Philosophy, University, and Democracy after the Military Rule: Argentina, 1975-1990

Abstract

The transition to democracy in Argentina during the early 1980s brought about, among many other reforms, a new professionalisation of philosophical studies in the country. It was a moment of disciplinary development, especially after the Third National Conference of Philosophy, celebrated in 1980. During these years, questions about the role of intellectuals and philosophers in society were highly debated against the backdrop of the democratisation process. This article identifies the institutions, magazines, and research centres devoted to philosophy before, during, and after the transition to democracy in Argentina. Our hypothesis is that these platforms, at this particular moment, shaped the way in which philosophy is practised in the country today. First, we highlight the relevance of authors who participated in the project of a “Latin American philosophy” in order to trace one narrative critical of disciplinary professionalisation. Second, we analyse academic and cultural journals that played an active role in the introduction of foreign authors and philosophical debates. These groups, we argue, set forth fundamental and contesting narratives about the democratisation process in Argentina in relation to philosophy.

Keywords:

• philosophy in Argentina (1975-1990)
• professionalisation
• philosophy journals and institutions
• intellectual history
• university
• Latin American thought

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 “I call ‘serious philosophy’ that which seeks to justify in a rational manner the utterances it produces, or at least that which takes distance from the conceptual digressions of the enthusiastic and snobby speculative compositions that our philosophical history is so rich in” (de Olazo 1980).

2 In addition to their comments in class, both Pucciarelli (1969) and Carpio (1995) criticised the so-called analytic philosophy on several occasions. Carpio would have said “The University of Buenos Aires is heading for death” (Cragnolini, 2011). Similarly, Astrada’s followers (1961) and the Latin-Americanist philosophers were also highly critical of this current emerging in Argentina.

3 “A philosophy external to the pedagogically dominant system, the oppressive system. A philosophy that takes seriously the epistemic conditionings of thought, the political conditionings of Latin American thought, from the point of view of oppression and dependency cannot be other than a liberation philosophy. In Latin America, and soon in Africa and Asia, the only philosophy possible will be that which undertakes the task of destroying the philosophy that concealed them as oppressed, a philosophy that undertakes constructive work, from a praxis of liberation, for the elucidation of the real categories that will allow the poor and the marginalised to have access to the humanity of a future system of international, national, and interpersonal justice” (Asociación de Filosofía Latinoamericana y Ciencias Sociales 1975, 3).

4 “The problem of mental emancipation for our current philosophy then becomes both more complex and more serious than before. More serious because it is no longer a question of dealing with the tutelage suffered by the Latin American intelligence in its infancy or in its youth, but with the revalidation of its alienation when it has reached, or has approached, its maturity. But more serious above all, because this type of philosophising, based on ultramarine historical coordinates, supposedly representative of universality, operates, unwittingly or inadvertently, as the intellectual dome of a national or regional dependence towards the outside, which is at the same time of social or cultural domination towards the inside. For our historical community, what at a certain moment was called its ‘philosophical normality’ as the exercise of a technically emancipated function, is transformed or deformed into dysfunction” (Roig 1975, 40).

5 Arturo Roig fled to Ecuador, while philosophers such as Sazbón and León Rozitchner (1924-2011) went into exile in Caracas. Mendoza-born philosophers Dussel and Cerruti Guldberg, like Terán, Oscar del Barco (1928-), and Mauricio Malamud (1918-1989), fled to Mexico.

6 For the previous projects of the so-called analytic philosophy in Argentina, see Gracia et al. (1985).

7 Between 13 and 18 October 1980, the Third National Conference of Philosophy was held at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires with the dean of the university Arturo Berenguer Carisomo, the president of the Conference Committee Eugenio Pucciarelli, and the national president Jorge Rafael Videla. The words of its organisers as well as the reviews of its collaborators are illustrative: “Philosophical activity, which is far from unfolding in an aseptic enclosure alien to the human world, and which necessarily extends into political action, calls for the collaboration of prudent magistrates, enlightened officials, men willing to ensure the validity of justice for all. It is not satisfied with administrators of public affairs, inspired by models of other times, but calls for statesmen open to the future, able to ensure the rule of order that makes possible harmonious coexistence in a country. Only in a climate of broad tolerance for the opinions, multiple and divergent, of the different human groups that are articulated in the complex of society, of generosity in welcoming constructive criticism, will the life of philosophy be possible as a creative life of new cultural possibilities” (Pucciarelli 1980, 46). “On behalf of the organisers and of the Casa de las Humanidades that welcomed them, I ask them to take back to their homelands the fraternal greetings of this Argentina open, as you shall have seen, to all noble, generous and fruitful ideas” (Berenguer Carisomo 1982, 45).

8 Indeed, members of all the aforementioned philosophical spaces participated. This did not imply greater adhesion, but above all an effective autonomisation. Among the participants were Carlos Nino, Olsen Ghirardi, Eduardo Rabossi, Conrado Eggers Lan, Néstor Cordero, Ismael Quiles, Juan Carlos Scannone, Francisco García Bazán. Adolfo Carpio, Roberto Walton, Lucía Piossek, Hernán Zucchi, Judith Botti de Achaval, Ezequiel de Olaso, Juan Carlos Torchia Estrada, Rafael Virasaro, Mario Casalla, Octavio Derisi, and Julio de Zan.

