Evandro Agazzi’s Contributions
3.1 Reputation and Visibility in Philosophy
A peculiarity in Agazzi’s way of considering philosophy is his effort to find certain objective criteria for evaluating the “reputation” of a philosophical school, association, institution, tradition.
This term does hardly occur explicitly in his writings, but its sense has inspired the attitude and the concrete activity that he has developed during the many years he has spent especially as a top officer of the International Federation of the Philosophical Societies (FISP), of the International Institute of Philosophy (IIP), of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science (AIPS). The objective ground of such a reputation should obviously be the philosophical quality of the work performed, but here difficulties immediately surface since (as Agazzi has often noted with disapproval) in contemporary philosophy we often see that the partisans of a certain school simply reject as “non-phil- osophical” the work of the representatives of a rival school, despite the fact that all of them belong to the philosophical “profession”. Such judgments are based sometimes on methodological reasons (an alleged lack of rigor), and sometimes on the alleged philosophical irrelevance of the subject treated. The joint effect of these two criteria has led for a long while to restrict the genuine domain of philosophy to the Western tradition, considering other traditions, at best, as containing “implicit” philosophical elements within an essentially religious context, or some “pre-philosophical” intuitions in the context of a certain popular “wisdom”. It is clear that such an intellectual attitude was not particularly suitable for evaluating the admissibility of associations and even of individual persons into institutions such as FISP and IIP that are constitutionally committed to be internationally open and representative. But then an additional and more serious difficulty must be faced, that of the linguistic barriers. Indeed the production of a philosopher, the activity of an association, the global level of the philosophical teaching in a country may be of a very high standard but, if the language of that country is scarcely known abroad, this good philosophical quality remains “invisible” from the outside, and the philosophical life and activity within that region is condemned to a status of practical isolation. Agazzi has succeeded in reducing significantly both difficulties.3.2 Philosophy as Self-Consciousness of Cultures
Regarding the first issue, Agazzi relied on his general way of conceiving philosophy as an organic reflection on the “world of Life” whose roots are present in the rational nature of every human being and gradually expand to form general views shared by larger and larger communities. These views regard the sense of life, the relations of humans with the rest of nature, the moral duties, the right social order, the possible existence of an ultra-mundane reality and life and so on. When, in the history of a given community, certain persons appear who are gifted with a special intellectual acumen, an aptitude for critical reflection and a capability of organizing these views in some systematic way, we can say that a philosophy is emerging, though the record of the names of these philosophers might be lost for different reasons. These ideas were presented by Agazzi in a seminal lecture on Philosophy as self-consciousness of cultures delivered at the conference of the International Society of Metaphysics held in Nairobi in 1981, that had called the attention of several outstanding participants (I was present at that conference and remember, in particular, the expressions of appreciation of Francisco Miro Quesada. Ioanna Kuguradi, Odera Oruka). When the proceedings of that conference were published in 1983, Agazzi’s paper attracted the attention of Leopoldo Zea who published its Spanish translation in his journal Escritos de filosofia the same year.
This circumstance was not accidental, since Agazzi’s thesis was a lucid way to make explicit the ideas on which (as we have seen) rested the “ontological trend” of Latin- American philosophy. Agazzi himself has remained faithful to this approach up to the point of resuming and expanding it (with the title Philosophy as self-consciousness of cultures and as condition for intercultural understanding) in a lecture delivered at the meeting of the International Institute of Philosophy of 2008 in Seoul, devoted to the theme “Comparative and intercultural philosophies”.One must note, however, that the strongest stimulation to elaborate this thesis had come to Agazzi from another special circumstance, that is, from having started in 1979 his activity of professor at the Swiss University of Fribourg, where he attracted several African students, some of which wanted to write a doctoral dissertation under his guidance. The easiest solution was to let them work on some topic or author of the standard Western philosophy; the most challenging was to engage the best of them to do a research on the philosophy of their own culture. Agazzi adopted both practices, but the second imposed him a serious reflection on the very idea of an “African philosophy”. The topic was by no means new, and its discussion had moved between two poles: on the one hand certain scholars maintained that it is possible to extract from indigenous cultural expressions an implicit philosophy by using the categories of traditional Western philosophy. This is essentially the approach of La philosophie bantou (1945) by the Belgian priest Placide Tempels, and has remained (though with a much more elaborated linguistic and ethnological sophistication) in the “etnophilosophie” of the Rwandan philosopher Alexis Kagame. On the other hand, a position closer to the “ontological” trend of Latin-American philosophy is to be found in Leopold Senghor, who has insisted on the “negritude” as a peculiar racial characteristic and has also linked his literary and philosophical production with concrete social-political commitments and activity (indeed he was even President of his country, Senegal, from 1960 to 1980).
