Tremendous article HERE about high school students learning philosophy in Brazil. I realize that reporters can get a lot of this stuff wrong, but even if the thing is only half correct, then the picture of the influence of some French thought on dominant strains of academic philosophy in Brazil seems absolutely vile to me.
The influence:
According to the narrative I hear time and again, philosophy started in Brazil in the 1930s, when French scholars founded the philosophy department at the University of São Paulo. They put an end to the “dilettante period” characterized by the oratory of lawyers and the scholasticism of priests that had dominated Brazilian philosophy until then. Among the French scholars were Martial Guéroult and Victor Goldschmidt, who taught that doing philosophy is no longer possible, only history of philosophy: reconstructing systems of thought through a painstaking analysis of their immanent structure. Since then, studying the history of Western philosophy has been the paradigm of serious philosophy in Brazil.
O.K. Let's be honest. Bad SPEP philosophy tends towards just this kind of prison. You learn the classics with at least more depth than the average analytic dude, then when you put on your first pair of big boy pants you write hagiography about Parisian 68er or maybe one of their students. And in the United States at least, the next level of Hell (going from big boy pants to a ruined version of Bradbury's vanilla white suit) is when you get enough institutional pull to graduate from hagiographic exposition to actually yourself aping the style (English language translations) of Heidegger and the worst writers among the aforementioned Soixante Huitards (cf. Michael Marder for sad evidence that, for all our once vaunted ability to see through the outright cons foisted upon us by the Boomers, many gen ex SPEPers did not see through this one). . . good work if you can get it I guess, though see Jesus on what happens when you win the world.*
But, according to the article at least, some prominent Brazilian academic continental philosophers** with political connections have been using this very kind of fetishism to do everything possible to undermine the ability of Brazilian students to learn and do philosophy!
Among the greatest skeptics of the 2008 law is José Arthur Giannotti, one of Brazil’s most respected academic philosophers. He is a close friend of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who vetoed the law when it was first proposed in 2001, after it had already been approved by the legislature. “Teaching philosophy to students who can hardly read and write,” Giannotti said in 2008, “is sad foolishness.”
What a complete tool! I'm embarassed to share a job description with this man.
The article continues.
To be sure, conditions are dire in public schools. Overworked and underpaid teachers deal with students who are often in class for the free lunch, reduced bus fare, or because of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s welfare program, the bolsa familia (family fund). More than 12 million poor families get tiny financial incentives to keep their children in school. Brazil still has 15 million illiterate people and an additional 30 million “functionally” illiterate who can decipher a text, but not understand it, much less write something coherent.
When I mentioned Giannotti’s statement to students they were outraged. They thought he described a vicious circle: if you can’t establish a just society democratically without the citizens knowing what justice is, and if you can’t know what justice is without philosophy, it would be impossible to achieve justice in an unjust society like Brazil if studying philosophy presupposes justice.
As far as I can make out, the problem is, one can only really do philosophy in high school in the manner of analytic philosophy, focusing very strongly on positions and arguments and cartoon versions of great philosophers (and cartoons do have their place at all levels of philosophy; cf. any of Heidegger's own history, atrocious qua History, but essential philosophy).
The thing is one simply cannot expect very many high school (or college for that manner) students to become competent expositors of Kant's third critique. But one can expect them to read some of the better philosophical literature (obviously the existentialists, etc.) and learn enough classic arguments to engage in Socratic dialectic.
As a result of this then, according to the article, those most invested in this hyper-historicism end up being incredibly threatened by the idea of teaching philosophy to high-schoolers.
I know what I'm talking about here. My wife Emily and dear friend Frankie Worrell have both taught philosophy in Baton Rouge public high schools. A HUGE challenge to be sure. While the poverty in Baton Rouge is nowhere near where it is in Brazil, it's still pretty hideous. If I showed you some of these schools, you might think you were in Brazil. And when I think of Frankie and Emily were able to accomplish with some of their students, and read what's going on for all Brazilian high school students, then Giannotti's statements, political activism, and the ideology underlying all of that just infuriates me. I can't help it. It does.
There's no royal road to wisdom, no methodology right for everyone everywhere. Lady Philosophy visits those who know no logic and those who's history is execrable. These Brazilian teachers who are making space for her appearance in their classrooms are my heroes. Just read the article. See what they are doing.
[Notes:
*As Joe Bob says, I shouldn't have to explain this, but I will- I've written enough about bad analytic and good continental philosophy*** on this blog to have every right to make these kinds of observations, which are true in any case.
**One more thing I must say so as not to be misunderstood. I know three tremendous, almost frighteningly good (much better than me) Brazilian philosophers, and none of them fit the stereotype the author associates with Giannotti. So: (1) Brazil is producing great philosophers doing more than baroque history of ideas, (2) Giannotti type ass-hattery is not by any means universal in Brazilian academic philosophy.
***Including repeated effusive praise of some American expositors of Les Soixante Huitards such as Lee Braver, Martin Hagglund, and Samual Wheeler.]
