Philosophy in a Changing Era: Challenges and Proposals

Abstract

Broadly speaking, critical thinking is understood as the living philosophy that emanates from a reason never satisfied with its own achievements (González, 2005: 5). Since the emergence of critical philosophy with E. Kant, various currents have claimed this qualifier for themselves.

Leaving aside such an extraordinary historical unfolding, the first objective of this contribution is to highlight some features and vicissitudes of recent critical thinking in the region, taking the Argentine “case” as a basis and beginning with the return of democratic governments during the 1980s.

Internal factors within philosophy, as well as others external to it, that influenced the academic and cultural agenda of those years are made explicit, in an attempt to unveil some of the deeper meanings of these developments in philosophy and the social sciences. The paper then mentions events and situations which, taken together, effectively resulted years later in a change of era, with notable effects on the development of thought.

The proposal-oriented section of the contribution begins with the question of the official “forgetting” of the Philosophy of Liberation and of the secondary place assigned to university chairs and researchers devoted to Latin American thought. It also addresses the necessary shift of these studies toward decolonial and intercultural forms of philosophy and the social sciences, which today appear vigorous despite the academic and political difficulties they must face on a daily basis.