing of time, of nature. So you have these two faces of philosophy. Analytic philosophy and continental philosophy are not related to national traditions but to two different goals inside this same family called philosophy. You want to express your experience of existence, moral conflict, time, consciousness, and that’s why you are going to develop this sort of poetic language. You don’t need to argue, you need to express your feelings, your experience. And that’s where perhaps philosophy is so close to literature, to poetry. But on the other side, we are reasoning beings and that means that when we are confronted with questions – and we are all the time confronted with questions – the best thing we can do is to think about ways to answer that question, or ways to solve the problem. And that’s where the analytic tradition, the more rationalistic tradition, enters into play. I think we will always have these two kinds of philosophy because we are human beings and we have these two different needs; the need to express our emotions, feelings and experiences and the need to deal with problems of cognitive, ethical or political kind.
G: How do the audience respond to your seminars? Is there a difference between an “academic” and a “non-academic” audience?
MB: To begin with, I have the impression that the public don’t work with fixed categories – “this” is science, “this” is philosophy, “this” is literature. We are trained through our studies to distinguish clearly between philosophy, theology, the different kinds of sciences and so on. The reaction of people in general is encouraging. Intellectuals tend to isolate and to work inside their clusters, not communicating with people in general People are eager to learn new things, to hear new things, and are more open to many discussions that we think. That’s positive. But the challenge is not to bring philosophy to the level of the public but, on the contrary, to bring the public to the level of the philosophical discussion. The thing is in an accessible way to present some of the questions with which we deal everyday in our intellectual research.
G: Thank you for the interview!
MB: I thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you, I’m very happy about your initiative as students, it’s a great thing to open philosophy to a broader public.