9 In a book published posthumously, Radical Evil on Trial (1996), Nino described how closely he and his two colleagues worked with Alfonsín on the design of the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP) and other strategies concerning the trials.

10 The members of the CONADEP were Ernesto Sábato (President), Ricardo Colombres, René Favaloro, Hilario Fernández Long, Carlos T. Gattinoni, Gregorio Klimovsky, Marshal Meyer, Jaime F. de Nevares, Eduardo Rabossi, Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú, Santiago Marcelino López, Hugo Diógenes Piucill, and Horacio Hugo Huarte. Political philosopher Carlos Nino also advised Alfonsín on the creation of this commission. In his account: “I played an active role in defining CONADEP’s membership. While Malamud was working with Minister of Justice Raúl Alconada Sempé on the appointment of judges, I worked with José Ignacio López, a Catholic journalist who was Alfonsín’s spokesman, on the formation of the CONADEP. I suggested Rabossi, Klimovsky, Fernández Long, and Meyer, as well Colombres on the advice of Carrió. Although we wanted representation of the Human Rights organizations, these organizations were sceptical about the commission and ultimately refused to participate. (…) The Human Rights organizations later cooperated intimately with CONADEP, once they recognized the seriousness with which it approached its tasks” (Nino 1996, 73).

11 Carlos Altamirano has worked extensively on Argentine and Latin American cultural and intellectual history. He has written important works on intellectual culture and politics such as Bajo el signo de las masas, 1943-1973 (2001), Para un programa de historia intelectual y otros ensayos (2005), Peronismo y cultura de izquierda (2001), and Para una invención de nuestra América (2021). Oscar Terán was a scholar and intellectual of reference in Argentina; some of his most important works are his edited volume on philosopher José Ingenieros’s writings Imperialismo y nación (1979), his work on the 1960s intellectual Left Nuestros años sesentas (1991), and De utopías, catástrofes y esperanzas (2006).

12 On this rivalry and competition for university spaces, Tomás Abraham recalls the SADAF group in the following terms: “They had formed a front of resistance to anyone suspected of infiltrating the faculty in the department to infect it with relativism, scepticism, sociologism, and essayistic delusions that simulated philosophical knowledge”. Meanwhile, in the same article he characterised the Peronist philosophers of liberation ironically: “They called themselves ‘national philosophers’, heirs of an illiberal tradition that made General Perón a disciple of Nietzsche” (Abraham 2005, 82).

13 In order to consider these philosophical platforms, it is necessary to realise that this academic space was different from the present one. At least comparatively, it can be thought that, today, the different theoretical traditions have their respective research spaces, with their own journals and chairs, recognising each other as different approaches or areas within philosophy and the university. In contrast, during this decade, the conflict between the different traditions escalated to higher levels, for at least three reasons. First, in many moments certain traditions of thought came to hegemonise notably university positions and programmes thanks to links that were always related to university and also national politics. Secondly, because also at many moments, for each of the traditions at stake, the need for a professionalisation of philosophy necessarily required a detachment from the opposing tradition. Thirdly, because, as we will point out, in comparison with the present moment, the different philosophical positions were also involved in broader cultural and political projects, and so it was not only a matter of an academic discussion for spaces within the university. In relation to this, Jorge Dotti (1997) suggested two interrelated sites where to trace the presence of political disputes in university practice. One is configured in what he calls “the politics of knowledge” and refers to a certain struggle for the imposition and adoption of subjects in study programmes, while the second consists of university practice in its links with national politics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucas Domínguez Rubio

Lucas Domínguez Rubio is assistant researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET, Argentina). Lucas completed his PhD and undergraduate studies at the University of Buenos Aires. His work focuses on the reception of philosophical currents of thought in Argentina and the links between politics and philosophy in Argentine history. He has published El anarquismo argentino (Anarres-Terramar-Tupac, 2018), a book on anarchism’s documentary sources in Argentina; and Carlos Astrada: textos de juventud, a compilation of texts by the young Argentine philosopher Carlos Astrada. He has also published articles in journals from Argentina, Spain, France, the United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and Colombia. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin and the University of Tübingen in 2019, receiving funding from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). He is also a member of the Academic Committee of the Center of Documentation and Research of Left Culture (National University of San Martín), and a member of the editorial board of the academic journal Políticas de la memoria.

Sofia Mercader

Sofía Mercader is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University. She holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the University of Warwick. She has recently published her first book, ‘Punto de Vista’ and the Argentine Intellectual Left (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), a historical study of the Argentine magazine Punto de Vista (1978-2008), a cultural review that gathered together prominent Argentine intellectuals throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. Her work primarily focuses on Argentine and Latin American intellectual culture, left-wing intellectuals, and Latin American feminism. She specialises in democratic transitions and intellectual culture during late-twentieth century Latin America. Her work is also largely focused on magazines and printed periodicals. In 2020, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (National Autonomous University of Mexico).