It lies outside the scope of the present contribution to give more details on this particular aspect of Agazzi’s intellectual life, but the mention of the above circumstances (as well as of others that induced him to be among the founders of the Afro-Asian Philosophy Association) is useful in order to understand why he was so appreciative of Latin-American philosophy at moments when even many philosophers working in Latin America did not appreciate very much that philosophy.
The analogy with Latin America, however, must not be pushed too far: almost all African countries (and also several Asian ones) had been subjected to colonial dominance until the second half of the twentieth century, and therefore had remained deprived of universities and in general of all those educational institutions that constitute the “infrastructure” for the development of the forms of “high culture”, including in particular philosophy. In short, no “professional philosophy” had existed in the African countries during the colonial period, and this explains quite well why the question of the very existence of an African philosophy could be raised (and is still raised) by many scholars. Latin-American countries, on the contrary, have gained their political independence in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and have had the opportunity of establishing a more or less efficient system of high education (moreover inspired by the Iberian models of the colonial period, in which philosophy was present). In addition, the fact of having received several European intellectuals escaping racial and political persecutions just before the second World War contributed to an enrichment and to a recognition of the philosophical life of certain countries, especially Argentina and Mexico, and this is reflected in the fact that, since the foundation of FISP in 1948, an Argentine and a Mexican philosopher have constantly appeared among the members of the Steering Committee of this Federation (the firsts of them were Francisco Romero and Samuel Ramos, respectively).
In addition, one must not ignore that one of the most brilliant, versatile and dynamic Mexican philosophers, Jose Vasconcelos, had delivered a series of very successful lectures at various universities and institutions of the USA during his voluntary exile after his political defeat in the Mexican presidential elections (1929), and had also visited several European countries. Therefore, it was rather natural that Vasconcelos (who had returned to Mexico in 1940 and had recovered his philosophical leadership in his own country) was invited as a main speaker at the World Congress of Philosophy that was held in Venice in 1958, where he also extended the invitation to hold the next World Congress in Mexico. The young Agazzi, by the way, had the opportunity of personally meeting Vasconcelos on that occasion.The 13th World Congress of Philosophy did actually take place in Mexico in 1963, but it could not be presided by Vasconcelos (who died in 1959) nor by Samuel Ramos (who died even a couple of months before him). It was organized and presided by Francisco Larroyo who then automatically became President of FISP (as it was tradition at that time). That congress was very successful and certainly contributed to a better knowledge of the philosophical life in Mexico by the international community. Nevertheless it was only with the World Congress of 1978 in Dusseldorf that a Mexican was invited again as a main plenary session speaker: he was Leopoldo Zea, who had been included in the program following the strong suggestion of Agazzi, who was a member of the Scientific Committee of that Congress.
3.3 The Study of Latin-American Indigenous Thought
The particular view of Agazzi, strictly relating philosophy with cultural traditions even outside institutionalized structures, very naturally induced him to be interested in those philosophical conceptions that were present in Latin-American cultures before the “conquest” realized by the Spaniards. Scholars doing important work in this direction existed especially in Mexico (Miguel Leon Portilla, Alfredo Lopez Austin, Mercedes de La Garza) and Peru (Maria Luisa Rivara Tuesta), and Agazzi established friendly relations with them, and especially a strict cooperation with Carlos Viesca Trevino who was the head of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Medicine of the Mexican UNAM.
This cooperation traduced itself concretely in the constitution of two research teams, one in Italy and one in Mexico (directed respectively by Agazzi and Viesca), that organized a series of meetings with regular alternation in the two countries on historical-philosophical issues of medicine. The papers and the proceedings volumes of these meetings (edited by Agazzi and Viesca in Italian and Spanish) have been a valuable output of such an initiative, whose merit has been double. On the one hand, it attracted the interest of European scholars on this aspect of the Latin-American cultures, that were usually studied mainly from an ethnological or archaeological point of view (in particular. Agazzi has hosted several articles on pre-Hispanic Latin- American philosophy in the international journals of which he is the editor). A significant demonstration of this fact was that the author of the present contribution obtained her doctor degree in philosophy at the university of Genoa with a thesis (redacted and published in Italian) on Philosophy and medicine in ancient Mexico. On the other hand, it testified also in Mexico that “Mexican philosophy” was not only the contemporary one, but included also the indigenous pre-Hispanic philosophy (actually the author of the present paper teaches “Philosophy of Mexico” at the Pontifical University of Mexico City and includes pre-Hispanic philosophy in the subject matter of her classes).3.4 Personal Contacts and Cooperation
The care for personal relations has always characterized Agazzi’s activity also in the domain of intellectual life and research, and for this reason he never accepted the role of an armchair intellectual whose chief work consists in reading (and writing) books and papers. He has given much importance to direct dialogues, real discussions, concrete encounters and for this reason has never underestimated meetings, conferences, congresses, tours of lectures of which he has organized a great number in all the continents. It is on the occasion of such initiatives that he was able both to deepen his knowledge of the philosophical work of persons and communities, and to offer to several philosophers the opportunity of knowing or better knowing one another and coming to a significant collaboration. This in particular has happened with regard to Latin-American philosophy. We have sketched above a rather systematic presentation of this philosophy, articulating it into three fundamental trends, each one including a great deal of authors and titles, with a wide chronological and geographical dissemination. This was obviously a historiographic systematization without the pretension of reflecting the existence of “schools” in a strict sense. Indeed many of those authors did not have a mutual personal acquaintance, and at times did only a partial reference to their respective works. In the span of less than two decades Agazzi attained a quite deep knowledge of Latin-American philosophy and, in particular, established links of personal acquaintance, and often of sincere friendship with many of the most salient representatives of this philosophy, to whom he also offered the opportunity of concretely coming together and confronting their views in conferences and congresses that he was able to promote also thanks to his functions as an officer of FISP, IIP and several other philosophical institutions. Leaving aside Mexico for the moment, we note that particularly frequent have been his visits to Brazil, Peru and Argentina, but also Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Chile have known his active presence, so that it is not exaggerated to say that Agazzi has had certain merits in the progressive consolidation and international recognition of the specific contribution of Latin-American philosophy. He has been a sincere friend of Miro Quesada, Leopoldo Zea, Mayz Vallenilla, Mario Bunge, Alberto Caturelli, Enrique Dussel, Tarcisio Padilha, Miguel Reale, Newton Da Costa (to mention just a few of them of different countries and orientations), and it was in a way symbolic that the last opportunity in which Miro Quesada, and Zea joined together was at Agazzi’s home in Mexico City where his wife offered a dinner to the participants of the meeting of the IIP in 2005. It is certainly significant that Agazzi received five doctoral degrees honoris causa by Latin-Amerucan universities.
3.5 The Privileged Links with Mexico
The first visit of Agazzi to Mexico was on the occasion of an international philosophical symposium in Ixtapan de la Salle in 1979, where he gave an invited lecture, and he returned then to this country very frequently, either in connection with meetings and conferences organized by institutions (such as FISP, IIP, the Interamerican Philosophical Society, the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, the International Association of Christian Philosophers, the Mexican Association of Philosophy), or on invitation of numberless universities and academic institutions to give lectures, courses, seminars in several parts of the Mexican Republic. This closer contact with the “normal” practice of the philosophical activity induced Agazzi to go a step further in the appreciation of Latin-American philosophy by recognizing its good quality standard. It is a judgment that he has quickly extended to the forms of “high culture” in general, and that he also expresses by reproaching Mexican intellectuals for often considering themselves as belonging to the “third World”. According to him, the level of the Mexican culture is objectively comparable with that of the European countries and with the average of the USA. Of this last country Mexico has imitated several things and, among them, the model of a “free market” educational system, in which one finds a rather restricted number of excellent (and expensive) universities and colleges, beside hundreds of second-rate or even poor (and cheaper) universities and colleges. In Europe, where education is still principally promoted and regulated by the State or other public authorities, the situation is much more uniform. One cannot underestimate the importance of this second kind of contact Agazzi has had with Latin-American culture: the personal acquaintance with the outstanding personalities whom we have mentioned above, and the knowledge of their work, could have given him the impression that they were just isolated peaks in a low-level landscape, but coming into direct contact with the standard activity of (good) Mexican universities, both public and private, offered the evidence that the general landscape was not that low-level at all. Agazzi had the possibility to confirm this diagnosis also for other Latin-American countries.
The most significant consequence of all this is that, after retiring from he universities of Fribourg and Genoa (of which he is emeritus professor), he has become full professor in Mexican universities, public (such as the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, UAM) and private (such as the Universidad Panamericana). In both of them he has given lectures and seminars of no lower level than those he gave in Europe or in the USA, but simply relying on his pedagogic expertise to make accessible even certain “difficult” pages of the classic authors to young students endowed with a poor educational background (totally adhering in such a way to the ideal of social promotion that must inspire higher education). Therefore, as one can speak of an “Italian period” and of a “Swiss period” of Agazzi’s career, one must now speak of a “Mexican period” that is characterized not only by his activity in Mexican universities and institutions (he is a member of the Mexican System of National Investigators, and of the Mexican Academy of Sciences) but also by the significant fact of having acquired the Mexican citizenship. In such a way Agazzi is concretely contributing today to the life and recognition of Latin-American philosophy in which, however, he had been present for many years through his work: it is sufficient to remember that the Spanish edition of his La logica simbolica has been the basic textbook on which logic has been studied by many generations of students (including the author of the present paper) throughout Latin-America.
3.6 The Battle for Spanish as Philosophical Language
What I have said, however, does not still concern an even more important contribution that Agazzi has brought to the promotion of Latin-American philosophy, the one that we have qualified above as the question of visibility and is strictly related with the existence of “linguistic barriers”. At first sight it sounds very strange to speak of a linguistic barrier in the case of Spanish that is the second spoken language of the world (after Chinese and before English itself). Nevertheless the question is different and regards the status of international language that a given idiom has outside the domain of its native speakers, at least from certain points of view (as it was the case for Latin until the end of the eighteenth century). As regards philosophy, in particular, it is certain that Spanish was not an international language in the first half of the twentieth century, and this reflected itself in a palpable isolation of the philosophical life of the Spanish-speaking countries, an isolation that could not be really overcome by a few representatives of that philosophy who were fluent enough in French, English or German and could hold talks or write papers in those languages. In short, it is really difficult for a philosopher to think or express his thoughts in a foreign language. This matter of fact was made particularly evident to Agazzi (who did not experience it personally, being fluent in several languages) by an accidental circumstance. He was trying to convince an outstanding Italian philosopher to be an invited plenary session speaker at the Dusseldorf World Congress of 1978 and, in order to overcome his denial, he visited him at home and received the following confidential confession: this eminent personality (who was at ease in reading several languages) did not afford reading out loud a paper and participating in a public discussion in a language different from Italian. Until that moment, French and English were the official languages of FISP (the Federation that is in charge of organizing the World Congresses of Philosophy), whereas German as well was admitted as a third official language just for the World Congresses (evidently owing to the great weight of German philosophy in modern times). From that moment on Agazzi started a work of persuasion within FISP in order that also Spanish and Russian be admitted as official languages for the World Congresses (in addition also to the language of the host country). The resistances were very strong, but a first significant success came at the Congress of the Interamerican Philosophical Society (Tallahassee 1981) that approved a motion moved by Agazzi in favour of admitting Spanish as an official language for the World Congresses of Philosophy. In the meanwhile Agazzi obtained the sufficient support within FISP Steering Committee and a change in the Statutes of the Federation (admitting Spanish, Russian and the language of the host country as official languages of the World Congresses) was approved by FISP General Assembly at the World Congress of Montreal (1983). The positive affects of such a measure were soon visible through the great increase of Spanish speaking participants (in particular of Latin-American philosophers) in the World Congresses.
One cannot conclude this survey without mentioning the policy in favour of a greater weight recognized to Latin America that Agazzi pursued in his position of Secretary general and then of President of FISP. Under his impulsion the Latin-American philosophers who were elected to the Steering Committee of the Federation attained the highest level (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico had one representative each), and the crowning of this policy was represented by the election of Agazzi’s successor as President of FISP at the Moscow World Congress in 1993. This successor was Francisco Miro Quesada who, proposed by Agazzi, obtained a great majority of votes (the tradition of the automatic succession had been discontinued after the Montreal Congress of 1983). This event may be considered a symbol of the full dignity and visibility that Latin- American philosophy had finally acquired and for which Evandro Agazzi had long committed himself. Today the fact that a Latin-American woman (namely, the author of the present paper) holds for the first time the office of Vice-President of FISP continues this tradition.